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April 12, 2012 11:59 PM   Subscribe

Terms of service for 500px

They host pretty great photos too.
posted by special-k (34 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nice idea on the TOS. Hooray.

500px is really the new Flickr, ain't it? The kinds of photos they're highlighting on their pages are very … flickry.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:03 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


what
posted by dunkadunc at 12:03 AM on April 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Here's an article that makes this post less confusing. Now which column of the TOS text should I refer to if I want to sue 500px, the left or right? I'm just going to go ahead and ignore all them fancy legal words in favor of the more ambiguous language on the left kthxbye.
posted by uaudio at 12:15 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


(shouldn't post at midnight...i meant the ambiguous language on the right)
posted by uaudio at 12:17 AM on April 13, 2012


I can't decide if I'm mad that it's talking down to me, or if I really like it...
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 12:18 AM on April 13, 2012


As someone who did research into the terms of service of cloud service providers I have to say I'm quite impressed with these at first glance. They seem to have been written specifically to address the concerns that potential users are starting to have about just what might be buried in the small print of ToS; not only are there short, clear summaries of what the terms mean, but hot-topic areas such as acceptable use and intellectual property rights are dealt with very early on.

I don't think they're perfect; as a lawyer I would suggest that matters such as governing law and jurisdiction are a little bit too important to bury in the middle of a 'Miscellaneous' paragraph, but they are certainly more user-friendly than most of the ToS I was trawling through in 2010.
posted by Major Clanger at 12:18 AM on April 13, 2012 [7 favorites]


Anyone here at Mefi using 500px, please share your impressions and opinions!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:37 AM on April 13, 2012


uaudio: "Now which column of the TOS text should I refer to if I want to sue 500px, the left or right?"
At the top of the page it says that "[t]he column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding." But you knew that, of course.
posted by brokkr at 12:49 AM on April 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


I love how "in no event shall 500px be liable under [any legal theory whatsoever] for [any damages whatsoever]" is simplified to "we may give you $100".
posted by you at 1:13 AM on April 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've tried to do this with several projects but each time the client was unwilling to risk incurring the wrath of the legal bods. No specific reasons/warnings were given, of course, it was just the usual "stick with the unreadable legalese, it's how everyone does it" arse-covering.
posted by malevolent at 1:48 AM on April 13, 2012


When they sell for $1 billion dollars in six months, I can say that I heard of them!

Seriously though, it's a gimmick designed to get hits and capitalize on the recent (ridiculous) brouhaha about pinterest, which wasn't doing anything different then any other website that hosts photos, although the other sites might not have spelled it out.

Interesting that they are presenting themselves as a Flickr competitor, but banning porn. There is actually ton of porn on Flickr, which is probably one of the reasons it was successful. Flickr's Community Guidelines only require you mark your content appropriately.
posted by delmoi at 1:54 AM on April 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


I've tried to do this with several projects but each time the client was unwilling to risk incurring the wrath of the legal bods. No specific reasons/warnings were given, of course, it was just the usual "stick with the unreadable legalese, it's how everyone does it" arse-covering.

Sure, but arse-covering is explicitly the reason for the existence of contracts. For my contracts I've wanted to do something like this, but I haven't been able to find any information about whether it's sufficient in an actual lawsuit that involves the simplified version to say "but I disclaimed the simplified version!". Keeping in mind that in different regions, consumers have different rights and certain parts of your contract (for instance, maybe even the part that says "that stuff over there on the right isn't binding") could be seen as not binding. I'd do it with some concrete reassurance that it wouldn't be a self-destructive decision.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 2:41 AM on April 13, 2012


As someone who wrote a TOS/privacy policy for a cloud-startup (which died an ignoble death prior to actual launch), I've had a longstanding dream of creating essentially a "privacy commons", doing for these types of contracts what Creative Commons has done for a copyright licence.

I'm currently finishing up law school and I still think it's worthwhile - although a lot harder than I first expected of course. It would look a lot like this in form, and so yeah, I think they're on the right track. Most of the problems (that the simplified is misleading, that it might have to be tested in court to ensure that the simplified isn't binding, etc) are a good argument for a standardization of TOS policies. Because, as with copyright stuff, there's a major chunk of every TOS that's going to be the same (or, rather, chosen from a small set of options) and having to re-write and re-read it each time is a waste of brain power.

So good on 500px for the effort, I hope it catches on.
posted by Lemurrhea at 3:03 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


Standardization would be great. It would be really nice to have a set of road-tested licenses to choose from for commercial endeavors the way we can choose OSS licenses, and also to have them accumulate history as complete licenses in the same way the OSS licenses have, so you can think about events that happened in the past with projects using those licenses when evaluating which license to use, and use that info to decide what risks you're up for. It wouldn't be good for corporate lawyers but it would be good for startups and it would be great for customers since it would be a lot easier for them to keep track of what they're agreeing to.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 3:32 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


More sites need TOS and privacy policies like this - a CC version would be an excellent idea, and give people an idea of a standard to build to, rather than re-inventing the wheel every time. But you;d still have to customize, I think. 500px itself seems to be aimed a bit more at a semi-pro/pro community and marketplace community than Flickr, so they'd need a TOS that can be tweaked for the specific needs of this community.
posted by carter at 3:34 AM on April 13, 2012


I have never seen this porn on Flickr and would like evidence that it exists now ok thank-you.

Try posting a picture of yourself as a seventeen year old girl who happens to be wearing tights. Wait for people with dubious names such as 'tightsplease' and 'hosieryluv69' to favourite it. Check out their other favourites. And bob's your uncle.
posted by mippy at 4:11 AM on April 13, 2012


Sort of like the bloodthirsty license agreement for EasyFlow.
posted by caddis at 5:00 AM on April 13, 2012


Standardization would be great.

Dutch internet law guru/lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet does something like that, by providing a neat terms of services template which is actually valid under Dutch/EU, unlike the vast majority of actually existing terms of sevice, which are usually too broad in what they want to deny the user or attempt to cover themselves for things that are already provided in law.

In the 500px case, somewhere in these terms is a bit where they say you have to waive your moral rights (I and only I am the author of the picture I just took) if you want to sell through their shops, which is not something I think (but IANAL obvs.) you can do under many jurisdictions that recognise such rights.

Engelfriet's blog is really great at explaining complicated legal matters to lay persons like me, but as it's in Dutch most of y'all won't be able to read it anyway.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:36 AM on April 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


Very interesting discussion. Very different reaction to this post on HackerNews.
posted by purephase at 5:38 AM on April 13, 2012


Standardization would be great. It would be really nice to have a set of road-tested licenses to choose from

Or, even better, sets of well-encapsulated and compatible clauses to choose from. Slightly off-topic I guess, but this is a sort of interesting start though it is for a very particular use case. Here is another generator for a common case.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 5:45 AM on April 13, 2012


A successful ploy, since it has become officially the only TOS I've ever read...
posted by Jimbob at 6:10 AM on April 13, 2012


THREE CHEERS FOR PLAIN LANGUAGE!

It's actually a growing movement to make sure that information is properly communicated. Terms of Service is a great example. In fact I seem to recall Tracy Morgan tweeting something along the lines of "The cure for AIDS could be buried in a Terms of Service somewhere and we'd never know."

Plain language is becoming more and more used in government material, tax stuff, legal stuff, academic stuff, and becomes particularly important in health care, too. If organizations that are trying to communicate health information don't do so in a way that matches intended recipients' health literacy, then it's all for naught!

It's not about dumbing down information - really, it's about communicating smarter and more clearly.

Some more links:
The Center for Plain Language, which gives ClearMark Awards for clear communication and plain language.
Plain Language.gov.
posted by entropone at 6:17 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


As someone who thinks the world will end in neither fire nor ice but click-through agreements, I applaud this.

I was thinking of something similar for the privacy policy, where you had a simple diagram that showed the typical connections between user, service, and third-party providers.

But first I think we need the demand for it, because your lawyer is always going to tell you to throw more crap into the ToS to make it unreadable.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:32 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


But where do they hide the fine print that says they get to use you in a human centiPad?
posted by fungible at 6:47 AM on April 13, 2012


MetaFilter: "Things can happen — we are not responsible."
posted by straight at 6:52 AM on April 13, 2012


cool and all...but notice the part where they say "We are not responsible"
Not responsible for what? Oh, just in general?
No thanks, then.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:54 AM on April 13, 2012


At the top of the page it says that "[t]he column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding." But you knew that, of course.

The question is, what is the user agreeing to, the explanation they understand, or the legalese they don't? Saying something is not legally binding does not make it so.
posted by smackfu at 7:07 AM on April 13, 2012


As several people have pointed out over on Hacker News, these terms of service are actually pretty awful. They leave all kinds of super-important stuff out of the little summaries, so that anyone reading the summaries totally misses the point of the terms of service. Moreover, I disagree with the text at the top – those little summaries may actually be legally binding, and simply saying they aren't doesn't necessarily mean they aren't. In which case there would be all sorts of very bad legal implications, considering the outright contradictions that exist between the summaries and the 'actual' terms of service text.

I mean, compare the summary:

We provide services that allow you to create portfolios and we will develop more features and services in the future.

... with the 'actual' terms of service:

... Your access to and use of the Site may be interrupted from time to time as a result of equipment malfunction, updating, maintenance or repair of the Site or any other reason within or outside the control of 500px. 500px reserves the right to suspend or discontinue the availability of the Site and/or any Service and/or remove any Content at any time at its sole discretion and without prior notice. 500px may also impose limits on certain features and Services or restrict your access to parts of or all of the Site and the Services without notice or liability. The Site should not be used or relied upon for storage of your photographs and images and you are directed to retain your own copies of all Content posted on the Site.

What? How are those equivalent in any way at all?

This seems like a great idea, but it's actually a very bad one. Most of all because whoever wrote the summaries couldn't help but want to pretty up what the terms of service were actually saying. Maybe this could be done well, but it sure wasn't done well here, I don't think.
posted by koeselitz at 9:04 AM on April 13, 2012 [7 favorites]


brokkr: “At the top of the page it says that ‘[t]he column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding.’ But you knew that, of course.”

The fact that they say it doesn't make it true.

In other words – can you imagine the difficult legal position it would put them in if they had to argue in court that they were presenting their users with terms of service, part of which is not legally binding, but which is supposed to be a real explanation of terms of service that are legally binding? If the full terms of service are legally binding, doesn't that imply that an explanation of them is, too? If the explanation isn't legally binding, why is it presented on the same page as the rest of the terms of service – doesn't that suggest to the user that it's legally binding? Or maybe does that mean that none of this is legally binding?

This seriously is a highly problematic thing to do.
posted by koeselitz at 9:12 AM on April 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


I came up with a long shaggy dog story about this that had "and this is why we can't have nice things" as a punch line, however, buried in the middle was an aside about needing a Theodosius or Justinian for legal reform. And it's true, we do need some sort of legal reform. If ignorance of the law is not an excuse, then average person needs to be in a position to understand just what the law is; but we are reaching a point where understanding the law requires knowing what amounts to a foreign language, and thinking in an alien mindset.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that while a plain English TOS would be lovely, it isn't really practical. Which means we get stuck with legalese TOS, which nobody reads and thus isn't really practical either.
posted by Meeks Ormand at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2012


Honestly, most of the terms on the linked page are not even that complicated. They aren't gibberish and using arcane terms. They're just long because they have a lot of details to spell out.
posted by smackfu at 11:12 AM on April 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services:

... To post or transmit, or cause to be posted or transmitted, any Content that is libellous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane, or that infringes any copyright or other right of any person


but

Parents and legal guardians are warned that the Site does display photographs and images containing nudity and violence that may be offensive to some.

So am I allowed to post erotica or not?

How about specific sexual activities that don't involve nudity--splosh, footworship, furries, etc. What is the standard legal definition for "pornography" or "obscenity" here? Does it include or exclude erotica?

This seems like a great idea, but it's actually a very bad one.

Agreed. It only creates more confusion.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:47 AM on April 13, 2012


The big disconnect in TOUs and fine print is often not that they are difficult to read in the sense that they are written poorly, or are too long, or use a lot of self-referenced definitions (though you can certainly find examples of all of these).

The real tension is that no one wants to spend the time reading all of these necessary to understand what's in them. Myself included. Maybe you read one or two when you have a particular question. But I know for a fact* that you have not and will not read the TOU and PP for each site you visit and share information. You also don't read the click-through or the shrink-wrap agreements. This is probably true for even the most important of contracts. Do you read your banks' TOS for their online services?

Courts have invented this legal fiction that going to a site with knowledge that it has a TOU is akin to assenting to what's inside, but this is actually pretty far removed from legal precedents regarding contracts of adhesion (ones which the person receiving the service/good cannot negotiate).
posted by benbenson at 2:51 PM on April 13, 2012


I still think there's room for the summaries - not arguing that these particular ones are good, people here made some pretty strong arguments that they suck.

But on the other hand, think of the CC icons. Essentially, those are shorthand agreements. There is a big difference in that one's a unilateral declaration and the other is a bilateral contract, but they still are possible. I think that if the summaries were written well, which is going to be a challenge, they'd be beneficial.

But yeah - I think standardization is the bigger issue. With an authoritative source that a company signs onto (saying, essentially: "we abide by sections 1.2, 1.3, 5.4, etc of the Model Contract, here are the changes"), then smart people can analyze the authoritative copy. I can then read an analysis of it by a blogger I like, in plain language. Or I can read carefully the Model Contract, write down the sections I won't accept, and if a site uses it I can tell really quickly.

That solves the very real problem benbenson said, that nobody's reading them all. Absolutely true, but solveable.
posted by Lemurrhea at 3:10 PM on April 13, 2012


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