Upcoming Series: Terms of Service (TOS) Under the Microscope, FSF Party, GitHub Scandals, Clowns, and More
We shall soon kick off a new series, somewhat of a guest series, about modern TOSes. In the older days the term "EULA" was quite common because people ran stuff locally, but now that a lot of stuff is done over the Net the underlying software changes and so do the terms. People are constantly compelled if not forced to accept changes to the terms they supposedly agree to. There's a moral if not a legal dilemma associated with the practice of implied consent or forced consent. We call that "Hostageware" because of the user's hostage-like dilemma.
Citing the articles "White House cracks down on deceptive online practices" and "Biden targets another junk fee: subscriptions that are hard to cancel", an associate has asked: "Would the two articles on junk fees be relevant to the TOS posts?"
At the moment we're not too sure of the best format for the series. It is still work in progress. We have about 4 series going on at the same time, perhaps even 5, and we're in no hurry to finish any one of them in particular (none is particularly time-sensitive, either).
We should note that the video stream of Daniel Pocock's talk (which took place hours ago; it streamed OK and there were no serious technical issues, except temporary, i.e. fixed on the sport) has been taken down by copyright claims*.
Aside from all that, some time soon (maybe this week or this coming weekend) we'll have something about the FSF, secrets about GitHub, and a long essay about "Clowns".
Right now we have way more material than we have time to cover. But that's a good thing. █
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* "Video unavailable. This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." Nothing too suspicious about it. The 7- or 8-hour video likely contained some music in it somewhere (like in prior days). The conference organisers tend to upload clips of the talks about a month later. Maybe presentation slides and video/audio clips can be uploaded soon (separately). There's a lot of new material in there, even incriminating stuff about Debian.