Information gathering is out of control Rural Ramblings

When I was doing my business diploma a good deal of the course was English Law, contracts, torts and such like. In retrospect I may have more in my bank account if I’d carried on in law, it interested me, it still does.

Put simply, in mine own words, onerous contracts suck. A contract should be a meeting of minds where both sides benefit to equal value and risks, if any are equally shared. Over the years, even before the Internet took off that corporate contracts have gotten longer, the print smaller and the majority of those that I’ve seen I would consider to be onerous. Basically, if you want the product or service that is being offered, suck it up and sign or take a hike.

I’ve stopped doing surveys that offer prizes. My freelancing mantra is still, “no pay, no way.”

I bought a bottle of wine from a local liquor store for my wife over the holiday weekend. I was given a voucher with my receipt, take this survey to have a monthly chance to win a million points or $5,000. With this column in mind I went to the site and went all the way until the terms and conditions.

I was hoping for something better but there were pages of stuff that included me agreeing for the corporation to be able to use my data in any way that they wanted to. Offering $5,000 a month is a cheap way of harvesting data don’t you think?

For free shipping I subscribe to a large online organisation’s prime service. I will mention them not but I’m sure you’ll guess who it is. Part of that deal is free music, which would be nice. My wife investigated and got as far as the terms and conditions before she pulled up short. The deal included a clause to download and use information from her computer, import and store your contacts was how it was benignly worded I think. There were others. Standard stuff nowadays I think. We declined.

I’m not a fan of Internet regulation per ce. The whole idea of the Internet was for it to be free and fair for people to use. However, I am a fan of reigning in corporations and even states when they get out of hand. And, in the information and data world one doesn’t have to go far to search for misuse and perhaps even downright criminality and sabotage.

Reading the small print was always a challenge. I’m a fan of plain, fair English, I don’t think corporations should be allowed to use a font smaller than 10 and should be compelled to limit terms and conditions to three A4 pages or less.

I think there is a need for people to be informed/educated of just what they are signing up for with these onerous contracts on or offline. I really believe that some people just don’t know what they are agreeing to or what rights and data they are signing away.

What would happen I wonder if enough people decided that they wouldn’t agree to such contracts and maybe even better, if a competitor offered a nicer, fairer one? Wouldn’t that be nice?