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Comment by alpha123123 | Hacker News Reader

> A Reddit post incorrectly took portions of our Terms of Service out of context, which only pertain to content provided to Vultr on our public mediums (community-related content on public forums, as an example) for purposes of rendering the needed services – e.g., publishing comments, posts, or ratings. This is separate from a user’s own, private content that is deployed on Vultr services.

> In order to simplify and further clarify our ToS, we are removing the following sentence from Section 12.1(a) of our ToS

https://www.vultr.com/news/A-Note-About-Vultrs-Terms-of-Serv...

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This doesn't seem to be true though. In the Terms of Service[1], "User Content" is defined as this in 12.a:

> (a) You are responsible for the information, text, opinions, messages, comments, audio visual works, motion pictures, photographs, animation, videos, graphics, sounds, music, software, Apps, and any other content or material that You or your end users submit, upload, post, host, store, or otherwise make available (“Make Available”) on or through the Services (collectively, “Your Content,” “Content” or “User Content”)

What is the "Services" then? It's explained here (first paragraph[1]):

> The Terms explain how you are permitted to use the services provided by and through our platform and website(s) (main url located at www.vultr.com) as well as all of our associated internet and online properties [...] Collectively, the Site, the Materials, and the services provided therein are referred to as the “Services”.

Is a website I host in Vultr an "associated online property"? When I upload or modify some of my website content through vultr.com, does it become User Content? This is very over-reaching on purpose (as most legalese tends to be) but not in a good way, I wouldn't want to have to go to court to prove that their non-binding blog post is correct and the binding legal terms are incorrect, neither should I nor anyone.

[1] https://www.vultr.com/legal/tos/

> Is a website I host in Vultr an "associated online property"?

No, I don't think a reasonable person would read what you've quoted and come away with that interpretation. Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist about what reasonable person means.

> our associated internet and online properties

ToS are not reasonable people.

Sorry for your downvotes, but they are earned. Predatory TOS [can be|will be|have been] abused by companies regardless of whether “reasonable people” created them or not.

Imagine your car dealer pushed over a 100pg finance contract with a first paragraph that said “we will take all your property if you miss a payment” but the dealer assured you that “we don’t really do that, it’s just lawyer stuff.” then said “you don’t need to read the rest, just sign here”.

How much of a great person would they have to be, and how much of an optimist would you have to be to sign it without reading the rest?

Ah ha, that explains my downvotes. I am not claiming the hosting provider are reasonable people. I'm referring to the reasonable person standard of contract law.

What exactly was out of context? Per https://web.archive.org/web/20240203121820/https://www.vultr...

> The Terms explain how you are permitted to use the services provided by and through our platform and....

Platform = hosting.

There's no small text, there's no restrictions, there's no qualification. It said nothing about "public mediums" or "for purposes of rendering the needed services".

The relevant section is taken from part 12 (User Content) where User Content is specifically and narrowly defined as stuff you upload to the website services.

I actually think there is an attempt in the ToS as written to keep the definition narrow in the way that the parent comment quotes, but it is unfortunately not super well drafted, because there is a partially-explicit distinction between "platform" and "services" that may make sense to a legal person, but is not sufficiently clear for a technical person.

So not quite good enough, IMO, but a distinction is being made in the relevant section, and this can be seen if you read the paragraphs in question.

That section as written is still insane. They’re taking ownership of anything you or your users do on their platform.

> "[...] and any other content or material that You or your end users submit, upload, post, host, store, or otherwise make available (“Make Available”) on or through the Services (collectively, “Your Content,” “Content” or “User Content”)"

1. the definition of "User Content" includes "your end users", something you can only have when using their cloud platform services, not when you're using their community forum.

2. It refers to "Services", not "website services"

> (a) If You use Our Services for any site, sub-domain, page or business model that allows Your end users or customers to control or upload material to Internet space assigned to You by Us, You shall be deemed to be acting as a "Service Provider" with respect to such services and/or customers. Service Providers include but are not limited to customers which; (i) resell bandwidth as hosts to third parties; (ii) operate user-generated content sites such as forums, "tube" sites, review sites, and online classified advertising sites; [...]

3. This paragraph refers to their hosting/platform services as just "Services", again.

I don't see a clear distinction being made.

Hanlon's razor[1] saves the day? In any case - looks like a happy ending.

[1]: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Never discard malice that might be intentionally disguised as stupidity.

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