Is it ok to copy the TOS or PP from another site and modify it for my own uses?

10 points by therealsolomon ↗ HN
Going to a lawyer seems pretty expensive, could I "re-purpose" the TOS and PP from another site? I'm a SaaS site.

6 comments

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IANAL, but if there isn't a license explicitly stated you must not reuse it (without permission).

Luckily, Automattic make their ToS available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, which might be a good fit for your site.

https://en.wordpress.com/tos/

when I first signed up on Twitter, I came across a guy that was a business advisor. I asked him where I could get a TOS and PP and he pointed me at this site termsfeed.com

I made a mistake in what I checked off when I ordered the TOS, but they were nice enough to fix my choices and send me a new TOS free of charge. Hope this helps.

Thank you for recommending us!
anytime, I have had two other people in the last week ask me where to get a TOS, I sent them to your site.
As rsto mentioned you can copy the agreements from Automattic as they released their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy under the Creative Commons Sharealike license [1]. However, it's important to consider that their legal agreements are suitable for their own business needs, their own website functionality, and so on [2].

A few things to look after in the Terms of Service for a SaaS app:

1. Payment terms. A "Subscription" clause can let users know exactly how subscriptions work for your app, that billing occurs in advance on a recurring basis (monthly or yearly), that subscriptions can automatically renew unless canceled (for example).

2. User-generated content. A "Your Content" clause can outline users' retained ownership of data as content created by users in an app would most likely be proprietary content.

For the Privacy Policy you can look at:

1. Communications. A disclosure to inform users that you may contact them with promotional and transactional emails.

2. A Business Transaction or Transfer clause.

[1] https://en.wordpress.com/tos/, https://automattic.com/privacy/

[2] https://termsfeed.com/blog/no-privacy-terms-wordpress/