Is licensing your contributions to stack exchange under CC0 legal? Some users have added Everything I post on Stack Overflow is licensed to you under CC0 to their profiles. I would like to know whether this is legal, because as far as I know stack exchange uses CC4.0, and I am not sure whether or not it is legal to add that to my Profile.
It's not illegal to say things in your profile. SE requires you to license your content to them on a non-exclusive basis pursuant to CC BY-SA 4.0. &quot;Non-exclusive&quot; means that you can also license the material to others on some other basis, e.g. CC0. In that case, a person who uses your material can rely on the other license that you granted. If SE wanted to, it could prohibit putting licenses in a user profile, in which case you would have to promulgate your more generous license elsewhere.
No you don't. There are two copyright holders regarding the derivative work: yourself, for creating the original. the other artist, for creating the modified version. The other artist has received the right to use your original through the CC-BY license, under the condition that they attribute you appropriately. However, you have not received any rights to the other artist's work.
Stack Exchange has given moderators certain authorizations or powers, but that does not automatically make them agents. The specific provision in the agreement that they are not agents would make it harder to argue that they are in fact agents in a particular case, but if they are in fact acting as agents they might be held to be agents in some situations. In order to hold SE liable, a plaintiff would need to shoe actual harm by a person acting as a moderator. Such a plaintiff would need to show further that the mod was acting in accord with the delegated authority given to mods, or in ways approved or encouraged by SE. If the action was a breach of the moderator agreement, and in no way approved or encouraged by SE, it might be hard to show that the mod was acting as an agent of SE in that instance. Without specific context, such as how the mod is alleged to have harmed the plaintiff, and how SE encouraged or permitted this, or failed to take reasonable steps to prevent such harm it is hard to give a specific answer, or an assured one. CDA Sec 230 says, among other things, that the operator of a service, such as SE, will not be treated as the speaker or publisher of statements posted by users, and in general will not be liable for such statements. (That is particularly section 230 (c) (1).) But there are many details and without specifics again there is little one can say. CDA section 230 (c) (2) (A) provides that a service provider (such as SE) or a service user shall not be liable for: any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; and CDA section 230 (c) (2) (B) provides that a service provider (such as SE) or a service user shall not be liable for: any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1). Given all this, it is hard to see how a post or an edit of a post made in good faith could be a cause of action against anyone, or how a post made in bad-faith could be a cause of action against the service provider unless they knowingly supported or encouraged it. The added hypothetical says: Let's assume a moderator, in good faith, edits the contents of a question, and changes its meaning in a way that reflects badly on the original poster's intent and reputation. Even if well-intentioned, might that action of the moderator, while still associating with new text with the OP author's name, become a defamatory act? Since the complete editing history is always available, one click away from any post, and the user name of the most recent editor is always displayed right under the post, adjacent to the link to the history, it is hard to see how a reasonable person could believe that an edited post was the work of the original poster. Beyond that, to constitute defamation there must be a purported statement of fact that is false, and harm to the reputation of the would-be plaintiff. Normally such a false statement must be &quot;of and concerning&quot; the plaintiff. It is hard to see how A making a statement, and B editing it, could create defamation of A. B could add defamation of some other party C, but then it could be easy to show that this was B's writing, not A's, so A would have no liability, and SE would have no liability for B's actions, as posting defamation is certainly not an approved activity. Moreover, it does not require moderator status to edit someone else's answer. Any user with a certain reputation level (1,000 on Law.SE, the level varies by site) my edit any post. Currently about 160 users have this privilege on law.se, while there are only 2 moderators. On other sites the numbers will often be larger. Since editing another's post is not a moderator privilege, it is hard to see how being a moderator is relevant to doing so improperly. And since CDA sec 230 (c) (2) (A) protects posters for liability for edits or deletions made in good faith, it is even harder to see any liability here.
The licence does not allow you to do this However, copyright law may. You work is (probably) an adaptation within the terms of the licence and these are not allowed. So, put the licence aside and consider if your use is fair use or fair dealing; if it is, you are allowed to do it notwithstanding the licence.
It would be terribly risky for you to simply link another company's terms of service. What if they take their server down? What if they change their terms? You would not even know when exactly the changes were made. Copying their terms means you might run into copyright issues on the text. Either pay a lawyer to write your ToS for you, or see if you can find something in the public domain.
Assuming Chegg own the copyright, then they can restrict the activities that copyright protects The statement you quote is no more or less than the rights granted to them by copyright law. Basically, it's their stuff, they get to decide how you can use it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the uses that you have nominated are prohibited. For that, we would have to look at the specific fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright protection where you are. It's likely that both of your usage scenarios would meet fair use and probably fair dealing (which is harder to meet). You may also find that, buried somewhere in those massive terms of use, is something that deals with this directly.
It depends on what you are selling to the enterprises. You could be selling just a licence to use the program, and retain all the rights on the source code. You could be selling the rights to the source code. For #1, the source code is yours and you can do what it pleases with it1. In fact many programs offer both an open-source licence (which usually forces the user to make its changes to the code publicly available) and a commercial one (which allows the user to keep the modifications of the source code for themselves). For #2, the source code is no longer yours so it is not up to you to decide what to do with it. 1I am assuming no other agreements imposing limits on those; for example that none of your contracts to your customers have a clause forbidding you from making the code available to the public.
No, it's still copyright infringement. When you modify a copyrighted work in any way, you generate a derivative work which you are not allowed to distribute without the permission of the original copyright holder.