Internet ToS

Almost any time we sign up for a service nowadays, we sign a Terms of Service agreement. These documents outline an agreement between us, the end user, and whatever company is providing the service. Most of the time these agreements are done in order to protect the company from some sort of litigation. A software ToS will usually have a section explicitly saying that if your computer breaks, then they cannot be held liable for it.

Every once in a while, there will be some more interesting bits of information. For instance, EA's Origin client has a section allowing the company to gather information about your computer's hardware and software. Sometimes though, the company is careless in making their ToS. Arktos Entertainment Group, developers of The War Z (now renamed to Infestation: Survivor Stories), seemed to have just copied and pasted their ToS from Riot Games' League of Legends. Arktos' ToS at one point contained a link to the League page, and they appeared to have just done a find and replace of the games names.

I think that having a government based ToS for internet usage would be a mistake. I am a strong advocate for Net Neutrality, so I tend to dislike any kind of internet interference. Edward Snowden's recent leaks about the lengths of the NSA's spying on US citizens have revealed how far the government is willing to go to “protect” its citizens. Having a ToS for government spying would benefit people in one way – letting us know exactly how the government spies on people. However, that list would likely not be entirely accurate for any point in time, as there are always things they won't be willing to share information on (Prism for instance). With a government internet usage ToS, you'd also be explicitly agreeing to allow yourself to be spied upon and have your privacy trampled. If the government wants electronic information on one of its citizens, then it should go through proper channels to whatever company holds that information. It has been revealed that the government has been demanding information of certain citizens from companies, and then preventing them from talking about the information requests legally.

A government ToS for internet usage would likely also land people into legal trouble for ToS violation. Most of the time, a breach of the ToS will result in a termination of the service to the customer, or maybe some sort of law suit. Making a federal ToS though would likely introduce severe judicial penalties for breaching the ToS. As most people don't read the ToS before clicking the agree button, there would likely be thousands of Americans that have just blindly signed something away.