[goodmythical]

Right? 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]

I 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]

That’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]

I 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.

[sedev]

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th...

> You might look at the standard KYC questionnaire for a new retail account and think “Really? You ask questions which have obviously correct answers. You give people less than a tweet worth of space to answer them. How could this possibly catch any criminals not stupid enough to write Occupation: Drug Dealer?” […] this is not the only mechanism by which KYC questionnaires have a stochastic effect; they’re also useful in an entirely different part of the crime lifecycle. Many, many crimes involve lies, but most lies told are not crimes and most lies told are not recorded for forever. We did, however, make a special rule for lies told to banks: they’re potentially very serious crimes and they will be recorded with exacting precision, for years, by one of the institutions in society most capable of keeping accurate records and most findable by agents of the state.

> This means that if your crime touches money, and much crime is financially motivated, and you get beyond the threshold of crime which can be done purely offline and in cash, you will at some point attempt to interface with the banking system. And you will lie to the banks, because you need bank accounts, and you could not get accounts if you told the whole truth.

> The government wants you to do this. Their first choice would be you not committing crimes, but contingent on you choosing to break the law, they prefer you also lie to a bank. […]

> Particularly in white collar crime, establishing complicated chains of evidence about e.g. a corporate fraud, and mens rea of the responsible parties, is not straightforward. But then at some point in the caper comes a very simple question: “Were you completely honest with your bank?” And the answer will frequently be “Well, no, I necessarily had to lie in writing.”

> And congratulations, you have just eaten a wire charge fraud for every transaction you’ve ever done.

[xstas1]

I learned about this from The Wire. They called it "the headshot"

[wrs]

It’s not just that they don’t want it, it’s that they’re liable for it themselves if they should have known it was happening. Asking you adds one more small layer of “we discouraged illegal activity and we didn’t know about any”.

[janalsncm]

Maybe I am just slow.

Bank 1 has the CYA clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

Bank 2 does not have the clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

In neither case does the clause prevent the illegal activity or make the bank any more or less aware of what customers are doing. They have to do KYC regardless of what the TOS says.

[anamexis]

The point of the CYA clause isn’t to prevent illegal activity or make the bank more aware of what customers are doing. The point is that when Bank 1 is defending itself in court, it has one additional thing they can point at when arguing that it should not be liable for the illegal activities.

[stavros]

The "cover your ass" clause is for the bank to cover its ass, not to prevent the crime.

[pocksuppet]

The CEO of bank 2 goes to prison because "you turned a blind eye to illegal activity"

[stevage]

Having a clear clause to point to when terminating the account seems useful.

[lxgr]

Banks can (and in fact are highly incentivized) to close your account if you're using it for criminal activity with or without you lying about it on some silly form.

[abustamam]

I'm curious if anyone has ever said yes to income from illegal activities. Moreover, I wonder if something like this would be protected under 5th amendment.

[pocksuppet]

I wonder what happens if you write "5th amendment" as the source for your completely legal salary.

[lxgr]

They'll probably close your account and point to their right to choose who they do and don't do business with without having to explain themselves.

[pocksuppet]

The IRS will close your IRS account?

[lxgr]

I recently chuckled when doing my taxes and reporting miscellaneous income when I saw that one possible income category in my tax software was "bribes, received".

[aidenn0]

IANAL, but my understanding is that it is not protected under the 5th amendment.

[bombcar]

For Good, not Evil, unless you're IBM™

https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...

[nickff]

This 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]

So, the entire legal system.

[josephg]

> 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!"

[kimixa]

Probably because the "default" (in the USA and all European states I've checked at least) is copyright protection - unless explicitly stated otherwise the original author has exclusive rights to reproduce or distribute the work.

That means that things with "no license" don't actually mean "you can do whatever you want" - but in fact "you can do realistically nothing".

So to actually let other people so much as look at it, you have to have some kind of license attached already. And then it can be easy to imply (in the eyes of the law) things like "fitness for purpose" or some kind of warrenty unless expicitly denied.

Honestly it's really annoying to find things like code on the internet with "no license" - that just means you can pretty much never even look at it. You could argue that isn't the "right" default, but the law is what the law is right now.

[spalzdog]

When 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]

Now I'm paranoid. To your knowledge, which places does it make a difference, and what difference does it make?

[fastball]

Legal 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.

[greycol]

In most places it doesn't make a difference to the outcome of the legal process what it does do is give you a quicker simpler off ramp from the legal process (which reduces costs) and may stop some idiots even trying to sue in the first place.

"Do not iron clothes while on body" should not be required to not be found liable, but it does change the question in court from providing discovery for safety consideration, how comprehensive is the manual, how... and the costs involved with that to "Did the customer use the device in a way that was it was clearly labelled to not be used? Did any part of the product packaging or instructions contradict this warning? ...Dismissed".

[abustamam]

On top of that, I think my canister of Lysol wet wipes and many other bottles of cleaning chemicals says something like "it is against federal law to use this product for any purposes other than its intended use"

Like, yeah it's illegal to do illegal stuff with or without the label, but at least Lysol could say "we did tell him that he can't use it for that."

[codebje]

It's illegal to do illegal stuff, but it's not illegal to do off-label usage stuff. If I want to take your hydrogen peroxide you sell as a surface disinfectant and mix it with vinegar and salt to etch my PCBs at home, that's my prerogative.

[abustamam]

Well, who's gonna tell on you? :) I don't have a bottle of H2O2 handy so I don't know if it normally has that disclaimer.

[zephen]

> 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]

> 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]

Does it take the view that I encourage/facilitate illegal use of my product unless I state otherwise in the T&C?

[abustamam]

Encourage, probably not. Facilitate, possibly. That's why my bottle of Windex glass cleaner says "it's against federal law to use this product for anything other than its intended purpose."

In either case it's illegal for me to use it for bad purposes, but how much I can blame on Windex depends on how much they let me know that I shouldn't do bad stuff with their products.

[awesome_dude]

Ask 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]

It'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]

Interesting 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.

[pocksuppet]

Most T&Cs don't mean anything anyway. There are no default T&Cs, there's just the law.

Publishing code without a license doesn't give it an "implicit all-rights-reserved license" - it's just illegal to copy because that's what copyright law says. A license is a conditional waiver of copyright law, a contract where the author promises not to enforce copyright against you if you fulfil certain conditions. (and this is legally binding so they actually can't enforce copyright against you)

[volemo]

I guess it’d be whatever the other party’s lawyer can persuade the judge into.