On the podcast this week, Woodrow Hartzog, Assistant Professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, and a Scholar at the Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses his new paper in Communications Law and Policy entitled, The New Price To Play: Are Passive Online Media Users Bound By Terms of Use? By simply browsing the internet, one can be obligated by a “terms of use” agreement displayed on a website. These agreements, according to Hartzog, aren’t always displayed where a user can immediately read them, and they often contain complicated legalese. Web browsers can be affected unfavorably by these agreements, particularly when it comes to copyright and privacy issues. Hartzog evaluates what the courts are doing about this, and discusses the different factors that could determine the enforceability of these agreements, including the type of notice a web browser receives.
Related Links
- The New Price to Play: Are Passive Online Media Users Bound by Terms of Use?, by Hartzog
- Woodrow Hartzog’s blog
- “Browsewrap Agreements: The Contract You Never See”, Austin Technology Law Blog
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the webpage for this episode on Surprisingly Free. lso, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
Comments on this entry are closed.