We moved our San Francisco offices this week (a block away) and had to update our address in a bunch of places. I took that as an opportunity to review our Terms of Use.

Very little needs changing, but I wanted to share the updates clearly in this blog post. You may view the original Terms of Use here.

Changes

• Updated office address.
• Updated email address for questions about the Terms of Use. The previous one was a spam magnet.
• Added the section Blocking Services. When we launched in July 2006, we didn’t have domain blocking or adult site blocking. Now we do. This section is broad enough to cover additional categories and like functionality in the future.
• Updated the tense in the section Content Posted by User(s). The text previously read:
  

  “OpenDNS may, in the future, provide features through the Service which allow users to upload, submit, disclose, distribute or otherwise post Content at or on the Site or otherwise through the Service.”

  We’ve added forums and your own custom image and announcement on the Guide page during the last year. The future is here, and the first part of the sentence now reads “OpenDNS provides features…”

• Added clarification to make clear that the Creative Commons license and copyright applied to our Terms of Use. The “work” referred to in the license is the Terms of Use itself and not the entire OpenDNS website.

Earlier this month, I noted that the OpenDNS privacy policy was posted using a Creative Commons license (ShareAlike 2.5, to be exact).

I’m pleased to follow the same practice (and the same license) for the OpenDNS Terms of Use. At the bottom of each document, you’ll see the notation about the license.

For the Terms of Use, we started with our own document, but the point here is to aid others in this process in the future, if they so desire. Good lawyers (like ours) are expensive; maybe this will save you some time (read: money). You will still need to consider the differences between your business and ours, of course. If you use our Terms as a starting point, please let us know. I’d even go so far as to ask for a link…but it’s not absolutely required.

The Terms of Use is not an exciting document, I’m afraid, but the Terms are important. They cover such areas as conduct, liability, indemnity, registration, (no) warranties, and more. Please read ours. Ask questions if you like.

For updates to the Terms of Use, we’ll post notice here on the OpenDNS blog, flagging the entry with the dull-but-descriptive category “OpenDNS Terms of Use.” The resulting category page should be refreshing simple. I’d be thrilled if it was only a single post for months or years at a time. Of course, if you read the Terms, you’ll notice that, ultimately, it’s still “your responsibility to check the Terms of Use periodically for changes.” Had to mention that.