By reading this blog, you agree to be bound by all the terms and conditions contained in this agreement. Too late—you are already committed. You can terminate this agreement at any time by not coming back to this blog, but that won't release you from the agreement you have just made. Also, you agree that you will not violate this agreement (whatever that means).
Oh, and if you decide to come back to my blog, you had better re-read this posting every single time, because the terms and conditions may change at any time without notice. But you will still be bound by them.
I can't name the company whose website prompted this posting, because that might be a violation of my (involuntary) agreement not to use any of the information on their website in a defamatory way. Oh, wait! I have an out for that:
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless me, my agents, partners, and content providers, and their affiliates and their respective agents and assigns from and against all claims and expenses, including attorneys' fees, arising out of your use of this site.There. If the lawyers who wrote that crap want to sue me for this posting, they'll have to prove that they never read it.
I'm probably in no position to sneer, since my employer has its own phalanx of lawyers. But I feel sorry for the folks I know who work at redacted.
2 comments:
My personal theory is that the only people who believe that web sites need terms of service is the lawyers who write terms of service. I would certainly love to hear of any case where somebody was successfully sued for not complying (or, more importantly, of a company that had trouble because they *hadn't* posted terms of service.)
In fact, I believe I expressed said opinion recently to our VP marketing. I'm sure that completely unrelated to the subject of this post.
That said,
http://www.oracle.com/us/legal/terms/index.html
includes much the same egregious claims, *and* a bunch of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
Notices that are the moral equivalent of "No shirt, no shoes, no service" are fine with me. It's fair to tell people what they can expect from you.
If you allow users to contribute content, for example, it is reasonable to remind them that you will share that content with others and to warn them that you don't guarantee you will keep it forever. It is okay to tell them that you won't host their content if it doesn't meet whatever arbitrary criteria you choose.
Just don't cross that line into telling people that you control their behavior, rather than your own. Is that so hard?
(When you say "*and* a bunch of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS" you imply that some other site doesn't have such a section. But that implication would be false. I think the capital letters for warrantee disclaimers may be an actual statutory requirement, so I'm prepared to cut some slack there.)
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