Hacker News – Terms of Use (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News – Terms of Use (2014)

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44 pointsffpip26 comments

Shouldn't it be the Terms of Use of ycombinator.com instead of Hacker News? I mean, the content of that ToU does sound like describing Hacker News, but it's under https://www.ycombinator.com not https://news.ycombinator.com (just like today's https://www.ycombinator.com/legal#tou ).

I mean, I haven't see any ToU for HN. The Legal section always linked to ycombinator.com pages.

It's a tad more complex now for sure:

https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou

Good old times, eh?

> violate any applicable local, state, national or international law, or any regulations having the force of law;

Does this mean the national laws of every country on earth? That's a long list!

I'll be sure to only post nice things about the King of Thailand ;)

It's a cover-your-ass statement; HN and the people running it CAN be held accountable if it's available in Thailand and content that isn't acceptable over there is posted.

Although in practice I think countries will opt to block the whole site instead.

Anyway, I do think foreign justice departments can in theory subpoena HN for data if their laws have been violated.

I was being cheeky, however, since it's in the ToU then potentially we can and should be censured for such things on this site. Thailand believes such laws are applicable to everyone around the world so my place of residence doesn't really seem to matter regarding "applicable".

Just another way that the internet and reality don't get along I suppose.

What?! By using this site I've agreed to be bound by an arbitration agreement, is that right? There's no way that should hold up legally. Clicking around the web shouldn't be equivalent to signing a bunch of legal contracts.

> There's no way that should hold up legally.

I guess it depends on your jurisdiction? It’s (actually that whole document) meaningless in the EU.

Disclaimer: IANAL and that’s just my layperson’s understanding of the law regulating contracts here.

> By using the site I've agreed to be bound by arbitration agreement, is that right? There's no way that should hold up legally.

You're right, it wouldn't. (In general, under US law. I am a lawyer but this post isn't legal advice).

The term for that sort contract is "browsewrap" and US courts have consistently declined to enforce them.

Lawyers that knowingly write such unenforceable legal intimidation should face some consequences.

Wow, if things are that formal now, perhaps European users should send GDPR requests. How about full-screen cookie acceptance prompts?

I don't think there is any third party tracking on HN

The cookie accept prompts are a misunderstanding of EU law anyway. Supervisory authorities vary in their interpretation, and some take a relaxed view towards it and see the issues in that crap from a UX perspective (they say so on their sites). I've no idea why sites choose to add them in anyway, seems lazy and unambitious.

Seconded. Ycombinator is fine here, in my not-lawyer opinion -- as far as I've noticed (as someone who blocks first party cookies by default with uMatrix), they set only a single cookie, when you log in. I checked just now and it has only two pieces of data: your username, and what looks like a signature for validating it.

Is hacker news actually covered by those ToU? It talks about subdomains, but news.ycombinator.com is not a subdomain of www.ycombinator.com so how could those rules apply?

com is the top level domain

ycombinator is the domain

news and www are both subdomains of ycombinator

Technically, does a server do that? I guess my browser does, right?

They have trademarked "Startup" and "Work at a startup"?

Yes, I think.

https://www.workatastartup.com/

I think it's "Startup news", which if I'm not wrong was the initial purpose of hn.

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News#History

https://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycomb...

Funny enough, if you were selling ice cream, you could totally trademark 'Startup' for that market.

Unlike "Start Me Up", which was the Windows 95 advertising blitz (and of course they licenced the Stones)

"You make a grown man cry..."

Even more interesting is that the Windows 95 startup sound was composed by Brian Eno.

https://theindustryobserver.thebrag.com/the-odd-story-of-how...

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