Terms of Service
Last updated: April 28, 2020
Please read these terms of service carefully before using Our service.
Interpretation and Definitions
Interpretation
The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions.
The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.
Definitions
For the purposes of these Terms of service:
- PARALLEL COLONIALISM is a digital text archiving tool that offers a comparative reading application between historical and contemporary documents. It allows users to experience how regulatory terms play in colonialism by offering two types of legal documents: Terms of Services and historical colonial treaties. This project opens up discussions in finding a colonial resemblance by mapping out the whole contractual landscape of terms used in each document.
- DIGITAL COLONIAL SOCIETY is a concept based on a digital society that every aspect of lives is profoundly being affected by the domination of digital technology where colonial heritages are omnipresent. As the Internet has become more prevalent in our lives, tech companies easily make use of users' online activities as monetizable commodities. This can be sold by big tech corporations giving them direct power over political, economic and cultural domains of life, users become digital workers of companies who use their digital labour freely to extract data through their online activities. This relationship between companies and users are inequitable, feels exploitative, and unfair. Interestingly, all of this shows similarities to the appropriating of human life, dispossessing natural resources, and dominating economics by indoctrinating and monopolizing manipulation in colonial times.
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(+)Although it is clear that the modes, intensities, scales, and contexts of today's digital colonialism are distinctive from the historical colonialism, the underlying power structures remain the same (Couldry, 2019) Of course, this doesn't mean that the transformation of colonialism has done fully identical. Unlike a historical colony that was bounded mostly by geographical locations, a digital colony has no physical borders. There are no geographical locations, there are only IP addresses, domain names, and user's data. Therefore, digital colonialism expands by exploiting more layers of human life itself through the use of technology [1](Couldry, 2019).
- ⤷ are written in a way that renders them functionally useless to most users with impenetrable legalese terms.
- ⤷ equivocate on the question of who you are selling the data or what they are sharing with.
- ⤷ obfuscate the meaning of the context.
- ⤷ are being as opaque as possible about their intentions.
- ⤷ are way too long that users don't read them and just click accept.
- ⤷ Mislead users on their true intentions.
- ⤷ The power of ToS is equvalent of the length of Terms of Service.
made between Japanese and Korean. They used a term called 'Unequal treaty' to refer that the treaty had generally regarded as an unequal treaty coerced by Japan. This gave extraterritorial rights to Japanese citizens in Korea, and forced the Korean government to open 3 ports to Japan.[2](Duus, 1998):The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea. University of California Press.- ⤷ are sometimes written in a way that renders them functionally useless.
- ⤷ to most indigenous people with superior languages.
- ⤷ equivocate on how they will colonize the colony.
- ⤷ obfuscate the meaning of the context.
- ⤷ are being as opaque as possible about their intentions.
- ⤷ have unequal access to language in the side of the colonized.
[1] Couldry, N. and Mejias, U.A. (2019) The costs of connection: how data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Culture and economic life. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
[2] (Duus, 1998): The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea. University of California Press.
[3] (Zelkowitz, 2003): Advances in Computers: Information Repositories edited by Marvin Zelkowitz
[4] Article: Terms And Conditions Are The Biggest Lie Of Our Industry
Contents
This platform presents two different types of legal documents. The left side of the archive presents a series of contemporary legal documents: Terms of Services such as FaceApp, Tiktok, PokemonGo, Snapchat, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and Sony. On the right side, it shows a group of historical legal documents: Colonial treaties and agreements such as the Peace Treaty of Tartu, Kiram-Bates Treaty, United Kingdom–Korea Treaty of 1883, Hong Kong Letters Patent 1843 and Japan–Korea Agreement of 1905. By selecting one of each document, a parallel reading platform is enabled, in which you can comparatively label, highlight, and analyze a range of specific terms. This will help you to analyze on how these documents operate similar ways in colonialism.
our service
- ⤷ is to provide a suggestive way of comparing reading application from neutral documents.
- ⤷ is to contribute a platform of reading ToS. In doing so, it questions what it means to provide ToS in the digital corporate society.
- ⤷ is to question the concept of digital colonialism by providing a tool to read languages of Terms of Service as a modern-colonial means to deceive users.
- ⤷ is to analyze ToS from major tech companies to investigate how particular terms are being used in the specific context of ToS. How does these platforms have modern-colonial aspects in ToS?
- ⤷ is to examine what is modern-colonial languages by taking a closer look on terms within the realm of ToS and historical treaties.
Important Aspects
As a contract aspect
- Lots of treaties were sneakily made contract in colonial era to be lucrative, to get profit out of their colony. Same for ToS or privacy policies in digital corporate society where the big companies are dominating the power structures via making a contract to deceive users.
As a linguistic aspect
- ⤷Language as a colonial tool: Treaties in colonial times and Terms of Service in modern time both are to show a way to indoctrinate/manipulate the colonize subject by language.
- ⤷ Polarity of calming language: Using their comfort language become a colonial language. Comforting language for the company that are using highly polarized terms sometimes obfuscates or conceal users' labour to deceive them.
- ⤷ Language as a colonial waterway: Shiproute in colonial times are used to sail to exchange goods, extract sources, and import labours. Through Language as a colonial waterway, it became a medium by which to interface with the colonizer.
- ⤷ Language as a colonial language:Using a language that you're porting into the colony in order to be able to extract the resources. (ex, Japanese forced Korean to speak Japanese)
Acknowledgement
These are the Terms and Service governing the use of this Service and the agreement that operates between You and this website. These Terms of Service set out the rights and obligations of all users regarding the use of the Service. Your access to and use of the Service is conditioned on Your acceptance of and compliance with these Terms and Service. These Terms and Service apply to all visitors, users and others who access or use the Service. By accessing or using the Service You agree to be bound by these Terms and Service. If You disagree with any part of these Terms and Service then You may not access the Service. Your access to and use of the Service is also conditioned on Your acceptance of and compliance with the Privacy Policy of the Website. Our Privacy Policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of Your personal information when You use the Application or the Website and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You. Please read Our Important Aspects of the Website carefully before using Our Service.
Dependencies
- Python is a computer language that is developed under an open source license, making it freely usable and distributable, even for commercial use. I used the Python library NLTK to create Part of Speech taggers in order to categorize words in the Terms of Service and the colonial treaties.
- NLTK is a leading platform to work with human language data. It provided this project for classification, tokenization and tagging words.
- POS Tagger is the process of classifying words into their parts of speech and labeling them accordingly in NLTK. It reads text in some language and assigns parts of speech to each word (and other token), such as noun, verb, adjective and more. An alphabetical list of part-of-speech tags used in this project are as followed:
- ⤷ TO: to
- ⤷ DT: Determiner
- ⤷ IN: Preposition or subordinating conjunction
- ⤷ WDT: Wh-determiner
- ⤷ WP: Wh-pronoun
- ⤷ MD: Modal
- ⤷ PRP: Personal pronoun
- ⤷ CC: Coordinating conjunction
- ⤷ NN: Noun, singular or mass
- ⤷ NNS: Noun, plural
- ⤷ NNPS: Proper noun, singular
- ⤷ NNPS: Proper noun, plural
- ⤷ VB: Verb, base form
- ⤷ VBD: Verb, past tens
- ⤷ VBG: Verb, gerund or present participle
- ⤷ VBN: Verb, past participle
- ⤷ VBP: Verb, non-3rd person singular present
- ⤷ VBZ: Verb, 3rd person singular present
- ⤷ VVD: verb, past tense
- ⤷ JJ: Adjective
- ⤷ JJR: Adjective, comparative
- ⤷ JJS: Adjective, superlative
- ⤷ RB: Adverb
- ⤷ RBR: Adverb, comparative
- ⤷ RBS: Adverb, superlative
Termination
We may terminate or suspend Your access immediately, without prior notice or liability, for any reason whatsoever, including without limitation if You breach these Terms of Service. Upon termination, Your right to use the service will cease immediately.
Limitation of Liability
Notwithstanding any damages that You might incur, the entire liability of the Company and any of its suppliers under any provision of this Terms and Your exclusive remedy for all of the foregoing shall be limited to the amount actually paid by You through the service or 100 USD if You haven't purchased anything through the service.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the Company or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, loss of data or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, loss of privacy arising out of or in any way related to the use of or inability to use the service, third-party software and/or third-party hardware used with the service, or otherwise in connection with any provision of this Terms), even if the Company or any supplier has been advised of the possibility of such damages and even if the remedy fails of its essential purpose.
Some states do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or limitation of liability for incidental or consequential damages, which means that some of the above limitations may not apply. In these states, each party's liability will be limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.
For European Union (EU) Users
If You are a European Union consumer, you will benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you are resident in.
Translation Interpretation
These Terms of service may have been translated if We have made them available to You on our service. You agree that the original English text shall prevail in the case of a dispute.
Links to Other Websites
Our service may contain links to reference websites or services that are not owned or controlled by the Website. The website has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party web sites or services. You further acknowledge and agree that the website shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such web sites or services. We strongly advise You to read the terms of service and privacy policies of any third-party web sites or services that You visit.
Website References
Visual References
License
Copyleft: This is a free work. You can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the Free Art License
Changes to These Terms of service
We reserve the right, at Our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material We will make reasonable efforts to provide at least 30 days' notice prior to any new terms taking effect. What constitutes a material change will be determined at Our sole discretion. By continuing to access or use Our service after those revisions become effective, You agree to be bound by the revised terms. If You do not agree to the new terms, in whole or in part, please stop using the website and the service.
Contact Us
This work has been produced in the context of the graduation research of Bohye Woo from the Experimental Publishing (XPUB) Master course at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.
XPUB is a two year Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design that focuses on the intents, means and consequences of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks.
If you have any questions about these Terms of service, You can contact us:
- By email: info@parallelcolonialism.com