Ask HN: Do you have a "Terms of Service"/"Terms of Use" on your web project?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431323

by blhack • 15 years ago

13 8 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

At what point do you decide to start including a ToS in your signup process? In the past, I've never included one because generally the projects I make are just for my friends and I to use.

My current project has really passed the point where I should be including one (I think). Or maybe not?

When do you include one? Right away? (I guess once you've written one, you could use it on all of your subsequent projects? I've never written one before.)

Is there ToS equivalents to the various open source licenses? Something that says "Use this at your own risk, etc."?

martey• 15 years ago

Automattic has Creative Commons licensed Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents available (i.e. http://en.wordpress.com/tos/ ). They are CC-BY-SA licensed, which means that you can use them on commercial projects as long as your document is similarly licensed.

blhack• 15 years ago

That's pretty awesome, thanks :)

andymurd• 15 years ago

The UK's Business Link provides sample documents for terms of use, privacy policy, disclaimer etc. I generally make a few edits and then use them as soon as a site goes live.

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=10...

DeepSeaRaisin• 15 years ago

I'm generally paranoid about such things, so I intend to have the Terms and Privacy Policy all set prior to a public launch. Whether or not this is a good approach... no idea. The peace of mind is worth it for me though, since I'm a worrier.

I wanted to ensure that I was as thorough as possible, so I brought up the process during my first (free) consultation with a lawyer. To minimize the billable hours, the lawyer recommended I piece them together myself and then just send it to him for any modifications as necessary. I'm just about done with mine and hope to send them off in the next day or so. It will probably cost more than I'd prefer at this stage, but the cost of getting nailed in a legal issue when such an agreement could possibly protect me would likely be higher. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. :)

It probably wouldn't hurt to look through the Terms of your competitors to get a feel for what others in your space are covering in their legal docs. You might also be able to buy some standard templates, although who knows how well they'd actually hold up.

revorad• 15 years ago

When I started, I emailed the founder of a well-known company, asking him if I could copy his ToS and adapt it to my site. He had no issues and said he had done something similar when he started and sought legal help only a bit later when he had some contacts and money.

HerraBRE• 15 years ago

Having a ToS and Privacy Policy were a requirement before I could hook http://pagekite.net/ up with a payment processor - you can't take people's money unless there's a clear statement of what they are (and aren't) getting for their money. Refund policies, things like that.

slysf• 15 years ago

Creative Commons has a search engine for finding documents licensed via CC and there are a ton of results for TOS: http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=TOS

Also good for privacy policies.

latch• 15 years ago

Wordpress/Automattic made their ToS and privacy policies available under a CC license...specifically to allow developers to use them as a template in their own sites:

http://en.wordpress.com/tos/

http://automattic.com/privacy/

Ask HN: Do you have a "Terms of Service"/"Terms of Use" on your web project?

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