You can freely copy pretty much anyone's as legal documents are not covered by copyright.
Can you really? Any reference?
Personal answer: No, copying TOS for your own website infringes their lawyer's copyright. "Documents written by a lawyer are protected by copyright as much as the work of any other writer"[1]
In the next season: Can we patent a particular way of protecting your website's legal rights ;) ? That would be great fun. We should patent the cease-and-desist letters, unfortunately there is far too much prior art on those...
You can indeed use our documents though and I'll add a licence to the repo to make that clear (after speaking to the lawyers involved first to ensure the licence I choose is the right one).
Comments
Can you really? Any reference?
Personal answer: No, copying TOS for your own website infringes their lawyer's copyright. "Documents written by a lawyer are protected by copyright as much as the work of any other writer"[1]
In the next season: Can we patent a particular way of protecting your website's legal rights ;) ? That would be great fun. We should patent the cease-and-desist letters, unfortunately there is far too much prior art on those...
[1] http://www2.mnbar.org/benchandbar/2007/apr07/drafting.htm
Ah, you are correct for the US: https://chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID757
You can indeed use our documents though and I'll add a licence to the repo to make that clear (after speaking to the lawyers involved first to ensure the licence I choose is the right one).
A true patent troll doesn't let little things like prior art stop them...