Dear colleagues, With apologies for spamming the lists - on behalf of both a student project and our development of further refinements in internet research ethics I'd like to ask the following. I've heard somewhere recently that a U.S. court has ruled that Terms of Service are not necessarily legally binding. If anyone can forward more exact details of the ruling, I'd be very grateful indeed. Why? There is considerable discussion regarding the creation of fake profiles as part of research into social media, algorithms, etc. I have the impression that this has become common practice, and this ruling may give some direct and/or indirect support to arguments for such a practice. (With important caveats, generally a good thing in my view, FWIW.) At the same time, however, Norwegian law and thereby research ethics, as a start, tend to be considerably more strict than the U.S. (and even, in some instances, the E.U.). I would like to figure out the differences and resulting nuances in the implications for research ethics - both for the sake of the general example and for an MA student project that I have the pleasure of supervising. Many thanks in advance for any tips and suggestions. All best, - charles ess -- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no