[OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Ulf Möller <usenet at ...> writes:

>>I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to
>>these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an
>>indication that you are doing something wrong.
>
>It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a 
>lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the 
>website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change 
>the license.

Hmm.  Since IANAL it is very hard to argue with someone who IAL.  I would note
that many companies (usually big, bureaucratic ones) have a legal department who
think it is 'good practice' to attach a lengthy disclaimer message to every
outgoing email message.  This message is confidential and intended only for the
named recipient; it does not necessarily represent the views of BigCorp Inc.,
and so on and so on.

Yet such organizations and their clumsy legalese are rightly laughed at by anyone
remotely Internet-literate.  What I'm getting at is that you have to be careful
not to let the legal department get out of control and start generating pages of
legalese disclaiming all possible eventualities and ambiguities, when there is no
tangible, identifiable reason to do so.  Labelling something as 'good practice'
or, worse, 'best practice' is not itself a reason to do it; in my experience the
most boneheaded policies usually come under this title.

If there are real reasons why some kind of disclaimer is needed then let's have
a couple of short paragraphs framed as a 'notice' rather than a set of 'terms'
which you must agree to.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>