Must the reason for a permanent ban for a paid online game be provided? Suppose that a fully automated anti-cheat system (claimed by a company to be 99.99% accurate) wrongfully and permanently banned a player from a game that requires a one-time fee to begin playing, offers further optional in-game microtransactions, and has no offline functionality. The support team for this game refuses to provide any specific information for the ban, such as the time "foul play" was detected by the automated system, computer information (e.g. modules injected into the game) that was relevant in the detection process, or other factors that caused the anti-cheat system to ban the player. Furthermore, the support team refuses to investigate the ban in order to lift it or provide any monetary compensation for the player's loss despite the fact that it was entirely wrongful and absolutely no cheating was committed. In the player/customer's perspective, he has just lost access to content he paid hundreds of dollars for for absolutely no reason whatsoever. If no explanation is given for the ban (other than "you were cheating") and it was entirely wrongful, can the player take legal action by accusing the company of fraud until it can provide either compensation or an accurate explanation of what caused the system to trigger a ban?
If you want to take legal action, hire a lawyer. If you want to puff your chest and see if they flinch here is what you do: First let's deal with this arbitration agreement. (There is probably also a jurisdiction agreement in there, ignore that for now.) First you need to find someone to to arbitrate and a place to hold the arbitration. I suggest a babysitter, dog-walker, friend, whatever... just make sure it is a real person. You write them a letter saying that you are exercising the dispute resolution set forth in the terms and that you propose an arbitration by [insert person's name here] to take place at [location] on [date and time]. You are going to mail this to a physical address and should include a sentence asking them to let you know within 30 days if this schedule works for them. Also tell them that you prefer to communicate via email and provide an email address. Mail this letter. Just mail it plain old snail mail. In two weeks write another letter opening with a statement indicating two weeks ago you sent a letter and asked for confirmation of receipt, that you did not get receipt and would they please acknowledge. You have now puffed your chest. Pretty soon 30 days will run and you will go to the courthouse. Hopefully this will have gotten them talking to you and you can get this resolved. What I describe next is an absolute interbreeding and then slaughter of various states' court rules. I hope that more-informed stack participants edit with gusto. If you can't resolve things go to the courthouse and tell the clerk that you want to file a claim in small claims court against [company] for [dollar amount] based on breach of contract. She will give you paperwork to fill out. You will pay her the filing fee. One of the things you will fill out is a complaint, one is a summons. It might be two in one. Here is an random example. It should be a simple form. Keep it all as simple as possible but be sure to describe the facts that support your claim. You might include the fact that they ignored your requests to arbitrate. Take this complaint and summons and serve them on your defendant. To do this you will need to get someone in the company's city to serve it. There are professionals who do this, mail or email them (if possible) the summons and complaint and pay them. They will you with provide proof of service. Now you have moved past chest-puffing and you've thrown a punch. Now you have initiated a law suit. They must file an answer. This means that they must get lawyers involved. You've gotten their attention and it only cost you filing fees. They must now file an answer to your complaint. They will also likely file a motion to dismiss and do one of a few things: 1. complain that you need to arbitrate 2. It will complain that the contract requires legal action in a certain state or county 3. It will complain that regardless of the contract this is the wrong court for any host of reasons 4. they will claim that you haven't stated a valid complaint 5. some other boilerplate stuff. You might have a hearing scheduled to deal with these things, you might deal with them all on a trial date. Now go back to the clerk at the court and ask for a subpoena form. You will have this served on the defendant also - it must name a person. This is a document that requires them to come to court at a time and place. Again, lawyers get involved to quash this. Lawyers = $ so you probably got their attention. Oh yeah, you need to pay a witness fee and travel costs. You can also serve a subpoena duces tecum which requires them to bring documents that you ask for. This needs to be served on the person in change of keeping records. You will probably pay the costs of the documents. The clerk will have forms for you and will describe the process in ambiguous terms while repeating "we cannot give legal advice." You've got your documents, you have a witness coming, you are ready for trial. If you haven't had some sort of hearing already to deal with defendant's motions to get this thing dismissed, you will need to deal with that stuff now. They will claim that arbitration is required. You tell the judge that you invited them to an arbitration that you set up and they refused to come. You show all the paperwork, including your contract with the arbiter. They will argue about jurisdiction, good luck with this one but it's a whole other problem that I can't touch here! If you survive these objections you will tell the story to the judge, you will call the witness and question her, you will present your documents as evidence. In small claims court the judge (or magistrate or referee) might ask the lawyer some questions about facts. Then the judge will bang his gavel and you wait for his decision. If you win come back here and ask how to get your money.
Unless the game is out of copyright, e.g. chess, snakes and ladders, Go, or checkers, your software would probably be considered a derivative work of the copyrighted game and an actionable infringement. The fact that you do not monetize it is not a defense. You would need written permission in the form of a license agreement from the copyright owner to do this legally. The penalties for violating copyright laws in this way could be punishingly serious.
There are some problems with this kind of vandalism, one of them clearly that the internet is international and vandalism can be performed from everywhere on servers everywhere in the world. And so it may be (both technically and legally) difficult to get hold of the vandal. Therefore, most wikis primarily focus on blocking offending accounts or their IPs and hope that this helps at least for a while. Only if it doesn't and the vandalism continues for extended time periods, legal measures are considered. Legally speaking though, vandalism is prohibited by many jurisdictions and of course by the terms of use of the wiki operators. For instance, the Swiss criminal code Art 147 explicitly puts &quot;abusing of data processing equipment&quot; under penalty and hence gives website operators a legal backup for setting up rules for the use of their services. Computer fraud Art. 147 1 Any person who with a view to his own or another's unlawful gain, by the incorrect, incomplete or unauthorised use of data, or in a similar way, influences the electronic or similar processing or transmission of data and as a result causes the transfer of financial assets, thus occasioning loss to another, or immediately thereafter conceals such a transfer shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding five years or to a monetary penalty. 2 If the offender acts for commercial gain, he shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding ten years or to a monetary penalty of not less than 90 daily penalty units. Technically, the law even requires prosecution ex officio, even though without a hint from the operator, the police won't start an investigation. I'm sure the US has a similar law. The problem is, as with all internet crimes, it's practical application, particularly because often website operator and offender are not living in the same country. Edit After reading the exact text again (it was unavailable yesterday) Art 147 is mostly about fraud performed by computers (classical &quot;hacking&quot;) but it shouldn't be difficult to argue that fighting and reverting vandalism requires significant (technical and personal) effort and hence the operator looses money. Additionally, there's Art 144bis which matches even better for the scenario here: Damage to data Art. 144bis Any person who without authority alters, deletes or renders unusable data that is stored or transmitted electronically or in some other similar way shall be liable on complaint to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender has caused major damage, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed. The offence is prosecuted ex officio. Any person who manufactures, imports, markets, advertises, offers or otherwise makes accessible programs that he knows or must assume will be used for the purposes described in paragraph 1 above, or provides instructions on the manufacture of such programs shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender acts for commercial gain, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed.
The linked Bloomberg story quotes the rule as: The recipient is allowed to keep the funds if they [the funds] discharge a valid debt, the recipient made no misrepresentations to induce the payment, and the recipient did not have notice of the mistake. If the recipient, or somone acting on behalf of the recipient, hacked the sender to induce the payment, that sounds like a form of misrepresentation to me. If the hacker is unconnected with the recipient there seems no way that the hacker benefits financially, although I suppose a hacker might simply want to cause an amusing disruption. As I understand it this rule only applies when the sender in fact owes a debt to the recipient that the transfer pays off. If the hacker were working for one of a large group of recipients, most of whom are innocent, and subsequent analysis establishes that there was a hacker, but not who the hacker was or which of the many recipients the hacker was working for, I suspect, but cannot prove, that the doctrine would not apply, because the transfer was not a valid but incorrect act by the sender, but was a fraudulent intervention in the sender's procedures.
The section you quote as clearly saying a thing is not clearly saying the thing. However: you cannot pass on or resell any license keys seems to say a thing clearly. However, one could argue that it's the sharer of the account who is in the wrong, and not the person receiving and passing on the account. I'd say that that piece of the agreement, combined with this: must not... let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable says that, yes, they are out of bounds.
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.
No First, gambling is not illegal - only illegal gambling is illegal. Lotteries are legal in the United States when operated by or under licence from a state (44) or territory (3). That's legal gambling. It's illegal when operated by somebody else. Clearly, Omaze isn't one of these; but they aren't running a lottery. They are running a sweepstakes. Not only is this legal, but it also isn't gambling because in a sweepstakes the players do not pay to play. If you look closely, you can see a link that says &quot;enter without contributing&quot;. Look even deeper and you can see &quot;NO PURCHASE, PAYMENT, OR CONTRIBUTION NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Contributing will not improve chances of winning. Void where prohibited.&quot; No stake means no gamble.
My question is, because I am not making any income from the distribution of the game, would the use of the copyrighted music fall under Personal Use? There are some &quot;private use&quot; exemptions in Australian copyright law but they have some fairly narrow conditions. These exemptions are fairly narrow because the point of copyright law is not to prevent you from making money with someone else's intellectual property but to protect the other person's ability to make money with it. If Alice writes a song and Bob distributes it free of charge, Alice loses revenue. Similarly, it is Alice's right to decide whether that song should be included in a freely available open-source software product, and her right to decide whether to allow that use without charge or in exchange for a license fee.