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500px Terms of Service

500px.com

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Re: 500px Terms of Service

#31

Post by jnabholz »

skrebbel wrote: post #29
icebraining wrote: post #26

As much as I think Terms of Service documents are broken, I don't like these supposed simplifications, because invariably they simplify too much. For example, in the real ToS, there's this clause: The license granted to 500px includes the right to use your Content fully or partially for promotional reasons and to distribute and redistribute your Content to other parties, web-sites, applications, and other entities (.…

Wow, this would make me feel so betrayed if I was a customer.

Agreed, I imagine this will not go over well with 500px users. You would think 500px would respect the IP savvy of artists and avoid (perhaps) patronizing them.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#32

Post by hermannj314 »

yaix wrote: post #25

What we need is a Creative Commons for TOS boilerplate, to just copy and paste. Especially, since most of that lawyer blah is superfluous. Things like "do not harass other people". Really! We already have /laws/ for that, you don't need to add any obviously prohibited thing to the TOS.

Yeah, I have always wondered why community bulletin boards don't come with a TOS, but internet bulletin boards do.

Someone puts a cork board up in a rec center, they don't feel the need to inform people that they are not resonsible for the content. What is the legal situation on the internet that makes people think they need to do this?

Is it just herd mentality or is there a legal reason why you have to tell people that if they post child pornography that you will delete it?

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#33

Post by NyxWulf »

gyardley wrote: post #22
ryannielsen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top, it's explicitly stated: Before using any of the 500px services, you are required to read, understand and agree to these terms. You may only create an account after reading and accepting these terms. The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding. Obligatory IANAL, but that explicit statement probably covers them from any potential liability from providi…

Has this been challenged yet in a court, when someone reading only the right-hand column decides they feel all lawsuity? Is this sort of 'user-friendly interface' covered by existing case law? IANAL either, and I wouldn't touch this or anything else that hadn't been vetted by a professional. To me, on first glance, this smells like class-action bait. "Your Honor, the defendants deliberately misled the plaintiffs by p…

I'm not a lawyer, but I have been through the process of litigating a contract in court.

The law does cover this. Contracts are about a meeting of the minds. Do both parties understand and agree to the terms. Things like email, other written communication about the contract or terms are all reviewed at trial. It's amazing how much of the "sneaky" verbage just get thrown out or ignored as unreasonable or not understood.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#34

Post by NyxWulf »

icebraining wrote: post #26

As much as I think Terms of Service documents are broken, I don't like these supposed simplifications, because invariably they simplify too much. For example, in the real ToS, there's this clause: The license granted to 500px includes the right to use your Content fully or partially for promotional reasons and to distribute and redistribute your Content to other parties, web-sites, applications, and other entities (.…

I've been through the process of litigating a contract in court. Not fun, but definitely was an exquisite education in the school of hard knocks.

Lawyers throw all kinds of language into a contract, that doesn't mean the intent was there. Vague, unfair, or overly broad language that was not clearly understood by both parties tends to get reduced, removed, or modified in accordance with what both parties reasonably understood to be the intent. So if they tried to get overly sneaky and do something where the basically version says X, but the full clause says we do X,Y,Z, then the courts may very well rule the implied intent was X but Y and Z were not implied and agreed to.

If they understand what they are doing, and plan to strictly abide by the basically section, this is a fantastic idea. If they at some point decide they want to get sneaky and put something in the detailed version that is not covered in the "basically" section, they may well find themselves in a world of trouble if it comes to court.

My experience was a company trying to sue me, despite them breaching the contract. The judge took a dim view of the crazy clauses in there and was pretty sharp with them. I expect the same thing would happen here. A normal user would probably abide by the "basically" section and the courts would probably take that interpretation. Of course YMMV.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#35

Post by Silhouette »

ryannielsen wrote: post #11
theunixbeard wrote: post #2

TL;DR TOS are quite refreshing! Of course I'd be interested to hear if this opens them up to any liability due to the summaries inherent imprecision... Can any lawyers chime in on this?

At the top, it's explicitly stated: Before using any of the 500px services, you are required to read, understand and agree to these terms. You may only create an account after reading and accepting these terms. The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding. Obligatory IANAL, but that explicit statement probably covers them from any potential liability from providi…

The trouble is, in most jurisdictions contracts are fundamentally about the understanding between the two parties. There has to be a meeting of minds and everyone has to know what the deal is up-front. You can't just sneak in an unreasonable term by including some tricky language written by a $500/hour commercial lawyer at the bottom of page 17, and then expect that the term will stand up in court if the person reading the contract was a legally untrained consumer and it would have taken them several days and hundreds of dollars of legal advice just to understand the agreement for your $10/month service.

In this case, if 500px are presenting a tl;dr of their legal terms in this way, they might be implicitly acknowledging that their detailed terms are too difficult for their customers to understand. If I were them, I would be more worried that a court would hold that, notwithstanding the weasel words at the top, only the summary was binding, because 500px clearly intended that customers might read only that summary and then choose whether or not to enter into the agreement on that basis.

Of course, in law it's rarely that simple, and lawyers do (try to) exclude certain wording such as headings all the time. Hopefully 500px did get proper advice from someone qualified in their own jurisdiction and satisfy themselves that what I've described here isn't really the case. I do appreciate the spirit of what they're trying to do, and I completely agree that absurdly long, detailed and technical on-line agreements make a mockery of anyone's legal system.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#38

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

yaix wrote: post #25

What we need is a Creative Commons for TOS boilerplate, to just copy and paste. Especially, since most of that lawyer blah is superfluous. Things like "do not harass other people". Really! We already have /laws/ for that, you don't need to add any obviously prohibited thing to the TOS.

http://en.wordpress.com/tos/

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#39

Post by philjohn »

jnabholz wrote: post #31
skrebbel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this would make me feel so betrayed if I was a customer.

Agreed, I imagine this will not go over well with 500px users. You would think 500px would respect the IP savvy of artists and avoid (perhaps) patronizing them.

The intent of that clause would have been to allow them to a) actually show the images on the 500px site, b) highlight them in "popular images" on the site, c) surface them in API results.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#40

Post by screwt »

icebraining wrote: post #26

As much as I think Terms of Service documents are broken, I don't like these supposed simplifications, because invariably they simplify too much. For example, in the real ToS, there's this clause: The license granted to 500px includes the right to use your Content fully or partially for promotional reasons and to distribute and redistribute your Content to other parties, web-sites, applications, and other entities (.…

I second this. Compare this 'basic':

    ... and we will develop more features and services in the future
to the actual TOS:

    ... 500px reserves the right to suspend or discontinue
    the availability ... or remove any Content ... without 
    prior notice. 500px may also ... restrict your access to 
    parts of or all of the Site and the Services without notice
(multiple ellipses for brevity)

To my mind that's a pretty big omission, and makes me distrustful of hte rest of the "basic" terms.

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