legalIs is OK to take the terms of service from a website and just change the details, such as names? This might not be advisable, but it seems like a nice shortcut to save some initial legal fees.
In other words, are terms of service and other legal documents public domain?
No, unless stated otherwise, they are not public domain. You could probably get away with copying one and modifying it though. They include a lot of boiler plate legalese and not many people read them anyway. Myspace supposedly used a copied terms of service for several years.
Your terms of service should be tailored to the service you offer though. Changing 'Google' to 'My Company' on the gmail terms of service probably wouldn't leave you with something that made much sense for your project.
If you're serious about the legal usage of your product (it doesn't sound like you are) and you can afford a lawyer, you should definitely work with one to make sure the terms fit your needs. If you want to do it yourself, a simple google search for terms of service templates will give you plenty of options that won't require you to start from scratch. There are also companies to help you create legal documents without a lawyer.
If you do really want to copy a site's terms of service, there are some sites that publish theirs under a copyleft license, like wordpress. To be safe, use one of those, modify it as needed and cite it appropriately.
No, terms of use are implicitly copyrighted, in a similar fashion to any blog post or page on the same site. The fact that a lawyer (probably) wrote it does not make it public domain.
That said, and, boy, this definitely isn’t legal advice, chances are that if you change words here or there to make it a bit more custom to your site, nobody will care, let alone know. Virtually every document of a similar category out there will say essentially the same things, and legal writing tends to be pretty restrictive, so if you find one that sounds pretty generic, you can probably paraphrase it here or there to make it a bit more personal. Try not to change the meaning, but most words in agreements like that are fairly easy to understand (unlike, for example, patent writing, where words tend to take on different meanings and connotations than in general usage), and you should be fine. It might be good to read through several sites’. You’ll quickly get the gist of the kind of language that you’ll want in yours.
Of course, I’d be hesitant of copying Microsoft’s TOS verbatim, but use a little common sense and make sure you aren’t actually stealing any unique parts. I would also only look at sites that specifically license theirs for reproduction, although I still wouldn’t take them verbatim.
Beyond that, I’d recommend just searching for templates. I’m sure there are lots of places on the internet with free privacy policies, or that sort of document, that are meant to be copied to your own works. If you did that, you’d certainly be much less likely to encounter any legal problems down the road.
Of course, if you’re really concerned about it–and I don’t get the impression you are, which is reasonable–it’d be best to at least speak with a lawyer. It might be that they don’t charge as much as you think, or that they heavily advise in your specific circumstances that you do go for something more official than a boilerplate document. In any event, if you couldn’t find any templates, if you read through a few documents and don’t understand them, you probably don’t want to use them. So make sure you’re clear on what they’re saying before you post them on your site.
If you get sued, and that’s the whole point of having these documents up, you don’t want to get caught spewing legal nonsense that you didn’t understand in the first place, especially if you’ve taken it in large part from a completely unrelated company that offers a completely unrelated service. So make it your own, and make sure you understand it, whatever you wind up doing.
Yes and no - but mostly no...
No: They are not public domain simply by virtue of being Legal Documents or even commonly used legal documents. For example if you copy/paste the Privacy Policy from Woot and just change the details to fit your site, Amazon's (they own Woot iirc) legal department probably wouldn't be too happy with you. Whether they'll ever find out or do anything about it is another discussion - but it's not public domain.
Yes: All that said, there are sources out there for templates that are under Creative Commons or similar licensing. A quick Google search for "terms of service template" or "privacy policy template" turns up relevant results. I don't have direct experience with any of the specific sites, so take these links with that in mind, but here are a couple I would be looking closer at if I was looking for a terms of service template:
So the documents themselves as created by a specific company fall under the same copyright terms as any other document, but there are sources available that you are free to use without any copyright issues.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.