Using someone elses User Agreement/policies

All,

Is it legal to just adopt another websites user agreement and terms of service?

Ive spoken to internet lawyers about making one for me, and one said he just uses a standard one and just fixes it up a little for my site. The cheapest lawyer i could find was 1k.

All of these policies just seem to be templates with the websites own name inserted in them.

If im making an auction site, could i just use ebays, fix it up, cut it shorter, and say its mine?

Regards,
m

 

If you look at your hosts terms, then compare to several others, you will see they are pretty much the same. I do not think there would be any issues, as what you are trying to do is roughly the same, and your going to want to protect yourself the same way. Plus you can argue you came up with it. Just make sure you sanitize it of anything that could be linked back to them and you should be good. Thats what I did with my webhosting site lol.

 

In a word, no. Its owner might hold you liable for copyright infringement.

That lawyer you mentioned probably browsed a couple and wrote a template
of his/her own, which can be customized. Hopefully that lawyer didn't maybe
"rip it off" (heaven forbid) of whoever's legal terms.

Here's one that might be a wee bit affordable:

http://autolawgenerator.com/

Of course, it's always best to get one from a lawyer who's intimately familiar
with the laws of your jurisdiction, depending on your situation.

Either because they happen to use similar wording, or they're all using exactly
the same template "licensed" to them from whoever they got it from.

 

I did the same thing, and there was this one time I advertised my service at a forum, a guy that offered the same service saw that and he didn't like it, he made a post about it.

You should spend sometimes to write your own agreement/policies, don't copy all.

 

If the owner did get it written up or wrote it, you could be contacted for copyright infringement. If i where you i would either take a look at others and write one up or hire someone to do it for you. Since you dont want to face trouble in the near future for something simple

 

Just google sample or template privacy policy, terms and conditions, and whatever else your looking for. There are many free places that offer them free of charge and allow you to customize them to suit your website. You can ever copy a few and incoporate what you need from each one. Much easier, and free )

 

There is also another post with a free policy generator.