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No Terms. No Conditions

notermsnoconditions.com

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131–140 of 149 posts

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#131

Post by knorker »

ndriscoll wrote: post #59
knorker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are essentially saying that shoplifting is legal because as a civilian you are unlikely to get caught. This is a terrible take. All it takes is a litigious jerk, and you could get bankrupt. And that jerk will be legally in the right.

I'm not. In saying people who want to share their work should just do so. If your goal is to not have terms, don't have terms. Don't lend credibility to the idea that you need to by default. Consider the war on drugs. Recreational marijuana is still highly illegal everywhere in the US, but there's businesses selling it that operate in plain view. How did we get there? Because people continued to point out how the law…

You can't unilaterally opt out of copyright. Not in a legal sense. In many jurisdictions not even on the creator side. E.g. Europe commonly doesn't even give creators the option to declare work "public domain". You have to be more specific than that, or it still reserves you the right to sue (and win) against any recipients.

If you want to follow Vaclav Havel's "Living in truth", then I commend you for it. But that's always a legal risk, and we're no longer talking about the law.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#132

Post by knorker »

TZubiri wrote: post #109
kemitchell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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.

Well… in a court the people with legal training run the show. And keep in mind that you don't have to technically lose, in order to lose both money and time.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#134

Post by knorker »

usea wrote: post #76
knorker wrote: 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…

It's common for non-lawyers to write terms and conditions, and other contracts.

You're right. I can see how I phrased that poorly. I meant what I said, but it also implies something that I don't.

It's not a requirement for a contract to be written by a lawyer, any more than a python script needs to be written by a professional coder. But in both cases the result tends to have problems. (skipping here how LLMs fit into this)

The way in which scripts and contracts can be "fixed" later are different, with no clever sound byte about just how these apples are different from oranges.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#135

Post by stavros »

janalsncm wrote: post #122
stavros wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cover your ass" clause is for the bank to cover its ass, not to prevent the crime.

The point is, no judge or jury should be fooled into thinking putting “don’t do illegal stuff” in a TOS actually should matter. Forget the TOS. They allowed illegal activity.

The point is they can claim they didn't know.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#137

Post by watwut »

anamexis wrote: post #108
janalsncm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bank that actually welcome the AlCapone will be first to have that form. If the court can be affected by something like that, it says something really bad about the legal system.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#138

Post by lxgr »

anamexis wrote: post #108
janalsncm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this actually works in court, the corresponding legal system has completely lost the plot, in my view.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#139

Post by lxgr »

stavros wrote: post #135
janalsncm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, no judge or jury should be fooled into thinking putting “don’t do illegal stuff” in a TOS actually should matter. Forget the TOS. They allowed illegal activity.

The point is they can claim they didn't know.

Yes, and any functional legal system would then tell them that asking the subject directly and explicitly whether they're trying to use your bank for money laundering does not count as "taking measures".

If you have actual measures (such as asking for source of funds and then asking for proof if the evidence looks incongruent with what was stated), you have no need for the silly question; if you don't, the silly question won't save you either.

This should go for both the asker and the subject of the question: Illegal things are already illegal. If a given legal system requires the silly question to be able to "tack on wire fraud charges" to something that would otherwise go unpunished(?!), I think what should be fixed is the legal system, not every single banking form.

Re: No Terms. No Conditions

#140

Post by lxgr »

abustamam wrote: post #98
wrs wrote: 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.

I recently chuckled when doing my taxes and reporting miscellaneous income when I saw that one possible income category in my tax software was "bribes, received".
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