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No Terms. No Conditions

notermsnoconditions.com

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#101
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies. Because the law applies - by that I mean if you don't put a disclaimer in then the law takes the view that you do provide a warranty, etc.

Does it take the view that I encourage/facilitate illegal use of my product unless I state otherwise in the T&C?

Encourage, probably not. Facilitate, possibly. That's why my bottle of Windex glass cleaner says "it's against federal law to use this product for anything other than its intended purpose."

In either case it's illegal for me to use it for bad purposes, but how much I can blame on Windex depends on how much they let me know that I shouldn't do bad stuff with their products.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s simple CYA, and also ensures you’ve not only done the illegal activity, you’ve defrauded the brokerage and breached your contract with them, and they get a weak KYC defense as well. Similar to the “Al Capone” instructions from the IRS: >Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if fr…

I still don’t understand the CYA though. For the majority of banks, they do not want people to conduct illegal activity via their bank. For the minority of banks which don’t mind it, nothing stops them from adding the clause anyways. A cartel bank probably cannot use the existence of the clause as a defense if they’re still allowing illegal activity. If the purpose is to allow the bank to terminate accounts suspected…

Having a clear clause to point to when terminating the account seems useful.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#105
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t understand the CYA though. For the majority of banks, they do not want people to conduct illegal activity via their bank. For the minority of banks which don’t mind it, nothing stops them from adding the clause anyways. A cartel bank probably cannot use the existence of the clause as a defense if they’re still allowing illegal activity. If the purpose is to allow the bank to terminate accounts suspected…

It’s not just that they don’t want it, it’s that they’re liable for it themselves if they should have known it was happening. Asking you adds one more small layer of “we discouraged illegal activity and we didn’t know about any”.

Maybe I am just slow.

Bank 1 has the CYA clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

Bank 2 does not have the clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

In neither case does the clause prevent the illegal activity or make the bank any more or less aware of what customers are doing. They have to do KYC regardless of what the TOS says.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#106
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s simple CYA, and also ensures you’ve not only done the illegal activity, you’ve defrauded the brokerage and breached your contract with them, and they get a weak KYC defense as well. Similar to the “Al Capone” instructions from the IRS: >Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if fr…

I'm curious if anyone has ever said yes to income from illegal activities. Moreover, I wonder if something like this would be protected under 5th amendment.

IANAL, but my understanding is that it is not protected under the 5th amendment.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#108
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that they don’t want it, it’s that they’re liable for it themselves if they should have known it was happening. Asking you adds one more small layer of “we discouraged illegal activity and we didn’t know about any”.

Maybe I am just slow. Bank 1 has the CYA clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes. Bank 2 does not have the clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes. In neither case does the clause prevent the illegal activity or make the bank any more or less aware of what customers are doing. They have to do KYC regardless of what the TOS says.

The point of the CYA clause isn’t to prevent illegal activity or make the bank more aware of what customers are doing. The point is that when Bank 1 is defending itself in court, it has one additional thing they can point at when arguing that it should not be liable for the illegal activities.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#109
post #17

This does not read like it was written by a professional. Non-professionals writing licenses and T&Cs cause problems because no organization, for profit or not, wants to be dragged into court to get a "common sense" definition of a word or comma defined, at their expense. I've heard of large organizations reaching out to places who use amateur T&Cs and licenses, saying "if we give you $X, can you dual license this as…

> > Access is not conditioned on approval I practice law in California. I've written terms of service that many, many people here on HN will have agreed to. I read this line and didn't know what it meant, or what it intended to mean. That said: > If you are actually a lawyer then it'd be interesting to hear your guidance, which I very much understand is not legal advice. If you're not a lawyer then I'm not. There's n…

>Access is not conditioned on approval

Legal training may be counterproductive to understanding this obviously non legal document.

I understand that it simply means that 'the thing' is public, and everyone has access. As opposed to access being granted explicitly to individuals.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#110

I like how, even when the whole point is to not have any terms or conditions, there are still disclaimers. "Only for lawful purposes," "no warranty," "we are not responsible." Those are still terms and conditions!

Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies. Including it in the license is just redundant. Had it simply read "You may use this site for any purpose." or "You may use this site." or "You may use this" or "This can be used." it would have the same level actual restriciton in that you obviously aren't allowed to use it to break the law regardless of what it actually says. And, having typed all that, I reali…

Probably because the "default" (in the USA and all European states I've checked at least) is copyright protection - unless explicitly stated otherwise the original author has exclusive rights to reproduce or distribute the work.

That means that things with "no license" don't actually mean "you can do whatever you want" - but in fact "you can do realistically nothing".

So to actually let other people so much as look at it, you have to have some kind of license attached already. And then it can be easy to imply (in the eyes of the law) things like "fitness for purpose" or some kind of warrenty unless expicitly denied.

Honestly it's really annoying to find things like code on the internet with "no license" - that just means you can pretty much never even look at it. You could argue that isn't the "right" default, but the law is what the law is right now.

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