Questions tagged [licensing]
Questions about the licensing of content on Stack Exchange sites.
267
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Are Stack Exchange blog articles also under Creative Common license?
Recently I stumbled on the site of an IT company that replicated the entire article "Do large language models know what they are talking about?" with attribution.
For basic content on the ...
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3
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186
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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
4
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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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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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40
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0
answers
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Stopping data dumps to "protect data" - harmful and threatening to the community
I find it a bit odd that "senior leadership is working on a strategy to protect Stack Overflow data from being misused by companies building LLMs", but historically has only cared about ...
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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 ...
- 34.8k
20
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0
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Will SE tell us if they sell our content?
So, the CEO of Stack Exchange has been quoted in a news article saying that they plan to sell the content of the SE network to large companies training neural networks like the one used for ChatGPT. ...
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13
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When did Stack Exchange start to dual-license user content?
Stack Exchange currently dual-licenses user content, which allows them to sell user content without attributing users. When did the dual-licensing start?
The Wayback Machine's first save of the ToS ...
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7
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1
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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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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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29
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2
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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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0
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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 ...
- 165
8
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1
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License link on SEDE archive page points to wrong BY-SA version
On the Stack Exchange Data Explorer Help page, there is a link to the Internet Archive page. On the Stack Exchange Archive page, there is a section for licensing, with the following description:
All ...
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Post disassociation requests should also apply to the author's messages in chat rooms generated from comments on the post
A while ago I made a question, and later decided to be disassociated from that question. However doing so does not completely disassociate your account from this question.
If a comment thread gets ...
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Show license info for tag excerpts and wikis explicitly
All user contributions on Stack Exchange are licensed (currently under CC-BY-SA 4.0). Back in 2020, Creative Commons Licensing UI and Data Updates made a change in showing the license explicitly for Q&...
- 12.2k
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Make license terms more prominent
A lot of people are unaware of license terms that apply to code pieces posted on Stack Overflow or the internet in general. This is from my own experience but is also stated in a paper here. And some ...
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0
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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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0
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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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27
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2
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What license do the help center articles that are editable by moderators fall under?
I was looking at the text of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which is the license used by posts on the SE network. Specifically, I noted the phrase that...
You must give appropriate credit, provide a link ...
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9
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1
answer
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Who has ownership of a Question/Answer after the account that posted it is deleted? [duplicate]
There has been some questions surrounding post ownership after a user voluntarily deleted their account and now they have a new account on the site. In a recent meta they referenced it as their post ...
- 2,706
12
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1
answer
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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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Why does the license link take me to Stack Overflow's license page? [duplicate]
The license information in the lower right corner of every page links to https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing instead of to the site's (existing) corresponding page (for example, on the Cross ...
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17
votes
1
answer
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Can I make a YouTube video adapting Stack Overflow content?
There are many interesting questions on Stack Overflow, 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 ...
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1
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Why does my comment show 41 "license: CC by SA 4.0"? Are all comments protected under copyright?
Why does my comment show this?
41 license: CC by SA 4.0
Are all comments protected under "creative commons" copyright? What does 41 mean? Why not 1 license - why 41?
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1
answer
359
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How can I correctly specify the license for my code snippets? [duplicate]
Per default, code snippets posted on Stack Overflow are licensed under CC BY-SA-*; see https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing. This includes a share-alike obligation and attribution obligation, both ...
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4
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2
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Is it against the rules to link from my own, monetized site to a question or answer on SE?
I want to document my progress on various projects and, as part of that documentation, I want to publish the questions I ask on the various SE sites. The website will be monetized. The questions I ask ...
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Tags assigned to a question should be CC BY-SA licensed
Glorfindel♦ wrote:
The CC BY-SA license only covers content. Tags are (apparently) considered metadata.
Feature request: Tags assigned to a question should be CC BY-SA licensed.
Answers to comments:...
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9
votes
1
answer
133
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Why aren't tag edits and comments licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0 in post timelines?
E.g.:
Why aren't tag edits and comments licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0 in post timelines?
- 34.8k
5
votes
1
answer
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Can I reuse and republish code snippets from Stack Exchange sites under a new license?
I want to start a project, Scheme Cookbook, with a better license because an old cookbook, that is no longer available online, was licensed under LGPL, which requires the inclusion of the license with ...
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21
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0
answers
412
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To who are translations licensed in Stack Exchange international sites that are submitted by community users?
International sites translate much of their content (other than questions and answers) with the help of community users.
How are these contributions licensed?
There are more than 10,000 strings, not a ...
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4
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1
answer
137
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Can “Community Wiki” become public domain? [duplicate]
What is the license of an answer marked community wiki?
It seems a normal answer is CC-BY-SA, which can possibly not be kept for community wiki contributions, since the author becomes the community.
...
user165536
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1
answer
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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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16
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2
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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 ...
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2
answers
167
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Can I include material from Wikipedia in a Stack Exchange post?
Now that Stack is on CC BY-SA 4.0, is it possible to include material from Wikipedia, which still uses CC BY-SA 3.0? I have no desire to be a lawyer, but I'm given to understand that the two licenses ...
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1
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If a user copies content from another SO post into his own post verbatim, is the attribution required according to the license?
Backstory:
We recently had a situation on ru.SO, where a new user had posted 22 answers in 2 hours, 17 of which were copy-pasted from comments under the corresponding questions. Most of them were ...
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3
votes
1
answer
103
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Rollback of a post to a revision with an older license version does not make the post relate to that older license version
A month ago it was noticed that a rollback could change the license version backwards.
In a comment, it was noted by Yaakov Ellis that the license version on a post should relate to the license ...
- 6,515
33
votes
1
answer
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Adding a bounty should not change the license of a post
I found a minor bug, and after a search here on Meta.SE, I discovered that it had been reported all the way back in 2013. To draw a bit of attention to it, I then added a bounty to the post.
The past ...
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7
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0
answers
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Just to clarify the attribution requirements
When a question or answer was posted under one license (e.g. CC BY-SA 3.0), and edited under a different license (e.g. CC BY-SA 4.0), who should be credited as the "author" for attribution ...
- 1,646
23
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1
answer
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CommonMark migration is causing license changes when it should not
CommonMark migration has begun!
Sites across the network have been scheduled for formatting migration, and some of them (Meta Stack Exchange included) have already finished their migration.
It was ...
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0
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I've found an exact copy of a Stack Exchange site answer without giving any credit, is that legal? [duplicate]
I was searching for answers for one of many daily issues we all normally have and found something quite odd. After finding this answer Stack Overflow, I've stumbled upon this one, which is an exact ...
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Stack Exchange Data Dumps still indicating old attribution requirements
The Stack Exchange Data Dumps still contain wording mandating that attribution be given in specific ways, going beyond the Creative Commons licensing requirements:
Specifically the attribution ...
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229
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23
answers
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Creative Commons Licensing UI and Data Updates
When we last updated you to clarify concerns and answer questions about our transition to version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license we committed to posting updates to the UI and addressing unanswered ...
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0
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Stack Exchange copyright - where should we give attribution?
I know that code from the Stack Exchange sites is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA.
So if I use code from Stack Exchange sites, attribution is required (as mentioned in this article).
How ...
user664016
3
votes
1
answer
172
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Forcing a code block when there is a JSFiddle link in a post
Right now, when there's a link from JSFiddle.net in a post you are required to have a code-block, otherwise you'll get an error which won't let you submit your post/edit:
Links to jsfiddle.net must ...
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Does the dual license in the pre-2018 Terms of Service allow SE to permit others to redistribute subscriber content outside of CC BY-SA?
I was reading around the topic of the precise details of subscriber-content licensing on SE, and I found (and read more carefully than the previous times I'd seen it) this thread on FOSS.SE from 2017, ...
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4
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1
answer
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Does Subscriber Content include a referenced text/image?
Does Subscriber Content include a referenced text/image?
You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, ...
- 5,659
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2
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Is it OK to license content under "the latest version of CC BY-SA at the time being"?
So... we've all seen the recent chaos caused by the license change from CC 3.0 to CC 4.0, and it's foreseeable that a similar disaster will occur when changing again to a future version of CC (4.1 or ...
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21
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An Update On Creative Commons Licensing
We’d like to provide you with an update to our transition to version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. We realize that this is something that you care deeply about, and that our response to your concerns ...
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4
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How do I get my content on Stack Exchange licensed correctly or else removed?
I do not agree to my old content being relicensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (it is not the same as 3.0).
Stack Exchange is not the owner of my contributions and is not allowed to change the license without ...
- 6,515