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Comment by kayodelycaon | Hacker News Reader

> It really doesn't take that much corporate self awareness

I think you underestimate how well anyone in management actually understands this. One job had me constantly pushing back on three or more paragraphs of legal text in the damndest of places. In one case, the legal text was larger than the form itself to say "we need your email to contact you with changes related to your account".

Every time I contacted our company lawyer directly for clarification, he was always fine with the short summaries I wrote.

I was the only person in the entire process that stopped to ask if any of this was really necessary. I guess that's why I was the developer handling all most of our legal compliance. Everyone else either didn't care or had given up.

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In many organizations, legal boilerplate has nothing to do with what's reasonable in the law or even what a lawyer thinks is necessary.

Much text in business has become the ever growing wrapper for:

"As the writer, I get as much monetary value as I can or at least make you believe as such and you give up as much monetary value as possible, or at least as much as I can scare or deter you from seeking. I also have no responsibilities and all rights, while you have all responsibilities and no rights."

It's simply expanded out a bit more and often gives explicit examples. It's completely unmanageable for any common citizen to process and understand what you almost have to agree to on daily basis to function in our ever more privatized world.

The amount of garbage I see on a daily basis wrapped with passive aggressive legal threats around every corner is mind numbing. I even still get emails from people who add footers that they own the information and if you receive it wrongfully, you're "required" to delete it.

We essentially have a bunch of children running around running society through businesses driven by greed who never fully socially developed into functioning reasonable and responsible adults.

You are right, the amount of garbage legal stuff has expanded - but mostly as a result of people doing shit they're not supposed to do. Let's take the email footer... and an email directed to the wrong person: in ye olde times, the recipient would go "not my crap, delete it" and that's it - but now, there is a real risk the recipient uses the information and publishes it, leading to monetary damage or penalties (e.g. if it was information that must not be disclosed prior to a certain date).

The company can now sue the recipient or at least threaten him for disclosing stuff. Yes: the error is on the sender side, but in ye olde times the unspoken agreement was that you'd delete mails not addressed to you. Times have changed and so the legal boilerplate had to adapt.

A bit more common sense across the world, especially when it comes to the trend of resolving conflicts via courts instead of talking to one another and shaking hands, and there would be a lot less boilerplate and mind-bogglingly dumb disclaimers ("don't put any animals in microwaves") in this world.

Well, I've had enough of this damn legalese. You see where 200 years of peace gets you? The world used to be run on broad but simple threats, where all we had to do was swear fealty to the man in the iron helmet, or pay the iron price.

The proposition that wrongly addressed mail used to be handled more discreetly is very dubious to me. I doubt it even holds for postal mail. It sounds a lot like the "people used to be more honorable" trope.

Okay, but can anyone find a case where this went to court and a lawyer successfully argued "Your honor, it's not our fault the info was leaked because we put a disclaimer at the bottom of the email when we sent it to the wrong person!"

I'm skeptical.

If the language doesn't actually prevent liability anyway, then get rid of it.

> I even still get emails from people who add footers that they own the information and if you receive it wrongfully, you're "required" to delete it.

In ye olden days if you accidentally received someone else's mail it was a felony to open it. If anything the legal restrictions have been drastically reduced when it comes to email.

Isn't a more apt analogy if you receive mail addressed to you, you open it, and you find a letter meant for someone else?

In that scenario you actually have the legal obligation to return the letter to the post office. The law as written makes it a crime to throw it away or otherwise obstruct delivery. Being asked merely to delete it is a much lower obligation.

https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-the-federal-law...

I don’t think that applies in the given scenario.

GP said that the letter is addressed to you, but the content is intended for someone else. You can’t obstruct delivery because it’s been delivered to the right place (the address on the envelope).

If obstruction of delivery applied in this case then we would end up with the ludicrous scenario where I could deliberately address letters to you, that are intended for my boss, then demand that you somehow deliver or return the letters once you’ve opened them.

Imagine if I sent you thousands of these letters, it would be a postal and legal DDOS.

There is no requirement that you attempt to effect delivery to the intended recipient. The legal obligation would be met by writing “not at this address” on the envelope and putting it back in the mailbox.

I imagine if you tried to abuse this and then sue your case would be laughed out of court. It would also be awfully expensive; compare the cost of postage to send all those letters with the cost of a rubber stamp to have them returned.

> I even still get emails from people who add footers that they own the information and if you receive it wrongfully, you're "required" to delete it

I occasionally get cold emails from recruiters that come with length NDAs at the bottom (often longer than the actual content of the email). I find it utterly silly, but at least it's a strong signal that I won't be missing anything good by ignoring it.

This is true. In a previous job the amount of legal text we needed to include depended on whether we had been sued for something related previously.

Generally I agree that most folks in an organization just don't bother to contribute or push back once 'legal' gets involved. It's a shame - I think if people just tried to understand even a little bit beyond the surface, this whole tweet could have been avoided...

if they had instead just said like "We're compiling something special for May 4th! Tweet @Disney using the hashtag #MayThe4th with your favorite Star Wars memory and you may see your memories featured (subject to TOS)" I think generally it's more honest. but yeah i guess no one cares to be 'that person'.

Seems to me like you're proving GP's point: you had the experience and knowledge to push back against the default legal process. A less experienced person might not have done it.

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