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Songs on the Security of Networks
a blog by Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Terms of Using the Service

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This is an ancient post, published more than 4 years ago.

As such, it might not anymore reflect the views of the author or the state of the world. It is provided as historical record.

Another pearl sent my way by Sirmacik – a footer on one of the websites:

“I prohibit copying and/or publicizing any content, including images and the source code of this website, looking into any files with these extensions is strictly forbidden: .html/.php/.css/.js”

I’m not sure whether it’s more funny or sad. It is, however, a part of a bigger and definitely serious problem – all kinds of Terms of Service or End User License Agreements that users don’t even know they are agreeing to, or what exactly those “agreements” contain.

So, with a reference to the great “End Vendor License Agreement”, I propose a similar response to all the Terms of Service out there – Terms of Using the Service (TOUTS), as follows:

By displaying your content to me and/or saving the following Terms of Using the Service you hereby agree to the following Terms:

  1. you will not track my browsing habbits outside of your domain;
  2. when tracking my browsing within your domain you will do that only after my express consent;
  3. you will not use any of data generated by me without my express written consent;
  4. at no time will you hinder my ability to access my data;
  5. you will fully comply with any and all my requests to delete my data, including copies, backups, cache and similar.

Or a shorter version, with a link to full TOUTS:

By displaying your content to me and/or saving the following Terms of Using the Service you hereby agree to the Terms available at: http://rys.io/static/touts-en.txt

Now we only need to place that in our User-Agent String, so that it’s visible in the server logs (hence the need to keep TOUTS short). And we can claim, that:

  • TOUTS have been written on the disk, which is considered acknowledging them and agreeing to them;
  • at any time the server could have just stopped serving us should it consider TOUTS to be unacceptable – but didn’t, hence we can once again assume that TOUTS have been agreed upon.

The idea is to get the “service providers” to acknowledge all the problems with TOS, and get them to finally agree that TOS are not binding.

So – spread the word, put TOUTS in your User-Agent String. Suggestions, additions, translations are very welcome. You can contact me in a plethora of ways, or you can use this Diaspora thread.