Launching websites without a lawyer

[maikklein]

Hello,

I am a student which implies that I don't have too much money to spend. Now I like to innovate things and I want to launch some websites in the future.

But there is always the fear to be sued. The last project that I started with play2 in java, I came pretty far, but at some point I had to write so many things and it felt just wrong. Then I switched to scala and lift which is literally awesome.

It is just, I am not sure if I want to rewrite it because the idea involves spending money to get people to write guides for you. But where money is there are always people who want to take it from you, right? (Maybe I am overreacting)

So I spoke to a local lawyer. I asked him to write some simple TOS etc for me, but the price is just insane. Couldn't afford it even if the site would generate a decent income.  

I live in Germany and if I want to have some income I would have to found a company. There are some "cheap" alternatives for example I only need 1€ to found it, but the register costs are around ~500-700€, which is pretty high. But this would guaranty me that I can't lose more then I have invested. The other alternative is to found a "private" company which costs much less but doesn't give me any protection.

What is you experience about the whole legal thing?

So I have to look for some really cool ideas which are fun to create and have a very low chance to be sued. 

At the moment I would love the create something like dropbox but this will probably get me sued in no time.

Why can't I just be innovative and create something that I want to create without having to spend my whole money just to protect me against legal issues? :(

[Aditya Vishwakarma]

I would suggest you to read Paul Graham's excellent article on this http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

Aditya 

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Lift, the simply functional web framework: http://liftweb.net
Code: http://github.com/lift
Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/liftweb
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[David Pollak]

I'm a lawyer and I dislike how lawyers treat the Internet and contracts and making clients afraid.

Here's the ToS I put together for Telegram: https://telegr.am/legal

There's a little bit of legal terms (Bailee), but bailment law is long standing and well settled (that's why we don't worry about parking cars in a parking lot, leaving our clothes at a cleaner, or checking our coat in a restaurant) although has not been applied to copyright.

Anyway, think of the things that matter today:

• Not getting sued by a user. Put language in the ToS that says they can't sue you and even if they do, there's a cap on recovery.
• Not getting sued by a third party. Don't do stuff that's going to bug third parties. Napster did this wrong... they had a business built on sharing (legal and illegal sharing). Note the "defend and hold harmless" language in the Telegram ToS. That basically means that if someone does something nasty (like copying someone's blog), they have to deal with the junk, not me. In reality, it's unlikely that if you're small, anybody is going to do anything other than send you a cease and desist letter and you take the content down.
• Making sure that as you grow, you can retain the content that helped you grow, so getting the initial IP ownership right is key (so, if you're a cookbook site, you'll need to do a bunch of research about different licenses and choose a good one).

Keep in mind that it costs > $250K to file a lawsuit. It costs > $5M to take a suit to trial. Apple and Samsung each spent > $250M (yeah, a quarter of a billion dollars) on their stupid patent suit in San Jose. Nobody's going to sue you out of $10,000... it's just not worth it.

Once your business grows and you've got enough money to hire lawyers and form corporate entities, then hire them. Spend the $25K to do it right. But today... focus on your product and your customers.

My 2 cents that do not represent legal advise... but does represent the business advise that I give to others and follow myself.

Thanks,

David

--
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Lift, the simply functional web framework: http://liftweb.net
Code: http://github.com/lift
Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/liftweb
Stuck? Help us help you: https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/liftweb/Posting_example_code
 
 
 

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Blog: http://goodstuff.im

[maikklein]

I didn't read the whole article but it only covers parents which I don't really need. 

Manly I worry about Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Terms of Service etc. 

Something like BadGuy1: "I don't like your content, I sue you!!!!!" 

I want to be safe from such guys. But maybe I watch too much TV :)

[maikklein]

Thank you very much David

[Maarten Koopmans]

Also keep in mind that patents in the EC are different, e.g. pure software parents are not recognized. 

--Maarten

[Ben Phelan]

Unfortunately, because you are in Germany, I suspect you likely will need professional legal advice.  The laws here are quite strange, quite specific, quite detailed and quite inflexible.  

If you're in or close to a large city there is probably a reasonable start-up scene with meetup groups, mailing lists, incubators, etc.  If I were you I'd find these and go ask for advice from other German start-up founders.

Another possibility is that there may exist some state-funded entities set up specifically to help people in your situation.  I know of several of these in my home country (Australia), and at least one in Bavaria, so they probably exist in other German states too.  There you might find relevant templates for the kinds of legal documents you're looking for as well as other free legal advice.

[maikklein]

Yes there is such a thing.... But they only support people who are getting welfare. So you had to work for 2 years before you can expect financial support. So they would pay for advice and founding a company. 

Too bad that I am a student who never worked before.

But I know that there is a special group of people at my university who are playing/pretending to be a startup. Probably to get some experience. Maybe they can give me an advice.

[David Pollak]

oddly, today I was thinking "What if the US was one big y-combinator... basically giving anyone who wanted, food, shelter, Internet, and legal advice for 6 months so they could bootstrap a business."

--
--
Lift, the simply functional web framework: http://liftweb.net
Code: http://github.com/lift
Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/liftweb
Stuck? Help us help you: https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/liftweb/Posting_example_code
 
 
 

[Naftoli Gugenheim]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:09 PM, David Pollak <feeder.of...@gmail.com> wrote:

oddly, today I was thinking "What if the US was one big y-combinator... basically giving anyone who wanted, food, shelter, Internet, and legal advice for 6 months so they could bootstrap a business."

:) What if we could have everything we ever dreamed for, for free?