Is it lawful to keep a user from updating one&#39;s own content on Stack Exchange? I have been banned for asking to many questions on Physics Stack Exchange for 1 year. During this time I am not allowed to revise or update my published work. I have asked that my work be invisible with my ban unless I am allowed to refine my questions and answers. Are they legally allowed to display my Q &amp; A and comments against my will?
Use of SE is subject to the terms and conditions specified here. Section 3 says "You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license." That means that your contributions can be used forever. That means the stuff is there, end of story. Section 11 on Termination says "Stack Exchange may also terminate, block, or suspend any and all Services and access to the Network immediately, without prior notice or liability, in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason at all, including but not limited to any Subscriber breaches of any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement". That means you can be banned. So, yes, what they did is legal.
The FCC has clarified their stance on this: ... were we mandating wholesale blocking of Open Source firmware modifications? We were not, but we agree that the guidance we provide to manufacturers must be crystal-clear to avoid confusion. So, today we released a revision to that guidance to clarify that our instructions were narrowly-focused on modifications that would take a device out of compliance. The revised guidance now more accurately reflects our intent in both the U-NII rules as well as our current rulemaking, and we hope it serves as a guidepost for the rules as we move from proposal to adoption. Essentially, Open Source firmware modifications are allowed, the modifications are disallowed are things like excessively increasing signal strength.
In such a case the person who bypasses the terms knows that use of the site is conditioned on agreement to the terms, and has taken an explicit action to continue past the terms and use the site. I suspect that if a dispute were to arise where this is relevant, it would be held that taking such action was legally equivalent to clicking "I agree". But I don't know of any court case on this point, and i can't be sure what a court would do. If having intentionally bypassed the terms, such a person tried to raise his or her lack of consent to the terms as a defense to some obligation imposed by those terms, such equitable concepts as "unclean hands" and estoppel might be raised, since such a person, in effect, leads the other party, the site owner, to believe that s/he has accepted the terms, I suspect that such a person will be treated as having accepted them. If this becomes at all common, I suppose that the designers of such sites will in future store a record of such consent being given, and not allow the user to proceed unless it has been.
We cannot dispense personalized legal advice: that is what your attorney is for. However, I agree with your analysis that this is most likely covered by fair use, and indeed it is not obvious that you have taken anything that is protected. There is no creativity behind a number such as entries in the &quot;I did N pushups&quot; column. The arrangement of data into a web page passes the smidgen of creativity test, but &quot;210&quot; is not a creative number. The terms of service of a website cannot negate your right to use the website however you want in a non-infringing way. If your use is &quot;fair use&quot;, then they can't tell you that you can't use it. In case it turns out that &quot;fair use&quot; fails, the matter would hinge on what exactly the TOS says. They may have granted you permission to make use of their &quot;information&quot;. So there are three positive avenues for you to consider: not protected, fair use, and permitted. A practical difficulty is that a university lawyer is only interested in the interests of the university, and they are as likely to say &quot;don't do that&quot; or &quot;get permission&quot; as they are to say &quot;that is fair use&quot;. You can hire a lawyer who is paid to care about your interest, though there is never a guarantee that the lawyer's advice is correct. I think it is likely that the lawyer will tell you to not say anything until legally forced to, given the apparent rebuff of your request for special permission.
Generally, it's illegal. You are creating a derivative work and you are not allowed to do that without the permission of the copyright holder. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, such as fair use under US law. However, this generally protects uses that are intended to comment on or parody the work. It doesn't sound like that is the purpose of your image modification. NOT including: faceswaps, modifications that would shame or affect negatively the reputation of the actors on the image. That doesn't make it legal. I share it in a way that I don't make any economic profit out of it, and clearly stating that it is a modified image (not sure if inside the image, or in the caption under it) and state who is the legal owner of the original image. That doesn't make it legal, either.
I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer 1 For the avoidance of doubt, the thrust of this debate is: By placing a logo associated with a certain political movement near my user profile, does StackExchange violate Section 4(c) of the CC BY-SA 3.0? Subscriber Content is Content that is contributed by StackExchange users. The relevant sections of CC BY-SA 3.0 (emphasis added) are: c. ... The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. For the avoidance of doubt, You may only use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above and, by exercising Your rights under this License, You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties. d. Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation... Does changing the logo on all pages imply an endorsement of the site/organisation by the user? It is likely, though not definite, that this positioning of the logo will imply that the user endorses the website. However, actions taken by the user - such as creating an account, accepting the Terms, contributing content - are likely to affirm this view. Does changing the logo imply that the site/organisation supports a particular political view? Again, it is likely, not definite, that changing the logo will imply that the site/organisation supports a particular political view. Does changing the logo impute support of a political view to the user? In this case, however, it is highly unlikely that the change of logo would impute to the user support of the political view. In a case such as this, onus of proof is on the plaintiff - were this claim brought in court, it would need to be proven on the balance of probability (or, less likely, on the preponderance of evidence) that a reasonable person would impute support of the marriage equality (and perhaps some other) agenda to the user. Reasonable person does not mean any particular person, nor does it mean, all people. Part of the imputation must come from the purpose that the user subscribes to the site. Perhaps if StackOverflow were a site that promoted marriage equality or judicial activism, this could support an opinion that the user supports this view. However, StackOverflow is about programming, and programming doesn't imply that kind of agenda. Perhaps if the icon had been changed to something that suggested support for object-oriented programming, the icon could be taken to suggest that the user supports this agenda. Neither does the user's content suggest support for this cause - if they constantly made off-hand remarks about it in their posts, then perhaps, again, a reasonable person may make that imputation. In any case, the damages awarded to the user would likely be compensatory rather than punitive - the user would need to therefore demonstrate actual suffering or loss as a result of the change of icon. If there were actual damages or loss, the way in which the user contributed to them - perhaps by posting a thread that would be likely to be inflammatory and attract attention to the user - may reduce an award of damages. In the case of no actual suffering or loss, the user could be awarded nominal damages. Injunctions that could be awarded would need to be proportionate to the breach of license - the court could require references to this user to be anonymised. This is easily done. It is unlikely that the court would require all contribution by the user to be removed - this is unlikely to pass a public interest test. In relation to placing a disclaimer in the footer, US courts have generally accepted disclaimers if they are positioned such that a reasonable user is likely to see it... In the footer? It's not a great place, and easily missed. It could be better than nothing, though, and may help with the likelihood of someone imputing such opinions to a user. Essentially - it's extremely unlikely that a reasonable person would impute support of the marriage equality agenda on a user based on a logo change, because the support is not sufficiently connected to the primary purpose of the site, or the user's activities on the site. Even if the user were successful in showing that this is the likely conclusion of a reasonable person, the remedies available to them would be limited to damages (which limited to actual losses, including suffering), and an injunction (which is likely to be anonymisation). A disclaimer may not, on its own, actually preserve the validity of the license, but it may be useful on determining the likelihood of a reasonable person imputing opinions to a user. 1. This is larger than normal, because I think it is more important than normal.
As for plagiarism, that is not a legal concept, so he can define plagiarism however he wants. It certainly isn't, under any definition I have ever seen on Earth and I have seen many (it has to do with "claiming someone else's work as your own"). As for copyright, a set of questions is (potentially) protected by copyright. If they are copied from somebody else's book of questions, then the book author (or publisher) holds copyright. Let's say that QM invented the questions, such as "What is the Turkish word for Janissary?", "What is the most prominent feature of Jannissary garb?" and so on. Then that set of questions, when put down in fixed form, are protected by copyright, and cannot be copied without permission.
There are no laws requiring that any company must publish all opinions from its customers. I'll admit it's fundamentally dishonest to only publish the positives, but there's no prohibition against it either. Look at movie advertisements, for example. They'll paraphrase or selectively quote a review, citing only what seems to be positive, yet if you read the review and quote in context, you'll understand the review quite differently. How exactly would you police it if you were to require companies to publish all reviews? Would you have some kind of litmus test to determine whether the critique is justified and fair? How often do people post false reviews (good or bad), and how would you account for them? Company web sites offering reviews form their own customers are doing nothing more than using the web as an extension of their marketing, so one has to expect some manipulation of the information in order to present products and services in their best possible lights. Why, for example, would I tell you how much someone hates my product when my goal is to sell it to you? This is why it would be better to use independent third-party review sites that have no dog in the hunt when it comes to honest feedback about the companies they cover.