New Tractis Terms Of Service

When David Blanco asked me to revise the Terms of Service for Tractis, he made it clear that they should be exhaustive and precise, but easy to understand. This is not at all easy for those of us used to complex and disorganized ‘verbal diarrhoea’ which uses strange (and often nasty) jargon.

I am confident that the new legal text, which constitutes the terms of service – that is to say a contract that binds the users with Negonation, with their responsibilities, guarantees and limitations – will be easy to understand. However, given that users rarely read such documents, I think it’s important to highlight some of the more relevant points.

Confidentially and Data Protection.

The ultimate purpose of Tractis, that is, the negotiation and signing of legal documents, requires for obvious reasons due confidentially, not just to protect the identity and signature of the parties, but above all the content of the texts. Spanish law (basically ‘Ley Orgánica 15/1999 de 13 de diciembre’ which describes the protection of personal data), implements not just the European directive but also establishes the strictest regulation in the European Union, defining a real standard with regard to privacy and confidentiality and imposing security measures that allow the user – who is the person who chooses whether the document they negotiate in Tractis is public or private – to decide the accessibility and management of the data with the due guarantees. The folder of each user is registered with the Spanish Data Protection Agency, and the user can freely consult it.

Intellectual Property

One of the advantages of Tractis is its public library, which contains freely available document templates that other users have uploaded. This causes two problems. On one hand the violation of the rights of 3rd parties by including texts, in all or in part, copied without authorisation or plagiarised. The responsibility for this act must fall on the person who uploaded the document. On the other hand, we need to preserve the rights of people who, as part of their work or voluntarily, contribute documents to improve Tractis. So, to those that make available such content, we recognise the corresponding moral rights (one of which is that their authority over these rights is mentioned), and determine the terms under which they surrender the exploitation rights to the platform such that their work cannot be legally used by others, prohibiting in the conditions of use that anyone can extract their text from the platform and commercially exploit it without the consent of the authors.

Responsibilities

It is important to state clearly what Tractis is and isn’t. Tractis is a platform that allows users to interact. It’s not an intermediary in the sense that it doesn’t interfere nor take any interest in the negotiations that parties are involved in. In this sense Negonation is responsible for what is referred to as the technical functionality of the platform, for the storage and presentation of the information and for the management of the digital certificates that faithfully identify the parties, such that they are valid. What could be seen as a limitation of responsibility is also a guarantee of neutrality and independence such that remains at the edge of the legal business in question.

Finally, this is probably the best moment to respond to any doubts, queries or suggestions that users might have, so go ahead…

By Javier Prenafeta
Saved in: Legal, Tractis | No comments » | 16 December 2007