VisualPing already does this: https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-a...

Docacracy did it a decade ago, but closed shop.

The problem isn’t the tech — it’s coming up with a business model that pays for the system and upkeep. As much as people give lip service about privacy, they sure don’t throw money at lobbying efforts that protect their rights in those areas.

You can build this with what Github offers for free to open source projects.

I like where this discussion is headed. Scrape the ToS and keep a record of that. Are ToS's copywrited?

Yes, at some point someone has probably written a copy.

I thought contracts can’t be copyrighted? There is too much similarity between them for it to make any sense.

No, that's nonsense. I don't know if there's a special exemption in the US but contracts and policies can be and absolutely are under copyright. Individual clauses might not be but the contract in its entirety likely meets the threshold of originality required for it to not simply be considered a plain collection of facts.

The similarity between standard contracts does make it harder to demonstrate a copyright violation based on the text alone though.

So, you’re saying only one company in the history of the world can install garages, or every company that wants to install garages must pay that company or ensure that it’s contracts are distinctly different so they don’t get sued?

That sounds absurd. What country is this?

That’s not what your parent said and you jumped a lot of logical steps to get where you did.

No form of intellectual property applies to “in the history of the world” — all IPs expire their monopoly protections after a period of time.

And yes, contracts must be distinctly different from copyrighted contracts. [1] Just because computers and the internet allow copy-paste of content with no effort does not mean it is necessarily legal.

[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-so...

I’m not sure what “logical steps” I jumped. All you have to do is prove someone else is selling garages and they stole your copyright in a violation of derivative work. It’s absurd to think copyrights can be be applied to contracts. It’s a hill I’d be willing to die on if someone sued me for it.

I don't understand how you make the leap from "if copyright can apply to legal documents it can also apply to arbitrary physical objects". Doubling down on ignorance seems like a bad way to learn new things but you do you.

Heck, this is very easy to google:

https://www.quora.com/If-you-ask-a-lawyer-to-draft-a-contrac...

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/24521/are-the-indivi...

https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted

Contracts are text and text is subject to copyright. You seem to be confused about the difference between copyright, patents and trademarks though. That copyright applies to contracts does not mean it's possible for two different lawyers to end up writing almost identical contracts. It instead means it's very difficult to demonstrate copyright infringement based on the text alone. But if you simply copy a contract verbatim that you demonstrably had access to and can't demonstrate how you arrived at the exact same wording (e.g. if you're a layperson and have never written a contract before), it's probably an easy case for the copyright holder to win.

This will apparently blow your mind but in some jurisdictions outside the US such as the EU, mere collections of facts ("databases") are also protected by copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right

Note that this does not mean you can't collect the same facts, it just means you can't harvest them from an existing collection and reproduce them the same way. So you couldn't just publish your own knock-off white pages phone book but you could publish a phone book as long as it is not sourced from an existing one. Please remember: this does not apply in US copyright law.

Wait. So I can create a service with a popular SaaS's ToS, then submit a DCMA takedown to them and they have to remove their ToS from the internet? You can't be serious. (AFAIK, there's no laws for abusing it).

If I understand your example correctly, you would take an existing SaaS's ToS (i.e. copy their copyrighted work), publish it as your own (i.e. lie) and then file a DMCA takedown request (i.e. commit perjury) to force them to remove their ToS? Yes, you could do that. But since you likely can't demonstrate that you're the original copyright holder (e.g. trivially their SaaS pre-dates your service and they probably have internal documents like e-mails surrounding the drafting of the ToS whereas you don't unless you forge those as well) and sending a DMCA takedown request for works you don't actually own is literally a felony crime, I don't think that's a winning strategy.

To be clear: yes, there are laws against abusing DMCA takedown requests, precisely because otherwise anyone could just send them out for fun. Specifically DMCA takedown requests include a statement under penalty of perjury from the copyright holder that they hold the copyright. So this isn't a special DMCA law but just a boring old felony crime involved in fraudulently filing illegitimate legal claims.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of this it's probably because you're thinking of sites like YouTube which don't actually receive DMCA takedown requests normally but instead provide an arbitration system to allow content owners to avoid messy legal back-and-forths over the back of Google and instead be trusted based on who they are (i.e. smaller creators will be stuck in appeals limbo trying to talk to a human whereas large corporations will usually be trusted by default). This does not however apply to e.g. GitHub, which is why there is a public collection of DMCA takedown requests hosted by them: https://github.com/github/dmca

To speed up this conversation: if you can think of another example where your conclusion is "but this is dumb" then it's likely because your example is, not the legal situation you're looking at. Also "but this is dumb" is not a counter-argument to "this is what the law is like". The law does not care if you think it is dumb and saying it is dumb is not a good defense if you end up in court.