Where do people get their TOS's written?
 

So when launching a new site, how do you get your T&C, 2257 and Privacy Policy written?

Seems like most people would just grab someone else's and change a few words around, but it occurs to me that this is probably not correct. How is it "supposed" to be done?

I am talking about a small site that does not have an in-house attorney to draw up paperwork.

bump for you mate

Last time I saw a commercial for legalzoom I actually wondered if they had service for setting up an adult sites TOS.

Good question, but probably the answer is a lawyer or the other way you mentioned. I've seen TOS' that had other sites names accidentally left in there..

I thought they did a search and replace on someone else's. :winkwink:

Best advice is to talk to a lawyer. But.... if you are cheap just go to a bunch of sites that have been around for several years and read all of their TOS.

A lawyer I talked to (who's reputable) even mumble kinda to me on the phone that most of the good sites have it right. It's up to you though.

It's always awkward when they leave a clue behind.

I guess I should read all of the previous posts.
That seems to be what a lot of people do.

johnnyloadproductions, may I ask you for your lawyer contacts (website?). I'm looking for a good, rebutable lawyer to write TOS for my coming-soon dating project. Does he work on hourly rate or flat rate?

Call up an attorney.

Like the rest of the adult industry (excluding myself), copy it.

Here is what I always did. Find at least five different agreements for the same type of site. Rewrite based on your needs. You will find that some sites think of more while others think of less. Take the common from all of them as well as the best from each individually and rewrite. It's actually easy after you do it a few times and you'll even learn the words and find mistakes and omissions in the others. Of course the best is to have a lawyer write it.

ctrl c, ctlr v, and find and replace company names etc

Bad advice. Get a lawyer if you are worried about repercussions. I can guarantee you that telling a judge your best legal advice came from GFY and that you you should copy somebody elses website will not help.

One could always ask permission to make a modified copy of someone else's. Of course read it carefully and make adjustments as needed.

Also of course there are a few attorneys active in this industry, including one who seems to be actively marketing himself. He might be willing to publish a sample document, with any copies provided to webmasters containing a link to his page or whatever.

I would suggest NOT getting "a lawyer". Instead get an adult industry lawyer or at least a net lawyer who knows privacy policies and T&Cs. "A lawyer" can be worse than no lawyer if you trust their incorrect guesses about fields of law they have no experience in. Better to know that you don't have an appropriate lawyer than think you do, but actually have a family law practitioner.

You will make serious mistakes by "modifying" someone else's docs. Things such as venues for lititgation (where the company you stole the page from wants to go to court is not necessarily where you want to go to court) and other issues could cost you more than your business ever makes.

If you take the thief route, spend a few bucks having a proper adult attorney review it, to make sure you didn't screw the pooch.

In an industry where folks bitch about piracy, stealing content (such as legal docs) shouldn't be an option...

Did you read my last sentence?

Reality is people write agreements themselves and 99.9% of the times it's fine. If you're not going to get an attorney, that is the second best. Sure, force majeure and other things can get you in trouble and then you can have the boilerplate statement about any provision being invalid or unenforceable does not void agreement where that sometimes doesn't matter, but we're not talking Facebook here. Obviously if it was a site making enough money and with enough traffic you'll just pay an attorney, but there are examples of high profiles start-ups doing just this and they're fine... they just eventually turned to an attorney. Sometimes you have limited dollars to allocate.

Don't fuck around with 2257, but if you want a TOS and privacy policy for your lead generation website or tiny social network, boilerplate works fine until you can allocate money.

everone just steals it from someone else.

Had Larry Walters do ours.
http://www.firstamendment.com/

:1orglaugh:thumbsup:helpme