Created: August 10, 2010
Howdy. Our basic terms of use are very simple: We do not have any terms of use.
Is it as simple as that then?
Yes, of course.
That’s the whole thing? “We do not have any terms of use.” Those are your actual terms?
Yes, that is correct.
Surely you can’t be serious?
Web sites don’t need terms of use. Most these pages have copyright notices and copyright law handles whatever that is about, no special terms or contracts are needed, copyright is already the law. As far as abuse and harassment, if you do that we’ll ignore you and maybe feel sorry for you. Don’t need a contract for that. Or let’s say you get into the forum and post a bunch of spam links to nasty sites, those will all be deleted. We don’t ask your permission for that; don’t need a contract for it either.
See how simple it is? Why do so many sites need teams of lawyers to draw up terms and contracts and then go golf with judges to enforce absurd contracts that people haven’t even read? Why should anyone have to sign a contract just to look at a web site? Do you have to sign a contract to read a book or watch a movie or TV or listen to a concert? Well of course not, duh, that would be totally stupid, everybody knows that, it’s just common sense. So why would it make sense for web sites to be any different? Well it isn’t.
The idea that contracts are the slightest bit necessary to access a web site is a bunch of BS thought up and promoted by a bunch of dishonest greedy lawyers that like to screw around with people and make the world a nasty horrible totalitarian place fit only for pathetic weenies like themselves. You know better than to believe their crap, right? And don’t get me started on the lunatics that want people to sign contracts before being allowed to have a simple conversation on their forum or to send an email to ask a question or just say hello. Who do these people think they are? Napoleon, Emperor of France? Look here, if you have gotten to the point where you think you are so special and important that people should have to sign contracts just to be allowed to gaze upon your face or speak adolations unto thee, the simple fact is that you’re completeley nuts. Bonkers. Gone. Lights out. La la land. Wake up and come to reality. The world doesn’t work like that. Contracts are not needed to have a conversation or read a book. Like, duh, OK?
This makes no sense. Without a term prohibiting hacking, how will you stop the hackers from defacing the site?
Hackers typically are coming in from other countries. They can almost never be found and they don’t read contracts. You realize this, right?
At the very least you need a condition specifying you reserve the right to delete slanderous and defamatory material posted by third parties.
Is that so. Consider this. The cool thing about having your own web site is you can do whatever you want with it without asking or receiving anyone’s permission. In fact we are thinking of changing the whole site to be a fan site for angora rabbit wool enthusiasts. There will be knitting patterns, video tutorials, everything that a dedicated angora rabbit enthusiast needs to take his spinning and knitting to the next level.
Why wouldn’t you want to ban offensive materials contractually? That is very suspicious. Well adjusted, normal people know that contracts are the only practical way to stop racism and obscenity. Since you refuse to explicitly state that obscene, vulgar and racist remarks are prohibited that clearly indicates that you yourself must be obscene, vulgar and a racist, or at least are in support of those things.
What on earth? Dude, like, give me a break. If you really believe that you are bonkers. Look here is the deal. Most people are reasonable and nice and are doing cool things or are hoping to do cool things, or appreciate cool things. If you are dealing with a reasonable and nice person everything is fine. No need for contracts. If you are dealing with a bully or a lunatic or a scammer, ignore them. Nothing in life suggests there is any need for or benefit from requiring contracts in order to engage in normal conversation and debate, to read, or to listen to music. That’s all just normal everyday stuff. It’s not an investment in a factory or an agreement to buy a house, to adopt a child, or to fight in a mercenary army. It’s just talking, reading, listening. Here’s a question for you. How insane does a society have to be to require legal contracts in order to engage in normal, everyday casual human interactions? That’s what doesn’t make sense. Requiring contracts for that. It just doesn’t make sense. Really. It Just... Doesn’t... Make... Sense. Just say no to insanity and maybe we can reduce insanity. Hopefully. Or maybe I will be killed by a lynch mob for saying this. Maybe that too. Hard to say which is more likely now that society has gone insane.
By not having a policy you are having a policy. You are implying that “anything goes” including illegal activities and therefore you are encouraging illegal activities and therefore because you are supporting and enabling illegal activities you are therefore responsible for them and therefore you are a criminal and therefore you are a bad person and deserve to go to jail.
There’s no court in the world that sees things that way or follows strange chains of assumptions so far along. It’s possible you are suffering from clinical paranoia, but this is not medical advice. If you are taking bad drugs, you should probably stop. I’m not saying you are, but I have observed this particular sort of paranoid thinking in addicts, where a bunch of unfounded assumptions that are not true are chained one after the other all leading to a fearful and bizarre conclusion.
Not having a terms of use for the site means that nobody has to agree to a legal contract to read articles on this site. It doesn’t mean that we are giving anyone permission or encouraging them to engage in bad things. No where do we say that doing bad things is OK, or encourage doing bad things. Not telling people that they shouldn’t do bad things is absolutely not in any way the same thing as telling them they should do bad things or that doing bad things is OK. It just isn’t.
But why are we even having this conversation? Is this some sort of known principle? Does anyone else follow this sort of reasoning? Do we say that a journalist who doesn’t make sure his readers agree in advance to a contract that they agree not to blow up buildings or kill people is then responsible for them if they do those things? Or what if the reader uses the newspaper to hide behind while robbing a bank, to start a forest fire, or to smother an unfortunate victim during an assassination? Is there some court which rules that a journalist should be responsible for any of these things because he neglected to provide a list to readers of his articles of ways in which they should not use the newspaper to hurt people or destroy property? Of course not. Please get a grip, this line of reasoning just is not sensible and it doesn’t reflect reality. It’s hysterical and illogical.
You are such a hypocrite. Your forum here itself has contractual terms of use posted on the index page. So after all this we discover that you do have them after all and this is all a bunch of posturing. You are pathetic.
The forum says “All posts are the opinion, property and responsibility of the person posting.” That’s not a contractual agreement anyone has to agree to in order for it to hold. It is a statement of truth. You could call it a notification if you like. People don’t have to consent to it for it to be true, the universe enforces its truth because it is a fundamental principle of reality. You are responsible for your own self and your own actions. This is truth. If you are stating something or posting something, then it’s you who have done so, not someone else. All right, perhaps you are posting something on behalf of someone else. For example, you may be an astroturfer receiving payments to post advertisements and propaganda in the guise of fabricated personal experience stories. It’s still your chosen action. You are the one that chooses to do this. That you are being paid does not change your personal responsibility. We’re not responsible for your words, you are. There doesn’t need to be a contract to figure that one out any more than if you are talking to a friend in a tavern about the big game and there was a claim that they were responsible for your opinions about the big game. No, they are not. Nor is the tavern owner. It’s just people talking. People who say stuff are responsible for it themselves. People who do stuff are responsible for it themselves. If you think others are to blame or should be held responsible for your personal actions, you are living under an illusion. You have free will to act as you please. When you exercise your free will you are the one who has willed it and is responsible for performing that act. This is not to say that if someone says “I like pie” and a pie-hater overhears and punches them that the puncher is not responsible because the speaker spoke. No, the speaker is responsible for saying he likes pie and the puncher is responsible for assault and battery. The puncher is also probably insane, because everyone likes pie.
Then why have you added a section 512 notice to your forum?
Do you want me to say because you are an idiot? I had once hoped this page would defuse the situation with a bit of humor, but I get all these emails about this telling me how I am a fool and threatening me legally because I continue to hold that it is outrageous and unnecessary to require contracts for normal human communication. I still hold to that but what has changed is I am not only regretting having this web site in the first place, I am regretting ever having anything to do with western civilization. I love making cool stuff, talking to people who are making cool stuff of their own and sometimes hearing the cool stuff that they made. Making cool stuff is cool. Legal parasitism is not cool, it’s a drag on society. It retards progress. If we are really going to have a society where contracts are needed to talk to people, contracts are necessary to read things, and lawyers must be consulted at all times, then we have utterly failed as a species and a culture.
“Idiot” ... ah, an ad hominem attack. I expected as much. I am offended. Your statement is unprofessional. You are unprofessional. Your product is stupid. No one professional would use it. The entire cooking paradigm is childish and unprofessional.
Thank goodness my statement is unprofessional. Professionals seem like a pretty nasty bit of work if you ask me. However you are perceptive. The cooking paradigm is intended to present an unprofessional, informal message, one reminescent of childlike innocence and that of excitedly approaching new things every day. Why? Because tuning is fun, it’s musical, it’s magical, it’s expressive, it’s emotional, human. It’s also vastly unexplored. Powerful, growing and learning, wonderful discoveries are there for the taking. Each day is a new day. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t discover something new myself or hear about an astonishing new discovery from a friend who has chosen this same path of wonder and delight. Tuning is about running through a field of wildflowers naked. Tuning is not about a bunch of abstract numbers generated by a committee of professionals wearing suits. A team of professional lawyers has never helped anyone to write heartfelt, beautiful, emotive, human music. Those trying to make music into a systemized, repeatable and professional technical trade have never written music that anyone gives a damn about.
Getting back to your 512 notification, I noticed you have a clause in there that users must agree to love their mammas. Is that even enforceable? My momma was a drug addict that sold me into slavery and I hate her. What about that, huh? You going to kick me off the board because I hate my momma? Doesn’t that just make you the sort of fascist that you claim to hate? You’re just another one of them.
Nothing is going to happen, it’s a suggestion not a contract. Which reminds me. Have you ever seen a web site where they enforced their terms in an impartial even manner? Yahoo says that users agree not to abuse or harass each other or say bad things. What happens when people violate that? Nothing if they are part of the lynch mob. If they are part of a minority dissenting opinion though, then they are reported and banned. So the entire system is not used to prevent abuse at all, it is used to suppress dissent and enforce an illusion of consensus that doesn’t really exist. These contracts are just another propaganda tool, and that should be clear as soon as one realizes a contract is being requested for normal human communication. Big red flag right there as you wonder how that might be enforced. Stick around a bit at any site with a contract and you soon see it is either not enforced at all or is enforced selectively to discriminate against and suppress minority views.
If you don’t have a contract, you will get sued.
And if we do have a contract we will also get sued. Lawsuits no longer have anything to do with justice. They are a tool of abuse by bullies to silence those who tell the truth, suppress unpopular opinions, destroy small competitors, and for the lowest of parasites to steal hard earned income from those who produce wonderful things. Lawsuits are not won by the person in the right, but by the side with the most money to pay lawyers.
Eventually we will be sued by parasites or sociopaths for some absurd thing and even though we will be in the right, we will be destroyed and then you won’t have to worry about us anymore. We might even be put in jail or killed because that’s how the system works. Again, this will have nothing to do with contracts and no contracts can stop this from happening. Do you know why most everything is shit? This is why. Those of us who try to improve things and make the world a better place are hated upon, targetted by the wicked, and either driven into exile or destroyed. Timotheus was exiled from Sparta for using 12 strings on his kithara. How many strings have we added to people’s kitharas? A lot.
Persecution complex much?
Just a student of history and an observer of the world around. Even though the struggle will ultimately be futile and pointless, we must still try for good. The world may not change for the better, but we must work that we do not give up and thus change for the worse ourselves.
Users really need to contractually agree not to steal your web pages.
Copyright violation is already illegal, but guess what. People already steal web pages from here. Images in particular have been taken by people who want goat pictures. Half these people are overseas. What are we going to do? Spend $100,000 to hire a team of international lawyers to track them down to their house in Democratic Republic of the Congo and then file a lawsuit there for theft of goat pictures? Is that really practical? At some point one has to realize that they can’t control everything. No, we don’t give permission for people in Tuvalu or Mongolia to steal our goat pictures but when they do really there’s nothing we can do about it so I’m not going to lose much sleep over it. The important thing is we know they are our goats and our goat pictures. Most of these people are just kids who want an illustration of a goat for their blog and they mean no harm. Technically what they are doing is a copyright violation, so very bad, don’t do that, kids, naughty naughty, tsk tsk.
The real problem faced here is, and what is very annoying, is when a person steals the pictures, writings, etc and misrepresents them as their own work, and/or then tried to intimidate us claiming it was their goats/essays/3D positional audio algorithms. Someone doing that sort of thing is a true liar, cheat and thief. A rogue, a criminal, a numbskull, a loser, a stinker, a plagiarist and a jerk. But not only is what they are doing already illegal by itself, a bunch of foo foo contract terms wouldn’t do anything more to stop those sorts of insane hijinx would they? Someone willing to break the law is also willing to break a contract. And yes, things like that have happened. More than once. It is extremely annoying when it happens. But contracts won’t stop a thief. Thieves steal. That’s how they are. They steal because they are thieves and they lie about it because they are liars and they play golf with the judge because they are crafty like that.
All this talk of Mongolia is ridiculous. With a contract at least you would be able to sue people in your own legal jurisdiction. In addition, you can specify the jurisdiction of enforcement and require the other party to answer your claim in the territory you so designate.
Yeah whatever. Let me tell you a little story. Some years ago some psychopath running a nasty adult site stole my photo and biography and put it on his site as pictures of the owner, in order to hide who he really was. This caused a lot of trouble. It turned out that the servers for his nasty site were in Washington DC only a few blocks from the FBI headquarters. The FBI would do nothing about any of this and the server host ignored my pleas to remove the material. It was a severe legal violation because they were committing fraud, but law enforcement just doesn’t care about your rights unless you are rich or powerful and that’s the way it is. Sucks to be you. Sucks to be me. Accept it and move on. You won’t get justice from the system that’s for sure.
Grow some vegetables, enjoy your family, and let the assholes be assholes. They die too someday. A tip: avoid the assholes, and your life will be less painful. Hang out with the fun people and it will be more sweet. Illegitimis non carborundum — Don’t let the bastards wear you down. Live. Eat. Love. Laugh. Hope. Despair. Experience. Create. Dance. Shout. Die.
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