What legal concerns may be caused by featuring a post on meta? Recently a post on Meta StackOverflow got unfeatured by SE employee, with the explanation that it was done because of some "legal concerns." Given that: similar posts exist on main Meta and are featured there, and the problematic post is still present on MSO, only that the "featured" tag got removed from it What kind of legal concerns might cause such an action? If the post content is problematic, only removing the post (or the problematic part) would help. Featuring posts is a responsibility of moderators, who represent the community, not the company, so I don't think there is a risk of treating the post (or its being featured) as a statement coming from company. So what concerns might be present here?
Risk Assuming there the post has or, more likely, has the potential to become a legal liability then not having it featured reduces the risk of that occurring or the consequences if it does because fewer people see it. For example, assume that a hypothetical post potentially exposes SE to a defamation suit. Reducing the number of people who see the post reduces the chance that the hypothetical poster ever sees it. Further, damages for defamation depend on the extent of damage to reputation - all else being equal, the more people who see it the more damage is done. So why not get rid of it and eliminate the risk altogether? Because legal risk is only one sort of business risk. SE has a reputational risk issue right now and the consequences of being too heavy handed may outweigh the legal risk. Some risks just have to be accepted.
People running web servers are generally liable for contributory culpability, when some user breaks the law by putting the material on the server. There are legal mechanisms for relieving the server guy from this burden. The best-known mechanism is "DMCA takedown", where you publish contact information so that an offended person can serve up a proper legal claim that you are distributing material that they own copyright to. If you follow the rules, you may enjoy "safe harbor" protection against contributory liability: one of the requirements is that you have to take infringing material down. The specific requirements can depend on the nature of the liability and jurisdiction, but generally involves a "hands off" involvement where the person has no knowledge of what's going on on his server. So just disclaiming responsibility does not work. There are other more serious violations, such as distribution of child porn or transmission of top secret information. Jurisdiction is not totally central to internet questions, and I could sue you (the server guy) in US courts, or (depending on the offense: copyright infringement of a particular item) in UK courts. Nailing this down specifically to Sweden is harder, but recall that The Pirate Bay had a whopping judgment against them.
It's not clear exactly what you're asking, when you say "the company I work for" – i.e. are you asking "can they fire me?" (almost certainly they can, even if their TOS thinking is legally misguided – unless in your country there are laws that prevent firing employees). To be certain, you need to hire an attorney who is sufficiently savvy about web page technology that they can accurately judge what you are doing, and whether you can fruitfully resist their demands. You seem to be skeptical of their position because you are "not affecting their servers in any way". The TOS is not about affecting their servers, it is about affecting their intellectual property. It appears that your code does a number of the prohibited actions such as and perhaps most importantly "modify". If you have distributed a program that allows users to modify company content on their own computers, then the user might be in violation of the TOS, but not you (since you're not running a server that redistributes). However, I am betting that in order to create and test the program you had to violate the TOS. Additionally, you could be vicariously liable for the infringements of others, especially if this program can only be used to infringe on copyright, and you know this fact. That is pretty much the end of the legal part. As for how you should respond, your attorney, and not Law SE, deals in recommendations.
If there is a trade mark and if Polaroid owns it and if you infringed it then yes they can force you to remove it. In addition, they could sue you for either damages (i.e. what they lost because of your infringement) or an account of profits (i.e. what you made because of your infringement). That is what trade mark law is for! If the trade mark is registered then this is trivially easy for them to demonstrate. If it is unregistered then it becomes a question of if the mark is clearly recognisable as Polaroid's; IMO they could probably show that it is - those particular border dimensions were distinctive of Polaroid instant cameras for many years. If you want to republish the app, you could probably avoid trade mark issues by allowing users to set the dimensions of the photograph and border, the colour of the border and the location of the caption.
There are a number of existing legal sites that do this, for free or for pay. The main concern for a website operator pertains to the DMCA "safe harbor" provisions, which protect against vicarious liability for infringement. A "report piracy" option is not sufficient; see this answer to a related question.
To answer part of your question, the takedown and restoration process of the DMCA is not required. It is a legal way a hosting site can stay in the clear for copyright infringement. Therefore, if the site didn't take down what you complained about, they're participating in copyright infringement (if that's what's happening). Since they did not take down the material (assuming your DMCA was in the right legal form), if you do sue over copyright infringement you can sue the site as well as whoever uploaded your stuff to the site. I don't think that linking to your stuff would itself be copyright infringement, so I'd suggest consulting a lawyer specializing in IP.
Please Note: This was written before the title change of this question and may no longer be applicable According to the Harvard website: In Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. 499 US 340 (1991) the United States Supreme Court held that copyright does not extend to a mere compilation of facts. In this case, it was a telephone directory much the same as the one in ProCD v. Zeidenberg 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996). Furthermore, the Court also ruled that something more than simple "sweat of the brow" labor was required before copyright protection would ensue, with some modicum of authorial originality necessary. Accordingly, it was held in Feist that copyright did not extend to a telephone directory, no matter how laborious a task its compilation was. The decision in ProCD v. Zeidenberg 86 F. 3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996) is highly significant, therefore, in that it permits copyright or quasi-copyright protection to be extended to non-copyrightable material through the use of contract. One would have to consider each meta tag independently. For example, the "description" tag could by copyrightable since it is written for more than just the 'facts', such as a subtle advert for the site that is more than an objective description. However the 'og:type' would not be copyrightable since it would just be considered a fact. Now, if you are using it on another website and sourcing it properly, you could probably use it under "Fair Use" Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses: Criticism and comment -- for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment. News reporting -- for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report. Research and scholarship -- for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations. Nonprofit educational uses -- for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use. Parody -- that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way. A copyright would exist on the image. One would have to know what license currently applies to the image to know for sure, however, the "Fair Use" to copyright would still apply. With Fair Use, the entity type that uses the image is important. There is much more leniency when a non-profit uses copyrighted information than when the information is used in commercial activity. (With, of course, more exceptions.)
There does seem to be a meme in the UAE of people threatening legal action for negative reviews, as a form of defamation. The police will simply tell them that this is not a crime, go hire a lawyer if you want to sue them. If you block them, perhaps they don't have any other way to contact you (seems that was the point of blocking them), which means that you cannot receive their offer &quot;If you pay us AED 1,000 we will not sue you&quot;, which could be a problem if they win their court case. Still, it is perfectly legal to ignore or block them, up to the point that you are actually served with legal papers. When they actually sue you, &quot;blocking&quot; is irrelevant, they will hire a process server to hand you the legal papers that command you to appear in court.