IANAL But my understanding is that a contract cannot void basic rights.
I think there’s probably a lot of profit in creating the impression among (disproportionately young) users that they can, though.
When those young people comb through the terms of service before opening an account, they’ll sure be in for some intimidation
The terms now say that TikTok users “forever waive” rights to pursue any older claims.
not a lawyer, but i don’t think a company can override a country’s law. If US failed to address this then the constitution is basically useless in the eye of corporation.
…yep!
For sale, one constitution, lightly used.
IANAL, and I get that this varies by country, but at least some of TikTok’s users are in the UK, where the courts have very thoroughly established that some contract terms are automatically unreasonable and are completely unenforceable even if someone agrees to them (the biggest example actually being most non-compete clauses in employment contracts!) This would seem to be one such case. This contract term is so blatantly unreasonable that I don’t see how a court would uphold it even if the users agreed to it.
It should nullify the entire benefit of the contract to the drafter, get every attorney involved disbarred and criminally prosecuted, and incur massive fines.
It really should. It won’t, but it should.
From now on, if you see my comments, you automatically give me the right to murder you and your family.
If you read this comment, including fragments or subsets of this comment, even if not read to its full extent, not read aloud or not read willingly, you agree to waive your right to murder anyone, including but not limited to persons who have previously read your parent comment, and including said persons’ families, in perpetuity.
Easy solution don’t use it!
Honesty though aren’t there laws to prevent companies from behaving like this, or are they paying the law makers too well.
The trick is to add a clause saying something like “if any part of this contract were found to be unenforceable, that part of the contract will be struck out and the rest remain valid”.
That way you can add all sort of weird requirements to a contract, and if in some country, circumstance, or at a future date, some of them turn out to be BS… whatever, you tried, and if anyone didn’t sue you because they thought it was valid, then so much better for you.
Severability is standard boilerplate. As is waiving of all liability (essentially in perpetuity, even if not stated as such), incidental and consequential damage, and indemnification of the writing party against any and all claims. This is a mole hill on the landscape of click-through licensing fuckery.
I don’t think such blanket waivers are valid under many jurisdictions. The companies are putting such clauses to get an upper hand, just in case some courts are willing to consider it. Honestly though, such clauses should be considered grossly exploitative and made outright illegal.
