Landowners and Liability: Infinite Outdoors’s Unmatched Protection in the Outdoor Space
Sam Seeton
04/10/2024
Unlike other platforms, Infinite was founded and funded, in near totality, by actual landowners on the IO app. When we were first building out the Infinite Outdoors platform, the mission was “How can we better manage the access to our OWN land as safely and profitably as possible?”. If you take nothing else away from this article, just know that my own ranch, family farm, AND family ranch are all listed on our platform. Our CTO has his own ranch in Oregon on the platform and the third board member of Infinite also has his family ranches also on the platform. If it wasn’t good enough to manage our own land, how could we expect it to work for other ranchers?
For literally hundreds of years, my family (Seeton’s, Armstrong’s and Carpenter’s) had ranches, bought ranches, sold ranches and, in times of trouble, lost ranches across the West. In my specific case, and where I grew up, was on our family ranch near Buena Vista, Colorado. This was also where my father had been a small-town doctor for years. What do you get when you mix a history of family ranching with a father who is a physician? A healthy fear of lawyers and a “trust but verify” mindset with people! In other words, if we were to build a powerful platform to help landowners earn more income, we sure as heck were going to do all we can to protect against liability too. Sadly, the days of a handshake and a 6-pack of Banquet are gone thanks to a few bad apples and the greed of a few lawyers. Luckily, we are here to help leverage technology to help restore the ways of old. In this blog I will quickly break down some of the ways we have pioneered our technology to help protect you and your land.
Terms of Service: Before the first line of code was ever written, we invested heavily in our embedded legal work. To the tune of more money than most ranching operations make in a year! This is no cookie-cutter umbrella of legal work but is entirely custom and catered to the IO platform. The three-prong protection (four prong if you add in an outfitter agreement or extra landowner form) is made up of a user Terms of Service (TOS), Privacy Policy, and the Landowner Listing agreement. These three documents sets all work in conjunction to protect the landowner from the users and explicitly outline the scope of all interactions. Even better is when and how users must consent to the documents. Every user not only digitally consents to these documents when they join but EVERY time they book a hunt.
Booking Flow: The unique booking flow also requires every guest of the trip to be an IO member, consent to the terms, and consent again to join any adventure. That not enough? The terms of service not only has users release liability for all activity and consent to punishment for rule infractions (yup, you can fine users for not following the rules) but the party leader of each group is also consenting to take full legal responsibility of all of the people he invites. The party leader still invites all of his guests (up to your established limit), they have to accept the invite, and everyone again consents to the terms and individual access fees. To highlight the key takeaways, every person on your land has agreed to the TOS and to hold you harmless TWICE at minimum, the party organizers has agreed to also be responsible for his group, plus countless more pages of disclosures and consents all designed to keep bad-faith actors at arm’s length that is all digitally tracked.
Membership Application/ Vetted members: Another unique feature of Infinite is the “membership” component. This was entirely designed to build a community that could be trusted by landowners. Not only do they have to show that their commitment to conservation through a partial donation of their $40/yr membership but there is also a required application that needs to be completed before being able to book any properties. This application is all digital and consists of a dozen or so questions that MUST be answered correctly to be allowed to book anything. These questions are anything from “have you ever been convicted of a felony” to “have you had any wildlife violations” and even “have you ever attempted to sue anyone for any reason”. A “yes” to any of the question we have deemed as mandatory will result in the inability to ever book properties on the platform.
Custom Liability Wavers: Want your specific liability waver to also be on your listing? No problem! We can add it to also be electronically consented to right alongside our standard Terms of Service.
Blacklist Anyone: Did you have to fine one of the hunters on your land and don’t want them back? Is your neighbor a member of PETA? Does your daughter’s new husband forget to address you as “ma’am” or “sir”? Just tell us who you want restricted from ever booking your property and they will be blocked, no questioned asked.
Digital payment processing/ Fining: As illuded to above, you can set your own rules and regulations and even set monetary fines for non-compliance. While this is a great tool to have, it is almost never implemented thanks to the fact that is CAN be done. Sportsmen are generally great people… but even better when they know their credit card can be ran if they don’t play by the rules.
Liability Insurance: While we still recommend carrying your own insurance plan or rider for hunting/ fishing, Infinite also holds a substantial general liability policy! The intent is to add another layer of protection on the very off chance that a user finds a way through all the other safeguards… or even to help cover the attorney fees until the accuser loses the case and is found liable for attorney fees (as is also included in the user Terms of Service).
Management Insurance: This insurance aspect is often overlooked- what do you do if there is an error in map boundaries or someone accuses you of false advertising on your trip listing? Well, we obviously included that in the legal work so, again, not something that should be able to be alleged by any user, but if all else fails we have insurance for that too! Both plans were crafted in a similar manor to that of Airbnb.
Hopefully it is evident now that we have taken unprecedented precautions to help limit all liability and feel that we have done so in a far more complete manor than some outfitter’s lease or any competitor could ever claim. If there are any further questions, ideas or concerns please feel free to contact an IO representative today. Otherwise, we look forward to a great partnership!