Your Phone Number

I think there's a benefit in governments took away people's phone number from the telecommunications providers. Just the number not the services, so that when we objected to certain practices, we could just change to their competitors without having to change number. 

Cause this is not 2001 when our number is just a relationship between the company and us, now it is tied to our banking, to other important applications that contains our public administrative identities. How could we change number now? and moreover in the future?

Cause there are clauses in most terms and conditions where they could change the terms and conditions, the contract, at their own whim and our continued usage of their services would be considered as acceptance and binding. If it were a business contract you would be scratching our hair vigorously and objected to it with passion. 

The digital terms and conditions might seem harmless some years ago, but overtime people are going to face problems, and one way or the other they are going to be "forced" to abuse some of the terms or clauses to their benefit, something unusual. Let's say in another 3 years they're going to want to do it again, and their business were going to be built upon the abuse... for example it used to be just a company storing your data in their own server, now they are sharing your data with third parties, and then next they couldn't conduct their businesses without it, the overtime there would come a need to require you to guarantee permission to your data for the next 2 years or 5 years... I mean something like that, since nobody's paying attention, and nobody's calling them out, it's only usual that they are going to build upon it and build upon it and build upon it.

Now I'm reading this telecommunication company's terms and conditions, and if it were other sites on the internet I would just object to the usual, lengthy, foreign, and hard to decipher, but now what's at stake is my number that I've been using for long and for most of my lifestyle needs... I couldn't just object... and what if they started some predatory practices? there's nothing I could do about it but to change my number... and then I had to start over again (I would be missing some data update with other applications that might still be tracking my interests based on the old number). 

This is not good, but what could I do about it?

Regulation Idea: Non Common Practices Label v.02

Sometimes products offer warrants, and people would expect that they might not include shipping costs. Restaurants might offer discounts, but not including drinks... another "expected" terms. 

But if a product had uncommon terms such as, "partially licensed not 100% sold", or requires users to have another product or to buy another accessories in order to fully function, or legal peculiarities such as phones imported from countries banned by the U.S, unregistered board / machines, or other uncommon, unexpected terms like that... the products should be labelled or marked with an "unusual practices" label. 

In order for such labels to work, countries or territories needed to define their currently common terms of trade and services. This also would make it easier for terms and conditions reader such as myself if this motivated companies to highlight discrepancies of their terms from the defined "standards". 

Apple iCloud's "INDEMNIFICATION" paragraph v.02

There is this "INDEMNIFICATION" paragraph in iCloud Terms and Conditions that said two things I object:

1. "... you cannot sue Apple, its affiliates, ..., as a result of its decision to remove or refuse to process any information or Content, to warn you, to suspend or terminate your access to the Service, or to take any other action during the investigation of a suspected violation or as a result of Apple's conclusion that a violation of this Agreement has occured."

2. "... indemnify and hold harmless Apple from and against any and all claims and demands arising from usage of your Account, whether or not such usage is expressly authorized by you."

Mind that this is my opinion, I'm not a professional legal practitioner nor am I acting as one:

First of all, number 1 makes it volatile for business purposes, legally speaking. There's no guarantee that your transactions or important time of negotiation wouldn't be interrupted by Apple at its sole discretion. And then, if they were wrong, all of those losses would be deemed to have been indemnified, by you. 

Number 2 makes it so that if your account got cracked by the malice of Apple's personnel, due to the company's negligence or encouragement, you don't get to claim compensation from Apple

Those are just in a hindsight, from the top of my head... these 2 clauses are so problematic, the fact that they are there at the first place, I'm concerned that it is deeper than just those problems. 

Gojek ToC and PP v.02

I'm reading Gojek ToC and PP right now, and they are so good. I'm sorry that I haven't read it before the update time... really, and I know I'm supposed to write this after I read them all but up until now they are just conclusively so worth talking about it would make it more difficult for myself if I were not to write this now. 

Gojek ToC and PP:

https://www.gojek.com/en/terms-of-service/, as of the 30'th of July 2020
https://www.gojek.com/privacy-policy/, as of the 30'th of July 2020

Are legit, hands down... although I wish people could make these things much shorter and simpler and still hit the points but that's a worldwide problem. Gojek didn't escape that problem but their stuff is authentic, and just as good if not better in some paragraphs and wordings compared to popular, common ToC and PPs. 

Most ToCs and PPs utilize commonly used formats and sentences they looked similar with each other. That's for a good reason, we want some degree of standardization to make it easier to read/(skip). But those also would make legal documents more dangerous, in a way that they nudge readers to overlook some of the custom points unique to their services. Realistically, different sites/services should have their own unique exposures, as much similar their ToCs and PPs might look from another.

I'm all for not making everything different too much, please, it is hard enough to actually thoroughly read all of those legal documents, but if you made it like Gojek, that would be something else. 

Each problems addressed in the documents easily feels realistic, and there are a lot of points presented as such. By consistently being such straight-forward and informative throughout my reading, I got the sense that they have spent considerable resources to seriously take care of mine as much as theirs well-being, conditions, and interests. At the same time it feels like I'm living through the concerns addressed... and since there were lots of them it felt like studying a relevant skill or a relevant subject for an actual job. 

These are worth your time for their authenticity, the ToC and PP, each of them might be a slow read, not the easiest, but they don't give me that dismissible feeling as when I read other popular ToCs/PPs. 

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no. 17 of the ToC contains a sentence that said:

"You shall not sue nor object the validity of this Terms of Use or the Privacy Policy which are made in the electronic form"

I think it should be changed to:

"You shall not sue nor object the validity of this Terms of Conditions and the Privacy Policy as electronic forms"

TOC PP club

TOC PP club is a place where website hosts, game providers, and users gather together and agreed upon certificates regarding terms of services and privacy policies. 

For example:

melki.site requires account creators to agree upon this TOC and PP, but if you are members of the TOCPP club, you only have to read number 1, 11, and 23. 

TOCPP also could issue certificates, for example, certificate type A is the type of privacy policy where providers doesn't share data to third parties, type B shares to limited and listed third parties, type C is when they share with any third parties that provided them such and such services at the time. Users that have passed and acquired the certificates could create accounts quicker by only agreeing to some points not covered by the certificates. 

TOCPP members then would have a special login button that could authenticate users with such certificates.  

GitLab terms has an amazing verse v.02

https://about.gitlab.com/terms/

In this page there are several terms and conditions, the verse that I'm talking about is in the GitHost.io section, number 7.

Usually a terms and conditions set is made only to protect the right of the service provider. But this particular verse made to protect the user.

It's wonderful to know that in the real world we protect ourselves by protecting the user. And that's the real purpose of terms and conditions and negotiations in general.

Well done!

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