Reverse engineering clause in Careers terms of service?

Question

I found this line in the Stack Overflow Careers Terms of Service, which I need to agree to if I wish to file my resume:

You may not reverse engineer, reverse compile or otherwise reduce to human readable form any software associated with the Service.

This seems rather excessive, especially for a programmer-oriented site like Stack Overflow. When I answer questions on Stack Overflow, I sometimes de-minify Stack Overflow's own JavaScript or CSS in order to explain how something works with reference to Stack Overflow itself. According to this, I am not allowed to de-minify any of Stack Overflow Career's code in order to inspect how it works.

I also run nightly build releases of browsers, in order to help find compatibility problems, and sometimes I encounter a bug on a website. Just last week, I found an incompatibility between the nightly build of WebKit and a local job site, and inspected their source to track the bug down and report it. According to this agreement, I would not be able to do the same on Stack Overflow Careers.

Also, "any software associated with the Service"? Like jQuery or WMD? This appears to say that I'm not allowed to de-minify jQuery or WMD, as they are both software associated with the service.

This clause is also troubling, though not a show-stopper:

You agree not to access the Service by any means other than through the interfaces that are provided by Stack Overflow for use in accessing the Service.

Does this mean that I can't use a Greasemonkey script to improve the interface at all, or use any sort of update notification program to notify me of messages without manually logging in to Stack Overflow careers? Why would these uses be forbidden?

This concern has been adequately answered below.

Also, beyond those sections which I have significant problems with, I feel that the terms of service is in general too long, verbose, and full of things that make me uncomfortable. For instance, the choice of law and forum section, the fact that Stack Overflow can unilaterally change the terms of service at its discretion without notice, the fact that I'm required to provide warranties of correctness of all information provided to Stack Overflow (with no value placed on this; how much am I liable for if I make a mistake and accidentally provide some information that is incorrect?), but Stack Overflow makes no warranties to me beyond a 90-day refund period.

And the length of the terms of service is intimidating and, I believe, unnecessary. There's no need to specify illegal activities that are disallowed; they're illegal, of course they're not allowed, that's why there are laws against them. The long section on various kinds of spamming, hacking, and harassment could probably be reduced into one short paragraph. And the agreement repeats its disclaimers of warranty an liability several times, which is redundant. The excessive length means I had to read it twice before I felt reasonably comfortable that I'd seen everything in the agreement. That meant I had to spend a fairly significant amount of time reading and understanding the agreement, when most of that agreement is not particularly relevant to me.

(I'm not sure how to tag this question; it's not exactly a request for a feature, nor is it exactly a bug, so I've marked it as discussion, but I would like to see this actually fixed.)

edit: I'm still waiting on an answer or resolution to this. I would like to file my résumé on Stack Overflow Careers, but the reverse engineering clause is currently preventing me from doing so (the other issues are not stopping me, but they do make me feel a bit uncomfortable). It's especially troubling because, as pointed out in the comments, that clause is forbidding the exact same thing that Stack Overflow itself did in order to enhance the WMD editor that it uses.

I don't agree with the answer (and comments) which say in essence "don't worry about it, no one will ever call you on it". In order to purchase the service, I would have to state that I agree to the terms of service, which I do not. I refuse to sign my name to something that I fundamentally disagree with; it would be dishonest for me to agree to these terms of service.

Answer 1

Regarding the GreaseMonkey bit I would argue that a SO interface in this sense is not indeed the web site UI proper, but rather any service interface. The service interfaces provided by SO are things like the web site (of course), any API or web service that is officially blessed/released, the data dumps (possibly), etc. With GreaseMonkey you're still accessing the web site interface so it's not a violation of that bit.

Of course, though, INAL...

Answer 2

I wouldn't worry about it:

• It's probably there only for malicious intents. It's up to Jeff whether to sue you or not, and I'm sure he won't sue you for using a Greasemonkey script.
• In some countries (such as most of europe) there are laws that prohibit prohibiting reverse engineering software
• Most of the time it's impossible to prove in court
• Even if it can be proven, if you didn't do anything malicious no jury or judge in their right mind would make you pay more than a few dollars, if anything

Anyways, not a lawyer. But still.. Don't you have anything better to do than to worry about this? :D

Answer 3

As usual, I am not a Lawyer, the following is strictly personal opinion and should not be considered legal advice.

The careers website is a little more strictly legalized than the rest of the "trilogy" for a variety of reasons.

That particular clause, for instance, is likely primarily meant to protect Careers in the event that someone breaks into the system and uses it for nefarious purposes. If sensitive information leaks out, and a person sues Careers, then Careers can point out that another user broke the terms of service, and therefore Careers is slightly less liable than it might be otherwise.

In other words:

• It's unlikely that the agreement will be changed, even if it means that you won't be able to use their service.
• It's unlikely that this particular clause will ever be proactively enforced - it is only meant to be used after-the-fact, not to spur legal action, but to stop legal action.

That being said, the clause says what it says, and means what it means. I can't say that I fully read your question, but:

• If you wrote the question hoping to get the clause changed, sorry - you're probably out of luck.
• If you wrote the question hoping for a legal statement or interpretation from the owners of "Careers", sorry, you're definitely out of luck. Consult with a lawyer if you must understand how this clause is likely to impact you, and the consequences of such action should it occur. At the end of the day, it's not much more than a game of risk/reward.