Terms and Conditions May Apply

just about every time we use the internet,

A communication link, or an app,

We agree to some very long terms and conditions.

But what exactly are we agreeing to?

You guys! You gotta help me.

These business-casual g-men are trying to kidnap me!

What? It's crazy, dude!

They're saying it's because I agreed to the latest terms and conditions on itunes!

Why? What did the terms and conditions for the last update say?

I don't know! I didn't read them!

You didn't read them?

Who the hell reads that entire thing every time it pops up?

I do.

Can you tell--

Can apple tell how many people actually read it?

Well, they have to say that they agree.

We can't know for sure if they've read--

We try to make it in plain english and very short.

If I were trying to make a user agreement uninviting,

I would choose a small font,

A sans serif font, and I would set it in all caps.

Because what happens then is that you have type

That becomes a texture rather than words and spaces.

No one has read the terms and conditions,

No one in the world.

No one. Even the lawyers who wrote it wrote it like this.

You come to a website and they have a set of rules

Usually described in a terms of services,

And then they have a privacy policy.

And as soon as you start using the service,

In essence, you have agreed to the terms of service and the privacy policy.

Do these terms and conditions that we sign up for even apply?

They do. I think if they didn't apply,

I think the web would topple over.

And so, to the extent there have been contract decisions,

They've held that these terms and conditions are valid.

and this concept is pretty new.

For instance, you never had to sign a user agreement

For an old-fashioned land line,

Or to watch tv, or to read a book.

But if you use a smart phone, a kindle,

Or you watch hulu, then you do.

Violet baby, don't you sign anything there!

What's this all about?

Standard form of contract.

Don't talk to me about contracts, wonka.

I use them myself. They're strictly for suckers.

Yes, but you wouldn't begrudge me a little protection.

in fact, if you were to read everything you agreed to,

It would take one full month of work out of every year.

That's 180 hours you'd need to spend every year.

And according to "the wall street journal,"

Consumers lose $250 billion

Each year due to what's hidden in fine print.

Here's an example from linkedin's terms.

You grant linkedin a nonexclusive,

Irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited,

Assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid-up

And royalty-free right to us to copy,

Prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish,

Remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize,

In any way now known or in the future discovered,

Any information you provide, directly or indirectly

To linkedin, including, but not limited to, any user-generated content,

Ideas, concepts, techniques or data to the services,

You submit to linked in, without any further consent,

Notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

so linkedin takes pretty much everything forever.

You'll find this kind of language in google, pinterest, facebook--

Pretty much anything that people consider free.

Instagram is finding that pictures are worth

Much more than a thousand angry words,

After the company updated its user agreement to say

It would have the right to sell posted photos

Without compensation for use in advertising.

and even if you are paying,

Companies have the ability

To make you accept just about whatever they please.

In 2009, gestation,

Company in the u.K.,

Put some pretty sneaky stuff their terms.

They didn't take mon, or your firstborn child.

But for one day, their terms stated:

By pcing an order via th website,

You agree to grant us a non-transferable option to claim,

Now and forer more, your immortal soul.

The contract was only live for a day,

But gamestation happened to rake in the lives of 7,000 immortal souls.

This was of course a joke. However, it makes you wonder.

What if there were more serious consequences

That might result from not reading terms and conditions?

What if your phone came with these long terms and conditions

That said, well, if you use the phone the government can wiretap you.

That would be insane.

But that's the kind of world we're living in.

a world where the government can wiretap you

Because of terms and conditions?

So if you look at the iphone user agreement,

Wiretapping isn't mentioned.

But in at&t's privacy policy,

They say that they can use data to investigate, prevent,

Or take action regarding illegal activities.

Prevent?

in 1994,

Pizza hut became the first major chain

To accept a delivery online.

Suddenly the internet needed a way to remember who you were,

Where you lived, and how you were going to pay.

My question is, what the hell?

Like, how do they know who you are?

Yeah.

Okay, there are these things called cookies,

Where, like, if you go to a site and buy something,

It will remember you and then create ads for other stuff

You might want to buy.

So it learns information about me.

Seems like an invasion of privacy.

it wasn't until the late '90s

That companies began voluntarily adding privacy policies

To explain what was happening with this data.

Then, in 2000, an online company called toysmart went bankrupt.

But they had an idea.

They tried to sell their database

Of 195,000 users to another company.

This included names, billing information,

Shopping preferences, and family profiles,

Even though their privacy policy said they would never share information.

People felt like they were being duped.

lawmakers tell you time and time again

That every time they go back to their district,

People are telling them that they want

Some internet privacy laws. They want some protection.

in early 2001,

Over a dozen bills were introduced in congress

To protect privacy online.

these acts of mass murder

Were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat.

But they have failed.

all of the privacy legislation was killed or abandoned,

And the patriot act was of course initiated.

the bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers

Posed by modern terrorists.

This new law that I signed today

Will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists,

Including e-mails, the internet, and cell phones.

The patriot act expanded the ability of the federal government

To do surveillance in a lot of little ways.

You don't need a judge's approval, for instance,

To find out what website someone visited,

What search terms they typed into google.

The question of your, if you will, information, being retained by google

Is not really at this point a google decision.

It's really a political or public-policy decision

Enforced by different governments in different ways.

what if privacy policies weren't about protecting privacy at all,

But rather, taking it away?

Let'e's privacy policy around this time

To see if any changes were made.

So here's google's privacy policy from December of 2000.

"google may also choose to use cookies

To store user preferences.

A cookie can tell us, 'this is the same computer

That visited google two days ago',

But it cannot tell us, 'this person is joe smith',

Or even, 'this person lives in the United States'.

And here's the privacy policy from one year later,

In December of 2001.

"google does this by storing user preferences in cookies

And by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search.

Google will not disclose cookies to third parties,

Except as required by a valid legal process,

Such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order."

Now it's important to note the fundamental difference

Between these two policies.

One says that you're totally anonymous.

The other says, when necessary, you're not.

But here's what's strange.

So the first screenshot you saw of google's oldest policy

Was taken by a non-profit internet archival service.

It records what websites used to look like

By taking snapshots, and it's been doing it since the '90s.

Now, google also lists the history of its privacy policies

On its own official archive page.

In their archives, they state that they've got every privacy policy

That goes back to the beginning.