Post
Topic
Board Service Announcements
Re: [Payout Updates] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation
by
Phinnaeus Gage
on 12/06/2012, 22:31:28 UTC
I believe that the company had plans to amend the Terms of Service to mention the illegibility of NZ non-accredited/non-institutional investors for Bitcoinica service.

You mean the Terms of Service available at: https://bitcoinica.com/pages/tos ?

Oh, that's right - Customers did not have access to terms of service for over a month, at a time where it matters the most.

Speaking of ToS:

Quote
[17] Force Majeure

You agree that Bitcoinica will not be liable in any way to you or to any other person in the event of force majeure, or for the act of any Government or legal authority, or for the failure of or damage or destruction to its computer systems, data or records or any part thereof, or for delays, losses, errors or omissions resulting from the failure or mismanagement of any telecommunications or computer equipment or software. The parties shall be released of all responsibilities for partial, full or non-fulfillment, as well as for improper fulfillment of the obligations under this Agreement, if such non-fulfillment or improper fulfillment was a result of extraordinary events, which occurred after this Agreement was concluded and which the party could not either foresee or prevent (natural calamities, wars, armed conflicts etc.).

I assume Bitcoinica is not treating this incident as Force Majeure? If not, how is Bitcoinica LP treating it?


Let's assume that those tos are geniune.

See bold text. Bitcoinica, who the hell came up with this drivel for you. Do you really think you can write this shit into Force Majeure and everything is hanky dory and you can just continue to be be as grossly negligent as you are? Yea nice lawmanship. Get proper lawyer to draft for you the terms. Bitcoinica, with such drivel in force majeure clause you are way better off without one.

tl;dr Bitcoinica thinks that having their computers hacked releases it from any liabilities to everyone.

I don't see what's so shocking about that.  Isn't that exactly what Linode thinks (as was written in their ToS), and, infact, what ended up being the case for the big hack a few months ago?  If I remember, all Bitcoinica ended up getting was an apology and an offer of free service for a year.

Edit:  To be clear, I'm not defending that practice, I'm simply pointing out that it doesn't seem to be uncommon and it's apparently enforceable.

I wonder if it's binding when it's only copied and pasted from some other website: https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=14&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22or+records+or+any+part+thereof%2C+or+for+delays%2C+losses%22

~Bruno~