No Terms. No Conditions(notermsnoconditions.com)
186 points by bayneri 5 hours ago | 81 comments
- CobrastanJorji 4 hours agoI 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!
[-]- goodmythical 3 hours agoRight? 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 realize that there is another restriction in that it presumes that there is a 'you' using it. Things that are not 'you' cannot use it given that it specifically lists 'you' in the referenced parties. "This can be used" would be more permissive.
[-]- lxgr 3 hours agoI recently had to confirm to a brokerage that I won’t be using the money I’m withdrawing for any illegal activities.
A sure sign of a legal team or possibly an entire legal system having lost the plot. Hopefully only the former.
[-]- wrs 50 minutes agoThat’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 from your self-employment activity.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about these stickers all over Seattle saying you’re not allowed to conduct illegal activities on the premises…
[-]- janalsncm 7 minutes agoI 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 of illegal activity, my assumption is they can already terminate for much less than that.
- bombcar 3 hours agoFor Good, not Evil, unless you're IBM™
https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...
- nickff 2 hours agoThis is probably a meek attempt at demonstrating compliance with Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) laws and regulations. Lawyers will often suggest this sort of thing, because the only cost is a slight inconvenience to the client, and it might suggest 'good faith' in the case of a prosecution or enforcement action.[-]
- AnimalMuppet 2 hours agoSo, the entire legal system.
- josephg 2 hours ago> I won’t be using the money I’m withdrawing for any illegal activities.
My guess is that this is so they can ban any drug dealers from their site without consequence. "They violated our terms of service your honour!"
- spalzdog 2 hours agoWhen it's in the contract, then it means that when you break the law you both break the law and the contract. SHould it be necessary? Perhaps not, but in some places that makes a meaningful difference.[-]
- AnimalMuppet 2 hours agoNow I'm paranoid. To your knowledge, which places does it make a difference, and what difference does it make?[-]
- fastball 46 minutes agoLegal matters are almost never black and white. If someone does something illegal using my service, and some other 3rd party sues me as party to that illegal behavior, from a legal perspective having a clause like "no criminal behavior allowed" in there makes it easier for your lawyers to argue "my client clearly didn't intend to authorize/facilitate such behavior". This argument is of course made much stronger if it is paired with behavior, like banning (or attempting to ban) the criminal user as soon as the activity was identified.
But if you are paranoid you should speak with a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
- zephen 3 hours ago> Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies. Including it in the license is just redundant.
Perhaps not. The law, as automatically applied, often include implied warranties.
- awesome_dude 58 minutes ago> 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.
[-]- volemo 28 minutes agoDoes it take the view that I encourage/facilitate illegal use of my product unless I state otherwise in the T&C?[-]
- awesome_dude 5 minutes agoAsk every account that has ever released information on drug use, lock picking, explosives manufacture, or "hacking" - they all say "for educational purposes only" for a damned good reason
- j_bizzle 3 hours agoIt's almost like the most effective way to publish without T&Cs is to just, you know, omit the section and publish what you want without T&Cs.[-]
- terrabiped 2 hours agoInteresting question. I wonder what the default (implied) T&C would be if nothing has been explicitly stated. For example, publishing a source code without an explicit license doesn't make it open source.[-]
- volemo 27 minutes agoI guess it’d be whatever the other party’s lawyer can persuade the judge into.
- sph 2 hours agoIf anyone knows that rules exist to be broken, it's Jorji. Glory to Cobrastan.
- daveguy 3 hours ago"NoTermsNoConditions"... Proceeds to list 9 terms and conditions.
It should be called bare-termsandconditions or minimal-termsandconditions.
- isoprophlex 2 hours agoShould have gone for the WTFPL
DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO. - AndrewKemendo 3 hours agoThis is the real salient point in this post in my opinion;
It unintentionally demonstrates the limits of individual agency to avoid legal embroilments
That is to say: it doesn’t really matter what this person puts on their website because there is a judge and a sheriff somewhere that can force you to do something that would violate the things you wrote down because the things you wrote are subordinate to jurisdictional law (which is invoked as you point out)
It’s actually pretty poetic when you think about it because the page effectively says nothing because it doesn’t have content that the license applies to
If it’s a art piece intended to show something about licensure all it does is demonstrate the degree to which licensure is predicated on jurisdiction
- shevy-java 3 hours agoRight. The cake is a lie.
- iamnotai666 3 hours ago[dead]
- Retr0id 4 hours agoI wonder how many one-sentence prompts have made it to the HN front page at this point.[-]
- rrr_oh_man 8 minutes agoWhy do you say that?
- ellyagg 2 hours agoI don’t know, but it’s kind of boring to speculate since computers easily beat us at chess and go.[-]
- Retr0id 2 hours agoPreventing computer-based cheating in competitive chess is a big deal (and I assume go also), because spectators tend not to want to watch two computers playing against each other.
- Yhippa 2 hours ago"Alternative Terms" was the giveaway.[-]
- rrr_oh_man 9 minutes agoWhy? For what?
- vincentabolarin 8 minutes agoNot sure how this is supposed to be useful, but I had a good laugh.
- tsukikage 3 hours ago
- canacrypto 1 hour agoA similar one I made a while back, inspired by South Park's disclaimer before each episode: https://github.com/jmrossy/south-park-license
- johnplatte 5 hours agoComedically, this doesn't load from my IP address in the Russian Federation. (HN does.)[-]
- tech_jabroni 4 hours agoNo alarms, no surprises[-]
- joncrane 3 hours agoMy mind when to the same thing. Great song.
- 0xbadcafebee 1 hour agoRemember when people started using WTFPL because it "sounded good", only to later find out it left them and their users legally liable? This is that but for websites.
- amelius 2 hours agoThe URL basically nulls the license agreement.
- jborichevskiy 3 hours agoI know this is mostly parody, but I'm curious if anyone has good starter templates for something that covers the general stuff and doesn't require a lawyer to customize[-]
- willks 3 hours agoI like the [Basecamp policies](https://github.com/basecamp/policies). Explicitly open source, limited legalese.[-]
- jborichevskiy 3 hours agoThanks! Basecamp's and Github's were a few of the open source ones I came across
- gnfargbl 4 hours ago> Access is not conditioned on approval.
The Zen Koan of T&C's.
- the_axiom 1 hour agoamazing how such a simple website lags to scroll on my phone
- catlifeonmars 3 hours agogoes without saying
that this site definitely
does not, legally
- Barbing 4 hours agoHope this slop doesn’t get anyone into trouble.
Not sure “last updated=never” works, but I don’t make terms and conditions websites.Last updated: never No further pages. No hidden clauses.[-]- bayneri 4 hours agouse at your own risk
> 8. You are responsible for what you do, what you build, and what follows from either.
[-]- FinnKuhn 4 hours agoAs far as I'm concerned this doesn't mean anything legally unless I missed something. Aren't you already responsible for what you do or build anyways?
Or is this somehow meant to mean something else but worded so badly it can't be understood.
- knorker 4 hours agoThis 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 MIT, Apache, BSD, or hell anything standard?".
> Access is not conditioned on approval
Is this obvious enough legalese to not waste tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees if you get sued?
Note before you reply: I will not argue with you about how obvious it is. 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.
[-]- kemitchell 3 hours ago> > 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 no good way to validate lawyerdom on public social media like HN. And while the average lawyer probably remembers enough from law school or bar exams to know slightly more about Web terms of service and legal drafting than the average person, there's nothing to stop non-lawyers from reading up and learning. Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog is a great, public source covering cases on ToS and other issues, for example.
The Bar monopolizes representation within legal institutions. Don't cede the law itself to lawyers.
[-]- knorker 2 hours agoYou can be competent without being a lawyer, sure. But if you see the other replies to my comment, you see why I would use this as a filter.
The dumbest person can be right, but as a lawyer, your guess is much better.
I don't cede the law. It's just that if I find this unclear, then J Random Hn commenter's opinion wouldn't reduce my risk.
I won't be acting based on your opinion either, of course, but the quality of your reply is clearly in a different class from the other two.
- usea 2 hours agoIt's common for non-lawyers to write terms and conditions, and other contracts.
- zephen 3 hours ago> I will not argue with you about how obvious it is.
Good. Don't. Because it is exceedingly plain, if concise, English.
[-]- tempestn 2 hours agoI'm guessing it means that your use of the website is not contingent on you accepting (approving of) the terms presented. But there are plenty of other ways it could be reasonably interpreted. For instance, your access of the website is not contingent on the website operator approving said access.
- knorker 2 hours agoThis is exactly the kind of comment I politely asked people not to make.
Did you see the actual lawyer saying they don't know what it means?
[-]- zephen 2 hours agoA statement that "If you're not a lawyer then I'm not." is blunt, not particularly polite or not.
In any case, (a) it's not a request, and (b) if you truly want to control the narrative, then perhaps you should just do that from your own blog.
- ndriscoll 4 hours agoSounds like a smart strategy then. Use an amateur license. People who just want to do stuff know they have your blessing. Corporations will stay away or pay up, not because you made them, but of their own volition. Everyone is happy.
Of course even better is to simply have no explicit license, especially for something like code. Normal people can assume they can do whatever they'd like (basically, public domain). Lawyers will assume they cannot. The only thing stopping someone is their own belief in their self restrictions. i.e. you can use the thing if and only if you don't believe in my authority on the matter.
[-]- iamnotai666 3 hours agoNo explicit license is not basically public domain. In most jurisdictions it means the default is full copyright, so permission is less clear, not more. The practical effect is usually to increase ambiguity rather than grant freedom.[-]
- ndriscoll 2 hours agoThat's the point: it's a rejection of the premise that you need these sorts of terms. You treat the law as the farce it has turned itself into. If people reject the farce, they can use it. If they support the farce, they can't (well, they can, but they think they can't). In a sense, an anarchist's viral FOSS license.
- knorker 2 hours agoYou 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.
[-]- ndriscoll 2 hours agoI'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 delegitimized itself until enforcement has started to become impossible.
- weinzierl 4 hours agoJust today I asked an LLM:
"Often one generation values things much more than others. Boomers and their wristwatches. One generation is like 'only from my cold dead hands,' the others 'what would I even need this for?!' What are examples of things the youngest generation did away with?"
If OP were a checklist, the answer would have checked every point.
[-]- rrr_oh_man 4 minutes agoNobody cares what you typed in your hallucination machine
- self-portrait 3 hours agoNo further update.
- shevy-java 3 hours agoIs that useful for anything?
- modzu 2 hours agoi do wonder if the world would be a better place if instead of lawyers we had cage matches[-]
- AnimalMuppet 2 hours agoSouthwest Airlines got sued by some other company over, IIRC, color schemes. Southwest's CEO (Herb Kelleher) made an offer to the other CEO: They skip the lawyers and settle it with an arm-wrestling contest. The other CEO agreed.
Eventually, they wound up selling tickets to the match, and donated the proceeds to charity.
Now that's a civilized way to conduct a lawsuit.
- badrequest 5 hours agohugged to death
- steveharing1 4 hours agoLast updated: never lol
- suoer 3 hours ago[dead]
- riteshyadav02 4 hours ago[dead]
- iamnotai666 3 hours ago[dead]
- ayakut 5 hours agobrilliant !