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500px Terms of Service

500px.com

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Re: 500px Terms of Service

#81

Post by freejack »

We just launched a redesign today that features a new presentation of our TOS (http://hover.com/tos). We take a lot of pride in making all aspects of our service as useful as we can and didn't want our legalese to be the exception to that. We abandoned the "Explain This" approach that 500px took on the basis that we wanted the agreement itself to be friendly, not the explanation of it. (Well, we want the explanation friendly too, but we thought it would be much easier to explain if the agreement itself was approachable.)

Its a work in progress, and I think we're a lot closer to where I want to be. We focused extensively on making it understandable, useful and usable and I'd love to get feedback on how well we hit the mark (or missed it as the case may be...). There's still some complexity in there that our lawyers insist on and I figure we can keep whittling away at it until we get what we really want.

/r

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#83

Post by joshu »

mey wrote: post #76
joshu wrote: post #71

I wanted to do this in 2006 for delicious. The problem is that by placing the simplified terms in the same place, they become binding. Since they must differ somehow from the actual terms, then you open yourself to various problems.

What about simplifying the actual TOS then?

That's probably fine. I'm just regurgitating the feedback I got from the lawyers - you should have exactly one representation of the terms so that people/courts/whatever don't get to pick and choose.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#84

Post by Cushman »

ynniv wrote: post #65
tomelders wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding." That's quite clear to me. If I were to try my luck in the courts, I'd be pleasantly surprised if the Judge took the "basically" column as the legal interpretation. Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes). The fact remains…

I'd be pleasantly surprised if the Judge took the "basically" column as the legal interpretation. I would be very surprised if their legal department thought the "basically" column was a good idea. They can say that it isn't legally binding, but that claim isn't ... err... legally binding. Everything written in a contract is equally binding, and the proximity and one-to-one mapping could make the summary column part…

> They can say that it isn't legally binding, but that claim isn't ... err... legally binding.

That is the most perfectly succinct explanation for why this might be a bad idea. Well done.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#85

Post by dwynings »

abrahamsen wrote: post #46

I like the TOS for this site: http://ycombinator.com/legal.html

I really liked YC's Privacy Policy from their original legal page

  Privacy Policy: We're too lazy to look at log files, and haven't yet written any software to do it.

  Terms of Use: When you click on a link, our server will send you the corresponding page.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050324100821/http://ycombinator...

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#86

Post by trb »

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 (.…

Aren't those clauses in there to cover transferring files to CDNs or backup services?

I'd interpret the "Basically" section as a display of their intent, since the full terms require a lot of legalese to protect 500px.

As NyxWulf and other commentators said, the "Basically" sections would probably play a role in a law suit anyway, so they couldn't hide contradicting terms in the left section.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#87

Post by comex »

Silhouette wrote: post #68
tomelders wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding." That's quite clear to me. If I were to try my luck in the courts, I'd be pleasantly surprised if the Judge took the "basically" column as the legal interpretation. Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes). The fact remains…

Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes). Be careful not to confuse criminal law with contracts. It is fundamental to the existence of a contract that both sides understand it. That is one of the few points of law that is pretty much a universal constant, whatever jurisdiction you're in.

Which is somewhat absurd, since most people agree to hundreds of ToS contracts without reading them.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#89

Post by saraid216 »

comex wrote: post #87
Silhouette wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes). Be careful not to confuse criminal law with contracts. It is fundamental to the existence of a contract that both sides understand it. That is one of the few points of law that is pretty much a universal constant, whatever jurisdiction you're in.

Which is somewhat absurd, since most people agree to hundreds of ToS contracts without reading them.

And the legality of this isn't fully established; in fact, last I heard, it was being somewhat successfully contested. But there's no sweeping word on the matter yet: you could probably take a ToS violation to court and have it set precedence.

Re: 500px Terms of Service

#90

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tchebotarev wrote: post #62
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #24

> (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.

Hi pbhjpbhj! Thanks for pointing that out! It is legal and very common. It is done simply to limit the liability in unforeseen events. Some courts can throw this point out during the case, some may adhere to that. But most terms on the Internet would include it "just in case". And no, we won't duplicate customers' works and such — we have build it for photographers, and we are photographers ourselves. We care about t…

>Some courts can throw this point out during the case, some may adhere to that. //

Thanks for your response. I wasn't suggesting, as it might read, that it's not legal to make the claim. Just that there was no apparent legal value in such a disclaimer.

I realise it's a technicality but do you, or does anyone here, know of a case in which such a clause has been valuable in limiting the defendants liability (or otherwise valuable I guess) and as a follow-up why the claimed limit of liability is not $0 USD or say 1¢? On the later point consider that one could be the subject of a class action by a million users (the claimed liability then would differ 1¢/$100 as $10k/$100M; this suggests there must be a strong reason to claim at the specific value).

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