5 ms·

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.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      > if you signed something you were not smart enough to be signing That's good advice, but I didn't sign anything here. I have in the past signed contracts with companies agreeing to use services or software in certain ways (generally pre-release stuff under NDA), and in those cases I do indeed read the contract carefully before signing it, sometimes redlining parts of it before they countersign, and I abide by our mutually agreed result. If I don't feel I understand it, I refuse to sign, or ask for clarification. However, to my knowledge, I have never signed a contract with Google. If they had asked me to do so, I would certainly have refused if I didn't understand the terms. But I do not believe they have even asked me to. All I have done is visit their website, just like they have visited my website. I have a ToS on my own site, but as far as I can tell, Google just accesses my site however it wants and does not read it (they definitely don't pay me for the premium tier, despite exceeding the stated free access limits).
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        >However, to my knowledge, I have never signed a contract with Google. To use their API you will need to agree to their TOS https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing
        _delirium 13y ago
        I have never visited that page. I have visited this one: http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com That webpage serves map tiles over HTTP, without asking me to agree to a contract first. I take it that I may therefore access the map tiles over HTTP? Obviously I assume I cannot redistribute them, as they're copyrighted. And it is good netiquette to observe robots.txt for bulk/crawl access. But beyond that I don't believe me visiting their page constitutes me "signing" a contract with Google, any more than Google visiting my page constitutes them "signing" a contract with me. Perhaps there is some other API with nice JSON stuff and OAuth or whatever, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just doing HTTP GET requests for map tile URLs.
- mikeash 13y ago
  You're not at all obligated to abide by an open source license that just happened to be bundled in with a bunch of files you downloaded. The thing is, without that license, you're bound by copyright. That means you're not allowed to redistribute those files, or anything derived from them, at all without permission from the copyright holder, with the exception of uses allowed by fair use. For source code and similar things, there's a default position which is highly restrictive, and the open source license loosens the restrictions. Nothing forces you to accept the license. It's just that you can do much less with the material if you don't. Terms of Service are a completely different beast, because the default position is that you can use services that are mad public over the internet more or less however you feel like, as long as you don't violate copyright and such. The ToS then adds restrictions.
  - TallGuyShort 13y ago
    I think the point you make is an excellent one. However, we've seen court decisions that essentially equate ToS violations with wire fraud, no? I wonder where the line gets drawn...
    - pyre 13y ago
      > we've seen court decisions that essentially equate ToS violations with wire fraud, no? I can only think of one, and it was overturned. Most of the others (that I can think of) have to do with an employee/employer relationship. Even the recent Craigslist case wasn't necessarily a case of ToS violation, because they were explicitly asked to C&D, but didn't.
    - wslh 13y ago
      And we've also seen antimonopoly actions against companies abusing their power position.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      My point is simply that the two are not at all equivalent. An open-source license grants additional rights to the person receiving the license, while terms of service restrict the person receiving it. As such, there is no inconsistency whatsoever with saying that one should not be automagically bound by such things just because they clicked through them or they happened to be sitting on a web site that you use. It doesn't matter at all if you violate the terms of an open source license. All that means is that you don't enjoy the additional rights granted to you by that license. You can still enjoy all of the rights granted to you by normal copyright, which means that you can use your copy and make additional copies in ways covered by fair use. If you go beyond that, you're violating copyright, and that is the fundamental problem, not violating the license. Violating the license is only a problem when you want to use some of it (e.g. the permission to distribute derived works) but not other parts of it (e.g. the requirement to distribute source code). Violating a license isn't illegal, only violating copyright is. I don't think there's an equivalent for terms of service for a freely-available service.
ajtaylor 13y ago
I really don't see the difference. Either way you're agreeing to abide by a set of rules by the owner of the service. If you don't like their rules, use one of the alternatives.
wisty 13y ago
OK, so on the one hand there's white (or grey) hat cases, and on the other there's spammers and scammers. Both break the ToS. I think a big difference is whether it's for commercial purposes, or has some evil motive. Eating KFC in McDonalds is probably breaking some rule, but no-one in their right mind would really care. Selling your own fried chicken in McDonalds is much more likely to lead to trouble. A political stunt is somewhere in between, but should generally be given a bit of lenience. So I'd say it should be OK to use a script to automate some personal task. Creating a business which relies on breaching a ToS is both wrong and stupid. And while political hacks might be a bad idea, they might also be the right thing to do. Here's the thing about the law - it's not quite black and white. A judge or jury will always consider the circumstances, when they decide what to do with you. The same is true about companies blocking you. Sometimes, you need to use common sense, and hope that other people do to.

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.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    > if you signed something you were not smart enough to be signing That's good advice, but I didn't sign anything here. I have in the past signed contracts with companies agreeing to use services or software in certain ways (generally pre-release stuff under NDA), and in those cases I do indeed read the contract carefully before signing it, sometimes redlining parts of it before they countersign, and I abide by our mutually agreed result. If I don't feel I understand it, I refuse to sign, or ask for clarification. However, to my knowledge, I have never signed a contract with Google. If they had asked me to do so, I would certainly have refused if I didn't understand the terms. But I do not believe they have even asked me to. All I have done is visit their website, just like they have visited my website. I have a ToS on my own site, but as far as I can tell, Google just accesses my site however it wants and does not read it (they definitely don't pay me for the premium tier, despite exceeding the stated free access limits).
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      >However, to my knowledge, I have never signed a contract with Google. To use their API you will need to agree to their TOS https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing
      - _delirium 13y ago
        I have never visited that page. I have visited this one: http://maps.google.com http://maps.google.com That webpage serves map tiles over HTTP, without asking me to agree to a contract first. I take it that I may therefore access the map tiles over HTTP? Obviously I assume I cannot redistribute them, as they're copyrighted. And it is good netiquette to observe robots.txt for bulk/crawl access. But beyond that I don't believe me visiting their page constitutes me "signing" a contract with Google, any more than Google visiting my page constitutes them "signing" a contract with me. Perhaps there is some other API with nice JSON stuff and OAuth or whatever, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just doing HTTP GET requests for map tile URLs.
mikeash 13y ago
You're not at all obligated to abide by an open source license that just happened to be bundled in with a bunch of files you downloaded. The thing is, without that license, you're bound by copyright. That means you're not allowed to redistribute those files, or anything derived from them, at all without permission from the copyright holder, with the exception of uses allowed by fair use. For source code and similar things, there's a default position which is highly restrictive, and the open source license loosens the restrictions. Nothing forces you to accept the license. It's just that you can do much less with the material if you don't. Terms of Service are a completely different beast, because the default position is that you can use services that are mad public over the internet more or less however you feel like, as long as you don't violate copyright and such. The ToS then adds restrictions.
- TallGuyShort 13y ago
  I think the point you make is an excellent one. However, we've seen court decisions that essentially equate ToS violations with wire fraud, no? I wonder where the line gets drawn...
  - pyre 13y ago
    > we've seen court decisions that essentially equate ToS violations with wire fraud, no? I can only think of one, and it was overturned. Most of the others (that I can think of) have to do with an employee/employer relationship. Even the recent Craigslist case wasn't necessarily a case of ToS violation, because they were explicitly asked to C&D, but didn't.
  - wslh 13y ago
    And we've also seen antimonopoly actions against companies abusing their power position.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    My point is simply that the two are not at all equivalent. An open-source license grants additional rights to the person receiving the license, while terms of service restrict the person receiving it. As such, there is no inconsistency whatsoever with saying that one should not be automagically bound by such things just because they clicked through them or they happened to be sitting on a web site that you use. It doesn't matter at all if you violate the terms of an open source license. All that means is that you don't enjoy the additional rights granted to you by that license. You can still enjoy all of the rights granted to you by normal copyright, which means that you can use your copy and make additional copies in ways covered by fair use. If you go beyond that, you're violating copyright, and that is the fundamental problem, not violating the license. Violating the license is only a problem when you want to use some of it (e.g. the permission to distribute derived works) but not other parts of it (e.g. the requirement to distribute source code). Violating a license isn't illegal, only violating copyright is. I don't think there's an equivalent for terms of service for a freely-available service.

ajtaylor 13y ago

I really don't see the difference. Either way you're agreeing to abide by a set of rules by the owner of the service. If you don't like their rules, use one of the alternatives.

wisty 13y ago

OK, so on the one hand there's white (or grey) hat cases, and on the other there's spammers and scammers. Both break the ToS. I think a big difference is whether it's for commercial purposes, or has some evil motive. Eating KFC in McDonalds is probably breaking some rule, but no-one in their right mind would really care. Selling your own fried chicken in McDonalds is much more likely to lead to trouble. A political stunt is somewhere in between, but should generally be given a bit of lenience. So I'd say it should be OK to use a script to automate some personal task. Creating a business which relies on breaching a ToS is both wrong and stupid. And while political hacks might be a bad idea, they might also be the right thing to do. Here's the thing about the law - it's not quite black and white. A judge or jury will always consider the circumstances, when they decide what to do with you. The same is true about companies blocking you. Sometimes, you need to use common sense, and hope that other people do to.