Hacker News Reader

You'd have to start by simplifying the legal code. Part of the reason that these long legal documents are necessary is the huge variety of theories of liability that companies are exposed to. If you want to avoid long disclaimers, you also have to remove the things companies need to disclaim to avoid huge legal expenses.

View on HN

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/2henryvi/2henryvi.4.2.html

Everyone likes to blame the lawyers, but is the companies and non-company organizations that lobby for complicated laws to be made, and who employ lawyers to sue each other.

It's a classic tragedy of the commons. Every little special case in the law helps the organization that lobbied for it, and hurts everyone else.

Unfortunately the legal is perfectly clear... to lawyers. I've thought that it would be nice to simplify things, but it already is simple to the people for whom it matters (i.e. lawyers and judges). It would be kind of like trying to make a scheduler clear and obvious to someone who isn't a kernel developer, or at least very technical. You could get the basics across, but there'd be plenty of corner cases you'd miss.

But most of us don't have to sign off schedulers.

Most of us are supposed to sign documents full og legalese once in a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com