don’t let lawyers make business decisions.

lawyers clarify the legal implications of business decision made by the business decision makers. how can you tell that the business decision makers are taking the easy way out and letting the lawyers run the show? one good sign is when wierd stuff starts to appear in things like “terms of service” or “acceptable use” contracts. unfortunately, as russel beattie points out, it looks like the lawyers are playing games with the ‘terms and conditions’ of google’s adsense program. most laughable is term 17, which prevents you from criticizing the the terms of agreement. i wonder if technorati is in violation for linking to people who are criticizing the terms and conditions.

clearly, this this stupidity is bad for business. even though i recently qualified for the adsense program, i won’t be participating. and while that might not be a bid deal for ex machina, where the ads wouldn’t work anyway, the {bio, medical} informatics section gets a fair amount of traffic from people in life sciences labs who make purchasing decisions. so they won’t be seeing adsense ads and buying stuff from adsense advertisers until the terms and conditions are changed to be less draconian and there’s a more transparency in the payment process.

don’t let lawyers make business decisions.