Curse's terms of use deserve a closer look
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 16th 2008 at 7:00PM
There's a storm brewing over in the UI & Macros forum, and it's about the terms of use for popular add-on site Curse. If you use mods at all, you're almost certainly aware of the site; I go there all the time. They're probably the biggest mod site right now. So it comes as something of a surprise to me that such a pillar of the scene would have what seems to be a pretty abusive set of terms service. According to the analysis conducted in this forum thread, Curse's ToU "specifically removes any and all copyright that we as authors have on our addons." Yikes!
There are other bad parts of the ToU language too, including that Curse can change the ToU at any time without notifying authors. Of course, the site is within its rights to impose any ToU it wants on the users, but it's not nice to take control of creations out of authors' hands. I am not a lawyer, so it's altogether possible that I'm interpreting some of this incorrectly. The forum thread, however, claims that lawyers looked at Curse's terms and agreed that the interpretation is correct.
Until these provisions are changed -- and Curse promises that they will be -- I recommend mod authors use other sites like WoWInterface or wowui.incgamers.com. In writing this article I read the terms of use for those sites -- or rather, tried to. IncGamers doesn't even have their ToU up! But they've been a pretty well-behaved site in the past (they used to be worldofwar.net), so I trust them. WoWInterface's terms of service didn't seem to have anything like what Curse has, and a source at the site assured me that "we never touch an author's zip file without their knowledge and consent, ever." WI has a good history of respecting the community and the authors. Curse folks, are we all reading this wrong? Is there something in this issue that's being missed?
Update: As several of Curse's employees have helpfully pointed out to me, the new ToU are much better. However, I still have reservations about them.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Hubert Thieblot Feb 16th 2008 7:50PM
Eliah Hecht,
For you information, This TOS was my by lawyers that always try to put the maximum protections into the ToS to protect their customer.
We had a chat with a few authors yesterday and reached an agreement on how the TOS should be. We were just waiting for our laywers to get back to us.
Everything that remain in the TOS now is very standard.
We are sorry for the troubles caused by this, and we will notify all our users for the new changes.
Best regards
Hubert
Hubert Thieblot Feb 16th 2008 7:55PM
Please read : *was made*
Felwrathe Feb 16th 2008 7:58PM
I've never liked curse. Curse seems far too commercial... like the Yahoo! of addon sites. I prefer wowinterface, but I don't use that much either, as I just use the wowace updater and WUU to update all my addons and sometimes install new ones.
But I'd really like to see a mod site step up and be the absolute leader. The place all real addon developers post their latest builds, the place all addon users go to discuss them/find bugs, a place that's absolutely safe and easy for those newer to addons [trust me, I've seen some sad cases], but in the end is still a community site, run by and for the people.
Something like Curse meets WoWWiki meets Wowhead meets WowAce. The end all be all community for WoW, outside of the official forums and individual guild stuff.
I'd start it myself if I knew more than basic coding. Hell, I'd pay membership for that. Probably just as much as I pay for WoW itself.
Re: Hacks - I've never seen a hack come out of Curse or WoWI. I don't understand where people are getting these ideas. I do know, however, that WoWUI has a very sketchy [and terrible looking] client, that I wouldn't be surprised if it had hacks in it. But people still use the site, so chances are not.
I have however, gotten hacked just recently [which has my account suspended for 72 hours], and that didn't come from an addon. I had run a spyware check just hours before it happened, and hadn't done anything but play the game since then. It was the Dire Maul treasure hack. I've never been to DM, but my character was respecced and left in there, with a few blues I didn't own on the auction house. I'm pretty sure the gold farmers don't have to resort to addons.
Sean Riley Feb 16th 2008 8:22PM
How many of the comments are coming from Curse employees, just out of curiosity?
dotted Feb 16th 2008 8:47PM
Hubert Thieblot (aka. NeT) is the founder, and I myself is a mod (i wouldn't exactly call that a employee though :p)
And as far as i can see me and NeT are the only ones affiliated with curse.
rick gregory Feb 16th 2008 8:45PM
Oh please Sean... take the paranoia elsewhere. I mean, I'm NOT affiliated with Curse (aside from using them for downloads)... but 1) how can you KNOW that? and 2) it's insulting to call into question the honesty of those of us who think you're being irrational.
As for your earlier reply to me, you certainly DID draw a connection between the ToU issue and being hacked - after all, the TOPIC OF THE POST is the ToU, not your personal likes or dislikes.
Sean Riley Feb 16th 2008 8:49PM
Fair enough. I retract all comments regarding the hack.
I should be calmer.
Shefki Feb 16th 2008 8:51PM
New terms seem fine to me.
I'm an addon author. I happen to like Curse's website. Simply becuase IMHO they provide better tools to me as an author. I also like WoWInterface for the community.
Curse seems to have responded fairly quickly. Especially given that this is a legal issue and their lawyers who drafted this are out for the weekend.
To the people who are saying that curse is trash etc... It's a website and ultimately a tool. There are other options. Use whichever one you like the best. In the end competition is good for all of us.
To the people complaining that Curse is too commercial. You're obviously coming to this blog to read it and it's run by a business that does nothing but churn out blogs on every reasonably popular topic. Is that not commercial enough for you? I don't really see the difference in levels of commercialism between say WoWInterface and Curse either. They both have ads.
I'm not really surprised that wowinsider is somewhat negative towards Curse since in some respects Curse competes with them. And yet WoWHead and WoWInterface do not.
Eliah Hecht Feb 16th 2008 8:51PM
At this point I would like to clarify that this article expresses my own personal opinion, not the opinion of WoW Insider as a whole.
Pål Feb 16th 2008 9:02PM
You're blowing this out of proportions. The ToU are obviously designed to keep Curse out of trouble, as well as provide a ruleset for the users to follow. Whatever rights they don't reserve for content that's uploaded to them, they can't actually make use of or malicious users can abuse them legally. That's why they reserve a lot of rights, which basically boils down to the right to host, store, and distribute the addons, basically what the purpose of the site is, or at least that section of it. In the old ToS they had also reserved the rights to modify, translate and sell the files, which admittedly, is overdoing it a bit, but also I think it's more of a default legalese text a lawyer gave the administrators than a specifically Curse-tailored document. Things having been added, I would think is simply the same lawyer having updated his own cover-most-issues document and using this as a basis for the updated ToU.
Besides, them reserving the rights does not mean that they are going to make use of those rights, it simply means that if, by design or accident, they end up doing so (having parts of, or the entire, database compressed for transfer counts as modifying, if there would be a site ownership transfer selling would probably be involved), you can't sue them over it anyway. They're just covering themselves, not plotting to take over the world by modifying and selling the addons.
Legorol Feb 16th 2008 10:05PM
Pal:
I think you missed an important point. Sure enough Curse needs to reserve certain rights in order to be able to function. However, the original ToU (before the debate started) had made the author grant a wide range of rights not only to Curse, but to Curse's users too! For example, the right to modify and redistribute AddOns they obtained from Curse.
In my opinion, it is this aspect of the Curse ToU that was most damaging to AddOn authors hosting on their site, before the changes were made.
San Feb 24th 2008 8:01AM
The new TOS looks fairly standard. The only part I, if I were a content submitter, would have issue with is the "successors and affiliates" use of material. Successors is an understandable clause, likely there to be a provision in case of sale of the site. Affiliates I am concerned about though. Allowing affiliate use can let them licence user content to 3rd party sites for display or distribution and there is no provision for income from such a licence to be shared by the content creators. If they have that term there to give them rights to advertise Curse via advertising the content, then they need to add a qualifyer such as "for limited promotional use" and state what part of the content would be used for promotion.
Michael O'Connor Feb 17th 2008 3:04AM
Am I the only person here who thinks that this situation is nothing more than out-of-date ToU whose wording got eschewed, causing the whole thing to get blown out of proportion?
1 - Considering the original ToU, have they ever actually taken user content and redistributed it for their own means?
2 - How long has it been up before someone actually bothered to notice? If anything, it proves that people don't seem to care what their rights are.
3 - It was changed rather swiftly, nullifying the problem. If they weren't interested, they could have left it as it is. A lot of companyies wouldn't respect their customer base that way.
Build mountains out of a mole-hill, much?
(No, I don't work for Curse. =P )
Venyo Feb 17th 2008 5:28AM
2nd Curse-bashing after the "ZOMG they stole wowhead!!!11!"
Any personal argument going on?
Like "We have a deal with wowhead: being able to link items from their database and now we do everything to discredit Curse because of rivalry?"
Venyo Feb 17th 2008 8:16AM
2nd Curse-bashing after the "ZOMG they stole wowhead!!!11!"
Any personal argument going on?
Like "We have a deal with wowhead: being able to link items from their database and now we do everything to discredit Curse because of rivalry?"
daniel Feb 17th 2008 6:40AM
the copyright clause is bullshit tho since you can't give up or transfer copyright to anyone else.
Venyo Feb 17th 2008 8:18AM
sorry for double posting, please downrate it^^
Matt Feb 17th 2008 3:55PM
Pretty much any site that hosts user-created content has a license like this. The rights you give to the site are the rights you want to give them: the ability to host and display your content on their website. They reserve commercial rights so they can display ads next to your content, or have a subscription-based service, etc. Usually there's also a clause that says when you remove the content from their site, you also remove their rights under the license.
Look out for language such as "irrevocable" and "exclusive." An irrevocable license is one that will NOT terminate if you remove the content, and transferring an exclusive license to someone is essentially transferring that right to them and them alone, effectively giving up ownership of that right (the copy-right being one such right). Curse does NOT have this language in their license, so you have no more to worry about than if you posted a video to YouTube.
To note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
liquid circuit Feb 17th 2008 4:31PM
Starting to question why I still read this blog... too much fear, uncertainty and doubt... too much speculation....
If this is "your opinion" and "it's altogether possible that..." you are "...interpreting some of this incorrectly", perhaps you should have consulted someone with some expertise on the subject before you blogged about it.
Wave goodbye to your credibility.
Kalandrah Feb 18th 2008 2:51AM
Looking at the ToU, they're really nothing special. Pretty much all of what was written is there to avoid Curse getting sued (hurrah for the american legal system!) because they might have inadvertendly kept a copy of something, or distributed your written mod to someone in China.
Basically, when you upload something to Curse, they decide when, where and how they distribute it. From a technical point of view, when you delete your addon its still on the harddisk (merely the reference to the data is removed). It might also be on one of their backup tapes (assuming they do backups), hence the clause that absolves them of any guilt if for some reason or other your "deleted" mod suddenly shows up on their system.