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Anthropic does a somewhat similar thing. If you visit their ToS (the one for Max/Pro plans) from a European IP address, they replace one section with this: Non
by wowoc 6mo ago
Anthropic does a somewhat similar thing. If you visit their ToS (the one for Max/Pro plans) from a European IP address, they replace one section with this:
Non-commercial use only. You agree not to use our Services for any commercial or business purposes and we (and our Providers) have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
It's funny that a plan called "Pro" cannot be used professionally.
https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms
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- giobox 6mo agoHa out of curiosity I loaded that same consumer terms URL on both a USA and a UK VPN exit node - sure enough, the UK terms inject that extra clause you quoted banning commercial usage that is not present for USA users. diff of the changes between US and UK: https://www.diffchecker.com/BtqVrR9p/ https://www.diffchecker.com/BtqVrR9p/ There's the usual expected legal boilerplate differences. However, the UK version injects the additional clause at line 134 that has no analog in the US version.
- graemep 6mo agoIn the Uk there seem to be separate commercial and consumer terms. In the UK the consumer terms say its subject to English law and the courts of the UK jurisdiction you live in. The commercial terms say that in the UK, Switzerland and the EEA there will be binding arbitration by an arbitrator in Ireland appointed by the President of the Law Society of Ireland.
- giobox 6mo agoThe UK commercial terms explicitly do not apply to individual user plans. The US also has a separate terms sheet for commercial plans. We are comparing like for like - an individual user using a Claude Pro subscription. A US user can use it for commercial use and be in compliance with the terms, the UK user cannot.
- conductr 6mo ago> A US user can use it for commercial use and be in compliance with the terms, the UK user cannot. But why? My guess is the liability exposure is what they’re trying to control. So you probably can if you’re ok with no liability. It’s still noncompliant to how they wrote it but I would guess it’s the motivation. Unless they really just want to force the UK to pay for all commercial uses, which I suppose is possible.
- graemep 6mo agoI think its because the law in the UK limits exclusions of liabilities in consumer contracts far more than in business contracts (in general consumer law has a LOT of protections that do not apply to business contracts). If you look at the clauses excluding liabilities they are very different. I think the same applies to many other countries so they will also have separate consumer contracts.
- mjmas 6mo agoThe law in Australia also has teeth, but visiting the link above just gets me (what seems to be) the US version of the terms without anything around commercial use.
- rkagerer 6mo agoWow, if you brought a paper contract to court that mutated itself depending which way you look at the paper, I wonder what a judge would think of that? Personally I would crumple it up and pitch it out the window. I don't know why they can't simply be clear about what clauses apply to which geographies. An IP address should not be assumed as a reliable indicator of the jurisdiction in which an end-user resides. (Eg. In addition of VPNs's and unexpected routing, what happens if you travel?)
- adonovan 6mo agoI once wrote a contract document in PostScript that changed the wording based on the date. Two parties could cryptographically sign an agreement in the document, which would change when printed on a later date. One of the reasons we don’t use PostScript so much any more.
- someguyornotidk 6mo agoIsn't PDF also programmable? I think it supports javascript and even a subset of PostScript if I'm not mistaken.
- cassianoleal 6mo ago> I think it supports javascript Indeed it does! https://github.com/ading2210/doompdf https://github.com/ading2210/doompdf
- ytoawwhra92 6mo agoIt's perfectly normal for contracts in different jurisdictions to use different wording and include different clauses. Even within the US, employment contracts with the same organisation may contain different wording depending on the state in which the employment is occurring.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago> It's perfectly normal for contracts in different jurisdictions to use different wording and include different clauses. Before signing, yes, but once signed the contract stays constant. Mutating terms of service are weird - I would expect them to be locked to a canonical URL at least, like "https://.../tos?region=eu" or ideally something that locks the version too, like "https://.../tos?version=eu-002". Let me pose a question from a different angle - these are legal contracts we are talking about, and the version they present to the user apparently changes based only on the client IP address. So if the terms in the EU ToS are better than in the US ToS, what would prevent me from signing up with an EU IP Address the first time? I would expect to be bound to the contract I actually agree to, not just the one they "intended" to show me.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoWell, there's your rationale as to why AI cannot replace you. When sh!t hits the fan, Anthropic will immediately point to this clause. Who knows, maybe a court would see it as valid. Meanwhile, your customer (and thus, your management) is looking for someone to blame for excrement making contact with the impellers. And that someone's gonna be you.
- jmalicki 6mo agoBut you have limited funds to take in a lawsuit realistically the worst they can do is fire you, it's not like being blameable somehow makes you more valuable.
- wowoc 6mo agoWell, OpenAI doesn't seem to have clauses like this. Europeans are allowed to use it for commercial purposes under the ToS. (But check it yourself, I'm not a lawyer). I reimplemented my startup idea from scratch with Codex a few months ago, just for peace of mind.
- tjmtjmtjm 6mo agoHonest question, what peace of mind does this give you? If my idea could be implemented from scratch by one of these agentic harnesses I would be concerned about the viability of it more than anything.
- throwawaytea 6mo agoEmployees often make mistakes that cost companies thousands of dollars. And there's no shortage of stories where employees cost companies tens of thousands and millions. When a construction guy messes up measurements and thousands of dollars of work has the be removed and redone, no one thinks of taking the employee to court. Why would you want to take your Ai to court?
- hubertdinsk 6mo agowhat the hell are you on about? Have you ever been employed? Employees do got reprimanded because of their mistakes. Employers just don't sue via the courts for the same reason you don't sue your spouse first thing when they break a plate. They settle via internal penalties first. (Not only that, employees who got a reprimand too heavy handed can sue back. Plenty of cases around.) "AI" company provides a service. They might or might not be adequate, that's not the point, the point is that the ability to sue them must always be on the cards if the agreed upon terms aren't met.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoSoftware in general has disclaimed any warranties or fitness for purpose for as long as I can remember. This is nothing new.
- naikrovek 6mo agoshow me any that have claimed that they were for entertainment purposes only. sql server has never had that in its EULA. The GPL does not say that the software is for entertainment purposes only.
- chrisjj 6mo ago> Software in general has disclaimed any warranties or fitness for purpose This is not such a disclaimer. If Copilot fails its purpose of entertaining you, you can sue. /i
- wat10000 6mo agoProhibiting the user from using it for any commercial or business purposes is definitely new!
- klez 6mo agoHave you really never seen any software saying "for non-commercial use only"?
- rubyfan 6mo agoIt's only called Pro so they can charge you a Pro rate.
- biker142541 6mo agoShould just be called the “Funsies” and “More Funsies” plans
- tmtvl 6mo agoIt'd be a dream come true if the TOS said code generated by Claude is licensed under the AGPL.
- zombot 6mo agoNot after all the training data was just stolen. That would be legalizing the biggest heist in human history after the fact.
- n1tro_lab 6mo ago[flagged]
- saghm 6mo ago"Surely our customers understand it's just Latin! Claude _for_ you!"