TOS Agreements Require Giving Up First Born -- and Users Gladly Consent 195
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: A recent study concludes what everybody already knows: nobody reads the lengthy terms of service and privacy policies that bombard Internet users every day. Nobody understands them. They're too long, and they often don't make sense. A study out this month made the point all too clear. Most of the 543 university students involved in the analysis didn't bother to read the terms of service before signing up for a fake social networking site called "NameDrop" that the students believed was real. Those who did glossed over important clauses. The terms of service required them to give up their first born, and if they don't yet have one, they get until 2050 to do so. The privacy policy said that their data would be given to the NSA and employers. Of the few participants who read those clauses, they signed up for the service anyway. "This brings us to the biggest lie on the Internet, which anecdotally, is known as 'I agree to these terms and conditions,'" the study found. The paper is called "The biggest lie on the Internet: Ignoring the privacy policies and terms of service policies of social networking services".This reminds me of a similar thing F-Secure security firm did in 2014. It asked London residents to give them their first child in exchange of free Wi-Fi access. The company, for the record, didn't collect any children.
assumptions (Score:2)
You just assume that everyone wants to keep their first born and not give their data to the NSA...
I am sure some people would love to take a kid off their hands. As for the NSA... well, we already give them all our data so why does it matter if that is or isn't in the TOS.
I guess it's too late for me. (Score:3)
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Along these lines, did the EULA in question say *when* they have to give up their first born? How about just in time for the first college tuition bill to come due?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Considering the last robot bomb on a shooter I pity her husband ...
On the other hand, if she is so attractive, that all are after her and the husband is ready to die for her: can I have her?
Well it sounded like a joke EULA (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, my first born... *laugh* then click "suuuuuuuure I accept", if they made some plausible sounding but ominous legalese they might have had some people refuse.
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Sure, my first born... *laugh* then click "suuuuuuuure I accept", if they made some plausible sounding but ominous legalese they might have had some people refuse.
You can put whatever you want into a TOS or EULA, what matters is what is enforceable by law, which is very, very little on most TOSs.
So why have them, well they're very effective arse covers. TOSs and EULAs aren't there to tell you what you can and cant do, they're there to indemnify the manufacturer and seller if you do something stupid with their product. By simply saying "Well it was in the TOS so not our fault" they're pretty much off the hook in most cases. The other use for TOSs is to terminate contr
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>Or maybe they weren't planning to ever have any offspring.
That would violate the contract since it states that if they do not have a first-born they have until 2050 to get one.
South Park episode (Score:5, Insightful)
I really liked the south park episode where they Apple tried to teach people not to do that by putting in permission for a human centipede.
The honest truth is those contracts are full of worthless lies intended to trick the unwary that are not aware that contracts can't make you give up certain rights.
We need to change the system to discourage/eliminate the TOS bullshit. I think that all TOS should be illegal unless they were fully negotiated by lawyers on BOTH sides - or approved by a federal agency as something that a citizen can understand and agree to without a lawyer.
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I think that all TOS should be illegal unless they were fully negotiated by lawyers on BOTH sides - or approved by a federal agency as something that a citizen can understand and agree to without a lawyer.
The alternative I prefer is to change the law so the entire EULA is invalid if any part of it "steps over the line". Of course, the success of this strategy would depend on the quality of the definition of "step over the line".
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I believe that'd be Mandatory Inseverability
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Actually, that is the law in a few places. It's why the EULA states that you may have more legal rights than granted, and affected portion is invalidated, but just that one part. If it wasn't, lawyers and everyday life would get WAY more complex. As in having to enter your postal code
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what about getting a maxed out top of line macpro from Apple and then returning it after you say no the TOS. The CC fees will hurt apple if you can get a lot of people to due that.
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The CC fees paid by any company the size of Apple are going to be pretty tiny. The discount is probably refunded so all they are out is the pennies (probably around 30 cents) transaction fee.
Re:South Park episode (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the 1990s, we didn't have these things. AT&T raised my long distance rates by a factor of 300% from one bill to the next, I called them and told them that I never signed a term or condition that allowed such unilateral negotiations, I dispute and refuse to pay the bill until you correct it.
Some years later, they sent me an updated terms and conditions that included a "may revise, at our sole discretion, from time to time with notice to be given to you on our website, your payment of your bill constitutes acceptance of the revised terms." So, of course, I never paid another AT&T bill again.
Sorry guys, I guess I started it.
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The dispute was $30, so, of course, court was out of the question.
It is remarkable how hard collection agencies will work for $30... especially when they never collect it.
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There's very likely a provision saying AT&T can cancel the contract on sufficiently broad and/or vague terms that reinstatement wouldn't be an option. A lawsuit would very likely decide that AT&T couldn't enforce such changes, and that OP wouldn't owe the money. At that time, AT&T would likely cancel the contract and offer OP a new contract at the changed rate.
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You can absolutely sign away rights, anyone that told you that you can't is full of it.
Courts aren't going to throw out clauses you agreed to no matter how "unfair" they are. They will throw out clauses that are illegal as a matter of law. For example, that first born clause is illegal because it's not legal to sell people. As the clause is illegal as a matter of law it's term can't be enforced and if the contract isn't severable (most are) the whole contract would be void.
If you think you can't be held to
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That depends I suspect on the legal jurisdiction you are in and the nature of the rights the other party is attempting to get you to sign away.
Certainly in the UK there is a whole bunch of legal rights that cannot be signed away in a contract. So for example on purchasing a fridge you cannot sign away your right to a two year guarantee. If the contract does attempt that then rather than the whole contract being voided the legal principle is to void the term that is not legally enforceable.
This is really lon
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>This is really long standing English Common Law that pre-dates by centuries the traitorous rebellion by the thirteen North American colonies, so I would be surprised if it was not also the case in the USA.
Well, difficult to guage. The first 5 years after that rebellion consisted of basically taking the Magna Carta and saying "everybody gets this except...". Next 50 years consisted of filling in the names in the dots (women, children, black people, native americans, romani (gypsies), catholics, Irishmen,
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> For example, that first born clause is illegal because it's not legal to sell people
Don't be so sure, if it's worded correctly it's entirely legal. Surrogacy agreements, adoption agreements etc. all effectively consist of signing over rights to a child, and are legal everywhere in the world. If what is being signed over is legal guardianship, not ownership - then it's probably legal. You can't own a person but you CAN transfer guardianship rights.
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Courts aren't likely to throw out legal clauses that you negotiated about. Contracts of adhesion, in which one side writes the contract to their own purposes, with no negotiation possible, are on shakier ground, and unreasonable and/or surprising provisions are likely to be thrown out. EULAs are contracts of adhesion, which means that halfway reasonable terms relating to the use of the whatever will be upheld, but even if turning over the first-born was legal and enforceable no US court would uphold it.
Lol, oh sure (Score:5, Funny)
Like they'd take my first-born.
Oh, they might put up with him for a day or so but then they'd want to give him back, and that's when they'd find out about my "no returns" policy.
I might waive the policy provision for a suitable amount of cash, plus handling fees, restocking costs, etc etc. A cool million or two ought to cover it.
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Perhaps you have in mind the classic O. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief." [eserver.org]
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Perhaps you have in mind the classic O. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief." [eserver.org]
Yeah, that's about it. I think that kid Johnny was my sons Spirit Animal.
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Two million is pretty generous, you'd have to go through this surrender and return process several times to offset the TCO.
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I can't find the reference but I do recall the earlier story. I also recall someone trying to get the company to accept his son and his associated student loan debts [plus provide said son with food, shelter...] - the company refused and I believe he threatened to take them to court for not honouring their contractual obligations.
Not sure how it ended up - but if a few highly publicised cases showed how companies weaseled out of their side of a bargain perhaps we could end up with more equitable and sane c
Not binding (Score:5, Insightful)
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The exchange of a first born child for the ability to access a social network would not be deemed as "adequate consideration" by any reasonable legal scholar, and thus the TOS and any contract surrounding it would be considered null and void.
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Wait, are you saying "A surrogate mother is signing away her child" or "A surrogate mother can keep the birth mother's child". Because, in the former case, I don't think she had any parental rights to sign away.
WAY not binding (Score:2)
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A contract requiring you to give you your first-born is not legally binding (in the United States), so that's no reason not to click "accept".
Does that mean that no contract was established, and therefore the product's consumer were genuinely accessing the company's computers without authorization?
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No what happens is the clauses that are unreasonable aka giving your first born up are struck out of the contract and the contract continues as is if those clauses didn't exist. That is what happens is exactly what most sensible people would think.
The idea that the whole contract is marked null and void is fanciful thinking from someone with no legal training. I don't have any legal training either, but having two siblings who do, one of which is a judge and this stuff rubs off on you.
totally agree, BUT, how about 'eternal soul'? (Score:2)
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under the CFAA you can less time for rapeing some (Score:2)
under the CFAA you can less time for raping some to for fill the 2050 part then being found guilty of hacking under the CFAA for not compiling with the EULA rules.
Now that would make for a odd court case on both sides saying I did the rape to not get a longer time in lock up for being an hacker or in a hacking case say I could of raped some one and be looking at a less time in lockup.
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There have been court rulings saying that not complying with the EULA does not constitute unauthorized access in the sense the CFAA uses. There was a case recently mentioned on Slashdot in which the defendant had been fired from a company and his access revoked, and had acquired a former colleague's login and password, and the court opinion made a clear and deliberate distinction between things like not complying with the EULA and true unauthorized access.
it's not legally binding (Score:2)
What's the problem? (Score:2)
I mean ... raising children is a chore and costs a lot of money. Think of it as free board and tuition for the first brat so that you can safely experiment a little on the first and get it right with the second and the third. I call that a public service!
In addition ... the NSA has all my data already and just in case ... why would I want object to them collecting more on me? That would be un-patriottic, no?
In additi
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By that time I'll be able buy a replacement set of kidneys and a brand new iver. They're welcome to my discards.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Fix the damn TOS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple's TOS is 56 pages long and reading it won't you much good since without lawyer translating from legalese to English you are probably going to miss quite a lot of legal traps anyway.
Especially as you have to read it (the itunes TOS in particular) on an iphone screen; because it jumped in the way of getting the free song you just got from starbucks.
Its unreasonable to have to read 56 pages of legalese to get a free song; so people do the reasonable thing: they don't read it.
And if they did read it, they wouldn't understand it, because they aren't lawyers; and its unreasonable to expect you to have a lawyer analyze a 56 page document for you, just to avail yourself of a free song. And th
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Governments should just define a standard set of terms that companies can choose from, and not allow anything else. They could create some logos for the different terms, a bit like Creative Commons have done.
Example terms:
- Rental only, for content that isn't stand alone
- Restricted use, for anything with DRM/copy protection
- Non-commercial only, for "home" editions
- Max N installations/uses
- Service aspect only guaranteed until DD/MM/YYYY
- May introduce periodic price increases (clearly stated what they ar
The 99% lie on the Internet and Computers.... (Score:2)
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At the end of the day, nobody cares! (Score:2)
However, the plain fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people don't read them and (here is the vital fact) almost always they don't subsequently feel that they have been disadvantaged as a result. For some strange reason, criminals and the generally dishonest are not setting up web sites, getting users to subscribe and then legally fleeci
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Can not resist:
This is because here consumers can't contract out of their basic consumer rights (e.g. if the product is faulty you are entitled to your money back and don't have to accept a voucher instead). There are some similar protections for buying things online (distance selling regulations) but none so far as I know that govern the contracts on web sites.
This are EU laws. I wonder what is going to happen if the BREXIT is going to happen :D
Are you going to reinstall that laws after you have kicked ou
Quality Daycare - Hard to Find (Score:2)
I have to applaud these forward thinking few. Understanding at this young age the potential and impending cost of childcare?
Let me find my time machine. I'll need to find 3 such agreements.
Not necessarily clueless; potentially pragmatists (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a lawyer. I plow through these things regularly for clients to advise them whether certain objectionable things are present, or occasionally even to negotiate the fine details of the wording.
That being said, I don't read them at all when signing up for services for myself. Oh, I'll do better than most and actually read the closing documents for my house, or for the loan for my car, or an employment agreement, because there's real money involved there. But for "free" services, and even that $25/mo Netflix account, no, it's not worth the time or aggravation. You draw the line somewhere based upon how much you'd write off by saying "screw it, I'm out of here." Guess what -- to a surprising extent my business clients do the same thing.
The extreme example here is not relevant because there's no way on Earth that a court will permit them to collect. They're of course trying to highlight that people don't read even terms that can be enforced against them, like binding arbitration clauses. I applaud the effort in principle, but it's a losing cause because it ignores a more fundamental problem that people instinctually recognize:
For most individuals, the terms are essentially non-negotiable.
If you want to hire a programmer to do something for you, by all means, negotiate in detail and do it well. If you want to buy consumer software, take it or leave it. If you're signing up for some new cloud service, take it or leave it. Unless you are willing to put in a lot of effort, can generate enough outrage to create an ad-hoc negotiating group, or are confident that you can find an advocate within the business, reading the agreement changes nothing.
Also, very few ordinary people are deciding whether or not to enter into a contract based upon enforceable terms like an arbitration provision. That's a very high order effect in their personal utility function, if it would be considered at all.
Short summary: If the license says something that is enforceable in court, odds are super good that you can't get it removed with anything short of an activist campaign. If that's not your thing, you're still a decent human being for not caring. I understand that you have other priorities. If the license says something that is not enforceable in court, why should you care at the outset? Deal with it if the circumstance arises. Again, you have other priorities.
I call it pragmatism. I don't care whether you do or not.
Re: Not necessarily clueless; potentially pragmati (Score:3)
When I bought my house there were 40+ pages of documents that I had t sign at the end, for deed transfer I think.
I skimmed through them, noticed one term that looked wrong, pointed it out. They said "you're right! In our ten years of doing business no one has ever noticed this mistake before. I'll fix it up for you here and now."
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And just how the fsck am I supposed to know which is which? Is litigation of every $(GOD)-damned term necessary to determine validity? And why is the onus on me to prove the term is bullshit? It seems to me that a "contract" that pur
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Congress passed a law. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the law.
I'll pick my own hill to potentially die upon, thank you very much. You can choose differently, but you'll be choosing for yourself.
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It's an idiom, idiot. And, frankly, I cannot hear myself talk, because I don't mouth the words while I write.
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And why is the onus on me to prove the term is bullshit?
Because you agreed to the contract terms of a nonessential service which you've purchased. If you don't like it, don't agree. You don't need most of that shit anyway. Utilities are [theoretically] required to behave sensibly by your local PUC, so the necessities of life are somewhat protected.
Contract abuse: Where will it all end? (Score:3)
So, I asked Mr. Gates why he wanted to eat my ice cream. He could buy his own. He said he likes to have as much power as possible over everyone else.
Okay, that's not a true story, but it is similar to stories in the media. Microsoft can spy on anyone. Microsoft has tried to kill TrueCrypt. Microsoft can begin charging monthly for the Windows operating system. Microsoft can change the user interface of Windows and try to sell everyone "apps".
Standard TOS (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be nice if there was one, two or maybe three standardized, generic and reasonable TOS that everybody can stomach.
That way the user has only to read one sentence and click OK if they agree.
This has been done before (Score:2)
On more than one occasion, student commons signing tables for petitions like "Ban dihydrogen monoxide" and "End women's suffrage" have polled oner thirty percent.
Not Libertarian society so we're OK (Score:3)
People are used to illegal "no refunds" terms of service anyway and take wild attempted power grabs as being a worthless unenforcable tissue of lies anyway.
Libertarians take note - do you REALLY want a society where the law of the land does not protect people from abusive agreements between parties? Take a look at the parts of the world where parents sell their kids into sex slavery if it hasn't sunk in yet that such a thing is an incredibly bad idea.
Nobody takes firstborn anymore. (Score:2)
1: Kids are fucking EXPENSIVE!
2: It's a greater punishment to make them raise their OWN little bastards.
how about asking for eternal soul? (Score:2)
Everybody goes on about the firstborn thing (Score:2)
The company, for the record, didn't collect any (Score:2)
>children
As per the terms of the document - the parents had to deliver the children to the company at their own cost.
I'm not clicking because I agree (Score:2)
I'm clicking because I want to use the thing.
I don't agree, but if I click the button which says I do, then I can proceed. And that's all i really want, to proceed.
Re:Everyone knows this, why it continues is beyond (Score:4, Informative)
Be careful - that is a pre-birth surrogacy agreement. Surrogacy agreements are valid [wikipedia.org] in some states, all of Canada except Quebec, all of Australia, New Zealand, and of course Russia.
Re:Everyone knows this, why it continues is beyond (Score:4, Insightful)
I was recently installing some software, and the actual, official documentation from the vendor had you skipping the EULA and typing Y to agree (Linux CLI install, so you could either space through it or "q" to skip it). My team and I wondered a bit at the legal implications of what would happen if a vendor telling you to skip their EULA ended up in court.
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I strongly suspect that a good lawyer would have a field day with that one.
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So far there is nothing in them that is enforced, that isn't also backed up by one law or another or that have become directly visible to users. The minute someone puts in "you will also buy us a car" and tries to enforce it, the ensuing shitstorm will at least invalidate the clause, if not (hopefully) undermine the entire broken system.
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The clause will be invalidated, because it's (legalspeak ahead) an unconscionable provision of a contract of adhesion. This is old stuff in the courts, so it isn't going to cause a major kerfluffle.
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Law and Equity (Score:4, Interesting)
What folks don't realize is that US courts consider "law and equity". That is, the court rules both on the fine legal points established by precedence AND also on what is fair. Most courts would say that the users did NOT consent to giving up their first born because they were not aware the term was there. And you can't consent to what you don't know. This would certainly be the case here because the offending clause was hidden in the fine print. And that is not "fair". So a ruling in equity would be in favor of the users.
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So, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but ignorance of the EULA clause is?
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Since the law is not a contract, and the government is not a private company - the two things have nothing in common, nor any sane reason why they should.
If say the government could not tax you without you signing a contract consenting to it, there would have been no US military in 1915, America would not have joined the first world war, Germany would have won the war - and Europe today would be a gigantic Prussian Empire. While that would be better than if the same thing had happened in the 1940s - not by
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You're not talking about taxes so much as the draft... one major improvement (IMO) in the last 50 years has been the abolishment of compulsory military service in the US. Maybe that won't last, but I do think it's worth a few extra tax dollars to not have to give up an arbitrary number of children to "the front lines," and we should try to keep it that way.
Maybe we can just "recruit" them with Call of Duty EULA clauses now?
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The draft got them soldiers - but taxes put bullets in their guns, fuel in their tanks and food in their stomachs.
For that matter - the draft is yet another thing only the government can do. When corporations do that we call it slavery.
>one major improvement (IMO) in the last 50 years has been the abolishment of compulsory military service in the US. Maybe that won't last, but I do think it's worth a few extra tax dollars to not have to give up an arbitrary number of children to "the front lines," and we
Re:Law and Equity (Score:4, Informative)
The law would invalidate it because it isn't the sort of thing that a reasonable person would expect to find in a contract of this type, and because the contract term would probably be per se illegal anyway.
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What, exactly, would a "Reasonable Person" believe is in a non-standardized EULA / TOS agreement ? I mean, of the entire class of EULA / TOS style agreements, how many "reasonable persons" have actually ready one, let alone the one they are about to agree to?
IMHO the whole "reasonable person" thing is grounds for tossing them completely out of court, since by very nature, reading the TOS / EULA itself is unreasonable.
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There's a lot of case law on "boilerplate contracts". Leases have been far worse that EULAs forever, and all sorts of crazy shit has been tried, and then tried. A long contract with a layman that has some hidden abuse is nearly impossible to enforce, if such contracts are common without the abuse. However, a "normal" contract is perfectly enforceable, even if no one ever reads it.
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Have you compared two EULAs? There is only about 50% that is reused between any two similar ones. TOS seems to be a tad more consistent, but that isn't saying much.
And personally, I wouldn't mind Boilerplate EULAs that I could read one, and know for certain that 95 % of the next one was the exact same. But they are not.
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This type stuff is common. Heck when I went to sign and get a business internet connection from Comcast they handed me a single page contract that we very reasonable until I got to the last line. It read "By signing this you agree to this contract and all pages published at http://xxxxx.comcast.com/ [comcast.com]"
That to me was not "fine print" it was bait and switch. I refused to sign tell I had read everything at the web address. Turns out they had 900+ pages of legal text published there. Most of what was stated in th
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You are significantly mistaken. The courts don't throw out "unreasonable" contracts people willingly agree to. You are perfectly able to sign rights away and most of the US courts will uphold that quite willingly and enforce it. In all but California you can sign away your right to be employed in the only field you are qualified to work in (non-compete clauses), only in Cali are these clauses illegal specifically because they were made illegal by the California legislature.
Now this first born clause would b
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At least in North Carolina courts, it is common for "unreasonable" clauses to result in a reversion to the Uniform Commercial Code.
Re:Law and Equity (Score:5, Informative)
The legal term for this is "unconscionable", not "unreasonable", and yes, the courts do throw them out routinely—particularly in contracts of adhesion. Stanford Law Review vol. 63:869-906 [uchicago.edu] gives a good summary of how the courts have fixed various unconscionable contracts and other unfair contracts.
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EULAs are contracts of adhesion, since there's no negotiation possible and it's to the benefit of the party writing them. Those are normally still valid, but they're held to a higher standard. The courts will interpret any ambiguity against the party writing the contract, and will throw out provisions it finds "unconscionable" (which isn't a well-defined concept). If the provision is reasonable in the light of what the contract is for, it'll be upheld. If it's unreasonable, and either irrelevant to the
Nobody reads that shit (Score:5, Interesting)
And sooner or later, a sensible judge will throw the terms of such a "click here" agreement out in an important case, with a ruling that states "everybody knows that nobody reads that shit" therefore it's invalid because it was not effectively communicated. This is valid legal reasoning because the context is that people are bombarded by impractically large numbers of these things in their everyday use of internet services. It is reasonable to infer that people will routinely start ignoring the fine print.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of fine print, I'm hoping for the first ruling that says along the lines of "The biggest demographic; people over 50, can't read that shit. It's too small. Therefore it is invalid. Bam. Case closed."
I Am Not A Lawyer But I Play One On The Internet
Re:Nobody reads that shit (Score:5, Funny)
I Am Not A Lawyer But I Play One On The Internet
Acronym being "I ANAL BIPOOTI" - sounds like a Thai massage place.
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Not just that people are bombarded by them, but the very nature of EULAs violates most basic principles of contract law. If I buy the average piece of software I don't get to know what the EULA is until it's too late to back out, virtually all EULAs are enormous and often extraordinarily invasive and one-sided, and there's never adequate consideration for the agreeing party.
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I'd love to see laws stating that additional provisions imposed after payment are invalid. A lot of what EULAs are for is covered by copyright law, which applies to all acquisition of copyrighted material without further ado.
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Companies could really easily make sure that the customer has read the EULA by imposing a minimum viewing time, and perhaps a short quiz afterwards. Then they would find it much easier to enforce in court.
Of course, they would really prefer you didn't read the TOS at all. Having a high barrier to entry makes their service less attractive, and they don't want you to be shocked by what you find in there.
Given that they have the means but choose not to use them, it could be convincingly argued that almost all
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How would you like to get a dead fetus in the mail?
Improper disposal of human remains (or medical waste depending on your state) is usually a felony.
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"Why this makes any sense is beyond me but IANAL."
It certainly makes sense... for the lawyers that get payed hefty sums for such nonsenses.
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o I've read the TOS.
o I read and understood the TOS
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The GPL *forces* code to be free.
You trying to include it in a proprietary, closed-source product is an attempt to make the code *not* free.
Therefore the GPL stops you.
Remember, it's free from the perspective of the user, not the developer. If you want that, go use the BSD license.
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If they want their code to be used by people. Some will avoid using GPL'd code because it forces them to open the rest of the project.
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Forcing someone who uses GPLed code to GPL the rest of the project is a feature that not all people want (they can use BSD-type licenses). Stallman's idea was to create a sufficiently attractive collection of GPL code to induce other people to make their projects GPLed so they could use the code. It worked reasonably well, at least for a while. The FSF web site claims that Gnat (Gnu Ada Translator) became Free/Open Source for that reason.
For some reason, the GPL seems to enrage some BSD-style license
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From reports RMS may be rather hard to get along with, but as time goes on he seems to have been spot-on about a number of things. It's no longer paranoia when 20 years later the things the guy was doomsaying about are actually happening :-/
For what it's worth, I can see both sides of the FLOSS argument. Some people want to take an ideological stand and make the ecosystem a better place; some people just want to code. Torvalds vs. Stallman.
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Stallman is a zealot with what I think some odd moral principles
Yeah, it kind of seems like the world has moved on from the environment he developed his principles in.
The open biography [oreilly.com] of him does a pretty good job of explaining where he came from. The first 8 sections or so (not as long as it looks) that culminate with him running across the old mainframe in the basement were quite informative.