500px Terms of Service • Hacker News Board

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#21

Post by rplnt » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:03 AM UTC

Funny how site called 500px doesn't fit in my 1000+px wide browser :)

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#22

Post by gyardley » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:19 AM UTC

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…

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 placing a 'simple' Terms of Service on their website, but then hid their true intentions in small print which claimed the obvious, prominent version wasn't legally binding." Who needs that hassle?

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#23

Post by mkoukoullis » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:21 AM UTC

I love it! Lawyers would hate it.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#24

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:27 AM UTC

>(iii) for any direct damages in Excess of (in the aggregate) $100. //

That doesnt sound legal.

It would, if enforceable allow them to only pay you $100 if they wrote off (destroyed) your car in a crash if it happened that you were a customer. Or similarly they could duplicate any customer's copyright works and pay only $100 compensation.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#25

Post by yaix » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:28 AM UTC

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.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#26

Post by icebraining » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:39 AM UTC

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 (...)

This is, in my opinion, an important clause that does not appear in the simplified version of the text.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#27

Post by CowCaBob » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 10:49 AM UTC

Never trust the big print.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#28

Post by gosub » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 11:00 AM UTC

NLips wrote: post #15

Good legalese IS human readable. The point of legalese is to define everything in absolutely certain terms. Where words are given unusual or overly specific meanings, these meanings should be defined in the document. Legalese can be heavy going, but should never require any knowledge that 90% of the population doesn't already posses. Of course, having a simplified version is still nice.

    The point of legalese is to define everything in absolutely certain terms.

Legalese is what you get when you try to get a precise meaning from an imprecise language. It is like trying to get the type safety of Haskell in PHP, resulting in a lot of verbosity.

I think this is relevant: There is a paper+presentation from SPJ about defining a contract (financial, in this case) in Haskell. Precise and machine verifiable.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#29

Post by skrebbel » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 11:15 AM UTC

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.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#30

Post by megablast » Thu, Apr 12, 2012, 11:33 AM UTC

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 wonder if using a simplified explanation in anyway voids the actual TOS.