How important is TOS for you?

TOS or Terms of service is a term which is widely known to everybody who use a computer. But how many of us read it before accepting the license or before availing the service? In most cases by accepting to the TOS we are legally binding to the service provider. Sites which deal with online shopping or sites which generally deal with currency transaction have carefully drafted TOS to obtain a high level community trust.

Likewise, site/services which deal with heavy user created content must have a clear TOS. Especially virtual environments where there are large amount of user created content. Second Life constantly had many changes in its TOS when the line between the virtual environment and real world blurred. Mainly when users created content and made real money out of Second Life.

As we all know, GoJiyo, our own desi version virtual environment is in its starting stage. We can surely expect massive changes in the service and hopefully I believe that they introduce a downloadable client to run GoJiyo instead of the browser based environment. Today I thought of checking GoJiyo’s TOS in detail. It is a carefully drafted TOS like any other service. But I wish they were more careful with numbers and the links as they were with the content.

TOS on Intellectual property rights is repeated in point number 2 and 3. And again there is a point number 3 that talks about Important usage conditions and related provisions. (This error has been rectified when I checked on 5th May 2010)

The Privacy Policy page links given in the TOS page leads to a page that does not exists.

Its true that not many people read TOS and Privacy Policy. But that doesn’t mean that an important document which explains the TOS and privacy policy of a service should not be given importance. But at the same time there are people who do read these before registering/availing a service.