OwnTerms

About

OwnTerms is designed as a repository for “boilerplate” legal documents: those that every web site, startup, or entrepreneur needs but doesn’t want to draft in a lawyer for. Too often, these documents are simply copied and pasted from another site, with references changed where needed — and while the copyright status of legal documents is unclear, the cost and trouble of defending a suit for copyright infringement wouldn’t be worth the effort.

All the documents on OwnTerms are licensed under a Creative Commons license, enabling anyone to take them and edit them for their own use provided certain conditions are met. Generally, these conditions are attributing the original document, and making sure any modifications are under the same license.

In addition, OwnTerms serves as a starting point for the process of wikifying law. In his chapter OpenSource.law, in International Commons in the Digital Age, Marcus Bornfreund writes:

The term “open source” is broadly understood to refer to a community-centric framework which advocates sharing of information and the collaborative development of information-based products of all mediums and genres. Based on empirical evidence with respect to text-based open source products, eg. Creative Commons Canada’s success with drafting and reviewing the cc-ca licence, there is every reason to believe that this methodology will map well onto the practice of law.

On the OwnTerms Wiki, we invite members of the legal profession to help draft additions to the repository, and discuss improvements to our current documents.