9 ms·

Here's another reason that I wish was more prevalently discussed: it's not okay to violate Terms of Service anyway. Don't accept the terms? Don't use the servic

Here's another reason that I wish was more prevalently discussed: it's not okay to violate Terms of Service anyway. Don't accept the terms? Don't use the service. We'd all have a field day if "big brother" violated the terms of an open-source license, but the freedom we enjoy in the community comes with a responsibility to honor our agreements.

Killswitch 13y ago
I just wish people would stop being so self-entitled period.
- TallGuyShort 13y ago
  Agreed. The tone of the article is correct, in my opinion, because this really does hurt the community. I think we'd have an easier time fighting things like SOPA, DRM, etc. if actual piracy wasn't such a big problem.
  - TillE 13y ago
    And if theft didn't exist, we wouldn't need police. This is a useless observation. You may be able to effect a limited degree of societal change, but you will never satisfactorily eliminate the problem at its source. Other solutions are necessary.
  - HNLogInShit 13y ago
    This isn't "piracy." It's easily shut down if the provider wants to.
- baddox 13y ago
  I feel like I deserve to live in a world with fewer self-entitled people.
- ianstallings 13y ago
  As my developer friend likes to say - this is why we can't have nice things.
revelation 13y ago
Violating the terms of a license is very different to violating the Terms of service you "sign" with a button click.
- TallGuyShort 13y ago
  Actually I'd argue that you're more obligated to abide by something you explicitly checked "I have read and accepted..." than something that was listed somewhere in a file you downloaded with some other stuff. You probably just happen to like the terms of the GPL or ASL more than you like the terms of Google's API. I do too - but at what point are we just losing all integrity because we're too lazy to read a long document we have no intention of actually agreeing with?
  - _delirium 13y ago
    If there is an actual click-through and the license is understandable by a human, perhaps. Usually there is neither, though. I rarely even know how to look up terms of an API, or that there is an API. If I know the name of the API, I can look for "Google Foo API", but that name isn't always obvious. If I just see a URL with an obvious schema, and I change the HTTP GET parameters to retrieve different stuff, am I allowed to use that in, say, a small-scale art project, or not? The usual internet default is that public URLs are implicitly giving blanket permission to retrieve them, except that retrieval by spiders should abide by robots.txt. Google itself makes heavy use of this ok-to-retrieve default assumption. If I go to http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com there is no license presented to me as a condition of using the service. I can however look for fine print and seek out the link "Terms of Service" of my own accord, at which point I get this: http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html Those terms specifically forbid several things I'm definitely not doing (mass-downloading data, using it for turn-by-turn navigation, etc.), so my first read of it makes it sound like grabbing Maps content in my art project is okay. But then I'm not a lawyer, so maybe it isn't okay.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      Ridiculous. Playing dumb isn't an excuse. Can I stop paying my morgtage on my house because the 40 pages of documents I signed I don't 100% understand? No. If you want to enter a legally binding contract that you don't understand you hire someone to help you do so, or face the consequences if you signed something you were not smart enough to be signing.
lmgftp 13y ago
This really could use more exposure. People who believe that because they only had to click "Accept" they may claim ignorance or stupidity/absurdity of the terms the accepted ought to be corrected. It's simply silly to think you may violate the terms of any agreement made, especially when that agreement is necessary to your use of the service (hence "terms" of service). While it is clear that hacker culture embraces putting things from numerous sources together, in this case the Google Maps elevation API with crime data, it's one thing to make a cool presentation and another to make a cool presentation derived from someone else's work against their explicit wishes, expressed in the terms. The use of software implies (by necessity or otherwise) that you wish to make/create/analyze/do-X with the software, and by using it you've accepted the fact that you will do-X, but within the terms. It's a funny world we live in ;)
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  If they wish people not use it in that way, then they should make it impossible to use in that way, or ban those people from using it. Those are really the only two options, no matter how much we wish people would be honorable.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Personally, I think it's silly to think that you may be bound to the terms of an agreement just because you clicked a button that says "Agree", without any of the fundamental attributes of a contract being present, and without even interacting with a representative of the other party in any way.
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    I've noticed typically I agree with your views, but on this case we diverge. I think it's reasonable to assume that when the service cannot be accessed before the accessor clicks "agree", and the accessor clicks "agree", that constitutes a valid contractual agreement. It's no more silly than mailing in a credit card application and being bound by those terms. The fundamental attributes are present. There is a contract and you can agree to it or not. Your interaction with the company is viewing the terms the lawyers wrote and agreeing to them or leaving the website.
ianstallings 13y ago
I've said the same in the past and usually it's to the business managers or executives. Too often they are willing to conveniently overlook licensing or service restrictions in order to get what they want or need. A specific example - I had to convince executives that we needed to pay MPEG LA because we were using FFMPEG to encode and decode using 264 on our servers. I only convinced them after a long debate and contacting our legal department to explain the risk. It had very little to do with my personal views on licensing or patents and everything to do with professionalism. A lot of the other software developers thought this was wasting money and time, and paying off people that were somehow evil because they charge large sums for using their patented software. My stance has always been if yo don't like the terms use something else and avoid the ethical dilemma. It's just plain easier and avoids some risk.

Killswitch 13y ago

I just wish people would stop being so self-entitled period.

TallGuyShort 13y ago
Agreed. The tone of the article is correct, in my opinion, because this really does hurt the community. I think we'd have an easier time fighting things like SOPA, DRM, etc. if actual piracy wasn't such a big problem.
- TillE 13y ago
  And if theft didn't exist, we wouldn't need police. This is a useless observation. You may be able to effect a limited degree of societal change, but you will never satisfactorily eliminate the problem at its source. Other solutions are necessary.
- HNLogInShit 13y ago
  This isn't "piracy." It's easily shut down if the provider wants to.
baddox 13y ago
I feel like I deserve to live in a world with fewer self-entitled people.
ianstallings 13y ago
As my developer friend likes to say - this is why we can't have nice things.

revelation 13y ago

Violating the terms of a license is very different to violating the Terms of service you "sign" with a button click.

TallGuyShort 13y ago
Actually I'd argue that you're more obligated to abide by something you explicitly checked "I have read and accepted..." than something that was listed somewhere in a file you downloaded with some other stuff. You probably just happen to like the terms of the GPL or ASL more than you like the terms of Google's API. I do too - but at what point are we just losing all integrity because we're too lazy to read a long document we have no intention of actually agreeing with?
- _delirium 13y ago
  If there is an actual click-through and the license is understandable by a human, perhaps. Usually there is neither, though. I rarely even know how to look up terms of an API, or that there is an API. If I know the name of the API, I can look for "Google Foo API", but that name isn't always obvious. If I just see a URL with an obvious schema, and I change the HTTP GET parameters to retrieve different stuff, am I allowed to use that in, say, a small-scale art project, or not? The usual internet default is that public URLs are implicitly giving blanket permission to retrieve them, except that retrieval by spiders should abide by robots.txt. Google itself makes heavy use of this ok-to-retrieve default assumption. If I go to http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com there is no license presented to me as a condition of using the service. I can however look for fine print and seek out the link "Terms of Service" of my own accord, at which point I get this: http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html Those terms specifically forbid several things I'm definitely not doing (mass-downloading data, using it for turn-by-turn navigation, etc.), so my first read of it makes it sound like grabbing Maps content in my art project is okay. But then I'm not a lawyer, so maybe it isn't okay.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    Ridiculous. Playing dumb isn't an excuse. Can I stop paying my morgtage on my house because the 40 pages of documents I signed I don't 100% understand? No. If you want to enter a legally binding contract that you don't understand you hire someone to help you do so, or face the consequences if you signed something you were not smart enough to be signing.

lmgftp 13y ago

This really could use more exposure. People who believe that because they only had to click "Accept" they may claim ignorance or stupidity/absurdity of the terms the accepted ought to be corrected. It's simply silly to think you may violate the terms of any agreement made, especially when that agreement is necessary to your use of the service (hence "terms" of service). While it is clear that hacker culture embraces putting things from numerous sources together, in this case the Google Maps elevation API with crime data, it's one thing to make a cool presentation and another to make a cool presentation derived from someone else's work against their explicit wishes, expressed in the terms. The use of software implies (by necessity or otherwise) that you wish to make/create/analyze/do-X with the software, and by using it you've accepted the fact that you will do-X, but within the terms. It's a funny world we live in ;)

sillysaurus2 13y ago
If they wish people not use it in that way, then they should make it impossible to use in that way, or ban those people from using it. Those are really the only two options, no matter how much we wish people would be honorable.
mikeash 13y ago
Personally, I think it's silly to think that you may be bound to the terms of an agreement just because you clicked a button that says "Agree", without any of the fundamental attributes of a contract being present, and without even interacting with a representative of the other party in any way.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  I've noticed typically I agree with your views, but on this case we diverge. I think it's reasonable to assume that when the service cannot be accessed before the accessor clicks "agree", and the accessor clicks "agree", that constitutes a valid contractual agreement. It's no more silly than mailing in a credit card application and being bound by those terms. The fundamental attributes are present. There is a contract and you can agree to it or not. Your interaction with the company is viewing the terms the lawyers wrote and agreeing to them or leaving the website.

ianstallings 13y ago

I've said the same in the past and usually it's to the business managers or executives. Too often they are willing to conveniently overlook licensing or service restrictions in order to get what they want or need. A specific example - I had to convince executives that we needed to pay MPEG LA because we were using FFMPEG to encode and decode using 264 on our servers. I only convinced them after a long debate and contacting our legal department to explain the risk. It had very little to do with my personal views on licensing or patents and everything to do with professionalism. A lot of the other software developers thought this was wasting money and time, and paying off people that were somehow evil because they charge large sums for using their patented software. My stance has always been if yo don't like the terms use something else and avoid the ethical dilemma. It's just plain easier and avoids some risk.