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Worst Terms of Service Ever
The legal birdseed here (appropriately and manically illustrated in the manner of The Secret Guide to Computers) makes the copy on Dr. Bronner's Soap look sane; the user agreement ("Click on any link or image to indicate "I ACCEPT" the USER Agreement.") begins with a little blurb about why it's necessary, and asks you not to be put off by the legalese. That might seem disingenuous at first, but buried in the text is this note, too: "[Yes, we know that you think that all this legalese is completely ridiculous, and we think so too, but we also believe that current law unfortunately requires that it be done this way; So if you know of a better, simpler 'legally correct' way, do tell us how!]"
(Besides this amusing legal stuff, the site is actually very interesting, at least if you enjoy U.S. history and trains.)
Hmmmmm. . ..I wonder how this will hold up in court?
No stereographs were harmed in the making of this website.
4B4556494E
They may as well ask for the moon. I doubt the even the courts read EULAs or web site agreements these days ;)
I read through that and at first thought, that's pretty funny, I've been .. something about
/. poster seems to think.. this is FUCKING CREEPY. This guy scares me.
.. he's got some weird browser-crashing code or something .. wtf!!!! I'm using ...
thinking of putting stuff like that on my own web site
50,000 words long and at the end say "or you may simply ignore the above and
choose the following Creative Commons license instead". The fact that it's all
old public-domain stuff, hilarious!
But looking around I began to wonder.. is it a joke or not? I'm not seeing any
punch-line.. Maybe this guy is *serious*.. but how can you take it seriously,
it defies logic. It's already illegal to make unauthorized copies, so what's
the point? And he admits that it is ridiculous.. should I agree to anything
"ridiculuous"? Would it stand up in court?
If he seriously can't come up with a shorter agreement (hint: nothing gives
visitors the right to copy stuff that isn't PD, so you don't have to do *ANYTHING*).
Then I read his replies, and I'm starting to realize, this isn't funny like
the
Don't visit this site, this guy is probably collecting IP addresses and he's
going to start stalking you or something. I'm almost afraid to write this..
*shiver*
WHOA now everytime I press the submit button after visiting his site,
konqueror crashes
mozilla to post this now.
I bought NBA tickets a while ago via the web (for a team that shall remain nameless). I received an email with the transaction details, and below it says...
"This ticket is a revocable license.The holder, on behalf of the holder and any minor accompanying the holder (individually and collectively, the "Holder"), agrees to all of the terms hereof."
Then it goes on in excruciating detail about all of the stuff I can't do with the tickets I just purchased, and how by buying a ticket I grant them permission forever to use my image in whatever manner they see fit without paying a penny, etc, etc. By word count, that email is 19% transaction confirmation and 81% legalese.
The nice thing is that "This ticket cannot be replaced if lost, stolen or destroyed". WTF???? They made it patently clear I had bought a license...
Just thought it was sorta funny, in a sad way, and somewhat ontopic.
No
They definitely spent more time on TOS than creating "original works" from public domain pictures from 19th century claiming copyright.
If you read the "ORIGINALITY" section they claim it requires artistic and original skills to scan the images and save them as JPEGs; not only that, but in the process, an original piece of art is created (a requirement for copyright). Therefore, even though the original images are 19th century and public domain, they are holding copyright on their scans. By agreeing to their TOS, you agree that that's the case.
I don't see how scanning public domain pictures calling them your own qualifies as an original work. It qualifies for extortion though:
- get hold of a rare public domain document/picture/book/etc.
- scan it and save scans as JPEGs/PDFs/whatever;
- lock the original public domain work in a safe;
- you've got a brand new never-expiring copyright and you didn't even have to produce anything!
- sell the art and PROFIT!!!
Call it stupid, moronic, but according to these so called terms of service agreements, if someone did click on the link, in theory I should be able to track down users via their ISP's and stake my claim.
Oh well... back to real news "Priests need love too"
MoFscker
There is a lot of funny stuff in it, I like this one most:
For example, if you write informally to ask us about using one or more images that you saw on the CPRR.org website and ask what the request will cost, while not specifying a price limit, you are thereby requesting and authorizing us to fill your order at a price consistent with the Use Fee Schedule and the terms and conditions of this User Agreement, and to let you know the total amount due for the license by sending you an electronic invoice which you are obligated to pay.
Next time somebody asks for my $/hour I charge big time!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35375.html
Is it just me or does google just keep getting slimier?
The more you know, the less you understand.
You are not permitted to, and you warrant and agree that you will not do or facilitate any of the following:
[...]
(9) engage in any activity that may or will directly or indirectly impose a disproportionately large, unanticipated, or unreasonable load on our website bandwidth or infrastructure
Oops! Did the submitter read that? I hope the submitter didn't agree to their terms of service - they might try and charge him:
You agree not to take any action that will impose a disproportionately large or unreasonable load on our computer web server(s), network, or other infrastructure. Please be mindful of the large amounts of data transfer needed to allow viewing of the CPRR Museum web pages with multiple, large images, and avoid suddenly flooding the CPRR Museum website with large numbers of unanticipated visitors. Suddenly increased, excess web traffic on this website as a result of your actions, including but not limited to publicity, reporting, or recommendations to others regarding this website on network television or radio or national publications or media, of more than one gigabyte of additional Internet data transfer per month, shall be at your expense, and you agree to reimburse CPRR.org for the resulting costs at the rate of the then prevailing additional data transfer charge made by the Internet provider(s) hosting this website.
Does anyone here read The Onion, or any other satire? If you didn't get the joke, go read Swift's Modest Proposal.
I actually wrote a bookmarklet to bypass EULAs.
3 /K illThatEULA/
:)
It just finds he first 'textarea' and replaces the content with a given payload.
Then when you click "I Agree" you aren't actually agreeing to their EULA.
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2004/01/0
Granted I have no idea if it's legal but who cares... it's all fun
So in this case you could hack the bookmarklet to replace the EULA with something like:
"All Your Base are not belong to Central Pacific"
and then hit the "I Agree" button.
It doesn't work for everything but at the very minimum you could search the page for "I Agree" and replace it with "I DON'T AGREE YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!"
Gotta love the DOM!
Of course this will only work if they are checking CGI params but most web monkey's assume their HTML is readonly.
Kevin
Any access to or use of this website or [...] or sending the character string "/I_ACCEPT_the_User_Agreement/" to our web server as you must do to gain access to our images, or [...] or the like, all indicate and signify that "I ACCEPT" this user agreement [...].
This is a neat trick, but I don't know if a judge would fall for it. However, later on the same page, they have an image (the SpamCop button) loaded from:e r_Agreement/logos/spamcop.gif
http://www.cprr.org/Museum/images/I_ACCEPT_the_Us
So simply by viewing this page you've "accepted" the license agreement!
Err, speaking as someone who is digitizing (read: scanning old photos) for the local museum (NB: we do NOT have a ToS as inane as this), it does require some artistic talent.
I won't go so far as to claim I'm an artist (I suck at it), but I do have to make the most of my limited Photoshop skills to fix the color (not all of the photos are THAT old, even if some objects are--yes, I have to fix the color on the digital photos, too) and sometimes I have to make other edits to make the picture look right (e.g. someone used the flash by mistake, I have to clean up the ID tag with the accession number which is out of focus, generally by erasing it and adding the text via Photoshop).
So yeah, it's a pain in the arse, but the photos just have to look good enough that we can identify the objects. We even have nice disclaimers in the image database (which should eventually be made public on the internet) that mentions that the photos are only meant for identification, because my use of the clone brush to fix glare might've changed things a bit much...
It's in the second sentence. The first links go to lawyer joke pages.
My guess is that the TOS are official, more or less.
First off, IANAL, so this is just based on my own understanding. Just because some other case ruled on the matter doesn't mean anything. Copyright cases are decided on a case by case basis, and as such the Judge involved can disagree with a case that has precedent. Copyright cases are not that predictable. I think this is where a lot of people run into trouble with copyright. And, while a museum or a web site may not be able to hold a copyright on a piece of art, they can control access to it and make you agree to terms or payment in order to gain the access you want. Thus, it might as well be a copyright, even if the original item is in the public domain.