Online Service Requires 2-User Minimum Billing for Per-User Priced Product Is this legal under Payment for Services Not Rendered if only one user account is ever used? I'm using an online service, Hubstaff, to keep track of my time and invoice clients for the time I work on their projects. This service has flexible per-user billing plans. However, they require you sign up for a minimum of two users, even if you will only ever use one user account. Here's an Explanation of their Per-User Pricing and details about their Available Plans. They have a free plan, but it doesn't have the features I need. They have three additional paid plans starting at $7/month/user plan, but, like I said, you have to pay for two users so it costs a minimum of $14/month even though you may only ever use one account. The reason this bothers me is I was using their service since 2018 and it was $5/user and I was accurately billed $5/month because I only had one user account with them. Since around February of 2020 they made this change and my bill went to $14/month but they also screwed up their billing changes and I got some additional $7 charges and $14 charges for some reason. I feel like it's legal, but just extremely slimy. Like some business executive said they want to make more money per user and their solution was to say the service still only costs $7/user but you MUST pay for a minimum two-user plan. I can almost guarantee the vast majority of the users of their software are single user accounts. There's absolutely no technical reason they require customers to have a two-user plan.
A business is free to set its pricing model in whatever way it chooses, unless there is a specific law restring this. As no country or jurisdiction is mentioned in the question, there is no way to judge if some specific law applies. (In the US that would probably be a matter of state law.) A business could set its prices at 10 per user, but with a Minimum charge of 100 if it chose to do it that way. It is up to a potential customer to decide if this is a fair price or not. As long as the price plan was disclosed in advance, the customer has no ground for a legal complaint. The customer could always ask the business to change its policy, but there would be no legal duty to make a change.
The parties don't need to explicitly agree on the price beforehand, unless a law explicitly requires it for a specific kind of transaction. Contracts do not need to have all terms explicitly spelled out for those terms to be binding; it is expected that dental care has a cost, and if you don't explicitly specify the cost then it's assumed you're willing to pay a reasonable fee. They can't charge you six million dollars for a bandage, but there's a very wide range of fees considered "reasonable" for a doctor to charge. If you care more about the price, it's your responsibility to work these things out yourself before saying "yes." The dentist does not need to make you sign a written contract saying it's your job to check, because when you agreed to the care without asking about the price you already agreed to pay whatever would be charged (subject to the fact that courts will not enforce an unconscionable contract). California law requires hospitals to provide someone without insurance a written estimate of healthcare costs upon request, as well as requiring any hospital with a master list of charges for services to make it available to the public and to give anyone (on request) a list of average charges for 25 common outpatient services. It does not require medical charges to be set out in advance without a request, just like other fields of commerce aren't generally required to do that.
Many products can be used for illegal purposes, so selling something that could be used for illegal purposes won't generally result in liability for the producer. Think of software used for computer system and network security testing; it's both useful for legitimate testing and securing systems, but of course it can be used by hackers to find and exploit security holes. Clorox can be used to clean the bathroom or poison someone. If you look at the Terms of Service for https://donotpay.com/learn/terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy/ , you'll see DoNotPay is Not a Law Firm DoNotPay provides a platform for legal information and self-help. The information provided by DoNotPay along with the content on our website related to legal matters (&quot;Legal Information&quot;) is provided for your private use and does not constitute advice. We do not review any information you provide us for legal accuracy or sufficiency, draw legal conclusions, provide opinions about your selection of forms, or apply the law to the facts of your situation. If you need advice for a specific problem, you should consult with a licensed attorney. As DoNotPay is not a law firm, please note that any communications between you and DoNotPay may not be protected under the attorney-client privilege doctrine. and Your use of the Service is subject to all applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations. Unauthorized use of the Service is prohibited, and violators can be prosecuted under federal and state laws. Virginia law and Federal law will govern the interpretation and enforcement of these Terms. That's for the web service, but it's useful to point out the distinction between a user using DoNotPay for themselves and getting a script to read in court, and the DoNotPay service actually participating in a court appearance representing the user. The reason DoNotPay pulled the plug on the court appearance, as pointed out in the article https://www.businessinsider.com/donotpay-ceo-says-risks-jail-ai-robot-lawyer-used-court-2023-1 is that DoNotPay's AI &quot;robot&quot; lawyer was going to actively argue in court, and the state bar objected, because that's what only lawyers are licensed to do. If the DoNotPay source code was released and someone used it on their own computer to analyze a legal situation and give themselves options and offer decisions, this could probably be seen as little different than someone reading books that analyze the law and strategies and offer options of how to go about representing oneself in a court. The software would be used to make decisions before and after court; the software is not actively arguing and making decisions for the user in court. Of course, in this brand new world of AI, the final assessment of whether or not AI software can be used to give others (or oneself) legal advice - either in court and/or prep for court - will likely have to be finally determined by litigation and courts. The idea of open source or closed source could possibly come into play to determine exactly how the software works, but would not be the sole criteria to determine if the use of the software is legal or not. The software could be simply a &quot;decision tree&quot; (little different than textbooks) that follows a hard-coded if/else script, such as If you get a ticket, go to court; if you plead guilty, this is what happens; if you plead not guilty, these are your options. Or, the software could have true AI aspects, i.e. it develops arguments for being not guilty from your past legal history, and develops and responds to the court's actions with counter arguments, and actually gives opinions to the user on what they should do. If the software is open source, we all see how it works and if it is a decision tree or real AI (and the software can also be modified by users and other developers.) If the software is closed source, we can't see how it works, and we don't know if it is a decision tree or AI, unless it it is opened, possibly through court order during possible litigation to determine if it is giving legal advice. Again, AI is a brand new thing in the legal world.
Is that extortion? false advertising? or in any way illegal? Not at all. The owner of the site is simply exercising his right as outlined in the terms and conditions from when the user signed up. And giving users an option for continued use of the site (that is, for him not to exercise a right of which they were always aware) does not constitute extortion.
Yes, its legal Economically, there is no difference between a cash discount and a card surcharge; legally, there is. That’s because the law prohibits charging more than the advertised price for a given payment method but doesn’t prohibit charging less. Of course, it’s likely there is some illegality here but it’s not against the customer. A business doesn't give a 10% discount to avoid paying a 1-2% fee. They do it because they are not reporting (some of) their cash sales to the tax authorities and are therefore saving the 25% VAT and 18% company tax.
Unfortunately the answer is a vague "it depends." Commercial versus non-commercial is not clearly defined in actual law, and is usually up to the specific license to define what it considers to be commercial use. If you were putting them on your business cards, then it's just being used for advertising and whether it's commercial use is a bit controversial. If the license explicitly prohibits the use of the work in advertising, then the license should explicitly mention that and should not rely on the term "commercial use" to cover or protect it. Creative Commons ran an excellent study on commercial versus noncommercial use back in 2009: Defining “Noncommercial” - A Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” In the United States, for example, the Copyright Act does not define a copyright owner’s rights in terms of commercial or noncommercial use. Instead, copyright law sometimes attaches legal significance to whether a use is “commercial” or “noncommercial” or whether a user is deemed to be a commercial or noncommercial entity, However, rarely are the terms defined, and the law offers no specific guidance on how to differentiate between commercial and noncommercial uses or users of copyrighted works. If you were putting them on a business card you were making for the client, then that would be more clearly identified as commercial use because you're using it in something you are selling for a profit. What your client will be using them for is not relevant, because you're the one selling them to the client and you need to have the right to be able to do that.
Normally, the person who uses the electricity and pays for it is the &quot;customer&quot;, that's you, not your landlord nor the maintenance company. Check out section 6.3.3 (A) of the MOCOPA agreement: the Distribution Business shall agree with the Customer or developer the position and space for the Metering Equipment, and shall, in so much as it is within its reasonable control, ensure it remains reserved. The location must be accessible to the Customer so they can read their meter and to the MOCOPA Operator (via the Customer). Consideration shall be given to the accessibility of the location to all users. The Distribution Businesses’ service termination equipment and the Metering Equipment should be located between 0.5 and 1.8m above finished floor level subject to unavoidable constraints such as vandalism or fire risk mitigation Essentially, after the locks have been changed the last time, the building is no longer compliant with MOCOPA agreement requirements: I don't see any provisions that would allow to substitute the customer access to the metering equipment with an access via a proxy such as cleaning personnel. Start by sending a letter by registered mail to the maintenance company, requesting them to provide you the access to the meter. Mention the agreement you have found as grounds for your request. You might want o clarify upfront with your electricity provider who exactly you are supposed to contact, the maintenance company would be my first guess. Chances are, you'll be given the access code. If they still refuse, they should state the reasons for doing so. Check their answer carefully, and if you are not convinced, you could take legal action (you may want to bring the response letter to a lawyer first). Having a copy of the letter you'd have sent will be a requirement for the legal action to be effective.
It isn't necessarily "illegal" (in the sense you are committing a crime) but you may be in violation of a verbal contract (which would fall under tort law). Let's take this a bit further. Perhaps Joe Schmoe gave you his debit card information so that you could make deposits for him and he said you could take $5 out for yourself for the trouble. This is a contract between you and Joe for a service. You can't extend Joe's offer to Jane Doe by saying "here is some debit card information, take $2.50 out for yourself". You have no right to extend your contract with Joe to somebody else. Now specifically for passwords it basically boils down to the same thing. Unless Joe gives you explicit permission to give that to somebody else, you can't just decide to unilaterally give what Joe gave you to somebody else. This may be different if Joe said "here, I'm buying you a subscription to service XYZ because you are a nice guy", this may be construed as a gift which transfers ownership. At that point you have control over what is or isn't done with the account. As another example let's say Joe let you borrow his car. You can't turn around and say to Jane, "here's a car you can use", Joe did not extend the offer to Jane, nor did Joe give you the right to extend the offer to another person. It's a moot point though, in the original context of this question, Netflix does restrict you from sharing your passwords "outside your household". Almost every paid service has some restriction against sharing with others. In the end Netflix may shut off Joe's account and Joe may sue you for damages, but you aren't going to be thrown in jail for this. This would be a civil case (tort) which you may be liable for monetary damages.