US lawmakers want terms of service to be summarized in plain language

Unless youre a lawyer, theres a pretty good chance youve never read through a websites entire terms of service. Theres a simple reason for that. Far too often, theyre too long and difficult to parse. Some services offer summary statements, but theyre the exception, not the norm.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers made up of Representative Lori Trahan and Senators Bill Cassidy and Ben Ray Lujn of Louisana and New Mexico want to change that. Theyve introduced the Terms-of-service Labelling, Design and Readability Act thats TLDR for short. Taking a page from Apple, the proposed legislation would require online businesses to include a nutrition label-style summary at the top of their terms of service agreements and make the contracts easy for researchers to examine through the use of XML tags. It would also require them to disclose any recent data breaches, as well as provide information on whether a user can delete their data and how they would go about doing that.

For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either agree to all of a companys conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely. No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice, said Representative Trahan. The group cites a 2012 study that found it would take the average American 76 workdays to read all the terms of service contracts theyve agreed to use their favorite online services as the basis for the need of the TLDR Act. Should the legislation pass, it would empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce it.