The circumvention of terms and conditions There are sites, for example 'moodys.com', which require an explicit agreement to the terms and conditions on every vist (e.g. https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-affirms-Chang-Hwa-Commercial-Banks-ratings-outlook-stable--PR_394007 .) I understand that if you click 'I Agree', that is legally binding. But I don't have to click I agree, instead it is possible to just go into your browsers developer tools, and just remove that popup from the screen, and continue to browse normally. Does this then exempt me from their terms and conditions - which I never read or agreed to? Is this a violation of some sort? I don't know how it could be because you're just changing what is locally displayed on your machine, if I were to screenshot the page and whiteout the terms and conditions that wouldn't be illegal would it? Is that not the same here? Most importantly though does that process exempt you from their T&amp;Cs, sorry for the longwindedness.
In such a case the person who bypasses the terms knows that use of the site is conditioned on agreement to the terms, and has taken an explicit action to continue past the terms and use the site. I suspect that if a dispute were to arise where this is relevant, it would be held that taking such action was legally equivalent to clicking "I agree". But I don't know of any court case on this point, and i can't be sure what a court would do. If having intentionally bypassed the terms, such a person tried to raise his or her lack of consent to the terms as a defense to some obligation imposed by those terms, such equitable concepts as "unclean hands" and estoppel might be raised, since such a person, in effect, leads the other party, the site owner, to believe that s/he has accepted the terms, I suspect that such a person will be treated as having accepted them. If this becomes at all common, I suppose that the designers of such sites will in future store a record of such consent being given, and not allow the user to proceed unless it has been.
There is no requirement that the terms of a contract be even-handed The common law position is that parties are free to contract on whatever terms they like: if you agree to sell me your late model car for $1 that's a matter between the two of us. The law allows you to make a bad bargain. Unconscionability There is an equitable doctrine that allows the court to refuse to enforce unconscionable contracts or terms. The California Supreme Court has ruled that &quot;the central idea (of the) unconscionability doctrine is concerned not with ‘a simple old-fashioned bad bargain &quot;… but with terms that are 'unreasonably favorable to the more powerful party.'&quot; In other words, courts will not enforce contracts that are &quot;overly harsh,&quot; &quot;unduly oppressive,&quot; or &quot;so one-sided as to shock the conscience.&quot; However, I would be extremely surprised if the terms you are upset about rising to the level of unconscionability. The basic test of unconscionability, as expressed in official comment 1 to section 2-302, is: whether, in the light of the general commercial background and the commercial needs of the particular trade or case, the clauses involved are so one-sided as to be unconscionable under the circumstances existing at the time of the making of the contract. . . .The principle is one of the prevention of oppression and unfair surprise. . . and not of disturbance of allocation of risks because of superior bargaining power. They seem to be dealing with risk allocation and moving risks that are normally on the lender to the buyer or requiring the buyer to waive statutory rights and warranties - there is nothing illegal in that unless the law has a &quot;no contracting out&quot; provision. Some laws do and some laws don't. Some laws may not allow contracting out in consumer transactions but may allow them in business transactions. You seem to be talking about some sort of equipment financing arrangement. As such, if you don't like the deal, there's a bank down the street with a different deal. US law recognises that once there is a contract, the parties have to act in good faith to ensure each party gets the benefit of the bargain they made but there is no such requirement in negotiating that bargain. If you can use your economic strength to get a better deal, that's called capitalism.
It is rather unclear what the facts are, and the legal answer would depend crucially on those facts. My understanding is that you bought a domain from a provider, and they allowed you to use a web server for some period. It also appears that you don't have a clear understanding of the contract, which may have been made online and you might not have retained a copy of the agreement (which would allow you to look at the terms). The assumption that failing to pay substitutes for explicitly cancelling a service is incorrect. If under the contract you agree to pay a certain amount per year, then you have been racking up charges for some time, and you would need to actually cancel. Ultimately, they could take you to court to force you to pay what you owe, although usually there are less drastic intermediate steps. In court, they would produce their documents to show that you owe money, and your attorney would somehow counter, perhaps by alleging that you had a good-faith belief that the contract had been terminated. It is possible that they simply messed up and failed to send you an invoice earlier, which could explain the lack of invoice. At any rate, the fact that you haven't gotten an invoice does not legally entitle you to avoid paying for the service, whether or not you use it. On the premise that they haven't taken back the domain (seems like they didn't), you can legally use it. However, if you do use it, then that would trash any claim that you believed the contract had been terminated (to argue "I thought it had been canceled" entails "and thus I didn't use the service").
If the tool circumvents Windows' copy protection (which is a computer question, not a legal one, but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which this isn't access-circumvention), then it is a violation of 17 USC 1201, which forbids &quot;circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title&quot;. It is both illegal to use, and to &quot;manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic&quot; in such a program.
The parties to the contract have not changed; they are still the purchaser company and the scrap vendor. The obligations have not changed; they are presumably based on amounts of stock and monetary value. The only changes are in the name of one party and its ownership, so unless the contract permits termination for those reasons (not unheard of, if a contract has been intended to provide/avert support from/by a particular party or symbolism) the contract still stands with all its terms. A novation is not needed.
I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer 1 For the avoidance of doubt, the thrust of this debate is: By placing a logo associated with a certain political movement near my user profile, does StackExchange violate Section 4(c) of the CC BY-SA 3.0? Subscriber Content is Content that is contributed by StackExchange users. The relevant sections of CC BY-SA 3.0 (emphasis added) are: c. ... The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. For the avoidance of doubt, You may only use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above and, by exercising Your rights under this License, You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties. d. Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation... Does changing the logo on all pages imply an endorsement of the site/organisation by the user? It is likely, though not definite, that this positioning of the logo will imply that the user endorses the website. However, actions taken by the user - such as creating an account, accepting the Terms, contributing content - are likely to affirm this view. Does changing the logo imply that the site/organisation supports a particular political view? Again, it is likely, not definite, that changing the logo will imply that the site/organisation supports a particular political view. Does changing the logo impute support of a political view to the user? In this case, however, it is highly unlikely that the change of logo would impute to the user support of the political view. In a case such as this, onus of proof is on the plaintiff - were this claim brought in court, it would need to be proven on the balance of probability (or, less likely, on the preponderance of evidence) that a reasonable person would impute support of the marriage equality (and perhaps some other) agenda to the user. Reasonable person does not mean any particular person, nor does it mean, all people. Part of the imputation must come from the purpose that the user subscribes to the site. Perhaps if StackOverflow were a site that promoted marriage equality or judicial activism, this could support an opinion that the user supports this view. However, StackOverflow is about programming, and programming doesn't imply that kind of agenda. Perhaps if the icon had been changed to something that suggested support for object-oriented programming, the icon could be taken to suggest that the user supports this agenda. Neither does the user's content suggest support for this cause - if they constantly made off-hand remarks about it in their posts, then perhaps, again, a reasonable person may make that imputation. In any case, the damages awarded to the user would likely be compensatory rather than punitive - the user would need to therefore demonstrate actual suffering or loss as a result of the change of icon. If there were actual damages or loss, the way in which the user contributed to them - perhaps by posting a thread that would be likely to be inflammatory and attract attention to the user - may reduce an award of damages. In the case of no actual suffering or loss, the user could be awarded nominal damages. Injunctions that could be awarded would need to be proportionate to the breach of license - the court could require references to this user to be anonymised. This is easily done. It is unlikely that the court would require all contribution by the user to be removed - this is unlikely to pass a public interest test. In relation to placing a disclaimer in the footer, US courts have generally accepted disclaimers if they are positioned such that a reasonable user is likely to see it... In the footer? It's not a great place, and easily missed. It could be better than nothing, though, and may help with the likelihood of someone imputing such opinions to a user. Essentially - it's extremely unlikely that a reasonable person would impute support of the marriage equality agenda on a user based on a logo change, because the support is not sufficiently connected to the primary purpose of the site, or the user's activities on the site. Even if the user were successful in showing that this is the likely conclusion of a reasonable person, the remedies available to them would be limited to damages (which limited to actual losses, including suffering), and an injunction (which is likely to be anonymisation). A disclaimer may not, on its own, actually preserve the validity of the license, but it may be useful on determining the likelihood of a reasonable person imputing opinions to a user. 1. This is larger than normal, because I think it is more important than normal.
It's not clear exactly what you're asking, when you say "the company I work for" – i.e. are you asking "can they fire me?" (almost certainly they can, even if their TOS thinking is legally misguided – unless in your country there are laws that prevent firing employees). To be certain, you need to hire an attorney who is sufficiently savvy about web page technology that they can accurately judge what you are doing, and whether you can fruitfully resist their demands. You seem to be skeptical of their position because you are "not affecting their servers in any way". The TOS is not about affecting their servers, it is about affecting their intellectual property. It appears that your code does a number of the prohibited actions such as and perhaps most importantly "modify". If you have distributed a program that allows users to modify company content on their own computers, then the user might be in violation of the TOS, but not you (since you're not running a server that redistributes). However, I am betting that in order to create and test the program you had to violate the TOS. Additionally, you could be vicariously liable for the infringements of others, especially if this program can only be used to infringe on copyright, and you know this fact. That is pretty much the end of the legal part. As for how you should respond, your attorney, and not Law SE, deals in recommendations.
Is she allowed to short the stocks of some company trading in this other metal, before she publishes her result ? Generally speaking, yes. The main exceptions consist of her being under certain form of fiduciary duty toward the company of which she is shorting stock, or (2) her transactions being motivated by superior knowledge resembling insider trading or fraud. Absent an element of fiduciary duty or insider trading, what you describe is an entirely valid arms-length transaction. Indeed, this happens all the time in financial markets, except that a lawful asymmetry of information may come in forms other than the scientific discovery of new metallic alloys (example: statistical models developed by the entity). Searching for case law containing the terms in italics will show you how these concepts supposedly are applied. For instance, see Procter &amp; Gamble Co. v. Bankers Trust, 925 F.Supp. 1270 (1996): No fiduciary relationship exists ... [where] the two parties were acting and contracting at arm's length. Moreover, courts have rejected the proposition that a fiduciary relationship can arise between parties to a business relationship. (citations omitted) You will notice that the court in Procter &amp; Gamble points to case law in the sense that a party's superior knowledge imposes on him a contractual duty to disclose that information. But the notion of superior knowlege as applied in case law seems typically narrowed down to situations where the seller conceals defects for which he is responsible (Haberman v. Greenspan, 82 Misc.2d 263 (1975)) or when the concealment resembles fraud. Haberman points to a case of fraud where (1) the seller of a boat before the sale took it from where it lay and placed it afloat in a dock to prevent the examination of the bottom which the seller knew to be unsound [...]; and (2) where the seller of a log of mahogany turned it in order to conceal a hole (citations omitted). That is different from the superior knowledge that a party obtains through the design of superseding techniques. It would be extremely inept for a court to rule against a party for trading without first bringing everyone up to speed as to her superseding developments. Not only that would contradict the tenets of trade secrets, perhaps patents, and so forth, but in the context you outline it would create inconsistencies with respect to other financial instruments associated to the same perception of downside risk that is inherent to taking a short position on stocks.