[Air-L] Terms of Service not legally binding?

[Charles M. Ess]

Dear colleagues,

With apologies for spamming the lists - on behalf of both a student 
project and our development of further refinements in internet research 
ethics I'd like to ask the following.

I've heard somewhere recently that a U.S. court has ruled that Terms of 
Service are not necessarily legally binding.
If anyone can forward more exact details of the ruling, I'd be very 
grateful indeed.

Why? There is considerable discussion regarding the creation of fake 
profiles as part of research into social media, algorithms, etc.  I have 
the impression that this has become common practice, and this ruling may 
give some direct and/or indirect support to arguments for such a 
practice.  (With important caveats, generally a good thing in my view, 
FWIW.)

At the same time, however, Norwegian law and thereby research ethics, as 
a start, tend to be considerably more strict than the U.S. (and even, in 
some instances, the E.U.).  I would like to figure out the differences 
and resulting nuances in the implications for research ethics - both for 
the sake of the general example and for an MA student project that I 
have the pleasure of supervising.

Many thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions.

All best,
- charles ess

-- 
Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>

Postboks 1093
Blindern 0317
Oslo, Norway
c.m.ess at media.uio.no