Norway deems iCloud agreement 'convoluted and unclear', breaks law

May 15, 2014

Forbrukerrådet, the Norwegian Consumer Council (we're just going to call them that going forward) is accusing Apple of breaking Norwegian law with their iCloud terms and conditions. At issue is that the aforementioned terms and conditions reserve many legal rights for Apple, and practically none for the users. The Norwegian Consumer Council has lodged a complaint with the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman over the issue.

Finn Mystrad, head of the Consumer Council's digital services unit, said:

"Receiving notice when terms change should be a bare minimum requirement. The fact that this can be done without informing the users is unacceptable."

That Apple is able to change their terms and conditions for iCloud or any other service without notifying the user isn't terribly surprising for a company of Apple's size (and the size of their legal team). Other cloud services, like Dropbox and Google's Gmail have taken considerable flak for parts of their terms of service, and even for changing their terms of service in ways that actually improved and clarified consumer protections with layers of legalese.

But here's the question: does anybody actually read the terms and conditions before just tapping on to "agree"?

Source: Forbrukerrådet; Via: ZDNet