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Comment by dshafer | Hacker News Reader

I agree completely with your observation about Ts&Cs. OTOH, I have a legal background and I know that agreements like this one (they used to be called 'rip-and-sign' back in the days of packaged software) are hard to enforce. I know of the problems and I still seldom do more than scan them to see if they contain an egregious paragraph or two that I look out for.

I'm not sure if Americans "expect to be bailed out all the time," but I do know that we expect as consumers not to have our rights trampled on arbitrarily. As a nation of laws, that's inconvenient sometimes but it's vastly preferable to any alternative I've seen.

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> I'm not sure if Americans "expect to be bailed out all the time," but I do know that we expect as consumers not to have our rights trampled on arbitrarily.

Right. Personal responsibility means companies must be held responsible if they don't follow ethical standards, something that goes strictly beyond obeying the law. Personal responsibility is thus the foundation of a free market.

And what ethical standard do you see broken here?

Ning provided a service, has realized that it's not financially feasable, and in the interest of (I presume) their owners/shareholders have decided to discontinue that service. They're allowing groups to continue using the service for a fee if they so desire.

Personal responsibility means weighing the pros/cons of trusting services to "the cloud". It's why there are a few things I still run on a machine in my basement, rather than move to an online provider, even though it could be cheaper for me. It's why I actively back up important documents (and yes, photos) to more than one location.

It's your ethical responsibility, whether as an individual or a corporation, to only let people rely on you if you're reliable. If you're not, you have to go out of your way to prevent people from leaning on you, because you know they'll fall over when you step aside. It is their ethical responsibility as well to find out if you're reliable, but it goes both ways.

> If you're not, you have to go out of your way to prevent people from leaning on you

How do you do that? That's a serious question. How about two different ways to "prevent people from leaning on you"?

Did Ning ever promise reliability for free?

Are there any free and reliable services? If not, isn't "free" an indicator of "not reliable"?

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