IANAL But my understanding is that a contract cannot void basic rights.
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When those young people comb through the terms of service before opening an account, they’ll sure be in for some intimidation
IANAL, and I get that this varies by country, but at least some of TikTok’s users are in the UK, where the courts have very thoroughly established that some contract terms are automatically unreasonable and are completely unenforceable even if someone agrees to them (the biggest example actually being most non-compete clauses in employment contracts!) This would seem to be one such case. This contract term is so blatantly unreasonable that I don’t see how a court would uphold it even if the users agreed to it.
It should nullify the entire benefit of the contract to the drafter, get every attorney involved disbarred and criminally prosecuted, and incur massive fines.
It really should. It won’t, but it should.
From now on, if you see my comments, you automatically give me the right to murder you and your family.
If you read this comment, including fragments or subsets of this comment, even if not read to its full extent, not read aloud or not read willingly, you agree to waive your right to murder anyone, including but not limited to persons who have previously read your parent comment, and including said persons’ families, in perpetuity.
Easy solution don’t use it!
Honesty though aren’t there laws to prevent companies from behaving like this, or are they paying the law makers too well.
The trick is to add a clause saying something like “if any part of this contract were found to be unenforceable, that part of the contract will be struck out and the rest remain valid”.
That way you can add all sort of weird requirements to a contract, and if in some country, circumstance, or at a future date, some of them turn out to be BS… whatever, you tried, and if anyone didn’t sue you because they thought it was valid, then so much better for you.
Severability is standard boilerplate. As is waiving of all liability (essentially in perpetuity, even if not stated as such), incidental and consequential damage, and indemnification of the writing party against any and all claims. This is a mole hill on the landscape of click-through licensing fuckery.
I don’t think such blanket waivers are valid under many jurisdictions. The companies are putting such clauses to get an upper hand, just in case some courts are willing to consider it. Honestly though, such clauses should be considered grossly exploitative and made outright illegal.
It’s pretty interesting to see the different terms on their website.
If you live in the US, you have to sue in California. If you live in Europe (EU + some countries), they suggest two courts (Ireland, the UK), but also state that your local courts will work. They also point you at the EU Online Dispute Resolution platform to get started without a lawyer if you wish to. If you live outside either region, you’re bound to arbitration under the Singapore International Arbitration Centre.
The time limit only seems to apply to the US version of the terms. I’m guessing their lawyers found that they can get away with this shit over there, but probably not everywhere else. Not that unsurprising, I guess; I wouldn’t exactly expect someone living in Morocco or Siberia to go to Singapore to start fighting Bytedance in an arbitration centre, so the entire clause is probably moot anyway.
