[knorker]

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 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]

> > 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.

[TZubiri]

>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.

[knorker]

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.

[TZubiri]

Oh I agree, I'm just saying that I understood what was meant

[knorker]

You 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]

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

[knorker]

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.

[zephen]

> I will not argue with you about how obvious it is.

Good. Don't. Because it is exceedingly plain, if concise, English.

[tempestn]

I'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.

[zephen]

> I'm guessing it means that your use of the website is not contingent on you accepting

I don't think it says that at all. Because "accepting" is the right word for this interpretation, as you point out. "Approval" is a different thing altogether. You can accept something without approving of it -- that's the main message in the Serenity Prayer and hundreds of self-help books that try to reframe that message, maybe to help it sink in, maybe just to grift a little.

If it was literally spelled out as "Your access is not conditioned on your approval" that could almost be taken as a threat -- you will access this whether you want to or not.

> For instance, your access of the website is not contingent on the website operator approving said access.

To me, this is clearly what it says. "(Your) access is not conditioned on (our) approval."

But, of course, since you read it differently, I have to agree that perhaps it's not as clear as I thought.

However...

Contracts and agreements, if ambiguous, are always interpreted in a light most favorable to the party who didn't draft them.

So, absolute worst case (for the website owner), if we combine your reading and mine, it reads "Your access is not conditioned on either your approval of these terms, or our approval of you."

Somehow, I think the author is OK with this.

[knorker]

This 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]

A 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]

Sounds 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]

No 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]

That'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]

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.

[ndriscoll]

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 delegitimized itself until enforcement has started to become impossible.

[knorker]

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.

[tekne]

You are essentially saying that walking is safe because as a civilian you are unlikely to get robbed.

This is a terrible take. All it takes is an angry mugger, and you could get killed.

[knorker]

Walking is not illegal.

That's why your analogy doesn't work.