Facebook contract Vs Minors A minor's ability to contract at face-value is straight forward, any contract with a minor that is not for necessities (food, medicine, clothing, and lodging), and was not approved by the parents/guardian, can be dis-affirmed by the minor as long as its before they become the age of majority. But how does Facebook handle their agreements with minors? Facebook, a social networking site that allows minors thirteen years of age or older to use their site without parental supervision (in compliance with COPPA); Facebook receives it's revenue from collecting personal information about its users and targeting the user with ads that might line up with their values or interests. Although Facebook is in compliance with COPPA, it still holds agreements with individuals that have not yet reached the age of majority, and uses their information for things like "testing" and "research". Can Facebook legally conduct these "research and testing" activities with minors and their accounts if the contracts(TOS) with Facebook's users that aren't the age of majority are considered voidable/unenforceable? UPDATE It seems as though Google, YoutTube, and other large tech companies (e.g. tiktok) have been found in violation of COPPA, with this new information can FaceBook conduct their "research and testing" with minors information without violating COPPA.
Facebook can continue to gather and exploit data, modulo the requirements of COPPA, because it does not depend on obligating a minor to do something, such as pay money or dig a ditch. In general and because of copyright law, nobody has the right to use anything that Facebook provides unless Facebook grants the user permission. The user has no obligation to provide anything to Facebook – if it did, the minor would arguably be exempt from that obligation.
We can start by looking at the text of the law. US federal law 18 USC § 2252A(a)(3)(B) says: Any person who... knowingly... advertises, promotes, presents, distributes, or solicits through the mails, or using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, any material or purported material in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe, that the material or purported material is, or contains— (i) an obscene visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or (ii) a visual depiction of an actual minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct... shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). I'm not sure how much posting the name without the link would protect you, given that you posted it with the explicit intent that someone would go and look at it. On the other hand, your intent was not to "advertise" or "promote" it, and you didn't actually "distribute" the material.
Are there actual laws written, or de facto situations (e.g. let's say another law specifies that a child can't be physically forced to go anywhere without causing abuse) where the child can refuse to attend? Are there "tiers" to the age; Is it true that a temper tantrum of a 5 year old would be seen as such, but the refusal of a 17 year would be legally accepted? This is a hard question to answer that doesn't have a neat resolution. Very little pertaining to the authority of a parent over a child is codified in statutory law and there is not a clear cut age at which a child has "freedom of conscience" vis-a-vis a parent. Most of the law related to children concerns allocation of parenting time and parental decision making between divorced, separated or unmarried parents; abuse and neglect; and juvenile delinquency. There is also usually a snippet of criminal law stating that certain kinds of uses of force to discipline children do not constitute crimes. But, part of why it doesn't come up very much is that older children are usually socialized in a manner that causes them to show a certain amount of respect for the wishes of their parents. It also doesn't come up much for children who aren't in their late teens, because the complete economic dependence of children on their parents or guardians gives the parents considerable power of their children that doesn't require the exercise of physical force. Also, it is quite dependent upon how the issue presents itself. No law enforcement agency is going to aid a parent in forcibly dragging a kid to church against their will. But, no social services agency is going to remove a kid from a home because his birthday party will be cancelled if he doesn't go to the church of his parents' choice the Sunday before his birthday. There are also some subtle but important distinctions between states on the issue of emancipation. In Colorado, emancipation is a statement about the empirical reality. If a child is self-supporting and lives apart from parents or guardians then the child is an emancipated minor. It is not a status granted by a court, it is a status acknowledged by courts when evaluating other issues. In California, a child is not emancipated unless a court grants a child that status and a child who is de facto emancipated without the leave of a court is guilty of a "status offense" (the New York State term for someone in this state is PINS for "person in need of supervision"). Basically, if a parent can force a child to go to church by means that don't constitute abuse or neglect and don't exceed the level of force authorize for child discipline in the criminal code, then they can do it, and if they can't manage that, then they can't do it. Many states have a "status offense" that allows government intervention with the cooperation of a parent or guardian in cases where an "uncontrollable" child is defiant and simply will not give any heed to the parent or guardian's instructions. In practice, the older a child is, the less likely someone viewing a parent's conduct forcing a child to do something is to be viewed as acceptable or legally justified. The legal rights of children in a school setting are also age dependent under the case law, although not always in a really well defined way. Controls on student expression that would be uncontroversial for elementary school students may be looked upon by the law with disfavor for high school students and clearly prohibited for adults. Perhaps one useful way to conceptualize it is that trying to make a child attend a particular kind of religious service is not considered an improper purposes for a parent of any minor to utilize the resources available to the parent to do so, but the range of resources available to a parent with regard to an adult child is much narrower.
No enforceable contract can contain illegal clauses and work Contracts can not remove some rights and never can bypass obligations. Talking to the police at times is a requirement by law, as is taking to the labor board. Responding to a subpoena is legally forced by the court. An NDA might limit the amount what you can say, and a contract might limit who you can sue, but can not ban you from suing at all. In germany, a contract that tries to curtail such requirements would be Sittenwidrig and make all clauses that try to limit the rights fully Void and nill ab initio - in fact, it can be used as evidence against the drafting party that they tried to do so. So to stay legal and keep the clause working in the limited fashion where it is not demanded, the clause cuts the contract to explicitly exclude such situations.
Users grant StackExchange a licence: You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. That should be determinative, but there was also some question as to whether StackExchange users can be deemed to have agreed to these terms. For this reason, I'll also review some case law relating to what are known as "click-wrap" agreements where the terms are made available via a hyperlink. In my opinion, StackExchange's way of displaying links to their Terms of Service during registration meets the requirements that have in the past been sufficient for courts to deem the user to have read and agreed to those Terms of Service. See for example, Schnabel v. Trilegiant Corp., 697 F. 3d 110 (2012), especially the section titled "Notice" for reference to other cases: A person can assent to terms even if he or she does not actually read them, but the "offer [must nonetheless] make clear to [a reasonable] consumer" both that terms are being presented and that they can be adopted through the conduct that the offeror alleges constituted assent. Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., 306 F. 3d 17 (2002)1 frames the notice test in terms of a "reasonably prudent offeree" and whether they would "have known of the existence of license terms". In Guadagno v. E Trade Bank*, 592 F. Supp. 2d 1263 (2008), the court found that clicking on an acknowledgement icon near an underlined, highlighted link to an agreement was acceptance of that agreement: In the instant case, a highlighted, underlined link to the Agreement was directly above the acknowledgement box, along with notice that "The following contain important information about your account(s)." A reasonably prudent offeree would have noticed the link and reviewed the terms before clicking on the acknowledgment icon. I think the most similar case is Fteja v. Facebook, Inc., 841 F. Supp. 2d 829 Dist. Court, SD New York (2012), although not at an appellate level. In order to have obtained a Facebook account, Fteja must have clicked the second "Sign Up" button. Accordingly, if the phrase that appears below that button is given effect, when Fteja clicked "Sign Up," he "indicat[ed] that [he] ha[d] read and agree[d] to the Terms of Policy." This is very similar to StackExchange's sign-up process: That court outlined a lot of case law and concluded that "Fteja assented to the Terms of Use and therefore to the forum selection clause therein". A DMCA takedown could be successful if submitted by somebody other than the StackExchange user where that other party asserts copyright ownership in the contributed material. This could happen if a StackExchange user infringed copyright by posting material that they didn't have the right to reproduce. 1. Opinion authored by now Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor.
Contract law involves a number of parts, the most relevant here being the formation of a contract, and the enforcement of its terms. There are various rules about formation, such as that you cannot hold a gun to a person’s head to force them to say yes (the courts would then say there was no contract), and then under other conditions a term in a contract might be illegal, for instance the courts will not order a person to commit a crime as one of the conditions of a contract. In the scenario that you propose, no term of the contract involves an illegal action, the only presumed illegality is in the circumstances surrounding formation of the contract. Duress is illegal, because there is no voluntary mutual assent. That’s not the case here. So there is no established legal impediment to finding that a contract was formed. There are ample opportunities to test the theory that an element of illegality in the formation of a contract makes the contract void, for example if a physical instrument used in creating or transmitting the contract was used illegally (the paper was stolen, the paper was used without permission of the owner); the assent was made while trespassing; the contract language infringes copyright. Given the court’s very strong commitment to recognizing and enforcing contracts, it is highly unlikely that the courts would reject a contract over a technicality of this type §97.113 of the FCC rules states the prohibited transmissions, the two relevant clauses being that the prohibited list includes (2) Communications for hire or for material compensation, direct or indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these rules; (3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer, with the following exceptions… (2) is not clearly applicable, since the communication is not for material compensation (e.g. A is not paying B to make a transmission). (3) is more likely applicable, since the parties each have a pecuniary interest in the communication. The exceptions involve being compensated for making a communication, or one can on an irregular basis offer amateur radio apparatus for sale or trade. Since the FCC regulations only provide bare languages and no explanatory texts, and they decline to provide any examples (this seems to be a policy thing), and there is substantial unclarity as to what the restrictions mean, see this analysis. A finding of letter-of-the-law violation in this case cannot be made by the court in which breech of contract would be litigated. Instead, the FCC would have to first make a finding of law-breaking, then a party would have to prove in a separate cause of action that because of illegality in the circumstances surrounding formation of the contract, there never was an agreement.
It is illegal to sell alcohol to a minor in Washington (RCW 66.44.270). The seller can get into various kinds of trouble, including losing their license, under liquor board regulations. However, as long as the establishment follows the rules for acceptable ID, they escape liability if in fact they sell alcohol to a minor: the license holder is legally allowed to accept an identification of the specific type. That is the sense in which this is required by law: the customer must have actually presented the identification, in order for the establishment to escape liability (RCW 66.20.210). Looking old enough is not the issue. It is legal to sell alcohol to a person who is over 21, and the law does not require presentation of identification as a condition for a sale. However, under RCW 66.20.180 a person is require to produce ID "upon request of any licensee, peace officer, or enforcement officer of the board". The legal risk attached to sales in an age-marginal situation is very high, and actual presentation of ID is required to escape liability by the establishment, so in that sense, it is "required by law". All requests to produce ID for liquor sales (at least in Washington, and leaving out deliveries which are governed by other laws) are driven by company policy. Typical policies are quite rational, being designed to protect the company's interest in not getting into a heap of trouble for an under-age sale. There is no law saying when you must ask, or when you are protected if you don't ask. Usually, store policy is to use "common sense" so that 90 year olds are not required to produce ID (they may be asked, jokingly). Non-compliance with RCW 66.20.180 carries no legal penalty, that is, there is nothing in the statute that says "if the customer doesn't...". The most obvious would be that the seller would refuse to sell, which the seller can arbitrarily do anyhow. There is no statutory penalty imposed on a licensee if they request ID of a person over 21 and the person fails / refuses to produce the ID. Obviously, the licensee cannot be punished if a customer fails to provide ID (and leaves), especially if they lost it. But the law "requires" them to provide an ID, with ne except "unless you leave / put the bottle back". Somewhat less obviously, if the legislature wants to, it can enact a provision that once a licensee requests ID, they are forbidden to sell alcohol to that customer until ID is provided. But there currently is no such law. "The law" also included regulations, such as WAC 314-17-105. This regulation is a chart, and the relevant entry is PERMIT: Failure to produce permit or identification upon request. See RCW 66.20.310 and 66.20.180. for which the 1st offense consequence is "5-day permit suspension OR $100 monetary option". This is a problematic regulation (potential lawsuit fodder), since it can be interpreted in a number of ways. The question is, of whom is the permit or identification predicated? Only the licensee has a permit, but customers and employees can both have identification. If we interpret this regulation as meaning "Failure by licensee or customer", then we arrive at the absurd conclusion that if a customer fails to produce ID on request, the establishment is fined. It is important to note that this regulation is under a chapter about server training, thus the regulation can only reasonably be interpreted as being about licensee providing identification.
The exception is often called a Romeo and Juliet exception colloquially when applied to statutory rape laws. See, e.g. here. It is an exception to the age of capacity to consent to sexual conduct, not an exception to the capacity to consent to a contract. When children are very young (typically in the range of 7 to 12 as set by statute of common law, it is 6 in North Carolina) they lack the capacity to commit a crime, which has to do with the age of the offender and not the mutual ages of those involved. Is the principle described above called something? How old is it? Did the Romans apply a similar concept? The medieval Catholic church? The principle that you described is a misunderstanding of the law and is incorrect. No jurisdiction has adopted it in the sense that you articulate. When these instances are not punishable as crimes they are not punishable for different reasons. So, the question of &quot;how old is it?&quot; is a category error that has no answer. The medieval Catholic church did not have any criminal or contract jurisprudence. Both of those domains were handled by secular officials, usually either feudal lords or the officials of a &quot;free city&quot;. In the medieval period, feudal secular law was often arbitrary and often came down to the personal whims of the individual holding the title. As @hmvsm appropriately notes, however, it did have doctrine about when a child was morally responsible for sins, but final adjudication of whether you sinned or not was ultimately determined in the afterlife, and the church doctrine of forgiveness of sins made the issue moot to a great extent. The Roman Empire, of course, did have secular laws, but its laws in the area of contractual capacity, which are largely replicated by modern European civil codes, didn't contain the principle that you propose. To the best of my knowledge, the modern concept of statutory rape was unknown in the Roman world. The lack of hard age based cutoffs was, in part, because vital statistics record keeping was nowhere near universal, so many people did not even know their exact age in a legally provable manner. Approximate age in the very late Roman Empire would often have been determined based upon time elapsed since an infant baptism as recorded by church officials, but Christianity went from being very rare to universal between about 275 CE and 450 CE, and Rome fell not long after that point.