Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause

Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by dunkelheit on Saturday June 13, 2015 @04:55PM (#9712627)

I don't think bickering over registration fee would be a reasonable thing to do. It just promotes the overall litigious atmosphere. The next thing we will see in such contracts is something like 'under no circumstances are participant's costs associated with event refundable, including but not limited to registration fees, travel costs, bla bla bla.' Or maybe it is already there. Much better make the whole thing public like the OP did.

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Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by rgbrenner on Saturday June 13, 2015 @04:58PM (#9712637)

I disagree. The way I see it, they stole $20 by crafting a completely one-sided contract designed to prevent reasonable people from participating in the event, and then foisted it upon participants at the last minute.

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Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by dunkelheit on Saturday June 13, 2015 @05:20PM (#9712718)

Surely that was bad behavior on their part. The question is how to prevent this type of behavior in the future? I think the OP achieved more to this end by making bad behavior public than by mitigating his personal damage. Maybe it is false dichotomy but maybe not (the reason for these contracts is organizing entity trying to cover its ass).

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Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by click170 on Sunday June 14, 2015 @03:12AM (#9714031)

I don't think you understand why this is unacceptable, as evidenced by what you propose "they" will "do next".

> The next thing we will see in such contracts is something like 'under no circumstances are participant's costs associated with event refundable, including but not limited to registration fees, travel costs, bla bla bla.'

This misses the point entirely.

Presenting a contract after the purchase is not acceptable, period. You do not have to agree to anything after the point of sale, and the vendor cannot make the use of your purchase conditional on any such agreement. If they expect any contract to be valid in court it must be presented before sale, full stop.

For more information please see First Sale Doctrine.

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Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by krick on Saturday June 13, 2015 @05:57PM (#9712841)

> just promotes the overall litigious atmosphere

Fair enough. But this contract and the whole registration procedure itself promotes litigious atmosphere in the first place, so my opinion is it would be not only "reasonable" (it would probably be easier to forgive that $20 and travel costs) — it would be the right thing to do.

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Re:Hack4Detroit's indemnification clause by zeckalpha on Saturday June 13, 2015 @05:29PM (#9712736)

For that to work, the contract would have to be agreed upon prior to participant's registration and travel to the event.

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