What we really need is a set of standard (or at least de facto) ToS, like we have for OSS licences, so that companies can then list deviation from the standard ToS. That would reduce the body of text required to be read and might actually make people read it and they would be more likely to understand the requirements the ToS.
Thanks, this is it. I've just posted the same thing before reading your comment.
Who should start that movement? Perhaps we could trigger it by having a public repository of (provisional) licenses and start linking to it from our side projects?
Well I dont have any projects (let alone side projects) that need a ToS.
Ultimately those who start it will be those that benefit from having readable unambiguous ToS. Some benevolent company? A company that has been bitten my unenforceable ToS? A startup that doesn't want to complicate legal? ISO? EFF?
What stops me from contributing to that effort is at that I don't know (and dont really want to know) enough legal to know common variations of in ToS. Not to mention the wide range of fields that ToSes cover.
I think that standard is called the Commercial Code. It hasn't stopped companies from putting into ToS even things that are in CCs since they operate in many countries and CCs are, by their nature, national.
That does seem like a better approach for helping people understand what their rights and obligations are. Whether that aligns with the interests of every system provider is another question.
Well hopefully spending less on legal is incentive enough. Knowing their ToS is enforceable is also a boon, unless they are deliberately trying to make the ToS in the grey, but then they probably wouldn't want to use a standard ToS anyway.
If if were to catch on hopefully user and social pressure would help to keep its adoption up.
