Questions tagged [legal]
Questions about the legal aspects of Stack Exchange sites, such as the terms of service, using content and/or code-snippets, attribution, copyrights, patents, using trademarks, etc. General legal questions are OFF-TOPIC but may be asked on Law Stack Exchange.
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Does the Share-alike clause of the content license mean software code content can't be used other than in open-source software?
Does the current applicability of the CC-BY-SA 4.0 to most Stack Overflow content actually mean that one can only embed (or adapt) code content from Stack Overflow in their own software if they make ...
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5
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Mod strike: Is it realistic to require a no-comment press policy?
This is by and large a reaction to Does the company acknowledge misusing the press, and why won't it agree on a no-comment policy?
Do we believe it's realistic to require the company to commit to ...
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3
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Does linked content count as "Subscriber Content" under the TOS?
The SE TOS defines "Subscriber Content" as:
any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or ...
- 25.9k
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1
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Posting content under licenses besides CC BY-SA 4.0
If I post content (authored by me) on an SE site, and I have released it under some license X, how does this work with the SE TOS (even though it links to SO I assume it's applicable to all sites ...
- 25.9k
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Do basically all ~1500 people on strike need to separately enter into "mandatory arbitration" after 90 days?
Currently there is an ongoing strike (Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers) which has led to (as at the time of writing)
124 ...
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2
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Is SE in violation of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license by not providing data dumps?
SE is no longer providing data dumps for the content contributed by their users.
CC BY-SA 4.0 states:
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally ...
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43
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2
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How can SE gate access to the Dump that will allow individuals access to the data while preventing "misuse" by for-profit organizations?
I read this answer written by Jody Bailey:
We are looking for ways to gate access to the Dump, APIs, and SEDE, that will allow individuals access to the data while preventing misuse by organizations ...
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149
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1
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Please follow your own policies on making new policies
Your policy on making policies is crystal-clear:
Stack Exchange, Inc. agrees that it will:
[...] Post previews for review of all new official policies in the Moderators Teams instance with the policy ...
- 2,994
12
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1
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We've updated the Data Subject Rights (DSR) request page
We’ve updated the Data Request page to use a native solution from our consent provider, OneTrust.
What is changing?
Data Subject Rights (DSR) requests, as a part of Stack Overflow’s global privacy ...
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7
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Is SE legally allowed to sell user content for AI model training despite the fact that some of this content is not allowed to be used to train AIs?
SE Inc. wants to sell our content to some companies for AI training. However, some of our content is not allowed to be used to train AIs. E.g., since ChatGPT hasn't been banned on all SE sites, some ...
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Moderator Agreement signing deadline
In the Moderator Agreement I see the deadline timings for only accepting the new agreement (emphasis is mine):
Announce changes to the moderator agreement no less than sixty days before the deadline ...
- 62.3k
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If a company makes a commercial use of an AI model trained on SE data and attribute all authors, will SE Inc. not charge them?
I read Is SE [going to be] selling our content for AI model training? And what exactly does "reinvest back into our communities" mean?. SE Inc. indicates that the will charge some firms if ...
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Can SE just resell our data, relicense it and remove the attribution requirement?
SE has decided to charge for the network content when used for training AI according to an article. This has not been officially announced here, so we do not know the details.
But the main question to ...
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Is SE [going to be] selling our content for AI model training? And what exactly does "reinvest back into our communities" mean?
Wired published an article titled Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data. I read through it, and a few sections seemed noteworthy to me
"Community platforms that fuel LLMs ...
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YouTube channel scraping Q&A from Stack Exchange [duplicate]
There is this horrible YouTube channel scraping Q&A from Stack Exchange without attribution to the author of either question or answers, and no links to the original post.
Stack Exchange licenses ...
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Is Stack Exchange going to limit content related to work about open-source code or statistical data likely to be under a ban in the United States?
The Office of Foreign Assets Control which is the agency for managing sanctions, took sanctions not only against the organisation of an open source project, but made it broad enough to target the open ...
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77
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2
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This year's Winter Bash violates the Geneva Conventions (no, really)
I know the title of this post sounds like a bit of an exaggeration - but it's not; the 'Lifesaver' hat awarded in this year's bash which includes the red cross emblem violates Article 53 of the Geneva ...
- 1,103
48
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1
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910
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Replace Google Analytics with a transparent, privacy-respecting alternative
Earlier this year, Google announced that Universal Analytics (UA) will be going away and will stop processing new data after July 1, 2023.
Stack Exchange currently plans to switch to Google Analytics ...
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38
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7
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Google Analytics 4 (GA4) upgrade
Update Sep 14: GA4 has been enabled network-wide.
Update Sep 8: GA4 has been enabled on Super User.
TL;DR: We’re preparing to upgrade Google Analytics to version 4.
A few months ago, the Google ...
tanj92Staff
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How to give attribution when using the same code on multiple webpages [closed]
I am very new to the Stack Overflow community. I noticed that there are several excellent answers here that can help me to build a website. I am a little bit aware of the License CC BY-SA 4.0 applied ...
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Do I have to worry about patent issues for code posted on Stack Overflow?
I purposely named this question similar to Do I have to worry about copyright issues for code posted on Stack Overflow?. Since Fedora is banning CC-0 licensed source code citing issue of explicitly ...
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How to ensure that ownership of all my contributions on the Stack Exchange network is transferred to Community Wiki after my demise? [duplicate]
I wish my affairs to be settled when I'm dead. This includes avoiding the false impression that I am still alive and reachable when actually I am dead. This also means that internet accounts that I ...
user1230597
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Are the private-beta sites also under Creative Common license?
The SE questions/answers are under the CC BY-SA license (ref).
Does it also include the beta sites that are still in the private stage?
--> If yes, isn't there a contradiction between this license ...
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32
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1
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Is the Texas anti-censoring law a concern for SE sites?
Texas has recently passed a bill that allows users to sue social media sites for "censoring" their content. To quote CNN:
Texas’s law makes it illegal for any social media platform with 50 ...
- 71.1k
103
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1
answer
1k
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Stop tracking users without their consent
Right now, if you visit an SE site the following things happen:
two cookies _ga and _gid are saved, those contain unique IDs used for Google Analytics
a request is made to www.google-analytics.com ...
- 184k
12
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1
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364
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Form to request erasure under GDPR doesn't indicate that attribution will be removed from all posts, a possible license violation
It's long been the case that when a user requests their account be deleted, all of their contributions are dissociated from their name. This would ordinarily be considered a violation of the CC BY-SA ...
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0
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Child protection: adding recognition filters to block obvious offensive content related to pornography
We've had yet another unsuitable post on Worldbuilding.
The title was innocent enough:
I'm think of making steam punk/fansty hybrid do you have any
suggestions
The body of the question contained ...
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4
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1
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How does this site avoid copyright infringement?
Once in a while I see the Worldbuilding site.
But if answers from this site literally become integrated into books, games, movies, apps and so on, how does the user of the answer avoid any claim to ...
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19
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Stack Exchange proxied by Chinese government listed as a Google search result
I was googling some problems and noticed some results (on the first page) pointing to
http://security.stackexchange.com.3567586363.proxy.jyj.lf.gov.cn/questions/112355/how-to-further-ensure-ssh-...
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Typo in the "Public Network Terms of Service"
In the Public Network Terms of Service page, there is a typo. In the second point, the character "e" is missing from word "Enforceable".
Contracts are Binding and Legally ...
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90
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We’ve made changes to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy - January 2022
We’ve just made two adjustments to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy. They were made to return a section that was accidentally removed about the DMCA Designated Agent - there’s little to no ...
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189
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1
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Why is the Google Analytics cookie defined as "strictly necessary" and saved without consent?
When you open a Stack Exchange site the first time you are asked about your consent for storing cookies. You can disallow all cookies except those that are defined as "strictly necessary". ...
- 184k
16
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1
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291
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Can I make a YouTube video about SO content?
There are many interesting SO questions that have many good answers and many good comments. I want to make an animated YouTube video about a question and some answers to help visual learners better ...
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Is Stack Exchange affected by Facebook's application for a trademark on "Meta" for Q&A?
Facebook the company (aka Meta Platforms Inc.) has filed a trademark application for the wordmark "Meta" on over a thousand kinds of goods and services, including:
Downloadable software ...
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3
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Why is Stack Exchange using dark patterns on its cookie permission dialog?
It would appear as though Stack Exchange is employing a dark pattern in its cookie permission dialogs.
Specifically, there are two buttons presented in the initial dialog. The colour depends on the SE ...
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0
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Send an email to users if any changes are made in the privacy policy and/or terms of service
If any changes are made in the privacy policy and/or terms of service of SE/SO, please send an email to the users (at least a month in advance before the legal agreement comes into effect).
For ...
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1
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What are restrictions on screenshots from Stack Exchange that I want to post on my Blog?
I run a blog with a friend of mine on Digital Easter Eggs, and I wanted to document some of the Easter Eggs all over the site. Since it is possible that I might take screenshots of the same, I wanted ...
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2
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Stack Overflow vs. Prosus on social justice: How does Stack Overflow plan to deal with Naspers past?
The events of the scandal involving firing of moderators a year ago made some things clear. Stack Overflow did several things wrong in that affair, but taking a firm stance against anti-trans members ...
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2
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User data in light of Stack Overflow's / Stack Exchange, Inc.'s acquisition
I would like to know how the acquisition impacts our user data, and specifically private user data.
I am aware that a large part of our contributions could be scraped from the outside (or even, ...
- 1,887
13
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1
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Privacy updates?
I can see that Stack Overflow does not participate in the Privacy Shield program since 2020/04/17. This was two months after the last update on privacy policies and three months before the EU–US ...
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Link to cookie policy doesn't work in "Accept all cookies" popup
See also, a more narrow bug here (tagged "status-completed", incorrectly(?)).
Upon visiting some SE sites (e.g. superuser.com), logged in or not, I receive this popup:
The "Customize ...
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2
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Is Stack Exchange a school/educator? Should SE be qualified/accredited as, and graded like, an academic institution/environment/school, legally?
Should Stack Exchange be considered like a school/academic environment (legally)? Would that qualify it a for-profit or non-profit university/school?
Would academic qualifications/standards help? ...
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We’re adding more user controls for cookie consent
Update (Feb 8 2021): We’ll be doing some A/B testing with the consent interface. Once we’ve landed on a final design, we’ll use that design on all of our sites network wide. Additionally, we’re ...
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1
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TOS and Ill/Quasi-legal Activity
I'm a moderator at the Raspberry Pi exchange and just had a question flagged for something involving "illegal behaviour":
RPi4 wifi and captive portal failure
I've closed it as off-topic, ...
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1
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We’re Adding our Subprocessors to the GDPR Section of Our Legal Portal
As part of our continued effort to ensure compliance with the GDPR, we are publishing a list of our subprocessors - a list of third party vendors who process personal information for each of our ...
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Is avoiding to report underage users a violation of the moderator agreement now?
There is a new official policy on reporting underage users by moderators:
What are our policies regarding underage users?.
This is posted with the mod-agreement-policy tag, so it is officially part of ...
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1
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Do users have right to not allow redistribution of their posts?
In my understanding, the CC BY-SA 4.0 license allows me to redistribute any material posted in Stack Exchange, as long as I put a link back to the original post. Does that mean a user has a right to ...
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1
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Why are moderators now required to report underage users?
Just today (December 2, 2020), a new moderator agreement policy was enacted, which requires moderators to report users that they find to be underage:
If you find a user claiming to be under 16 ...
29
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1
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What are our policies regarding underage users?
What are the age requirements for using the Stack Exchange network and what should moderators do if they encounter an underage user?
- 18.9k
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Is moving self-answers in questions into separate answers under the Community user valid under CC BY-SA?
Prompted by my question at How best to deal with self-answers edited into questions? which was somewhat answered with a link to What to do when OP answers his/her own question in an edit?, which then ...
- 4,106