Even more fun: https://www.google.com/?q=link:www.saygent.com#hl=en&out... (It seems to have gotten harder to link to Google results pages. I tried to cut it down but kept getting a link to the main search page with my query filled in.)
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Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
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Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#12It's not just Saygent. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22no+one+may+hyperlink+this+... And it's not a recent phenomenon. http://boingboing.net/2007/02/01/fruitbat-grounded-be.html
It seems to be some cookie cutter legal template: https://www.google.nl/search?q=%22Unless%20expressly%20autho...
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#13[deleted]
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#14Maybe I haven't had my coffee yet, but why wouldn't they want people to link to their site? That's the point of the Web.
inverse psychology? I don't know...
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#15This is slightly off topic, but did anyone else have a completely different idea of what they thought this company did based on their name? Never-the-less, it's an interesting concept.
With in regardless to their TOS, I would imagine it's best to do as they wish, and give them no further press by linking to their homepage.
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#16Check out the following condition:
"In no case shall the viewer, visitor, member, subscriber or customer have the right to go to court or have a jury trial."
Just because you say I can't, doesn't make it so.
I do like that the fact that they haven't stated that if one part of the contract is made invalid then the rest of the contract that is enforcable will remain valid.
Whoever wrote up this legalese has missed something important, but included something ridiculous. Whoops!
P.S. Oh, and I also like they have included most of an episode of Seinfeld above their legal policy. Copyright violation, anyone? The irony...
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#17I don't understand why any one would do put any restriction on linking to their site.
I can understand banning linking to certain sites from their site, but the other direction? It's a bit like paying for billboards and painting them and then covering them up.
Can anyone explain why any party would think it is a good idea to have policies that will reduce the possibility of news sites/random blogs/whatever linking to them and so reduce their page views?
(And thinking that they can get people to pay for the "privilege" of directing possible customers their way?)
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#18I haven't heard of this company before. Is this exceptionally out of character for them?
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#19Maybe I haven't had my coffee yet, but why wouldn't they want people to link to their site? That's the point of the Web.
inverse psychology? I don't know...
While it could be reverse psychology to troll HNers to linking their site, it's also bad publicity among hackers, and the argument breaks Occam's razor.
Re: Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website
#20Even assuming that this kind of TOS is valid, the damages clause is not likely to hold in court. For a clause like that to be valid, it must (1) be a reasonable estimate of the likely actual damages for violating the contract, and (2) actual damages must be difficult to determine so that agreeing to a fixed amount in the contact will save significant effort at trial.
Neither of these applies here. It is hard to see how most links could cause anywhere near $100k in damages. Worst case would be a link that results in a DOS from heavy traffic, but the actual damages from that are not too hard to figure out--overage charges from their hosting company, plus costs of overtime for hourly employees who have to deal with the DOS, plus profits attributable to the business they normally would have gotten during the downtime.