No Terms. No Conditions (notermsnoconditions.com)

173 points by bayneri 4 hours ago

CobrastanJorji 3 hours ago

I like how, even when the whole point is to not have any terms or conditions, there are still disclaimers. "Only for lawful purposes," "no warranty," "we are not responsible."

Those are still terms and conditions!

goodmythical 2 hours ago

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 2 hours ago

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.

bombcar 2 hours ago

nickff an hour ago

josephg an hour ago

spalzdog an hour ago

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 an hour ago

j_bizzle 2 hours ago

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 an hour ago

zephen 2 hours ago

> 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.

sph an hour ago

If anyone knows that rules exist to be broken, it's Jorji. Glory to Cobrastan.

daveguy 2 hours ago

"NoTermsNoConditions"... Proceeds to list 9 terms and conditions.

It should be called bare-termsandconditions or minimal-termsandconditions.

isoprophlex an hour ago

Should have gone for the WTFPL

        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE

        TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

            0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

shevy-java 2 hours ago

Right. The cake is a lie.

AndrewKemendo 2 hours ago

This is the real salient point in this post in my opinion;

It unintentionally demonstrates the limits of individual agency to avoid legal embroilments

That is to say: it doesn’t really matter what this person puts on their website because there is a judge and a sheriff somewhere that can force you to do something that would violate the things you wrote down because the things you wrote are subordinate to jurisdictional law (which is invoked as you point out)

It’s actually pretty poetic when you think about it because the page effectively says nothing because it doesn’t have content that the license applies to

If it’s a art piece intended to show something about licensure all it does is demonstrate the degree to which licensure is predicated on jurisdiction

Retr0id 3 hours ago

I wonder how many one-sentence prompts have made it to the HN front page at this point.

ellyagg an hour ago

I don’t know, but it’s kind of boring to speculate since computers easily beat us at chess and go.

Retr0id 38 minutes ago

Preventing computer-based cheating in competitive chess is a big deal (and I assume go also), because spectators tend not to want to watch two computers playing against each other.

Yhippa 44 minutes ago

"Alternative Terms" was the giveaway.

layer8 2 hours ago

> By accessing or using this site, you acknowledge and accept the following terms.

I’m pretty sure this is already questionable in the EU.

dbvn 4 minutes ago

yeah - thats why we just ignore the EU

_vsrp an hour ago

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layer8 an hour ago

It depends, not everything requires explicit consent. Where it doesn’t, it’s sufficient if the terms are clear, understandable, and transparent. The last criterion means that the terms must be prominently advertised in the locations where they apply.

canacrypto 31 minutes ago

A similar one I made a while back, inspired by South Park's disclaimer before each episode: https://github.com/jmrossy/south-park-license

tsukikage 2 hours ago

0xbadcafebee 30 minutes ago

Remember when people started using WTFPL because it "sounded good", only to later find out it left them and their users legally liable? This is that but for websites.

the_axiom 10 minutes ago

amazing how such a simple website lags to scroll on my phone

johnplatte 4 hours ago

Comedically, this doesn't load from my IP address in the Russian Federation. (HN does.)

replooda 3 hours ago

> 4. Nothing here is guaranteed, including availability, correctness, continuity, or fitness for any purpose.

There you go.

stavros 4 hours ago

Yes that was one of the nine terms the site didn't have.

bayneri 4 hours ago

unintended condition: cloudflare

p.s. quick fix is "stop being lazy and move the single html off cloudflare"

tech_jabroni 3 hours ago

No alarms, no surprises

joncrane 2 hours ago

My mind when to the same thing. Great song.

tosti 3 hours ago

Schrödingers terms and conditions

amarant 3 hours ago

Read carefully if you are of a feline persuasion

amelius an hour ago

The URL basically nulls the license agreement.

jborichevskiy 2 hours ago

I know this is mostly parody, but I'm curious if anyone has good starter templates for something that covers the general stuff and doesn't require a lawyer to customize

willks 2 hours ago

I like the [Basecamp policies](https://github.com/basecamp/policies). Explicitly open source, limited legalese.

jborichevskiy 2 hours ago

Thanks! Basecamp's and Github's were a few of the open source ones I came across

gnfargbl 3 hours ago

> Access is not conditioned on approval.

The Zen Koan of T&C's.

catlifeonmars 2 hours ago

goes without saying

that this site definitely

does not, legally

Barbing 3 hours ago

Hope this slop doesn’t get anyone into trouble.

  Last updated: never
  No further pages. No hidden clauses.
Not sure “last updated=never” works, but I don’t make terms and conditions websites.

bayneri 3 hours ago

use at your own risk

> 8. You are responsible for what you do, what you build, and what follows from either.

FinnKuhn 3 hours ago

As far as I'm concerned this doesn't mean anything legally unless I missed something. Aren't you already responsible for what you do or build anyways?

Or is this somehow meant to mean something else but worded so badly it can't be understood.

knorker 3 hours ago

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 2 hours ago

> > 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.

knorker an hour ago

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 38 minutes ago

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

zephen 2 hours ago

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

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

tempestn an hour ago

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.

knorker an hour ago

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 an hour ago

ndriscoll 3 hours ago

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 2 hours ago

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 an hour ago

knorker an hour ago

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 an hour ago

tekne an hour ago

self-portrait 2 hours ago

No further update.

weinzierl 3 hours ago

Just today I asked an LLM:

"Often one generation values things much more than others. Boomers and their wristwatches. One generation is like 'only from my cold dead hands,' the others 'what would I even need this for?!' What are examples of things the youngest generation did away with?"

If OP were a checklist, the answer would have checked every point.

shevy-java 2 hours ago

Is that useful for anything?

modzu an hour ago

i do wonder if the world would be a better place if instead of lawyers we had cage matches

AnimalMuppet an hour ago

Southwest Airlines got sued by some other company over, IIRC, color schemes. Southwest's CEO (Herb Kelleher) made an offer to the other CEO: They skip the lawyers and settle it with an arm-wrestling contest. The other CEO agreed.

Eventually, they wound up selling tickets to the match, and donated the proceeds to charity.

Now that's a civilized way to conduct a lawsuit.

steveharing1 3 hours ago

Last updated: never lol

badrequest 4 hours ago

hugged to death

ayakut 4 hours ago

brilliant !