Update: Olefoo on HN points out that this has been tried: http://khulaproject.com/

 Path and Pinterest are both receiving some extra attention on HackerNews today, but not for design or impressive user adoption. Instead, they are being criticized for undisclosed (or perhaps under-disclosed) behavior. Path is uploading your entire address book to its servers. Pinterest is altering user's links to generate affilitate revenue.

Neither of these actions strike me as nefarious or malicious. And as some members pointed out on HackerNews, both examples could be cleared up with a simple change to the Terms of Service (TOS). I agree.

But here's my problem. I almost never read the full TOS. It takes a serious time investment to understand what they are trying to say. So why isn't it easier? In the US, we have mandatory "Nutrition Facts" on food labels (courtesy FDA). And we have standard fabric care symbols (courtesy FTC):

Couldn't we implement something similar to convey age, privacy, affiliation, and payment terms for a site or service? Privacy issues are already hard to track and it isn't getting any easier.

Here's a startup idea for someone: Parse a website's TOS to summarize in an easy-to-understand format.

Something like this:

Just a thought. It could be a fun project. Revenue model could include confirmed site logo licensing fees.