Terms of Service

[JRobert]

Sorry, I disagree. The "Note:", by which Edwin gives himself and the moderators ultimate discretion without recourse, supercedes everything above it.

That said, I don't think my tenure here is hanging by a thread. If I did, I wouldn't be hanging around. And let's be clear: What I write here is already public. Disclosure is not an issue. I value what I gain here, but neither is it irreplaceable nor would it's loss have a profound negative effect on my life or business. I'd miss being able to participate in this community but my friends, family, customers, vendors, etc., wouldn't be wondering why I suddenly went out of touch. I wouldn't bear any consequential legal, financial, and/or social consequences of either losing this connection or of having its content distributed publicly. This makes it qualitatively different from my email account.

[NJSS]

Have I missed something - or are we still waiting to hear from Jeremy or Rob ?

NJSS

[akorvemaker]

Originally Posted by NJSS

Have I missed something - or are we still waiting to hear from Jeremy or Rob ?

Jeremy posted in the Privacy Policy thread

andy

[mariner]

Originally Posted by akorvemaker

Jeremy posted in the Privacy Policy thread

The relevant comment from his post there is

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

I have seen in the last 10 years many examples of service providers which haven't had broad enough language in their policies, and have ended up stuck in nasty situations where, for instance, they can't terminate spammers, due to the limitations of their policies.

[tehsux0r]

Originally Posted by walesrob

With all due respect, I think you're probably being a bit alarmist.

Sorry, but I can't agree. Concern is the rational response when a company with years of detailed information about my personal and professional relationships introduces terms of service giving them the right to delete or disseminate that information at will.

Originally Posted by walesrob

Let's await word from the guys from FM to clarify things.

I'm not sure how that would be useful. The contract says what it says, and assurances that the management won't abuse it are only good for as long as they're around (at the most). If we want clarification of their intentions, the best place to do that is in the contract

Originally Posted by walesrob

Your post highlights the one good reason to use your own domain for emails - let’s say for example, the moment your current email provider stops working for any reason (and this is not a dig at Fastmail, I could apply this statement to Tuffmail, Runbox, etc), you can easily move over to an alternative service and carry on as normal (as possible - taking into account DNS and MX changes may take a while, but ultimately, you won't lose your email address).

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like either you don't use FM's IMAP to store your e-mails, or you delete messages when you're done with them - if losing your e-mail address is the worst possible outcome for you, fantastic. As I do, though, I have to trust the company's integrity a great deal, and this kind of thing makes me seriously question that trust.

Losing my address, while annoying, is the least of my worries!

[tehsux0r]

Originally Posted by hobbes

Just for fun, I tried a search for the exact phrase "may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service"

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q="ma...lated+service"

There are over 16,000 exact references to this clause.

This is merely a standard legal thing that appears in countless other services (Tuffmail included, by the way).

I'm not sure how this is helpful; am I supposed to be reassured by the fact that it's "standard"? Besides, I have my doubts about ubiquity when Google can only find 16,000 of something (Google can find 12.8 million instances of "definately", but that doesn't make it a standard spelling).

We all know full well that a lot of people have clauses like this, but context is everything: we're talking about FastMail, a company that runs IMAP servers for centralised e-mail storage by their customers. In this context, the addition of clauses like this to the service contract is genuinely alarming.

The potential to instantly lose one's entire e-mail history isn't even the worst issue - the clause that talks about divulging customer information to others for any reason (to protect the interests of *anyone at all*!) have far more potential for damage.

How serious all this is depends on how you use e-mail, and what kind of FastMail service you subscribe to. Anyone who, like me, retains message history, and stores it on FastMail's servers, has good reason to worry.

[kirill]

Rackspace's terms:

http://www.rackspace.com/information...neralterms.php
http://www.rackspace.com/information.../mailterms.php

[elvey]

Originally Posted by kirill

It's not any worse than terms of most other services.

Kirill: It's a helluva lot worse than the ToS fastmail had the last time I reviewed it! I recall J or R saying years ago that without a locally-valid court order, nothing gets shared with LEOs. Perhaps it was in a blog post; I don't recall.

I have noticed that they at least seem to specifically avoid looking at (non-abusive) customer email; i.e. they ask that mail that needs to be looked at to address a help request be placed in a folder named forwebmaster.

The quote from Jeremy is entirely unpersuasive in light of mariner's posts mentioning the EFF and 'unreasonable searches', especially the EFF link to a page that states in part:

Avoid using weasel words like "we will disclose your personal information where permitted by law,"

...

If you change your privacy policy, you should give notice to the users and make the prior versions available (with the dates those policies were effective).

I think J&R owe their users a better response. For one thing, FM could be sold to a non-Australian firm in a way that made it not subject to Australian law.

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by elvey

FM could be sold to a non-Australian firm in a way that made it not subject to Australian law.

Now that would also be a main worry to me. As it is, it's mainly knowing the owners and things they've said about Australian laws in the past about their TOS and Privacy Policy that has allowed me to accept things the way they are. Take away J&R and put the same policy worded as is and with different unknown laws would cause worry.

Sherry

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by elvey

... For one thing, FM could be sold to a non-Australian firm in a way that made it not subject to Australian law.

IMO that's a very important point! Personally I like short contracts that avoid stating what the law states. I agree with what has been said here that it doesn't help users that don't read it with a lawyer that can interpret it and put it in the context of the appropriate laws. But the fact that it is actually an international business in the sense that it is perfectly plausible that it may change hands and move to ownership subject to a different set of laws (or even without changing hands: ROb spent a year in Canada during the decade that FastMail existed. Jeremy has spent some time in Malaysia during that time). So even if the TOS is subject to Australian laws it may change and the same TOS read in the context of another set of laws might be interpreted differently. So in this sense the legal practice of not stating in contract what is already written in law fails. For this to be corrected a contract should state that it should be interpreted within the context of the laws of a particular jurisdiction, at least in some sections (if it becomes subject to interpretation in another jurisdiction it cannot escape being subject to the laws of this other jurisdiction, so I don't believe merely stating that stating that disputes are to be settled in a certain jurisdiction is enough. I think it may be necessary in such cases to explicitly state in a contract that certain laws of a certain party are to be considered as part of the contract in case it is being interpreted in another legal system). It is still advisable as has been suggested that if not stated in the TOS explicitly it should at least be accompanied by some document that explains the legal environment it is subject to (so if privacy is derived from Australian privacy laws and what's in these laws is not explicitly written in the TOS, users will be able to know something about the privacy they can expect without needing to consult a lawyer or become experts in Australian privacy laws themselves.

[mariner]

Originally Posted by hadaso

so if privacy is derived from Australian privacy laws and what's in these laws is not explicitly written in the TOS, users will be able to know something about the privacy they can expect without needing to consult a lawyer or become experts in Australian privacy laws themselves.

FastMail seems to disagree. A poster in the privacy policy thread received this reply from FM when he proposed in an email that someone from the company participate:

Originally Posted by tehsux0r

[Quoting FM’s email:] The forum thread you pointed to is long and contains lots of posts by people who aren't lawyers, aren't familiar with Australia law, and are trying to interpret a legal document. We worked closely with lawyers to ensure the document is valid and contains the correct legal wording.

(They also requested that he identify “exactly which parts/sentences” concerned him.) My reaction to this rationale is that signing up for FastMail shouldn’t require agreeing to a contract that, in FastMail’s own estimation, only experts can understand!

[blevins]

If privacy is an issue, use PGP.

[mariner]

If privacy is an issue, use PGP.

Since this is not the privacy policy thread, I’ll be brief. PGP doesn’t conceal when you sent or received a message, who was on the other end, the contents of your address book, your aliases, your mobile number, and so on. More practically, there are still a few people and businesses out there that don’t use PGP. (Go figure.)

[kirill]

Originally Posted by blevins

If privacy is an issue, use PGP.

Or cut the network wire.

[tehsux0r]

Originally Posted by Sherry

Just a guess but perhaps FM has to be more blunt because of their user base? Those using Runbox are paying users who are not apt to do anything requiring them to get shut down whereas FM has the free accounts that many may sign up to use it in a way that FM may need to shut them down? (I'm certainly not say most free users would hurt their service but still think many may and would need to be shut down immediately?)

Sherry

That's a good point. If it's true that providing free memberships represents a significantly greater risk to a provider like FM, it seems like bad business for the Ts and Cs to be the same for the paying customers. They pay a significant proportion of the service's running costs, and have significant incentives not to abuse (by virtue of having paid in advance).

In that case, it would seem sensible to draw up standard terms and conditions for paid-up customers, and add a couple of overriding "we can do anything we like" clauses that specifically apply only to free customers. It's no significant increase in the length or complexity of the contract, and lets customers feel that the service is dependable before they sign up.