Attesting that it's not allowed when you're not a lawyer and have no standing to say pretty much anything in this answer is what leads to the frustrations like Aleksandr shows. Rather than attempting to state things in big bold letters, it makes more sense to rephrase this answer to ask if we consulted lawyers, whether this is allowed, and whether we've considered all the implications. Your answer comes off as arguing for the sake of arguing rather than trying to bring up a legitimate concern that users might have and deserves an answer because your "questions" are buried. — animuson ♦2 days ago
Yeah. The point isn't what a license says or intends to say. It is what a sufficiently lawyered-up company can get away with.
@Tinkeringbell I mean, it's the internet and it happens all the time. Do we deserve the hate? Of course not. Does it even constitute "hate" as in real life? Probably not. It's as serious as me getting pissed off at an annoying customer. Five minutes later and it's gone. Does it happen all the time? Of course.
I've probably been conditioned to love the insults. It's when the other side is trying to make an intellectual argument that gets me.
@ankiiiiiii Oh, you tried to be helpful with a comment on that Python question and that is kind of you. I considered leaving a similar comment as you did but I refrained due to the desperate tone in the comment the OP already left. Sometimes it happens that users go into some kind of retaliation. It has nothing to do with you. Just flag their comments, use a custom flag to provide context and move on. By all means don't engage and don't let it give you the creeps. Been there, done that.
@Tinkeringbell I commented firstly from my phone and then later ones after translating to help mods see the meaning. (idk if anyone knows Russian.) But yes, it was kinda weird to see such a reaction for recommending an alternate site ( as @MetaAndrewT. said), so I messaged here.
@M.A.R. I know about Combiflam, can cause liver failure if taken extra. But it is way too popular in India than it is required to be
The Idiot (pre-reform Russian: Идіотъ; post-reform Russian: Идиот, tr. Idiót) is a novel by the 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published serially in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1868–69.
The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting...
@Conifold, the question has been understood and answered, moreover, my meditation to understand why the answers given are the answers to this question has also been answered (by me)..............And it looks valid too.........WE (royal) ARE TRAPPED, there is NOWAY to get out of it, THE TRUTH IS ON US and it is ON US FOR A BIG TIME, I am seeing it. — Explorer_N7 hours ago
@AlwaysConfused It's over a hill, not off a cliff. There is a SE-initiated thread about measuring activity.
In a nutshell: 3089410 answers posted in the first 8 months of 2018, versus 2819647 in the first 8 months of 2019. The decline of 9%. Numbers vary widely between the sites, SO with its size dominates the balance.
> This change is pretty concerning, as it represents a copyright grab that goes beyond the permissions originally granted; to put it plainly, it is not good internet citizenship. As has been clearly documented in Makyen's answer, SE needs to ask for permission from copyright owners (i.e. users) in order to relicense their content from CC BY-SA 3.0 to 4.0, and this is made very explicit by Creative Commons themselves.
> However, the only response from SE thus far is a pretty outrageous ad hominem attack trying to simultaneously tar the answerer and dodge the very real, and very obvious question. This answer, by Federico Poloni, has sharpened the focus into a 'proper question', as requested, and yet, two days on, SE have stayed completely silent about this.
Quoting in case it disappears like bounty text tends to do.
As has been clearly documented in [Makyen's answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/333094), SE needs to ask for permission from copyright owners (i.e. users) in order to relicense their content from CC BY-SA 3.0 to 4.0, and this is made very explicit by Creative Commons themselves. However, [the only response from SE thus far](https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7893343#7893343) is a basically an ad hominem attack ("you're not a lawyer, we don't need to listen to you"), and I'm having a really hard time reading it as anything other than a dodge of the very real and very…
The Terms of service back in Nov 5 2017 where (bold emphasis mine)
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. You grant
Stack Exchange the ...
"we actually have the right from our TOS to do whatever we want with your stuff, you just didn't notice because we were very successful with our PR front about everything being CC BY-SA"
@E.P. That's no better. The comment isn't an ad-hominem attack, it's pointing out what the answer itself says/said: They're not a lawyer and saying in big bold font that SE doesn't have the right to do this when you're not a lawyer is no better than just asking if you're seriously worried about that stuff.
@JourneymanGeek sorry, I don't understand that comment.
@JourneymanGeek for now, anyway.
> This is particularly important looking into the future: if SE feels this confidently that it can unilaterally change the licensing conditions on the content that we the users allow it to distribute, how confident can we be that similar unauthorized re-licenses will not happen in the future, with changes that are less benign than this one?
> I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is just my interpretation from reading the license, the current TOS, my memory of the old TOS, etc. I strongly recommend that you seek the advice of your lawyers.
That's what the answer says. Now, saying IANAL but then writing big bold statements saying SE does not have the legal right.... that's kinda 'bold'. (forgive the pun)
if SE feels that it can unilaterally change the terms under which they re-license the content I contribute to any license they choose, then I'd quite like to know
You can post such a requirement, but how would you meaningfully enforce it?
The reason we can enforce the CC BY-SA licensing requirement is because it's explicitly stated under the Stack Exchange Network Terms of Service, which users are required to agree to before using the site. So moderators ...
As animuson wanted this phrased as a question:
Are you sure you're legally allowed to relicense all content without asking the copyright holders (i.e. all contributes) individually for permission? If so, by what justification? As detailed in other answers it looks like CC-BY-SA 3.0 doesn't allow...
@E.P. Yes. Because it is drowned out. Really, with the state that post is in, I wouldn't want to step forward and answer stuff. Oh, and it's weekend. Employees have weekends to, you know.
> So: can we have a proper response from SE as to what legal reasoning is being used to ignore Creative Commons' indication that copyright-owner permission is required for this type of relicensing?
@JourneymanGeek well, it depends, doesn't it? has SE shifted from an attitude of we're-grateful-y'all-have-posted-all-this-amazing-content from "no, actually, we own the content. what are you gonna do, go to experts exchange?"
I feel that an in-depth realization, built into the whole SE structure, that without contributors the network is worthless, is something that actually matters
we seem to have gone from "you license your content universally as CC BY-SA, and we (SE) reuse it under those terms"
to
> you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit [your] Content
@JourneymanGeek a clear precedent that SE just dictates what license terms it redistributes stuff under, and that the contributor community has no say if SE wants to change it
if precedent is your concern... Well shit, we've already changed the license once before. This is the third CC-BY-SA license used on SO; it launched with v2.5 (which we incorrectly called CC-WIKI for like four years)
(specifically: what's the legal reasoning for SE being allowed to relicense old content? Is it directly from a reading of the CC license? Is it from additional language in the TOS? In either case, what are the details?)
@rene But, you're right: none of this matters until it goes to court. And it may not even matter then, unless the suit hinges on some very technical difference between license versions.
@rene If you look at CC's website where they list case law pertaining to their licenses... The closest relevant suit was where WikiTravel sued their former editors over re-using their CC-licensed content. That... Really should be the focus of concern here: does the change in license potentially leave folks unprotected?
Because, that's really what the CC license is about here: protecting y'all from us. Or from whoever buys us. If you look at the history that motivated licenses like this, that was generally the thing that happened: company solicits user contributions, then makes 'em private, then sues former users for trying to re-use their own content.
My understanding is that v4 changes are mostly concerned with weird EU laws that I don't even begin to understand. So... YMMV; if you live in the EU maybe you care; if you don't, you probably don't.
@AlwaysConfused I should have added that those stats are limited to the Public Network. The usage of private SE instances seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, but the data is not available.
Projection into 2020s: the public network is effectively a free demo version of the main SE products.
In which case the public usage does not matter all that much.
any idea why the tag status-bydesign is missing a dash? I mean only a select can use it, but still :) initially typed it in a question with a dash, that's how I noticed
Since "by design" is two words, the current name violates the current tag naming scheme and is thus counterintuitive.
The specific case that pushed me to propose this is misnaming the tag when writing its name from the top of my head at Navigating back after doing AJAX changes produces a stale c...
DEV ToS: "Regardless of citation, users may not post copy and pasted content that does not belong to them." Yet there is a button under every SO post for them to do exactly that.
As for the content license: "Permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the materials (information or software) on DEV's web site for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only. [...] you may not: modify or copy the materials;"
@MetaAndrewT. yeah there was an insane peak in one month 2018 so I considered that an outlier and capped it. I think that is permitted in statistics ... :/
The Terms of service back in Nov 5 2017 where (bold emphasis mine)
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. You grant
Stack Exchange the ...
