Is MCLeaks breaking the Minecraft EULA? I have been in an argument for the last twenty or so minutes regarding the legality of a website known as &quot;MCLeaks&quot; (link to terms of service), which is a purveyor of free Minecraft accounts by way of users uploading their details to them. The Minecraft end user license agreement clearly states: The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we've made unless we specifically agree to it. By &quot;distribute anything we've made&quot; what we mean is: give copies of our Game to anyone else; make commercial use of anything we've made; try to make money from anything we've made; or let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable; unless we specifically agree to it. And so that we are crystal clear, &quot;the Game&quot; or &quot;what we have made&quot; includes, but is not limited to, the client or the server software for our Game. It also includes updates, patches, downloadable content, add-ons, or modified versions of a Game, part of those things, or anything else we've made. While the MCLeaks page states: Uploading MC Accounts If you are submitting an accountlist, you provide that you have full owner rights at the specified accounts you submit. The accounts will be automaticially uploadet to our service, and shared with the community. The accounts are stored in our database and get completely deleted after 7 days. You are responsible for every account you have submitted to our service, we are not legally responsible for your actions. However, I'm not certain whether MCLeaks can realistically claim that they are not liable for the actions of the uploaders. Are MCLeaks outside of the bounds specified in the Minecraft EULA?
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.
You can design whatever this system is (leaving aside jurisdictions without First Amendment-like law that lets you design to your hearts content), the problem comes in implementing. The main legal question is whether you are operating a website. A website operator has to comply with various laws that require them to remove content. For example, if you operate a website that allows users to distribute content that they upload, they can distribute copyright-protected content, and you can be held liable for copyright infringement. DMCA in the US provides a way for you to not get sued, but you have to be able to remove putatively infringing content, so you could get sued if you can't remove illegal content. This may also include legal troubles over e.g. defamatory content where a plaintiff gets a court order to remove the content – you can't plead &quot;I can't it down&quot; if the court orders you to do so. Napster was sued for copyright infringement and racketeering for facilitating law-breaking by others (&quot;secondary infringement&quot;), and in MGM v. Grokster the Supreme Court annonced the general principle that One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses Grokster's problems arose because they clearly intended the software to be used to violate copyright law, whereas it is unlikely that Github will get sued because it is possible to use the platform illegally. So it really matters exactly what this &quot;platform&quot; is and what your relationship to the platform is. Describing a system is generally not illegal, realizing and maintaining one can easily be.
Yes, that’s allowed. Under the Stack Exchange terms of service, content you upload is licensed to Stack Exchange Inc. on a non-exclusive basis under CC-BY-SA 4.0. The terms of service do not give Stack Exchange the copyright to your contributions, and a non-exclusive license means you are not promising Stack Exchange that “only Stack Exchange will be allowed to use this content.” That means you can continue to do whatever you want with your own content and do not need to mention Stack Exchange at all. The only restriction is that you can’t stop Stack Exchange from continuing to use your Stack Exchange content under CC-BY-SA 4.0, and since it’s a Creative Commons license you also can’t stop anyone else from using your Stack Exchange content under that license.
Stack Exchange have already covered this in a couple of places, from MSE's A site (or scraper) is copying content from Stack Exchange. What should I do?: When should I not report these sites? They follow all the attribution requirements. As mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with copying our content elsewhere on the web, so long as they are following all the attribution requirements given. There is no action we can take against a scraper who follows all the rules. And the old Attribution Required blog post mentions that the actual requirements are: Visually indicate that the content is from Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network in some way. It doesn’t have to be obnoxious; a discreet text blurb is fine. Hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345) Show the author names for every question and answer Hyperlink each author name directly back to their user profile page on the source site (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/users/1234567890/username) By “directly”, I mean each hyperlink must point directly to our domain in standard HTML visible even with JavaScript disabled, and not use a tinyurl or any other form of obfuscation or redirection. Furthermore, the links must not be nofollowed
This has some basis in law. You need permission from a person to commercially exploit their likeness especially in California, and a waiver is a way of staving off future lawsuit over right of publicity. YT has a privacy policy whereby a person who have been filmed can request removal of the video (see also this, because they don't explain the policy in a single place). Because YT is commercially exploiting people's personalities, this is necessary.
There are three main aspects to this: Its their website, and their terms of service. They can enforce those terms, or change them (in some appropriate manner). You have no recourse if they remove you, block you, or delete your account, for example. That's the measure that you would probably have, virtually every time. To claim damages, or litigate beyond just website access control, requires a legal claim. But there's a catch there. To claim damages, they need to show actual damage, which they wish to be compensated for. If you misused their website but no actual harm can be shown, the total damage claimable is zero, whether or not you followed their rules. Merely entering dishonest information isn't by itself harm. So they would have to show they suffered damage/harm because of that, which is directly attributable to your behaviour, was foreseeably harmful etc, or similar. They also need to consider legal costs, and ability to enforce, especially if you are in a different country. If for some reason the computer use was also illegal, then a criminal act could be committed and they could notify law enforcement. For example suppose you did this in the little known country of Honestania, where the law says that to prevent trolling and online abuse, anything posted on social media under any but your own legal name is a crime. Or suppose you'd been banned from the system and ignoring/evading such a ban was criminal computer use or criminal trespass due to the forbidden/unauthorised access (which can happen in several places). But this is purely for completeness; I guess you'd know if you were taking it further, into criminal computer use.
Twitter don’t have to host your account UMG’s and Sony’s business is probably more important to Twitter than yours is. It seems Twitter have made a commercial decision to close your account down. They can do this: We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason, … What’s happening is not fair use Fair use is a lot narrower than you think it is. UMG and Sony (and every other music label) get paid when people use their music on a commercial platform like Twitter. Which means, you enabling people to avoid this is directly reducing their market so this is not fair use. Giving credit does not help. Now, if your program blocked the use of copyrighted songs that might be ok. Your program looks exactly like a piracy tool I’m sure you have the best intentions but your tool readily enables copyright violations by others. That’s moving out of the realms of civil breach and into possible criminal sanctions. I wouldn’t push this if I were you. Your understanding of copyright is flawed This video is a good primer on copyright.
Is this limitation enforceable? Sure it is; you agree to a TOS or EULA with the company to use the API, and that's a legally binding contract. If the contract stipulates limits to caching, that's enforceable in civil court by lawsuit (possibly criminal court, which will depend on jurisdiction). What if the end-user is the one caching the data on their end? If your end users might be caching, that's something you may need to outline in your own TOS/EULA to adhere to the API's stipulations. And, the API may not allow you to serve API data to your own users; read it and see. the information provided by the API is not proprietary,... That doesn't matter; you're using their API and service. If you don't like that, you need to write your own API or develop your own queries for the information. I'm designing a web application that will make use of a (non-free) third-party API. If that App is going to be distributed and used by others, talk to a lawyer about the API and have them write a TOS/EULA for your App; you run the risk of significant legal liability with a publicly distributed App that uses someone else's API, paid or free.