Greetings!
We’ve just added a new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Scratch, with links at the bottom of every page. Given that these are new, we thought we should take the time to explain to Scratchers what these pages are, and why we added them.

The Terms of Use is a legal document we created with the help of our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and MIT Legal. We worked through several drafts to come up with language that’s as readable as possible and says, in legal terms, what the rules have always been on Scratch. I’ll summarize these as:

1. Be Nice! (and follow the community guidelines)
2. Everything you share can be remixed (as long as credit is given)
3. Don’t upload projects made with modified versions of Scratch (our server might not know how to play them properly)

The Privacy Policy is mostly a restatement of the privacy section of our Frequently Asked Questions page. It explains what information we gather from Scratchers, how and why we use it, and under what circumstances we will or will not share it. (We don’t sell Scratcher’s information to anyone - never have, and never will.) We added a link to it at the bottom of every page because that’s where most sites put it, and where most people are likely to look for it.

You are invited to read the docs themselves – we kept them as short and readable as we could – and ask any questions you have on this thread!

Scratch On!

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Lightnin wrote:

Greetings!
We’ve just added a new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Scratch, with links at the bottom of every page. Given that these are new, we thought we should take the time to explain to Scratchers what these pages are, and why we added them.

The Terms of Use is a legal document we created with the help of our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and MIT Legal. We worked through several drafts to come up with language that’s as readable as possible and says, in legal terms, what the rules have always been on Scratch. I’ll summarize these as:

1. Be Nice! (and follow the community guidelines)
2. Everything you share can be remixed (as long as credit is given)
3. Don’t upload projects made with modified versions of Scratch (our server might not know how to play them properly)

The Privacy Policy is mostly a restatement of the privacy section of our Frequently Asked Questions page. It explains what information we gather from Scratchers, how and why we use it, and under what circumstances we will or will not share it. (We don’t sell Scratcher’s information to anyone - never have, and never will.) We added a link to it at the bottom of every page because that’s where most sites put it, and where most people are likely to look for it.

You are invited to read the docs themselves – we kept them as short and readable as we could – and ask any questions you have on this thread!

Scratch On!

i will scratch on! wise imformation!

ProdigyZeta7 wrote:

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Yep! The browser and / or Flash (the editor, which lives inside the browser.)

CannonZ wrote:

Cool, I like the new rules

so do i!

Lightnin wrote:

ProdigyZeta7 wrote:

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Yep! The browser and / or Flash (the editor, which lives inside the browser.)

I made a project: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23108305/ just to test the concept of crashing the flash player, and it specifically says it is not meant to be used to crash peoples browsers as a joke or to be mean. Should I unshare it?

Great! But I thought the old one was fine…

Lightnin wrote:

Greetings!
We’ve just added a new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Scratch, with links at the bottom of every page. Given that these are new, we thought we should take the time to explain to Scratchers what these pages are, and why we added them.

The Terms of Use is a legal document we created with the help of our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and MIT Legal. We worked through several drafts to come up with language that’s as readable as possible and says, in legal terms, what the rules have always been on Scratch. I’ll summarize these as:

1. Be Nice! (and follow the community guidelines)
2. Everything you share can be remixed (as long as credit is given)
3. Don’t upload projects made with modified versions of Scratch (our server might not know how to play them properly)

The Privacy Policy is mostly a restatement of the privacy section of our Frequently Asked Questions page. It explains what information we gather from Scratchers, how and why we use it, and under what circumstances we will or will not share it. (We don’t sell Scratcher’s information to anyone - never have, and never will.) We added a link to it at the bottom of every page because that’s where most sites put it, and where most people are likely to look for it.

You are invited to read the docs themselves – we kept them as short and readable as we could – and ask any questions you have on this thread!

Scratch On!

YAY!

ShadowCoder wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

ProdigyZeta7 wrote:

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Yep! The browser and / or Flash (the editor, which lives inside the browser.)

I made a project: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23108305/ just to test the concept of crashing the flash player, and it specifically says it is not meant to be used to crash peoples browsers as a joke or to be mean. Should I unshare it?

i don't know if you should, but i'm going to look at it!

ShadowCoder wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

ProdigyZeta7 wrote:

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Yep! The browser and / or Flash (the editor, which lives inside the browser.)

I made a project: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23108305/ just to test the concept of crashing the flash player, and it specifically says it is not meant to be used to crash peoples browsers as a joke or to be mean. Should I unshare it?

Yep! I know it's an interesting experiment, but it definitely is a no no, crashing people's browsers and what not.

Actually, we'd also like to prevent that programatically - so can you download the project and email it to help@scratch? Thanks!

Hi! I've just read the Scratch Terms of Use page.
So I can download Scratch project file, edit json script by hand , and zip it back (further - hacked project).

According to what The Scratch Team wrote:

4.4 You may only submit user-generated projects that were created with (1) the Scratch website editor or (2) an unmodified copy of the Scratch editor compiled from the source code described in Section 5.3. You may not upload any projects that were created, by you or by anyone else, with a modified version of the Scratch editor.

1. So, am I now not allowed to upload hacked projects to the Website?
   Suppose someone have submitted hacked project before these limitations appeared in the Terms of Use.
   
2. Is he still allowed to publish/open that project?
   
3. Am allowed to copy scripts from hacked projects?(I mean, I'm still using the Scratch website editor, (1) from Terms of Use.)
   
4. Is this limitation intended to forbid all hacked projects?
   
5. Or is it just a pre-prepared reason to remove projects with syntactically incorrect json files?
   

Hacked blocks can be too useful to be removed whthout any consideration. (Examples: 1 , 2 , 3 , etc…)
Hope to have an answer from Scratch Team.

Nice to have official documents for these. I noticed a typo in the privacy policy. It says “provided” when it should be “provider” (in How does the Scratch Team use my information?)

RGBD wrote:

Hi! I've just read the Scratch Terms of Use page.
So I can download Scratch project file, edit json script by hand , and zip it back (further - hacked project).

According to what The Scratch Team wrote:

4.4 You may only submit user-generated projects that were created with (1) the Scratch website editor or (2) an unmodified copy of the Scratch editor compiled from the source code described in Section 5.3. You may not upload any projects that were created, by you or by anyone else, with a modified version of the Scratch editor.

1. So, am I now not allowed to upload hacked projects to the Website?
   Suppose someone have submitted hacked project before these limitations appeared in the Terms of Use.
   
2. Is he still allowed to publish/open that project?
   
3. Am allowed to copy scripts from hacked projects?(I mean, I'm still using the Scratch website editor, (1) from Terms of Use.)
   
4. Is this limitation intended to forbid all hacked projects?
   
5. Or is it just a pre-prepared reason to remove projects with syntactically incorrect json files?
   

Hacked blocks can be too useful to be removed whthout any consideration. (Examples: 1 , 2 , 3 , etc…)
Hope to have an answer from Scratch Team.

Good question! So, our primary concern is that all projects shared to the site are clearly editable and understandable to anyone who wants to see inside. We don't want someone hacking the open source editor and adding new features, and uploading something that can't be really viewed (in a way that makes sense) or played with the official Scratch editor. That would lead to bad user experience - people viewing what they think are Scratch projects, but they act or look all weird / hosed in the editor b/c they really aren't, or b/c it doesn't know what to do with them.

Editing the Json by hand is a tricky case (not exactly what we were talking about, but related.) I'd say I don't want people uploading hand hacked json that, when opened in the Scratch editor, causes the blocks shown to not make sense, or to be in a state that you could never get them into using the editor itself. What if someone new to Scratch sees inside, and wants to do the same thing but it's impossible to do with the editor? That violates one of our primary goals: Scratch projects should be easy to understand and dive into, even by people with little to no prior experience with Scratch. That means they probably won't know what JSON is or even have a way of finding out.

Of course, if all you are doing is something like a global find and replace in the JSON, but the uploaded project makes sense and could have been made in the editor, then that seems fine. Anyhow - this shouldn't be taken as the final word - I haven't consulted with other ST about it, but those are my general thoughts.

Lightnin wrote:

ShadowCoder wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

ProdigyZeta7 wrote:

Great job! I like the new layout at the bottom, especially since the wiki is easy to access now.

Edit: I'm now reading the Terms of Use. I'm at a loss as to how this can happen:

3.6, point 1: Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;

Would that mean crashing the browser?

Yep! The browser and / or Flash (the editor, which lives inside the browser.)

I made a project: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/23108305/ just to test the concept of crashing the flash player, and it specifically says it is not meant to be used to crash peoples browsers as a joke or to be mean. Should I unshare it?

Yep! I know it's an interesting experiment, but it definitely is a no no, crashing people's browsers and what not.

Actually, we'd also like to prevent that programatically - so can you download the project and email it to help@scratch? Thanks!

Even with a button that clearly says “crash flash?” OK…
EDIT: ST you can still see it right even though it's unshared?

We're working on a layman's terms version over on the wiki !

Oh, and a typo: “Attribution-ShareAlike” should be “Attribution Share-Alike”.

Lightnin wrote:

Greetings!
We’ve just added a new Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Scratch, with links at the bottom of every page. Given that these are new, we thought we should take the time to explain to Scratchers what these pages are, and why we added them.

The Terms of Use is a legal document we created with the help of our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and MIT Legal. We worked through several drafts to come up with language that’s as readable as possible and says, in legal terms, what the rules have always been on Scratch. I’ll summarize these as:

1. Be Nice! (and follow the community guidelines)
2. Everything you share can be remixed (as long as credit is given)
3. Don’t upload projects made with modified versions of Scratch (our server might not know how to play them properly)

The Privacy Policy is mostly a restatement of the privacy section of our Frequently Asked Questions page. It explains what information we gather from Scratchers, how and why we use it, and under what circumstances we will or will not share it. (We don’t sell Scratcher’s information to anyone - never have, and never will.) We added a link to it at the bottom of every page because that’s where most sites put it, and where most people are likely to look for it.

You are invited to read the docs themselves – we kept them as short and readable as we could – and ask any questions you have on this thread!

Scratch On!

Are these legal documents also on other sub-domains?