Questions tagged [legal]
Questions about the legal aspects of Stack Exchange sites, such as the terms of service, using content and/or code-snippets, attribution, copyrights, patents, using trademarks, etc. General legal questions are OFF-TOPIC but may be asked on Law Stack Exchange.
364 questions
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We’ve made an addition to our Terms of Service – November 2025
Today we’ve added a new section to the Terms of Service. The new section is an “AI Addendum” and pertains to features that utilize AI interactions, such as AI Assist and Question Assistant.
The full ...
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The FAQ for scrapers contradicts the Acceptable Use Policy for scraping
At the time of writing, the FAQ for scraping writes:
What is a "scraper" and why is that bad?
Historically, SCRAPER here on Stack Exchange meant "Stack Content Republishers Attributing ...
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Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in. Once again a profile was created that I did not want. Is this a bug that should be fixed? [duplicate]
I propose that this is a bug that should be addressed, unless it is considered a clever feature.
I had recently written a comment about the topicality of my Law SE question, addressing a comment that ...
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The phrasing "They do not use the output for training their machine learning models using the output" seems problematic
The stackoverflow.ai Terms of Use has a couple of weird phrasings, which appear to be because of some editing issue. This is in the context of using third-party services (notably OpenAI):
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We’ve updated the cookie policy modal and domain (August 2025)
We’ve made changes to our Cookie Policy.
The goal of this update is to provide accurate information on a high level of how we utilize cookies across the different services we offer, and remove the ...
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Why is Stack giving the option manually object to "legitimate interests" if it is supposedly the same as pressing "necessary cookies only"?
This request recently got answered and the official answer says that Stack itself uses no cookies based on "legitimate interests".
While good to know, this leaves the following questions (...
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Does Stack Overflow Inc. receive anything of value from podcast guests in return for allowing them on the show?
Does Stack Overflow Inc. receive anything of value from podcast guests in return for allowing them on the show? I realized that for a while I had assumed thought that the podcasts were advertorials (...
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Does Stack Overflow distribute content under the non-CC license granted by the terms of service? If so, who receives distributions under this license?
It has recently been confirmed that the Terms of Service requires contributors to dual-license their content when posting on the Network. The first license is the Creative Commons Attribution-...
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Could SE remove the "For inquiries about using the data for LLM training, contact us." clause? It's pointless now that a US judge ruled it's fair use
Feature request: remove that clause when accessing an SE data dump:
You can access this site's data for personal use. For inquiries about using the data for large language model (LLM) training, ...
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How to flag jobs on Stackoverflow Jobs for being illegal offers? [closed]
I browsed "Jobs" for the first time, it said "new", so I clicked on it.
A degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field is required. At least 4 years of ...
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1
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Is it legal to paste on StackExchange a link to my own article?
I asked a question here related to my recent article that was published in a scientific magazine within EU. The articles there don't undergo an official review process; the magazine mostly publishes ...
35
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1
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"Necessary cookies only" enables cookies it shouldn't
The current layout of the cookie setting currently allows selecting "necessary cookies only" with one click. However, selecting "necessary cookies only" still leaves "...
30
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How does this processing meet the company's legitimate interests?
To quote Bella_Blue's 2024-06-17 answer:
The objection to legitimate interests selection does not apply to “Necessary cookies only” due to the ‘strictly necessary’ exemption. When the “Necessary ...
8
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Incorrect documentation of cookies in "consent" banner
The information in the Cookie Consent popup does not satisfy your legal obligation of informed consent, because it is completely unreadable. That is not, however, the point of this bug report; only an ...
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The Public Network Terms of Service navigation should include all subsections
In order to increase transparency and better comply with the various (inter-)national privacy/transparency laws, I recommend expanding the navigation section of the Public Network Terms of Service. ...