TOSAmend: turn all online "I Agree" buttons into negotiations

Kevin Owocki's TOSAmend is a provocative browser applet that allows you amend the (up-to-now) non-negotiable terms of service you had to "agree" to in order to access many services online. The applet causes your new terms of service to be submitted along with your "I agree" click, so that the provider can agree, disagree, or modify your terms and send them back, preserving the ages-old tradition of negotiation.

Here it falls to me to remind you of ReasonableAgreement.org, where you can get the text of my ReasonableAgreement:

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

on stickers and t-shirts, sold at cost (I don't get anything from this, apart from a warm glow).

TOSAmend: The easy way to modify web service Terms of Service agreements (via /.)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • Happy Mutants • reasonableagreement • web theory

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lyd

Discussion on /. seemed to arrive at the general consensus that, while this is very cool and an important awareness thingy, there’s no legal remedy in it.
- Lobster
  
  Especially since the provider can also simply ignore it.
semiotix

As a vegan, I’m outraged that this forces me to agree that I “like ham sandwiches.” (Or, as the actual script currently linked has it, cheese sandwiches. IT’S STILL MURDER.)

In retaliation, I’m developing TOSAmendAmend, an applet that, if you so much as mouse over it, signs you up for Columbia House’s 9-CDs-for-a-penny deal, in perpetuity, no-backsies-to-infinity. And sets your default preference to “smooth jazz.”
nosehat

That t-shirt idea is fantastic! Fight one bogus adhesion contract with an even more bogus adhesion contract. “By reading this, you agree..” :D I’m so totally stealing that!

I’m definitely getting one of these shirts to wear the next time I shop for a cell phone.
- Marktech
  
  “By reading this, you agree..” :D I’m so totally stealing that!
  
  Oblig. http://xkcd.com/501/
Max

Surely you actually need to send the amended contract back to them so that they know what you’re signed up to.
Then of course they get to decide whether to agree to your new TOS, probably, decline by default and you’re back to square zero.
It’s not like they HAVE to let you be a customer. If you don’t want to play by their rules, there is plenty of other interwebs for you.
hugh crawford

I mentioned this on the original site:

“does sending a POST message to a web server have any legal meaning? ”the two obvious answers are eitherYes , thus the amended agreement is binding.

or

No , the original agreement is not binding in the first place.

I suspect that someone somewhere thinks a posted agreement is binding otherwise why bother, and that any programmer who’s code doesn’t check to see that the agreement posted matches the agreement served will get fired real soon now.

Then I thought:
I have not seen any of those post the agreement back to the server things recently. All I see are checkboxes that I have read something on some other page and agreed to that.
- willu
  
  I think that “the original agreement is not binding” might be the correct answer. But that would then mean that you are using the web site without authorization. How does that interact with the (recently modified) computer fraud and abuse act?
  
  This is similar to the GPL not requiring agreement, but if you don’t agree then then you probably have no copyright license to do what you want to do.
Erik Postma

I tried to order the ReasonableAgreements tee, but it looks like MondoTees pulled it. Certainly the link from the ReasonableAgreements page is dead and I can’t find it using Google or other searching fu.
http://jron.tumblr.com/ jron

reminded me of this…
http://shallowsage.com/post/1335820521/whether-or-not-he-had-actually-read-the-terms-of