How do you write a contract that anyone can sue on? Privity is a key principle in contract law. Those who are parties to the contract can sue on it. Those who aren't, cannot. Even in contracts where a huge number of people can sue, it's usually because each of that huge number of people is a party to the contract. (For example, ten million people download some open source software, where each individually is a party to an offer and implied acceptance of licensing terms). But what if I wanted to specifically write a contract in which the essence was that anyone could sue to enforce it, not just the parties? What is the magic phrasing, or legal mechanism, to do so? Examples: I want to enter a contract with B, where (as a contractor) I give copyright of software I write for B's business to B, and as part of consideration, B agrees to make it publicly available for free download under an appropriate open source license, within at most 3 years. I want anyone in the world to be able to sue to enforce that, so that it doesn't matter if I've died, or my executors and heirs aren't bothered or lack funds. I want to sell a business, but being ethical, the future owner must agree that spare parts for my product will be maintained available up to 10 years after product discontinuation. Again, as above, I want to be sure that even if I die and my successors in title don't care, any third party can sue to enforce or for damages, if they breach and past model spares aren't maintained. I can imagine that it's possible to set up a trust or prepay/pre instruct a law firm so that things can be done under my authority even so. Or that I could build a mechanism into my will, or a living will, in some way, if the concern is death or incapacity. The problems with these approaches are that, nobody else can enforce those if my representatives can't/won't, and nobody else can claim a right to be involved in the legal decision how my representatives conduct a case (if they do), what they agree to, or how they enforce it. So I'm looking for solutions that directly within the contract wording itself, extend the ability to sue the contracting party for breach, to anyone in the world in some class (or indeed any person in the world if that's the class), even if they weren't a party to the contract and even if they have never themselves explicitly entered a legal relationship with the contracting party.
what if I wanted to specifically write a contract in which the essence was that anyone could sue to enforce it,not just the parties? Intended beneficiaries have standing to sue for a breach of contract that infringes the rights to which the contract entitles them. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts at §302 et seq. Both of the scenarios you outline convey the existence of intended beneficiaries. Accordingly, the contract only needs to be reasonably clear as to who the intended beneficiaries are. The intended beneficiaries can be identified in terms of persons/entities, classes thereof, or they might be implied from the nature and scope of the contract. By contrast, some jurisdictions are explicit in that incidental beneficiaries lack standing to sue. Two examples are Myers v. Richland County, 429 F.3d 740, 749 (2005) and Boston Executive Helicopters .LLC v. Maguire, 196 F.Supp.3d 134, 142 (2016). See also Hoy v. Incorporated Village of Bayville, 765 F.Supp.2d 158, 173 (2011) (&quot;An intention to assume an obligation of indefinite extension to every member of the public is seen to be the more improbable when we recall the crushing burden that the obligation would impose&quot;, citations omitted).
The liability shield is the big one, and it can't be achieved with a contract. Just because the contract says you're not liable, that doesn't make it true. If I sign a contract with my friend that says "Nate Eldredge is hereby the King of France", that won't make me the king, nor will it force anyone except maybe my friend to acknowledge me as the king. By its nature, a contract can only bind the parties to the contract, and has no effect on the rights of anyone else. Suppose, then, that Alice and Bob agree to start a pizza delivery business, using a contract like you suggest. Their delivery car crashes, injuring Carol, a bystander, who incurs medical bills that exceed the assets of the business. Carol decides to sue Alice and Bob personally. Sure, Alice and Bob have a contract, and maybe it prevents them from suing each other, but it certainly doesn't prevent Carol from suing them; Carol never signed it. So Carol can still go after Alice and Bob's personal assets. Thus contract law cannot give them a liability shield. However, the government can, since it makes the laws about who can sue whom under what circumstances. And it has made laws saying that Alice and Bob can be protected from such suits, but only if they form a company according to the process that the law sets forth. So that's what they have to do.
There is no such law; copyright secures exclusive rights for the copyright holder (and related rights sometimes secure certain rights for the author which cannot be sold or given away except through death), but it cannot be used to force them to spend money to distribute it in a form that you can conveniently use. Such a rule would defeat the purpose of copyright law, which is to give the copyright holder control over the use of the work, not take away their ability to do so. You can certainly request that they release the work, and can offer to pay them for doing so. But someone who does not own the copyright or any related rights cannot use copyright law to force the person who does own the copyright to spend their own money to convert a show into a new format.
A plaintiff chooses where to sue, provided that the chosen court has jurisdiction. The laws of the court's jurisdiction will generally apply, although in some cases it will also look at the laws of another relvant jurisdiction. Therefore, the laws of the developer's location, the hosting location, or of any user's location might apply. Often a user agreement of a license will specify that disputes are to be determined under the laws of a particular jurisdiction. Such agreements are often given effect, but some courts disregard them in some circumstances. Crafting an agreement to limit exposure to other laws as much as possible is the kind of thing for which good legal advice is generally needed.
what responsibilities/liabilities does/will his company have given that it's in possession of my property? None. There is no contract (implicit or otherwise) between the owner and you. The owner receives no consideration from you in exchange for storing your goods, and an essential element of contracts is an exchange of considerations. Thus, he has no obligation to continue storing your goods. Another essential element in contract law is that the agreement --meaning the conditions thereof-- be entered knowingly and willfully. Since the time of making the arrangement and up to now, you were reasonably unaware of the likelihood of an obligation to pay the owner. This preempts the owner's right to start billing you. If anything, you would need to prove special circumstances to avail yourself of a viable claim of promissory estoppel. See Havens v. C &amp; D Plastics, Inc., 124 Wn.2d 158, 171-172 (1994): To obtain recovery in promissory estoppel, plaintiff must establish (1) [a] promise which (2) the promisor should reasonably expect to cause the promisee to change his position and (3) which does cause the promisee to change his position (4) justifiably relying upon the promise, in such a manner that (5) injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise. However, the viability and duration of any relief pursuant to promissory estoppel seems very unlikely in the situation you describe. The hardship you are undergoing --and which prompted you to store your goods there-- is unfortunate. But generally speaking, a third party (such as the owner) who is unrelated to the causation or prolongation of that hardship cannot be lawfully forced to aid you for free.
Your GPL example detracts from the question: see this recent answer. Setting aside GPL-specific conditions, the legal underpinning of software licensing is copyright law, whereby copying source code or an executable is only allowed with the permission of the copyright holder. There are two partial exceptions: "fair use" (generally not relevant to software), and a specific statutory permission to copy software in particular ways (making a backup, plus the act of executing software which requires copying from disk to memory). The latter permission only applies if you have legally acquired a copy of the software. Which explains why nobody sells copies of software, they sell a license to use software (a subtle, legalistic distinction, which is essential to modern software qua business). The terms of the license say what you may and may not do: if you violate the terms, you do not have permission to copy the software, and are liable for copyright infringement. One limit on the terms is that they cannot take away a right that you already have by copyright law (e.g. "fair use" cannot be negated by a license term). Another limit is that the terms have to be consistent with contract law, hence the license cannot include a human centipede obligation – or, "all your stuff belong to us". When a contract is ambiguous, the ambiguity is construed against the writer, and that is also so with software licenses. Also like the situation with contracts, the terms have to be legal, that is, cannot deny some right or requirement encoded in law. There is a legal requirement that disclaimers have to be "prominent", and that holds of license terms. As for "tricking" a person, that's not supposed to happen, with a proper license. If you put stuff out there and say nothing, nobody has been given permission to copy the item. You can make it available to a specific named person, but that is limited to one person, thus a license includes language allowing anyone to copy, but also requiring that the license be retained with any subsequent copies. Hence B copies from A, and sees the license; B may share with C (assuming a decent license) but must include that or substantially equivalent license; and so on. A problem arises if B redistributes without original license, substituting a bogus license. When C copies, that copying is not done with the permission (implied or express) of A, and C could be open to legal consequences. B is also clearly open to consequences, since re-distribution with the self-perpetuating license is a violation of the terms of A's condition grant of permission. Ignorance of the true ownership of copyright is no excuse, and there is no general innocent-infringement exception to copyright law in the US. However, the part of copyright law that talks about remedies for infringement, 17 USC 504(b)(2) lessens the burden on the innocent infringer: In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. Still, not zero. I don't see how adding some NOPs would make it impossible to prove that you have a copy of someone else's IP. Perhaps it's not a trivial, but still quite possible.
The question reads: I see an NDA as a pseudo-public document, something you need to read in detail before you acknowledge and opt-in to limit rights (discussion of topic/tech). Unfortunately for this view, the law normally sees an NDA as a private contract, except when it is alleged that it violates public policy. If an NDA explicitly or implicitly includes itself in the list of things not to be disclosed, then posting it would be a violation of the contract. In such a case the party posting the agreement would be subject to whatever consequence the agreement specifies for violation, unless that person had a valid defense. The operator of a web site where the document might be posted would not normally ne a party to the agreement, and so would not be liable for hosting it, unless some other limitation applies, beyond the NDA itself. An NDA can indeed be a significant limitation on the signer's freedom to discuss certain topics, and a person would be wise to consider it in detail, and perhaps consult a lawyer, before signing one. But that does not mean that the person should post or distribute it publicly, nor that the person is automatically entitled to consult NDAs that others have signed. There are sufficient sample NDA forms available that a person can compare an offered NDA with other possibilities, and get an idea if an offered NDA goes beyond the usual terms.
No Contracts are not bound by due process. Due process is a rule of how a lawsuit has to be handled, not how a contract is to be handled. All the Due Process clauses in the US constitution simply don't apply. The only things that apply are the contract language, and the underlying/overwriting laws. If your contract stipulates that it is terminated by winning a coin flip against the other party, that's fine. If it stipulates, that you have to find 15 people supporting you in terminating the contract, that's fine. If it states that the other party can terminate for any and all reasons, including no reason, that's what the contract says, and fine. The contract would have to establish that you actually have a process, and how it is handled. My hypothesis is that these common practices combined with the plain language of the TOS of these social media platforms that grant complete autonomous impunity to the platform[...] This part is correct. They have the complete impunity because of how the contract is written. However, that does not make the contract illusory: you can decide not to agree to it and not go to the place, so it is mutual acceptance. Both sides are bound to perform something until the contract is terminated. An illusory contract would be that Alice gets 2000 USD for nothing (only one side performs). But both sides perform. The contract is to follow the TOS in exchange for site access. Both sides offer something: access in exchange for adherence to rules. The claim of non-mutuality is frivolous: If you claim &quot;I don't agree to the TOS and contract&quot;, you can't at the same time get the benefits of the contract either: you signed the contract to follow the TOS in exchange to access the site, and if you don't want to follow the TOS, you have to terminate the contract and can't access the site. You can't eat your cake and have it too. Also, there is a severability clause, which is valid: even if a clause would be illegal, it would be replaced by the closest legal clause, overwritten by the legal minimum, or removed, whichever is the least impact. The rest of the TOS is untouched and fully valid. Your conclusion is wrong and meritless.