How many contracts have you signed without even checking to see whether you've agreed to donate your spleen and other entrails to a Bulgarian vulgarian who lives in Krk, Croatia?
Well, those clever professors at DePaul University thought that "hundreds" might be your answer, because they did something very strange. Yes, they brought about an interesting piece of research.
It was not inspired by the raising of voices and emotions about Facebook's terms of service. But it might now be dedicated to it.
They dragged 91 students in from various interesting corners of the campus and reminded them that they'd agreed to be research guinea pork as part of the course requirement. Then they asked them to sign an innocent consent form. Just three pages of single-spaced type.
Eighty-seven of the students, some of whom may already have been double-spaced from certain student-friendly paraphernalia, signed the form.
The professors were squeezing their legs together in excitement because the contract declared that the students would be "administering electric shocks to fellow participants...even if that participant screamed, cried, and asked for medical assistance."
The contract also succeeded in getting the students' agreement to do push-ups.
I cannot confirm that this is a memorial to all those who agreed to the electric shock contract.
(Credit: CC Eamonn)The professors then told the students what they had signed. "Some of them laughed, some of them just rolled their eyes," assistant professor Jessica Choplin wrote in the NYU Journal of Law and Business.
However, she and her fellow researcher, Debra Pogrund Stark, are not without heart. So without even a spark of high-voltage punishment, they tore up the bogus consent forms and gave the 87 fine undergraduates the real consent forms.
"Of the 87 participants who signed the bogus consent form," wrote Choplin and Stark, "17.2 percent did not even look at the actual consent form, another 18.4 percent looked so briefly that they could not have read it, and 21.8 percent only skimmed enough to get a vague idea of some of the provisions."
The new consent forms actually committed the students to running naked down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, singing Wham's fine hit "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and holding a flag that read, "I Sleep with the Squirrels."
Well, not exactly. But somehow, one wishes it had. I wonder if Comcast got me to agree to never, ever, ever complain about its service. I must go and check.
I understand that Facebook lawyer Chris Kelly appeared on television Sunday morning to reassure all 175 million of his parishioners that Facebook doesn't own their intimate details and never will.
The lawyer in me, entirely untrained and without a trace of a Hugo Boss suit, whispered, "Aha. But he never said Facebook didn't want to own your stuff." I let that thought pass because I want to keep Facebook on the heavenly side of my Day of Judgment.
However, the pouring rain, the wind from Hades outside my window, and an undeniably chilling piece by Frank Rich in today's New York Times made me actually read these terms of service about which everyone's arms seem to be raised in dread.
Here is the important sentence: "By posting user content to any part of the site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the company an irrevocable, perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such user content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such user content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."
If lawyers had editors, they would never be able to write sentences as long as that. But I am assuming that all of these words are, indeed, the same kind of English words I use in my daily life--except, perhaps, for the word "sublicense."
I know that the main problem with terms of service is that they are written by lawyers and accepted by people who don't read them because they are in a hurry to buy something. But doesn't the mere word "perpetual" (never mind "irrevocable") suggest rather irrevocably that Facebook would like to own your things before and after you're dead--before and after, even, the nuclear holocaust?
This photograph, entitled '17/52-Denial', is irrevocably and perpetually not a representation of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Any suggestion otherwise will immediately necessitate closure of your account.
(Credit: CC LabGP and SigOther)Surely there is only one question to be asked here: what was the meeting like in which these perpetual brains decided to draft something that appears, to an average mind, to be a brazen pickpocketing of users' material?
I imagine some Facebook large toupee, perched on the side of a desk, briefing the lawyer:
"We need to make sure we own everything forever."
"OK," the lawyer says.
"Oh, and don't forget that we need to be able to use people's stuff in advertising. Because who knows what advertising might look like in the future? We certainly don't," continues the Facebook executive.
"OK," says the lawyer, not a giggle in his delivery.
"And let's make sure we're covered until the end of the world," says the toupee.
"How about a little beyond that?" suggests the lawyer. "There might be another Big Bang, and we might be merged into another planet."
"You're right," concludes the toupee. "That's why we pay you the big bucks."
"Well, if you remember, you gave me more stock than cash," says the lawyer.
"Yes, but it's perpetual stock," says the toupee, getting up and leaving for lunch.
Unlike some large brands, Facebook does actually listen and respond to its customers. But unlike some large brands, the company's capacity for denial can be almost charmingly breathtaking.
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