Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California's "click to cancel" Assembly Bill 286 into law to make it easier for consumers to opt out of subscriptions.
Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California's "click to cancel" Assembly Bill 286 into law to make it easier for consumers to opt out of subscriptions. The bill, introduced in April 2024, forces companies that permit online or in-app sign-ups to allow for online or in-app unsubscribing as well.
"AB 2863 is the most comprehensive ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation in the nation, ensuring Californians can cancel unwanted automatic subscription renewals just as easily as they signed up — with just a click or two,” said California Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo.
As good as this is, it's just another example of Republicans shrinking the federal government to unsustainable levels. Click-to-cancel will be implemented in California while showing your ID to access porn sites is happening in Texas, but have fun canceling any subscriptions.
That's literally how the government was designed though. Do you believe that there should be a Constitutional amendment to protect porn and ease of subscription cancellation? I agree that the system is flawed, but a win here deserves to be celebrated even though there was a loss somewhere else.
Is the company in question national or local to CA only? This is the defining line for laws like this. If a company cannot be distinguished from the services it provides in CA vs any other state then the laws of one state should influence all others since the company is not different between states. Unless they create a different website for each state then they will have a hard time verifying if a user really is from CA and be able to apply the law.
I could be visiting CA and sign up for something while there. My address is not CA, my billing address is not CA, I could be using a VPN connected to my home. But I am physically in CA and signed up for Planet fitness online. Now whose laws protect me? CA or my home state?
Ok but in a new situation, I signed up online while in CA. Now I am back home and forgot to cancel. How does one go about using the CA law to cancel? The website might have a link that says "CA residents click here" but what if it does a check and you can't prove by one click you were there in CA when you signed up? These laws then get really tricky to implement. Hence why these kinds of laws that affect national companies should be national laws. Interstate commerce makes it almost impossible to have state laws for this kind of thing.
That's not what I said. My original scenario applies. You sign up while physically in CA but you are not a CA citizen and used a VPN. But forgot to cancel while physically in CA. The company is national.
Your original scenario was that you were in CA when you signed up. Now you are not in California, right? If neither you nor the business are in California, the law does not apply.
Why is that? If you get stabbed in one state but end up in another before reporting the crime the jurisdiction of the crime falls to where the crime was committed not reported.
There is a constitutional amendment that protects porn though. The first. What's changed in Texas isn't porn's legality, but restrictions on distribution (though yes, Texas's law is useless and completely misunderstands the internet's dynamics)
Flying squid is a Russian troll. Only EVER criticizes Democrats. I won't say block him, because that amplifies his reach, but interact with him on this basis. He is not discussing and never has discussed in good faith.
Because there is no such nuance. This should be a federal law. It isn't because the federal government has been too weakened by Republicans over decades. Which was my point.
You didn't provide any context. You've just named a federal program that has nothing to do with this law, which is about automatic subscription renewals. You certainly haven't explained why being able to click to cancel such a program is a good thing in California and a bad thing in all 49 other states.