Terms and Conditions Clarification

Not that long ago there was a complaint that it was too hard to read the long OGS Terms and Conditions in order to find out if you are allowed to cheat or harass people at OGS or not.

This has now been rectified.

You aren’t allowed to cheat or harrass people at OGS.

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In case that wasn’t abundantly obvious to everyone :smirk:

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Wait what, since when has harassment been prohibited? Does that also include trolling and sexual harassment?

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Relax, from how I’ve read it it might still be allowed if you cheat at the same time! :wink:

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Depending on who you ask, neither of those things exist :wink: thus the ‘guidelines’

It might not depend on how you read it :wink:

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By using our service you agree not to:
[…]

  • Intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law

I just wondered how to avoid unintentionally violating the law. :thinking:

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If you get banned, I guess you’ll know why (or maybe not) :wink:

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umm… what international laws are applicable on ogs?

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It breaks my :heart: that this post had to be created.

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Yes, it’s nonsense.

You can “intentionally” do something and you can also agree to refrain from (intentionally) doing something.

You cannot “agree […] not to unintentionally” anything.

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Isn’t this just another way of saying ignorance of the law is no excuse?

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Why not? Let’s say in Clean Air Land you agree not to fart intentionally or unintentionally. Person A farts intentionally and is thrown out. Person B farts unintentionally and is also thrown out, because they agreed not to fart intentionally or unintentionally.

Other terms of services also have this. https://google.com/search?q=“agree+not+to”+“unintentionally”

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How can I cheat in go besides knowing who’s connection is worse for time tesuji? If its AI make the leela bot alert of games where it finds players that play suspiciously close to her ideas, then it is anulled.

Other forms of cheating include:

  • collusion, where players form a team and agree to lose to each other so that one of them will win. I’ve also seen this done by the same person using alternate accounts.
  • sandbagging, where a player deliberately keeps their rating low to play ranked games against lower rated players.
  • airbagging, where a player plays stupid moves to goad their opponents into resigning as a waste of their time.
  • score phase cheating, where a player mis-marks stone status and the other player inadvertently accepts the result.
  • time cheating, where a player returns to play after a few minutes’ absence to steal the win when the other player thought the game was abandoned.
  • assistance, where a player takes advice on move choices during a game or allows a stronger player to move for them.
  • various combinations of these acts, and others I can’t think of right now.
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I doubt I have to enumerate all the reasons why appeal to popularity is fallacious.

And yes, you can write a text that contains the words “I agree to” and then follow it up with nonsense, that is entirely feasible. You can not, however, if you’re acting in good faith, ask from others to “not unintentionally” do anything. What you’re doing there is to try to escape the rather difficult task to prove intent. That’s all it is.

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Nope. We’re saying, “Even if you don’t intend it, but you do the thing, you agree we can throw you out.”

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No, that’s not what you’re saying. If that’s what you meant to say, that’s what you should replace it with.

More accurate would be “You accept that we reserve judgement on whether you did the thing, and if we deem you to have done the thing, regardless of intent, we can/may/will throw you out.”

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Rest assured, any appeal to popularity was “unintentional.” :wink:

What I meant to show by the link was that the phrasing in our TOS is boilerplate. In other words, it’s standard language that courts have upheld as having a particular legal meaning, even if we can’t agree among ourselves that the phrasing actually makes sense.

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Would it even be ToS law if it did make sense? :stuck_out_tongue:

Good God man, you’re giving them ideas! :joy::joy::joy:

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