No Terms. No Conditions

3/24/2026 at 5:11:14 PM

I like how, even when the whole point is to not have any terms or conditions, there are still disclaimers. "Only for lawful purposes," "no warranty," "we are not responsible."

Those are still terms and conditions!

by CobrastanJorji

3/24/2026 at 5:22:12 PM

Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies. Including it in the license is just redundant.

Had it simply read "You may use this site for any purpose." or "You may use this site." or "You may use this" or "This can be used." it would have the same level actual restriciton in that you obviously aren't allowed to use it to break the law regardless of what it actually says.

And, having typed all that, I realize that there is another restriction in that it presumes that there is a 'you' using it. Things that are not 'you' cannot use it given that it specifically lists 'you' in the referenced parties. "This can be used" would be more permissive.

by goodmythical

3/24/2026 at 5:46:41 PM

I recently had to confirm to a brokerage that I won’t be using the money I’m withdrawing for any illegal activities.

A sure sign of a legal team or possibly an entire legal system having lost the plot. Hopefully only the former.

by lxgr

3/24/2026 at 7:51:30 PM

That’s simple CYA, and also ensures you’ve not only done the illegal activity, you’ve defrauded the brokerage and breached your contract with them, and they get a weak KYC defense as well.

Similar to the “Al Capone” instructions from the IRS:

>Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

On the other hand, if you want to talk about these stickers all over Seattle saying you’re not allowed to conduct illegal activities on the premises…

by wrs

3/24/2026 at 8:34:21 PM

I still don’t understand the CYA though.

For the majority of banks, they do not want people to conduct illegal activity via their bank. For the minority of banks which don’t mind it, nothing stops them from adding the clause anyways. A cartel bank probably cannot use the existence of the clause as a defense if they’re still allowing illegal activity.

If the purpose is to allow the bank to terminate accounts suspected of illegal activity, my assumption is they can already terminate for much less than that.

by janalsncm

3/25/2026 at 2:23:38 AM

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th...

> You might look at the standard KYC questionnaire for a new retail account and think “Really? You ask questions which have obviously correct answers. You give people less than a tweet worth of space to answer them. How could this possibly catch any criminals not stupid enough to write Occupation: Drug Dealer?” […] this is not the only mechanism by which KYC questionnaires have a stochastic effect; they’re also useful in an entirely different part of the crime lifecycle. Many, many crimes involve lies, but most lies told are not crimes and most lies told are not recorded for forever. We did, however, make a special rule for lies told to banks: they’re potentially very serious crimes and they will be recorded with exacting precision, for years, by one of the institutions in society most capable of keeping accurate records and most findable by agents of the state.

> This means that if your crime touches money, and much crime is financially motivated, and you get beyond the threshold of crime which can be done purely offline and in cash, you will at some point attempt to interface with the banking system. And you will lie to the banks, because you need bank accounts, and you could not get accounts if you told the whole truth.

> The government wants you to do this. Their first choice would be you not committing crimes, but contingent on you choosing to break the law, they prefer you also lie to a bank. […]

> Particularly in white collar crime, establishing complicated chains of evidence about e.g. a corporate fraud, and mens rea of the responsible parties, is not straightforward. But then at some point in the caper comes a very simple question: “Were you completely honest with your bank?” And the answer will frequently be “Well, no, I necessarily had to lie in writing.”

> And congratulations, you have just eaten a wire charge fraud for every transaction you’ve ever done.

by sedev

3/24/2026 at 9:42:04 PM

It’s not just that they don’t want it, it’s that they’re liable for it themselves if they should have known it was happening. Asking you adds one more small layer of “we discouraged illegal activity and we didn’t know about any”.

by wrs

3/24/2026 at 11:06:46 PM

Maybe I am just slow.

Bank 1 has the CYA clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

Bank 2 does not have the clause and a cartel uses them for a decade for illegal purposes.

In neither case does the clause prevent the illegal activity or make the bank any more or less aware of what customers are doing. They have to do KYC regardless of what the TOS says.

by janalsncm

3/25/2026 at 12:08:41 AM

The point of the CYA clause isn’t to prevent illegal activity or make the bank more aware of what customers are doing. The point is that when Bank 1 is defending itself in court, it has one additional thing they can point at when arguing that it should not be liable for the illegal activities.

by anamexis

3/25/2026 at 10:48:51 AM

If this actually works in court, the corresponding legal system has completely lost the plot, in my view.

by lxgr

3/25/2026 at 10:22:41 AM

The bank that actually welcome the AlCapone will be first to have that form. If the court can be affected by something like that, it says something really bad about the legal system.

by watwut

3/25/2026 at 4:53:06 AM

Ok, fair enough. I just don’t think that is convincing evidence, personally. But there would be 11 other people on the jury.

by janalsncm

3/25/2026 at 3:18:16 AM

The "cover your ass" clause is for the bank to cover its ass, not to prevent the crime.

by stavros

3/25/2026 at 4:49:01 AM

The point is, no judge or jury should be fooled into thinking putting “don’t do illegal stuff” in a TOS actually should matter. Forget the TOS. They allowed illegal activity.

by janalsncm

3/25/2026 at 9:02:30 AM

The point is they can claim they didn't know.

by stavros

3/25/2026 at 3:15:20 AM

The CEO of bank 2 goes to prison because "you turned a blind eye to illegal activity"

by pocksuppet

3/25/2026 at 4:49:56 AM

And what about the CEO of bank 1?

by janalsncm

3/25/2026 at 6:24:38 AM

His bank gets fined 3 minutes of revenue because "you turned a blind eye to illegal activity"

by pocksuppet

3/24/2026 at 10:52:27 PM

Having a clear clause to point to when terminating the account seems useful.

by stevage

3/24/2026 at 10:06:15 PM

I'm curious if anyone has ever said yes to income from illegal activities. Moreover, I wonder if something like this would be protected under 5th amendment.

by abustamam

3/25/2026 at 3:15:44 AM

I wonder what happens if you write "5th amendment" as the source for your completely legal salary.

by pocksuppet

3/24/2026 at 11:43:45 PM

IANAL, but my understanding is that it is not protected under the 5th amendment.

by aidenn0

3/24/2026 at 6:02:56 PM

For Good, not Evil, unless you're IBM™

https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...

by bombcar

3/24/2026 at 6:38:57 PM

This is probably a meek attempt at demonstrating compliance with Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) laws and regulations. Lawyers will often suggest this sort of thing, because the only cost is a slight inconvenience to the client, and it might suggest 'good faith' in the case of a prosecution or enforcement action.

by nickff

3/24/2026 at 6:50:15 PM

So, the entire legal system.

by AnimalMuppet

3/24/2026 at 6:51:02 PM

> I won’t be using the money I’m withdrawing for any illegal activities.

My guess is that this is so they can ban any drug dealers from their site without consequence. "They violated our terms of service your honour!"

by josephg

3/25/2026 at 12:46:30 AM

Probably because the "default" (in the USA and all European states I've checked at least) is copyright protection - unless explicitly stated otherwise the original author has exclusive rights to reproduce or distribute the work.

That means that things with "no license" don't actually mean "you can do whatever you want" - but in fact "you can do realistically nothing".

So to actually let other people so much as look at it, you have to have some kind of license attached already. And then it can be easy to imply (in the eyes of the law) things like "fitness for purpose" or some kind of warrenty unless expicitly denied.

Honestly it's really annoying to find things like code on the internet with "no license" - that just means you can pretty much never even look at it. You could argue that isn't the "right" default, but the law is what the law is right now.

by kimixa

3/24/2026 at 6:44:39 PM

When it's in the contract, then it means that when you break the law you both break the law and the contract. SHould it be necessary? Perhaps not, but in some places that makes a meaningful difference.

by spalzdog

3/24/2026 at 6:49:33 PM

Now I'm paranoid. To your knowledge, which places does it make a difference, and what difference does it make?

by AnimalMuppet

3/24/2026 at 7:55:34 PM

Legal matters are almost never black and white. If someone does something illegal using my service, and some other 3rd party sues me as party to that illegal behavior, from a legal perspective having a clause like "no criminal behavior allowed" in there makes it easier for your lawyers to argue "my client clearly didn't intend to authorize/facilitate such behavior". This argument is of course made much stronger if it is paired with behavior, like banning (or attempting to ban) the criminal user as soon as the activity was identified.

But if you are paranoid you should speak with a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

by fastball

3/24/2026 at 8:56:47 PM

In most places it doesn't make a difference to the outcome of the legal process what it does do is give you a quicker simpler off ramp from the legal process (which reduces costs) and may stop some idiots even trying to sue in the first place.

"Do not iron clothes while on body" should not be required to not be found liable, but it does change the question in court from providing discovery for safety consideration, how comprehensive is the manual, how... and the costs involved with that to "Did the customer use the device in a way that was it was clearly labelled to not be used? Did any part of the product packaging or instructions contradict this warning? ...Dismissed".

by greycol

3/24/2026 at 10:13:26 PM

On top of that, I think my canister of Lysol wet wipes and many other bottles of cleaning chemicals says something like "it is against federal law to use this product for any purposes other than its intended use"

Like, yeah it's illegal to do illegal stuff with or without the label, but at least Lysol could say "we did tell him that he can't use it for that."

by abustamam

3/25/2026 at 1:46:51 AM

It's illegal to do illegal stuff, but it's not illegal to do off-label usage stuff. If I want to take your hydrogen peroxide you sell as a surface disinfectant and mix it with vinegar and salt to etch my PCBs at home, that's my prerogative.

by codebje

3/25/2026 at 2:39:33 AM

Well, who's gonna tell on you? :) I don't have a bottle of H2O2 handy so I don't know if it normally has that disclaimer.

by abustamam

3/24/2026 at 5:39:39 PM

> Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies. Including it in the license is just redundant.

Perhaps not. The law, as automatically applied, often include implied warranties.

by zephen

3/24/2026 at 5:55:16 PM

It's almost like the most effective way to publish without T&Cs is to just, you know, omit the section and publish what you want without T&Cs.

by j_bizzle

3/24/2026 at 6:55:10 PM

Interesting question. I wonder what the default (implied) T&C would be if nothing has been explicitly stated. For example, publishing a source code without an explicit license doesn't make it open source.

by terrabiped

3/25/2026 at 3:17:49 AM

Most T&Cs don't mean anything anyway. There are no default T&Cs, there's just the law.

Publishing code without a license doesn't give it an "implicit all-rights-reserved license" - it's just illegal to copy because that's what copyright law says. A license is a conditional waiver of copyright law, a contract where the author promises not to enforce copyright against you if you fulfil certain conditions. (and this is legally binding so they actually can't enforce copyright against you)

by pocksuppet

3/24/2026 at 8:15:08 PM

I guess it’d be whatever the other party’s lawyer can persuade the judge into.

by volemo

3/24/2026 at 7:43:34 PM

> Right? Why include that? The law automatically applies.

Because the law applies - by that I mean if you don't put a disclaimer in then the law takes the view that you do provide a warranty, etc.

by awesome_dude

3/24/2026 at 8:13:34 PM

Does it take the view that I encourage/facilitate illegal use of my product unless I state otherwise in the T&C?

by volemo

3/24/2026 at 10:15:49 PM

Encourage, probably not. Facilitate, possibly. That's why my bottle of Windex glass cleaner says "it's against federal law to use this product for anything other than its intended purpose."

In either case it's illegal for me to use it for bad purposes, but how much I can blame on Windex depends on how much they let me know that I shouldn't do bad stuff with their products.

by abustamam

3/24/2026 at 8:36:25 PM

Ask every account that has ever released information on drug use, lock picking, explosives manufacture, or "hacking" - they all say "for educational purposes only" for a damned good reason

by awesome_dude

3/24/2026 at 6:45:50 PM

Should have gone for the WTFPL

        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE

        TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

            0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

by isoprophlex

3/24/2026 at 6:26:33 PM

If anyone knows that rules exist to be broken, it's Jorji. Glory to Cobrastan.

by sph

3/24/2026 at 5:53:15 PM

"NoTermsNoConditions"... Proceeds to list 9 terms and conditions.

It should be called bare-termsandconditions or minimal-termsandconditions.

by daveguy

3/24/2026 at 5:15:58 PM

This is the real salient point in this post in my opinion;

It unintentionally demonstrates the limits of individual agency to avoid legal embroilments

That is to say: it doesn’t really matter what this person puts on their website because there is a judge and a sheriff somewhere that can force you to do something that would violate the things you wrote down because the things you wrote are subordinate to jurisdictional law (which is invoked as you point out)

It’s actually pretty poetic when you think about it because the page effectively says nothing because it doesn’t have content that the license applies to

If it’s a art piece intended to show something about licensure all it does is demonstrate the degree to which licensure is predicated on jurisdiction

by AndrewKemendo

3/24/2026 at 5:45:00 PM

Right. The cake is a lie.

by shevy-java

3/24/2026 at 5:22:37 PM

[dead]

by iamnotai666

3/24/2026 at 5:00:54 PM

I wonder how many one-sentence prompts have made it to the HN front page at this point.

by Retr0id

3/25/2026 at 4:50:52 AM

Ah, now that you mention it, the part at the bottom makes it pretty obvious too:

>Last updated: never

>No further pages. No hidden clauses.

Exactly the sort of cutesy language the LLMs use when they're trying to agree with you. "You got it! Here's a page with simple, easy to understand terms and conditions. No further pages. No hidden clauses. Nothing hidden behind another link."

by tsunagatta

3/24/2026 at 7:00:18 PM

"Alternative Terms" was the giveaway.

by Yhippa

3/25/2026 at 4:44:08 AM

for me it was the “No further pages. No hidden clauses.” Reeks of LLM

by mat0

3/24/2026 at 8:33:07 PM

Why? For what?

by rrr_oh_man

3/25/2026 at 2:45:53 AM

it's a prompt synopsis

by functionmouse

3/24/2026 at 8:33:23 PM

Why do you say that?

by rrr_oh_man

3/24/2026 at 6:34:19 PM

I don’t know, but it’s kind of boring to speculate since computers easily beat us at chess and go.

by ellyagg

3/24/2026 at 7:06:25 PM

Preventing computer-based cheating in competitive chess is a big deal (and I assume go also), because spectators tend not to want to watch two computers playing against each other.

by Retr0id

3/24/2026 at 5:41:33 PM

> By accessing or using this site, you acknowledge and accept the following terms.

I’m pretty sure this is already questionable in the EU.

by layer8

3/24/2026 at 6:21:53 PM

---

by _vsrp

3/24/2026 at 6:26:28 PM

It depends, not everything requires explicit consent. Where it doesn’t, it’s sufficient if the terms are clear, understandable, and transparent. The last criterion means that the terms must be prominently advertised in the locations where they apply.

by layer8

3/24/2026 at 7:39:41 PM

[flagged]

by dbvn

3/24/2026 at 10:08:27 PM

Who is "we"? Given the EU is the single largest foreign market openly accessible to the USA and all that money y’all invested into your pension ETFs needs constant growth to avoid shrinking, and the EU is your best bet on that… I’d recommend not ignoring us :-)

by 9dev

3/25/2026 at 5:37:24 AM

Who us "us"? You? Your EU representative? Your country? The EU is much more insignificant than people within the EU like to admit.

by catcowcostume

3/24/2026 at 5:26:53 PM

Prior art: https://github.com/sorat0mo/wtfpl/blob/master/WTFPL2.txt

by tsukikage

3/24/2026 at 7:14:19 PM

Remember when people started using WTFPL because it "sounded good", only to later find out it left them and their users legally liable? This is that but for websites.

by 0xbadcafebee

3/25/2026 at 12:00:14 AM

Liable of what and to what?

by ThunderSizzle

3/24/2026 at 7:13:18 PM

A similar one I made a while back, inspired by South Park's disclaimer before each episode: https://github.com/jmrossy/south-park-license

by canacrypto

3/24/2026 at 4:04:48 PM

Comedically, this doesn't load from my IP address in the Russian Federation. (HN does.)

by johnplatte

3/24/2026 at 4:14:13 PM

> 4. Nothing here is guaranteed, including availability, correctness, continuity, or fitness for any purpose.

There you go.

by replooda

3/24/2026 at 4:07:38 PM

Yes that was one of the nine terms the site didn't have.

by stavros

3/24/2026 at 4:09:30 PM

unintended condition: cloudflare

p.s. quick fix is "stop being lazy and move the single html off cloudflare"

by bayneri

3/24/2026 at 8:19:28 PM

I’m not lazy, I’m just tired of the fucking AI crawlers trashing my bandwidth.

by volemo

3/24/2026 at 5:07:29 PM

No alarms, no surprises

by tech_jabroni

3/24/2026 at 5:14:41 PM

My mind when to the same thing. Great song.

by joncrane

3/24/2026 at 4:27:17 PM

Schrödingers terms and conditions

by tosti

3/24/2026 at 5:01:45 PM

Read carefully if you are of a feline persuasion

by amarant

3/25/2026 at 5:04:34 AM

#5 "Access is not conditioned on approval" would seem to be permission to DDOS.

by kilna

3/24/2026 at 4:39:11 PM

> Access is not conditioned on approval.

The Zen Koan of T&C's.

by gnfargbl

3/24/2026 at 5:27:59 PM

I know this is mostly parody, but I'm curious if anyone has good starter templates for something that covers the general stuff and doesn't require a lawyer to customize

by jborichevskiy

3/24/2026 at 5:36:46 PM

I like the [Basecamp policies](https://github.com/basecamp/policies). Explicitly open source, limited legalese.

by willks

3/24/2026 at 6:05:43 PM

Thanks! Basecamp's and Github's were a few of the open source ones I came across

by jborichevskiy

3/25/2026 at 2:31:38 AM

It seems a fun and curiosity website. Not for any real use.

by chopete3

3/24/2026 at 6:27:11 PM

The URL basically nulls the license agreement.

by amelius

3/25/2026 at 5:38:19 AM

That is not how T&C work.

by catcowcostume

3/25/2026 at 8:14:40 AM

If a legal agreement comes in an envelope with the written text "this envelope contains BS", what do you think a judge will say about its validity?

by amelius

3/24/2026 at 8:34:00 PM

Not sure how this is supposed to be useful, but I had a good laugh.

by vincentabolarin

3/24/2026 at 5:44:42 PM

Is that useful for anything?

by shevy-java

3/24/2026 at 5:16:02 PM

goes without saying

that this site definitely

does not, legally

by catlifeonmars

3/24/2026 at 4:44:55 PM

Hope this slop doesn’t get anyone into trouble.

  Last updated: never
  No further pages. No hidden clauses.

Not sure “last updated=never” works, but I don’t make terms and conditions websites.

by Barbing

3/24/2026 at 4:47:11 PM

use at your own risk

> 8. You are responsible for what you do, what you build, and what follows from either.

by bayneri

3/24/2026 at 5:04:07 PM

As far as I'm concerned this doesn't mean anything legally unless I missed something. Aren't you already responsible for what you do or build anyways?

Or is this somehow meant to mean something else but worded so badly it can't be understood.

by FinnKuhn

3/24/2026 at 7:34:12 PM

amazing how such a simple website lags to scroll on my phone

by the_axiom

3/24/2026 at 5:03:50 PM

Just today I asked an LLM:

"Often one generation values things much more than others. Boomers and their wristwatches. One generation is like 'only from my cold dead hands,' the others 'what would I even need this for?!' What are examples of things the youngest generation did away with?"

If OP were a checklist, the answer would have checked every point.

by weinzierl

3/24/2026 at 5:30:45 PM

No further update.

by self-portrait

3/24/2026 at 4:55:57 PM

This does not read like it was written by a professional. Non-professionals writing licenses and T&Cs cause problems because no organization, for profit or not, wants to be dragged into court to get a "common sense" definition of a word or comma defined, at their expense.

I've heard of large organizations reaching out to places who use amateur T&Cs and licenses, saying "if we give you $X, can you dual license this as MIT, Apache, BSD, or hell anything standard?".

> Access is not conditioned on approval

Is this obvious enough legalese to not waste tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees if you get sued?

Note before you reply: I will not argue with you about how obvious it is. If you are actually a lawyer then it'd be interesting to hear your guidance, which I very much understand is not legal advice. If you're not a lawyer then I'm not.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 5:15:08 PM

> > Access is not conditioned on approval

I practice law in California. I've written terms of service that many, many people here on HN will have agreed to. I read this line and didn't know what it meant, or what it intended to mean.

That said:

> If you are actually a lawyer then it'd be interesting to hear your guidance, which I very much understand is not legal advice. If you're not a lawyer then I'm not.

There's no good way to validate lawyerdom on public social media like HN. And while the average lawyer probably remembers enough from law school or bar exams to know slightly more about Web terms of service and legal drafting than the average person, there's nothing to stop non-lawyers from reading up and learning. Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog is a great, public source covering cases on ToS and other issues, for example.

The Bar monopolizes representation within legal institutions. Don't cede the law itself to lawyers.

by kemitchell

3/25/2026 at 12:14:18 AM

>Access is not conditioned on approval

Legal training may be counterproductive to understanding this obviously non legal document.

I understand that it simply means that 'the thing' is public, and everyone has access. As opposed to access being granted explicitly to individuals.

by TZubiri

3/25/2026 at 8:29:17 AM

Well… in a court the people with legal training run the show. And keep in mind that you don't have to technically lose, in order to lose both money and time.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 6:27:39 PM

You can be competent without being a lawyer, sure. But if you see the other replies to my comment, you see why I would use this as a filter.

The dumbest person can be right, but as a lawyer, your guess is much better.

I don't cede the law. It's just that if I find this unclear, then J Random Hn commenter's opinion wouldn't reduce my risk.

I won't be acting based on your opinion either, of course, but the quality of your reply is clearly in a different class from the other two.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 7:05:39 PM

It's common for non-lawyers to write terms and conditions, and other contracts.

by usea

3/25/2026 at 8:35:01 AM

You're right. I can see how I phrased that poorly. I meant what I said, but it also implies something that I don't.

It's not a requirement for a contract to be written by a lawyer, any more than a python script needs to be written by a professional coder. But in both cases the result tends to have problems. (skipping here how LLMs fit into this)

The way in which scripts and contracts can be "fixed" later are different, with no clever sound byte about just how these apples are different from oranges.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 5:44:04 PM

> I will not argue with you about how obvious it is.

Good. Don't. Because it is exceedingly plain, if concise, English.

by zephen

3/24/2026 at 6:48:26 PM

I'm guessing it means that your use of the website is not contingent on you accepting (approving of) the terms presented. But there are plenty of other ways it could be reasonably interpreted. For instance, your access of the website is not contingent on the website operator approving said access.

by tempestn

3/24/2026 at 9:47:05 PM

> I'm guessing it means that your use of the website is not contingent on you accepting

I don't think it says that at all. Because "accepting" is the right word for this interpretation, as you point out. "Approval" is a different thing altogether. You can accept something without approving of it -- that's the main message in the Serenity Prayer and hundreds of self-help books that try to reframe that message, maybe to help it sink in, maybe just to grift a little.

If it was literally spelled out as "Your access is not conditioned on your approval" that could almost be taken as a threat -- you will access this whether you want to or not.

> For instance, your access of the website is not contingent on the website operator approving said access.

To me, this is clearly what it says. "(Your) access is not conditioned on (our) approval."

But, of course, since you read it differently, I have to agree that perhaps it's not as clear as I thought.

However...

Contracts and agreements, if ambiguous, are always interpreted in a light most favorable to the party who didn't draft them.

So, absolute worst case (for the website owner), if we combine your reading and mine, it reads "Your access is not conditioned on either your approval of these terms, or our approval of you."

Somehow, I think the author is OK with this.

by zephen

3/24/2026 at 6:28:16 PM

This is exactly the kind of comment I politely asked people not to make.

Did you see the actual lawyer saying they don't know what it means?

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 6:34:49 PM

A statement that "If you're not a lawyer then I'm not." is blunt, not particularly polite or not.

In any case, (a) it's not a request, and (b) if you truly want to control the narrative, then perhaps you should just do that from your own blog.

by zephen

3/24/2026 at 5:08:46 PM

Sounds like a smart strategy then. Use an amateur license. People who just want to do stuff know they have your blessing. Corporations will stay away or pay up, not because you made them, but of their own volition. Everyone is happy.

Of course even better is to simply have no explicit license, especially for something like code. Normal people can assume they can do whatever they'd like (basically, public domain). Lawyers will assume they cannot. The only thing stopping someone is their own belief in their self restrictions. i.e. you can use the thing if and only if you don't believe in my authority on the matter.

by ndriscoll

3/24/2026 at 5:21:48 PM

No explicit license is not basically public domain. In most jurisdictions it means the default is full copyright, so permission is less clear, not more. The practical effect is usually to increase ambiguity rather than grant freedom.

by iamnotai666

3/24/2026 at 6:30:08 PM

That's the point: it's a rejection of the premise that you need these sorts of terms. You treat the law as the farce it has turned itself into. If people reject the farce, they can use it. If they support the farce, they can't (well, they can, but they think they can't). In a sense, an anarchist's viral FOSS license.

by ndriscoll

3/24/2026 at 6:29:51 PM

You are essentially saying that shoplifting is legal because as a civilian you are unlikely to get caught.

This is a terrible take. All it takes is a litigious jerk, and you could get bankrupt. And that jerk will be legally in the right.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 6:33:01 PM

I'm not. In saying people who want to share their work should just do so. If your goal is to not have terms, don't have terms. Don't lend credibility to the idea that you need to by default.

Consider the war on drugs. Recreational marijuana is still highly illegal everywhere in the US, but there's businesses selling it that operate in plain view. How did we get there? Because people continued to point out how the law delegitimized itself until enforcement has started to become impossible.

by ndriscoll

3/25/2026 at 8:26:39 AM

You can't unilaterally opt out of copyright. Not in a legal sense. In many jurisdictions not even on the creator side. E.g. Europe commonly doesn't even give creators the option to declare work "public domain". You have to be more specific than that, or it still reserves you the right to sue (and win) against any recipients.

If you want to follow Vaclav Havel's "Living in truth", then I commend you for it. But that's always a legal risk, and we're no longer talking about the law.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 6:35:25 PM

You are essentially saying that walking is safe because as a civilian you are unlikely to get robbed.

This is a terrible take. All it takes is an angry mugger, and you could get killed.

by tekne

3/24/2026 at 6:39:34 PM

Walking is not illegal.

That's why your analogy doesn't work.

by knorker

3/24/2026 at 10:40:36 PM

use this if you want a corporation to use your content & IP to make money, while offering nothing to you (or the community) in return.

by tonymet

3/24/2026 at 4:05:07 PM

hugged to death

by badrequest

3/24/2026 at 6:39:38 PM

i do wonder if the world would be a better place if instead of lawyers we had cage matches

by modzu

3/24/2026 at 6:57:16 PM

Southwest Airlines got sued by some other company over, IIRC, color schemes. Southwest's CEO (Herb Kelleher) made an offer to the other CEO: They skip the lawyers and settle it with an arm-wrestling contest. The other CEO agreed.

Eventually, they wound up selling tickets to the match, and donated the proceeds to charity.

Now that's a civilized way to conduct a lawsuit.

by AnimalMuppet

3/24/2026 at 4:50:33 PM

Last updated: never lol

by steveharing1

3/25/2026 at 8:30:15 AM

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by irenetusuq

3/24/2026 at 10:16:32 PM

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by pugchat

3/24/2026 at 5:21:46 PM

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by suoer

3/25/2026 at 1:07:54 AM

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by getverdict

3/24/2026 at 4:45:52 PM

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by riteshyadav02

3/24/2026 at 5:16:01 PM

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by iamnotai666

3/24/2026 at 4:10:10 PM

brilliant !

by ayakut