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Comment by rush-tea | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. I was thinking of copy and paste from some sites that I have seen so far. But Mz post said otherwise. This is exactly my concern. Mz post states that his disclaimer is used by legal permission. Now to me, this seems to contradict what tstegart and me believe. If legal terms can not be copyrighted, then why would Mz require someone consent, the author in this case, to use the disclaimer? I want to avoid this situation if lets say I use facebook or google term of use word by word and then they sue me?

so now i m confused...

i understand that my project is nothing, and the chance of getting sued is almost 0 because i have no traction, but if it's legally not right, then i want to avoid the risk.

thank you for the advise.

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I don't think tsegart is quite right on this one. Anytime you "express" words on a page, those words are copyrighted. Expressions are distinguished from more functional/factual considerations like labels, page numbers, math equations, etc.. So, my guess is that terms of service would likely be considered a copyrightable expression, just like software code, novels, and company manuals, because they are a manifestation of a lawyer's expression.

Assuming you copied Google or Facebook's terms of service without their permission, you would be in technical violation of their copyright. What they would sue for is less clear - unlike copying music, a textbook, or someone else's code, you're not really harming Google or Facebook's revenue through your copying like you would if you copied a competitor's design. In the extremely rare .00001% chance that Google's legal team decided to sue you, you're probably looking at a court-ordered takedown notice.

However, this discussion is largely academic. No one is probably going to sue you when you're bootstrapping and you can hire a real lawyer to change your ToS later. There's a good discussion of this on metafilter:

http://ask.metafilter.com/74055/Can-one-copyright-a-legal-ag...

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice, just my personal opinion. If you want to rely on someone's advice, hire a lawyer.

To clarify: I said a specific individual advocated I cover my ass and encouraged me to use his disclaimer as a starting point. That doesn't contradict what other people here are saying. I have no idea if you need permission to adapt something like that. I am not a lawyer. I was only telling a personal anecdote as to where I got some of my legal language.

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