Pokemon Go players: you have 30 days from signup to opt out of binding arbitration

The guy that created Pokemon was mimicking a hobby he had growing up, where he would go and collect bugs and such outside. So, yup!

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I believe New Zealand’s does as well (we have a “if a clause is clearly Some Bullshit it doesn’t stand” law, partly in response to crappy contracts for gyms). That said, you’d still need to go to court to prove the clause itself wasn’t enforceable, I believe.

That’s exactly right. Maybe we should blame the trivial lawsuit bringers for the severe permissions on games and everything else.

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Not sure how similar NZ is to Australia. We can shortcircuit it here by raising a formal complaint with appropriate govt dept (I think it might be Fair Trading, but could be wrong. However, no doubt they could send you the right way). From there, there will be only 1 complainant. Australia. We’ll let Niantic deal with a govt dept who has lots of lawyers and fun things.

These Arbitration contracts have been shot down so many times in Australia that they are meaningless. But then, Australia is much smaller than US and we tend to be less ‘lawyer happy’ when it comes to suing etc.

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Consider that the game creator apparently thinks you might have standing to sue.

But that’s not really the point, in any case. They could have a ToS saying that they’re legally allowed to hunt me for sport if I use the game as a suppository. I’ve got no fear of ever running afoul of that, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with Nintendo hunting people for sport under any circumstances.

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This is the third distinct, false Pokemon death rumor I’ve heard since the game launched a week and a half ago. There’s been assorted injuries and embarrassments, and one weird story where a teenage girl found a drowned corpse in a river while looking for water Pokemon, but no deaths yet.

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If I were writing the ToS for a game like this, I’d do the exact same thing. People are going to do stupid stuff, get hurt, and file frivolous lawsuits.

if the cases are clear they will be thrown out at court.

arbitration is an excellent idea, but it shouldn’t be able to use it to completely replace the legal recourse

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Mandatory arbitration clauses are regularly invalided down by courts when they cross the line to unconscionable (extremely unjust) and a class action lawsuit is just a money making vehicle for lawyers, so really… who cares?

There are a bunch of possibilities, improperly billing you for in game purchases, leaking your location data, or the application having some kind of terrible bug that bricks your phone.

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Just because you would do something shitty if you could get away with it doesn’t mean you should be allowed to.

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