
Is it OK to copy terms of service/privacy policy from another site? - picnichouse
What do you think?  I see it done all over the place...
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weebro
What is your alternative; get a lawyer to draw them up? Where do you think
they get them from? Only 10% of legal documents are drawn up from scratch.
Lawyers have a service called Westlaw. This service allows them to copy entire
briefs/submissions made to the court by a lawyer in the past. They don't even
need to come up with what to say in court, they just copy the person who was
successful in the past. I spent 18 months in a NY law firm cutting and
pasting.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE.....

My advice, take it from many websites, piece together the bits you want and
use examples from other sites for different ways of saying the same thing.
Change its wording slightly and put the sentences back to front sometimes. If
it's altered, not in the same format and slightly different it's ok.

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cwilbur
If your lawyer okays it, then it's fine. If you don't have a lawyer, why are
you asking us? Ask your lawyer.

Honestly, the questin is like asking "Is it okay to copy code from another
project?" And the answer is the same: if it works the way you want it to work,
and you won't get in trouble for using it, then go for it. The way to
determine if it works the way you want it to work is to consult a lawyer.

Don't think of legalese as if it were just marketing BS; think of it as an odd
programming language for the legal system. When you need Python code written
or evaluated, you become or hire a Python programmer; when you need legalese
written or evalauted, you become or hire a lawyer. It's as simple as that.

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pc
Just steal some free (= Creative Commons licensed) documents:

<http://wordpress.com/tos/> <http://automattic.com/privacy/>

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chaostheory
Here's another alternative: <http://www.ownterms.org/>

creative commons too

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onceageek
I don't see any issue with copying the terms. Most of all End-user agreements
and service policy are similar. Pay attention to substituting your company's
name :)

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jey
That sounds like copyright violation. See if you can find a legit free source
instead.

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onceageek
I disagree on copyright part. Two reasons: 1) You are not selling the
agreement 2) It is impossible to find out from where or whose agreement (most
of them are generic). Moreover, who the heck reads those!!! I am tempted to
write in my ToS - that the users hereby agree to sell their soul for using my
website :)

I agree on finding a legit free source.

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jey
> _Two reasons: 1) You are not selling the agreement 2) It is impossible to
> find out from where or whose agreement (most of them are generic). Moreover,
> who the heck reads those!!!_

How does selling it, whether it can be found that you copied it, or whether
people read them affect that it's a copyright violation? It's a copyright
violation if you publish it as your own, irrespective of whether people read
it or find out that you plagiarized it.

~~~
onceageek
jey: thats a valid point. I totally agree with your argument as it being a
copyright violation too.

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benhoyt
It depends on their terms of service.

Seriously, though, we wrote ours ourselves, but we did heavily use info we
gleaned from other peoples' ToS. If you're just a generic web 2.0 site you can
probably get away with using someone else's generic ToS, but if you're doing
anything slightly different, you'll have to tailor it anyway.

FWIW, for microPledge we ended up with <http://micropledge.com/conditions> \--
we got a lawyer friend to look over it briefly, and he gave us a few good
pointers.

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rami
If you decide to copy, double check your punctuation.
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060806....](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060806.wr-
rogers07/BNStory/Business/home)

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herdrick
MySpace did it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3775>

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epi0Bauqu
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37112>

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rokhayakebe
f??k yeah it is.

