How do you write the terms of use? it seems so huge and complicated. Can I just copy the TOS from another site? How do you guys do it?
I would use a good, established site as a guide (think a big business site with lots of lawyers) to make sure you don't miss anything, followed by big doses of common sense, your own knwoledge of your policies, and NO straight copying. Those legal agreements are usually copyrighted.
Nice one DomainKing! I started mine from scratch and it was extremely hard. Bad move. So, I just used TOS of a good website as a guide.
I know it feels to be writing a TOS for the first time... For one of my sites it toke me a week and $800 in lawyer fees
it depends on what kind of site you got, if you got a site like myspace then you go to myspace and look at their TOS and get a good idea of it and probebly copy some of things that they have. i used myspace just as an example, replace myspace with any thing you site matches
Absolutely EVERYTHING in a TOS will be based based on some sort of legislative directive, whether it be a statutory piece of written law, implied law, or case law decision via appeal courts. So, to that extent, it's not really 'copyrighted' material - it is fact information which is in the public domain and is information which the LAW would state that the public 'should know, or ought to know' ! EVERYTHING in law is based upon the legal maxim By implication this means that you should know the law, or you ought to know the law, as ridiculous as that may seem, given the volumes of law that exist in most legal jurisdictions nowadays! The problem you have when trying to 'copy and paste' from somebody else's TOS, is that it may not be appropriate, applicable, or specific to your jurisdiction! That's not to say that lots of people don't go down the 'copy and paste' route... it's just that you have to be extra vigilant that what you are declaring applies in your situation, and in your jurisdiction. And if the law says that it is information that you should know... who can argue with you for knowing what the law says 'you should know, or ought to know' anyway. Where a 'TOS' will be copyrighted, will only be to the extent that the author has framed their own words around that actual legal words that would be required to be contained in the material. Deciding what words are 'the spin' and what words are 'the legal jargon' might be solved by doing a google with quotation marks, but that's a bit tedious. Some people compare a variety of similar TOS for websites as close to each other in every respect as possible (products, usage, locality etc), and in this manner, it is usually obvious what are the legally required terms, and what are the authors personal fluff.