25 May
2004
25 May
'04
11:13 a.m.
On Tue, 25 May 2004, der Mouse wrote:
Speaking personally?
- They require you to agree to California legal jurisdiction
(unreasonable for individuals living non-near California, outrageous
for individuals living outside the USA) and binding arbitrarion, with
no right of recourse beyond that arbitrator.
As I've explained before, you have to be a real fuck up for this to even
come into play. If we are ever in a situation where legal action is
required, we would be stupid to not make it easy for ourselves to sue an
offending party. This is standard in business. I don't know any business
that would say "if we sue you, we'll do you a favor and sue in your
jurisdiction to make things easy for you".
I don't ever expect (or at least I hope never) to have to sue anyone (or
enter arbitration) over something that happens on the VCM.
It's all fine and dandy when you're doing trading on a hobbyist basis but
Patrick and I have opened ourselves up to some level of risk by hosting
this service for public consumption, and we are covering our ass. I'm
not going to apologize for that, nor are we going to waver on it.
- They require that the site be accessed via Web
browsers only
(unacceptable to me, as I want to fetch pictures).
As long as you aren't scraping our site and causing problems with our
server then I don't think you'll hear any fuss from us. Again, this is to
cover our ass against any potential assholes out there who would make our
lives difficult.
- It requires that I use my full legal name. I
don't even know what
that _is_ by California law, and unless California law would let me
use "der Mouse" (which it may, I've heard that in many jurisdictions
a name you use long enough and consistently enough with no fraudulent
intent becomes a legal name for you) it would be unacceptable, as
that is the only name by which I am known in computer circles. Even
if California law _would_ let me use "der Mouse" I would expect to
have to fight for it, and I'm not willing to go to that much effort.
I think this is splitting hairs. What's on your birth certificate? Or
your driver's license? Or your passport? That is what you should use.
We didn't think it would be necessary to spell this all out since "full
legal name" is pretty basic.
Why do we require this? To make sure all users are dealing in an open and
honest manner. If we allowed aliases then fraud could ensue. If you want
to sell under an alias then use the Usenet or some other mechanism that
allows you to hide your identity for whatever reasons you deem necessary,
and you assume whatever risk comes along with that mechanism. The VCM is
intended to be a safe trading community for the vintage computing hobby
and this is one step to ensure that. To expect otherwise is being
disingenuous.
- I may not engage in "activities that may
adversely affect the
performance or stability of the Site". If I may not do anything that
risks crashing it accidentally, I can't even _touch_ it!
This is also disingenuous. What would you like to do that you think risks
crashing it accidentally? If you mean launching a DOS attack, or scraping
huge volumes of data off the site (another form of DOS), then no, we don't
want you doing that.
Also, nothing in that clause refers to "accidental" activities. The
system is pretty solid by now, but if an error does occur, it gets trapped
and we're notified. If you make it your life's focus to try to crash our
system then we're going to have a problem with that.
This is all pretty basic.
- I am (well, would be) liable for my own acts and
omissions, but the
VCM isn't: "To the fullest extent permitted by law, the foregoing
indemnities will apply regardless of any fault, omission, negligence,
or breach of warranty or contract of the Operators of the Site or
their suppliers, vendors, and assigns". Sorry; responsibility is a
two-way street.
Not when we're offering this service for free. Would you also like that
we turn on the TV and bring your milk and cookies to you on the sofa?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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