The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum has 21,000 words of legalese on its homepage, a disclaimer and terms-of-service document that is likely the very worst of its kind on the entire Internet. James Grimmelman shreds this thing, picking out the dumbest moments in a 21 kiloword extravanganza of dumbness:
[It] gives every sign of having been professionally drafted by a competent lawyer with severe OCD. It's not quite that any individual term is clearly insane as that the redundancy makes the whole much less than the sum of its parts. We've been cracking each other up by reading selections aloud. Some highlights inside:
"All other access, use, disclosure, reproduction, delayed use, reduction to human-perceivable form, printing, copying or saving of digital image files or other content, reformatting, file sharing, downloading, uploading, storing, posting, mirroring, archiving, recording, distributing, redistribution, repurposing, modification, rewriting, manipulation, creation of derivative works, translations, or products, licensing, sale, transfer, display, public performance, publicity, broadcast, televising, reporting, publication (in whole or part) or transmission whether by http, ftp, electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol, and whether by electronic means or otherwise, or use by other than individual scholars, or commercial use requires prior written permission of the rights owner(s) and payment of a fee, and severe penalties apply for theft and unauthorized publication, which is also a crime."
(Thanks, James!)
