A group of technologists, lawyers and other interested parties have come together to do what most people don’t want to: read those horribly long terms-of-service contracts to which most simply click “agree.”
Called ToS;DR for “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read,” the project creates grades — from “Class A” (the best) to “Class E” (the worst) — based on peer-reviewed summaries, enabling consumers to make more educated clicks.
“For example, if you’re uploading photos to TwitPic, you might want to reconsider,” explains The Atlantic. “They give the site their worst grade, a ‘Class E.’ Why? Well, they have an easy-to-understand summary… If you click on ‘Read the Details,’ you get an extended explanation of these warnings and can also link back (almost like a Wikipedia page) to the ToS;DR discussion that led to the thumbs-down.”
The Atlantic post includes a screen shot which shows simple bullet explanations for Twitpic’s grade, like “Twitpic takes credit for your content,” and “Deleted images are not really deleted.”
“‘I have read and agree to the Terms’ is the biggest lie on the Web,” according to the ToS;DR site. “We aim to fix that.”
“The project hatched about a year ago at the annual Chaos Communication Camp event in Berlin as an outgrowth of the Unhosted project, which is a system for building Web apps that leave users in control of their data,” notes TechCrunch in a related post.
The ratings are based on German energy efficiency ratings for appliances, according to TechCrunch, which reports the site plans to officially launch later this month.
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