Comment by doomslice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doomslice | Hacker News Reader

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I've been thinking of writing my own Terms of Service for my cryptocurrency-related web startup -- with plain and clear language that the average person should be able to understand. Several people have advised me that this is a horrible idea and that I should enlist the help of a lawyer to write it instead.

Some things I want to protect myself against:

- People suing if they lose their private keys and are no longer able to make transactions

- People suing if they forget their passwords and can no longer access their email they signed up with to do a recovery.

- People suing if they lose their 2FA code and can no longer access their account

- People suing if a bug in my software causes them to lose access to their account or coins

- People suing if I decide to close down my service (I will give 90 days notice --- or maybe more, haven't decided yet) and did not deactivate their accounts.

Basically trying to protect myself for anything that is not fraud on my part.

Seems like most people here are pro-"short and sweet" ToS -- what do you think about writing it myself?

> People suing if a bug in my software causes them to lose access to their account or coins

Everything else sounds pretty reasonable, but this doesn’t. If you cause someone harm, you should expect that they will attempt to recover damages from you, regardless of what your T&C says. I cannot fathom why you think you should be protected against this eventuality. Buy insurance instead.

Regarding your question, notwithstanding the hand-wringing on this page, a given T&C clause tends to exist because someone has been sued over the matter being clarified. If the law specified each point, or if society were less litigious, these clauses would not be necessary. But this is not the case. I think you would be a fool to risk your company’s wellbeing to satisfy the whims of uninformed HN commenters. Almost all of them will blindly accept and be bound by your T&C regardless of their stated beliefs on this site, and, even if that were not the case, they are a tiny, unrepresentative slice of your market.

Fair enough. I guess this is why I should get a lawyer involved! I was assuming there was some distinction between accidental negligence and fraud as far as what could be protected against.

Is this a standard you would like to be subjected to from someone who is responsible for your money? For example, if your bank, through an accidental, non-fraudulent error, allowed a criminal to extract your account’s entire value as cash, do you think they ought to be able to defend themselves by saying they did not commit fraud?

why shouldn't the customer be able to recover damages from you if you had an accident, or were negligent? they were paying you to take care of this stuff for them. if they wanted the risk of accident and incompetence, they'd just do it themselves.

Does that draw any distinction between paying and non-paying customers then as far as their rights? I see tons of "you assume all risks" sorts of Terms of Service, but I have a feeling those are likely just there and don't do much.

You should never write a contract yourself unless you are a lawyer. There's a case law which usually involved, and if aren't careful, you might have big problems.

But it seems like getting a lawyer involved is exactly what leads to these complicated Terms of Service. I would have to find a lawyer who agreed to significantly dumb down the Terms of Service, which I would suspect they would be opposed to -- I mean they are writing these things like this for a reason, right?

They write the thing the way they are written because likely there was a case where simpler language lead to the company losing in court. There's also a principle Contra Proferentem, that intreprets all ambiguities in favor of the non drafting party, so the drafting party should be extra careful and write all this pesky legalese.

There is no reason why terms should not be written in plain English and indeed under European consumer protection laws, you should be writing the terms in plain English because it means the user has a better chance of understanding them, and (regardless of the first part) you have a better chance of enforcing them should the need arise.

Please be aware that not all lawyers are the same and you can find many who will be more than happy to write a set of terms that are in plain English, ambiguity-free and protect your company against any areas of concern that are legitimate for you to protect against.

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