Most of you readers will just shug this off, and along with it will go another little piece of our rights and freedoms and power as citizens and consumers. We are so addicted to the instant gratification provided by clicking a button, whether it be online or on a cell phone or whatever, that we don't care if legal weasels start screwing us when we aren't looking. Here's a typical example:
You agree to indemnify, hold harmless and defend Google and its wholly owned subsidiaries, at Your expense, any and all third-party claims incurred by Google arising out of Your use of the Service.
NOTE: The above is condensed or you would probably have never read the whole agreement and skipped this post. They use peoples's growing ADD ( Attention Deficit Disorder ) and apathy to their advantage, knowing you'll probably never bother to read the TOS ( Terms of Service ).
Here is what it means: For merely using their service, in this case their analytics software, you are agreeing to cover any of their legal costs from anything that may simply "arise" including those things that might simply "arise" from a "third party" ( not you ). So you may not have done anything wrong yourself, but they still expect you to pay their legal bills, even though they are the supplier of the service and are worth what ... billions?
After they started adding these unfair indemnification clauses I decided not to use any services which contain them. But Google isn't the only guilty party. They are creeping in everywhere, and they are even affecting people's employment. I've been through it personally. London Drugs ( A Canadian drug store chain ) told me I had to indemnify Telus ( a huge telecommunications company ) against third party claims that may arise from merely using Telus the website to assist customers. That left me open to medical lawsuits, accident lawsuits ( virtually anything ). I had to get legal advice and hard copies of letters threatening my employment in order to cover myself.
Why should consumers or employees be required to cover the legal costs of giant companies? They are the ones who are supplying the products, if anything they should be indemnifying us. If you don't think lawsuits are an issue with Google's sevices, just Google "lawsuits against Google" ( including quotes ). I got About 17,400,000 results ... thankfully it only took 0.15 seconds to find them.
I've seen similar clauses in Facebook, Linkedin, PayPal ... even the terms of this forum ... ( sorry guys ). They say they won't reveal your identity and everything is cool but have you actually read the TOS:
You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the owners of this forum, any related websites to this forum, its staff, and its subsidiaries. The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum.
Because of the above, when I started posting here I posted a counter indeminty clause of my own that releases me from any liability. I haven't been kicked off, so I assume it's been accepted.
How is this insideous legal weaseling justified? I constantly get the, "It's standard practise" excuse. At one point it was standard practise to gas Jews too. How did it get that way? Because it became "standard practise" for the politicians, backed by corporations and the military to erode little chunks of people's rights and freedoms until eventually they had none left. So go ahead ... shrug it off, it's nothing really ... is it?
j.r.