Can a free website have a terms of service? I co-own a free website that recently underwent a spam attack. I have considered a terms of service to keep people from abusing the website. However, upon reading sites that inform me how to create one, I noticed a lot of them have to do with money. Since the website is free, and has no current plans to make money, I do not want the site or any legal things to deal with money. The website also has no relation to any company. Is there a way to tell people that they are not allowed to use the site if they do not follow the rules, and what can I do if they do not follow these?
Yes, you can. An excellent example is this very website - at the bottom of this page you will find a series of links in the footer, one of which is &quot;Terms of Service&quot;. I think you will agree that most people using the Law SE are making no money from it or paying no money to use it and yet the terms of service sets out in black and white what a user of this site can do, and what the repercussions can be if they breach the ToS, so it serves a purpose as an excellent example for your question.
Just at the offset this does not constitute legal advice, just some opinions I have on this point. Technically, you would not be prohibited to generate speech and use it however you like. Under normal circumstances any output generated by the system that does not contravene the service agreement would be your intellectual property. This would include the text and speech generated. Once you go about the request limit you would naturally be required to pay, but until that time you can use the service as a paying customer. Just to clarify this point I would like to make reference to the service license agreement, clause 3, which make reference to the following prohibitions: (a) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile, translate, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to extract any or all of the source code of the Services (subject to Section 3.4 below and except to the extent such restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law); (b) use the Services for High Risk Activities; (c) sublicense, resell, or distribute any or all of the Services separate from any integrated Application; (d) create multiple Applications, Accounts, or Projects to simulate or act as a single Application, Account, or Project (respectively) or otherwise access the Services in a manner intended to avoid incurring Fees or exceed usage limits or quotas; (e) unless otherwise set forth in the Service Specific Terms, use the Services to operate or enable any telecommunications service or in connection with any Application that allows Customer End Users to place calls or to receive calls from any public switched telephone network; or (f) process or store any Customer Data that is subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations maintained by the Department of State. Unless otherwise specified in writing by Google, Google does not intend uses of the Services to create obligations under HIPAA, and makes no representations that the Services satisfy HIPAA requirements. If Customer is (or becomes) a Covered Entity or Business Associate, as defined in HIPAA, Customer will not use the Services for any purpose or in any manner involving Protected Health Information (as defined in HIPAA) unless Customer has received prior written consent to such use from Google. Similarly, as specified here: Customer will not, and will not allow third parties to: (i) use these Services to create, train, or improve (directly or indirectly) a similar or competing product or service or (ii) integrate these Services with any applications for any embedded devices such as cars, TVs, appliances, or speakers​ without Google's prior written permission. These Services can only be integrated with applications for the following personal computing devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. In addition to any other available remedies, Google may immediately suspend or terminate Customer's use of these Services based on any suspected violation of these terms, and violation of these terms is deemed violation of Google's Intellectual Property Rights. Customer will provide Google with any assistance Google requests to reasonably confirm compliance with these terms (including interviews with Customer employees and inspection of Customer source code, model training data, and engineering documentation). These terms will survive termination or expiration of the Agreement. You should also take a look at this and this. However, as per the terms of the agreement the speech generated would be your intellectual property, unless otherwise specified. Good luck!
Owing to the First Amendment, in the United States your recourse would be limited to civil action based on violations of terms of service (meaning that "the authorities" are not going to knock on their doors to tell them to behave). This is not "spam" (which could be regulated) as the term is generally understood. It is annoying, but probably does not constitute threatening or child porn. It might involve violation of an anti-impersonation law such as this one from Texas, if the offender uses the persona of a real person as opposed to a fictitious person). That law, moreover, does not criminalize simple annoying. Prosecution may be possible in the UK.
What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.
At least as of 2011, when regulations under the Information Technology Act related to privacy and data security were issued (some of the relevant statute sections and regulations are linked in this answer at Law.SE), there was no non-contractual right to have your data destroyed, although a terms of service for a site could give you that right contractually. Instead, usually, a term of service agreement will do exactly the opposite and give a site owner an irrevocable right to keep your data forever. I am not aware of any subsequent statutory, regulatory or case law developments in India which have changed this situation, but that kind of tweak of IT Act regulations in India wouldn't necessary make headlines outside of the local IT industry press coverage in obscure trade journals. The EU is the only place of which I am aware that has any individual right to have data destroyed or suppressed even if it doesn't violated copyright, wasn't obtained illegally and isn't fraudulent or defamatory. Even then, as I understand it, in the EU this is not a unilateral right that applies in all circumstances and is instead a specific remedy for certain situations that have a particularly intense privacy aspect to them.
The only real recourse you have is to contact the webhost and try to convince them your content is really yours and file a DMCA Takedown request. How you convince them might be an issue; do you have any old screenshots? Original photos? Any proof that the content and photos are yours? The webhost appears to be https://datacamp.co.uk/ , unless the DNS is being proxied, since DNS points to CloudDNS https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dns:marksmayo.com NZ and UK are members of the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, so there don't appear to be any arguments about not applying copyright law. You willingly gave up the domain, so you have no recourse or valid reason to try and regain ownership of the domain. You could try and contact the new owner of the domain by filing a complaint via the abuse email listed by the domain registar at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?&amp;domain=marksmayo.com But they may not do anything, even if you can prove a copyright violation, since they only handle the domain registration and not the webhosting. How they got the content is another question: who was your webhost when you owned the site? Datacamp? Did they not delete it when you closed your account? How did the new owner come to get it?
Check the website's terms of service. Check to see if you're violating these terms, and check to see if the script you are making enables other people to violate them. Courts don't often look kindly on actions whose sole purpose is enabling someone else to do something that is prohibited. If you're making a script that helps people do something they're allowed to do, in a way that's better for at least somebody and makes nobody worse off, that's often a different story. Major websites will generally indicate whether or not you're allowed to do this. Some sites are fairly strict about prohibiting scraping (e.g. Craigslist, which at one point shut down Padmapper's alternative more-useful presentation of their content). Others, like Wikipedia, much more actively encourage reusing content from their sites as long as you meet certain conditions such as a link back to the original source.
Can a moderation team in a game extend a ban that you have just because they want to TL;DR Yes and no. It's their platform and you broke the rules that you agreed to. Therefore, you forfeited your right to use the service for as long as they deem appropriate up to and including forever. In exercising this power they must act reasonably which, in the absence of anything in the contract (and I can't see anything) means that their response must be proportionate and offer you procedural fairness. It's possible that they haven't done this - it may even be likely. However, in order to have this overturned, clause 24 of the EULA requires you to take the dispute to arbitration. Clause 24.4 sets out how to initiate this.