People should read T&C's. But it is a fact they don't. Yes this is to their detriment, BUT it is not really fair the way some companies make their t+c's so damn hard to read in the knowledge people will give up. To me this is edging close to deceipt.
PS. It kills me, but always try to read mine. Whether they make sence is another matter.
I've just been reading about this on the Inquirer, about California seeking to restrict what Gmail can do with people's mail- I'm not sure if this is what you're refering to David?
Anyway, what California are saying is that they propose to stop Google building up a database of customer information through their email scanning. They are not saying that Google cannot scan the email once, and then provide a suitably targeted advert, they are saying that they should not be allowed to store the data they find for later use. That is similar to the provisions of the Data Protection Act in this country, and it seems reasonable to me.
I generally agree that if a service is free then you shouldn't moan about it, but I also think that businesses should be regulated by government to a certain extent. If that regulation is intended to stop gullible people being exploited for their own laziness or trusting nature, then I think that's reasonable.
Rich :¬)
But, if you don't like it you don't need to sign upOriginally Posted by Rys
But people are happy to bash the RIAA for watching people and stopping illegal MP3 downloads? Why? Because they are a corporation?
The point of the Western world is free choice - if you don't like the Google GMail - then don't sign up and take your buisness elsewhere.
sums it up, really. for example, i disagree with the terms under which some services are offered (e.g. big-label music), so i don't buy it. nothing more than that.
when you get a T&C or EULA, you're being presented with a number of stipulations & ctahces. the correct answers are "Yes, I'm fine with those" or "No, I don't llike the look of that" - saying "yeah yeah whatever" is no excuse. google offer you buckets of space, and in exchange they do certain amounts of directed marketing. deary me, that's tough, since google are the only free email provider in existance, boo hoo - hell, there are several other 1gb providers starting up, so it's not as if you're stuck for choice on that front.
But sometimes you need a service, and even though you disagree with some of the terms you have sign up, for lack of a better replacement. (Microsoft springs to mind).
I still think that Google should be reigned in a little on this one. The implications are horrendous.
It is up to them what they offer as a buisness service. I charge 10,000 quid to be a Mod for a day... is this right? Well it is my decision really.
Depends if you have a monopoly on Mods. Besides, I actually agree with your first post. People shouldn't moan about a free service, just there are other factors.
But Google don't have a monopoly - far from it. They are trying to get in to a crowded market.
I'd say they had a large monopoly for the search engine market, this will help them to gain a monopoly on the web based email market, most people still do not have an email address so there's plenty of room for growth.
I have no problem at all at what is essentially a computer scanning emails I receive for keywords. Free email is going to have adverts, so would you rather have flashing GIFs or a targetted, relevant text ad?
If it was Google techs reading them and laughing at the content of my emails and passing them around to their mates then that would be a different issue, but from what I can see that's not what's going to happen.
It's not like governments don't already do the same things, it's just that this time people know about it and have a choice.
I know you asked that of David, not me, but my response is :-
Do I read T&C's - yes.
Do I change my mind about signing up - Yes. Last time was about 10 minutes ago, because a utility company privacy policy included the fact that they store MY personal data outside of the EU and that therefore signing up includes giving them permission to do this (thereby bypassing Data Protection Act rules), and that they will provide my data to other companies with whom they are "partners", who may not have the same data protection protections as the utility company itself. Screw that! That policy of theirs cost them a customer.
As for the point David made, I agree ......... largely.
Provided the implications of signing up are made clear, then I'm in total agreement. Nobody is twisting your arm or holding a gun to your head to sign up, so it's not really fair to bitch about conditions.
Of course, not everybody makes conditions clear. Too often, the implications are hidden in pages of incomprehensible legalese, and that is hardly a fair practice, even if it is a legal one. Also, it's not unknown for companies to put a clause into conditions that basically says they can change whatever they like whenever they like. I signed up, many years ago, for a free lifetime email redirector account (a bit like Bigfoot). It stayed free for a couple of years, then they decided to charge. Had they said they were going to do that up-front, I would probably not have joined. So I was them left with the job of contacting several hundred business contacts, all over the planet, telling them that my email address had changed, and avoiding that was PRECISELY why I'd signed up for the service in the first place. Even though the charge was modest (£10 a year or thereabouts), there is no way on earth I would ever again do business with a company with ethics like that. I regarded the way they did business as lying and deceitful, and their marketing as a con trick.
Conventional wisdom has it that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but too many people these days expect one. If a compnay is giving you something for nothing, there's a reason. Always. Every single time, there's a reason. It might be as simple as publicity, or PR, but there's a reason. That even applies to free competitions with prizes - there's a reason. It might be raising the company profile, a subtle form of advertising, or it might be harvesting the names/addresses/email details of potential customers. It might be other things, but a reason there will be.
There is, in my opinion, ALWAYS a reason. It might not be to the customer's detriment, but there'll be one. Google is a good example. A free service and one I happen to find very useful indeed. So why provide it free? Because "free + good service = lots of users", and that equals a strong case to put to advertisers to justify rates, and the result is a valuable company which has made the owners/founders very wealthy.
Personally, I think that greed is one of the biggest problems with society these days. Our standard of living is typically very high - anyone that doesn't believe me wants to look at parts of Eastern Europe, let alone many African states, and things are also far better now than they were in this country not all that long ago. I suspect most members of Hexus take things like colour TV, cellphones and CD's for granted, yet it's well within my living memory when none of these things existed. Even cars are taken almost as a human right in today's society, yet they were a rarity not that long ago.
Too many people will jump on the opportunity of something for nothing. I remember my family being car-less, and my mother buying the groceries on a daily basis, because there was no such thing as freezers, and if the weekly shopping budget didn't stretch to the end of the week, we didn't eat! And that was despite a father in a well-paid and stable job.
Yet despite how well-off most people are these days, they are STILL greedy for a freebie.
An example - a company makes a mistake with the price they put on a product on their website, and hordes of people will jump in trying to get whatever it is at that incorrect price, despite knowing full well it's a mistake. My view - that is basically dishonest and is a prime example of modern greed. Some people have even been known to order large quantities of whatever the product is so they can sell them on. The mentality behind that is, in my estimation, little short of the mentality of those that think it's OK to burgle people's houses or nick their cars and I have to admit I have a very low opinion of people that do that kind of thing.
Oh, I'm sure lots of people will sign up for it, people like having the latest biggest thing around, if you have a yahoo account with 6mb of space i'd guess many of them will jump ship for Google's service. In general people tend to rush into things, of all these people who sign up how many do you think will check out the service in the general media? How many will read and more importantly understand the T&C's?
Probably not very many in truth. Perhaps some of them believe that having their privacy invaded is ok for free email account with a lot of space to store stuff, personally I use email bundled with my hosting deal and don't use free email accounts, but there are millions of people out there who do rely on free email providers.
Recycling consultant
That boils down to a campaign for fair use rights to music, a completely separate issue to the one Google faces.
The option of not signing up doesn't really stop Google violating your basic rights to privacy, something that I'd think would be paramount on people's lists of things to be protected, especially in this day and age.
Being more than likely forced to carry ID cards in the near future, because you might be a terrorist, is the same class of privacy issue, and I don't think anyone is really happy about that.
Privacy needs to be protected and Google need to take steps to make sure that happens. The thing is, they more than likely will and it'll turn out to be a great email service. But the issues need to be brought to them first and foremost.
Saying it's free and "well, you don't have to use it" are false arguments, they don't solve the issue at hand, they just hide it out of sight.
In my humble opinion of course.
Rys
MOLLY AND POPPY!
Absolutely; even if one can argue that the person who owns the account has read and signed the T's & C's in an informed fashion, can one say that about everyone with whom they will communicate? Of course not. If I send information to Joe Bloggs, am I consenting to that information being scanned for commercial purposes by a third party who will be effectively selling that data? Am I required to read the terms and conditions of EVERY mail service provider operating a mail account to which I might wish to send mail to ensure that they won't be eavesdropping on confidential data for commercial purposes? That is the logical endpoint of the "If you don't like it, don't use it" argument, since there is no other way to determine whether data that I send is likely to remain confidential.
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