The paper dwells on the specification of terms and privacy regulations through the analysis of Terms and Conditions May Apply documentary.
The motion picture starts with a cartoon element that regards the issue of terms agreements. Through the traditional representation of the problem, the director manages to reach a desirable effect: he links the procedure of Internet terms acceptance to the regular daily activities.
After a general depiction of the concept of web privacy, the documentary reveals the problem in correlation to specific world companies that provide the global community with typical Internet services.
These are such corporations as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Specifically, the authors of the terms and conditions fraud theory address the issue as a secret strategy that hides the concrete objectives of a particular Internet company under the multiple pages of plain textual reiterations that confuse the readers and leave the customers no choice, except for accepting the conditions of a corporation.
The idea of terms and conditions reading turns to be ridiculous since, due to the filmmakers’ quantification, it can take approximately 180 hours a year for reading the complete terms and conditions that are assigned to the popular websites such as iTunes.
The content of the documentary is based on a compilation of interviews that are given by the leading IT experts. Among them, there are Chris Anderson, Frank Heidt, and Brian Kennish. The specialists provide some consistent facts and data that support the idea of customers’ rights violations.
For instance, the experts states that contemporary terms and conditions regulations seem to stipulate the invasions of privacy, for the web servers can remember the information about the clients, who accept specific conditions, which becomes a subject for the further manipulations.
Thus, due to the film, the world Internet-users lose approximately $250 million on the frauds that are promoted by the occasional terms and conditions agreements (Hoback, 2003).
The documentary reveals some cases of Internet privacy abuse that concerned some celebrated personages. For instance, the film contains the interview with Barack Obama, who admitted that his privacy rights were hindered through the Facebook service.
The working mechanism of the terms and conditions manipulations is shaded and hard to disclose since the similar violations are usually conducted on the basis of legal regulations. Thus, the clients, who agree to the individual web regulation, may be unaware of the fact that their signature serves as a legal ground for the web page administration to employ their personal data.
In fact, practically every act of terms and conditions contains the section that claims the employment of private data. Therefore, it is a primary responsibility of every Internet user to check the dedication of the agreement as well as the reliability of the certain website. Moreover, it is recommended to use the web page that possesses a long-established tradition of customers’ serving.
The documentary emphasizes that certain Internet servers reveal the lowest inclinations to the terms and conditions manipulations. These are such web pages as Twitter and Reddit. In contrast to them, Google is described as one of the most corruption-driven sites that support the wide usage of private data misusage.
In my opinion, the concept of terms and conditions violation is a direct consequence of the high information technologies development. Since the issue of private data usage stipulates such consequences as financial fraud transactions and verbal abuse, it is highly recommended to spend some time on cross-reading of the Internet agreement rules.
Reference
Hoback, C. (Producer), & Ramos, J. (Director). (2013). Terms and Conditions do not Apply [Motion Picture]. United States: Hyrax Films.