As a Roblox developer and someone who is very interested in the law and how it operates, it pains me to see users without proper legal research or a degree in law propose different “legal solutions” to others.
Misinformation is hard to debunk and there are many who usually unknowingly in good faith say something that is far from the truth. Sometimes not even the usual “I’m not a lawyer, take it with a huge grain of salt” disclaimers help against people quoting the misinformation like it is gospel. There were times when I have messed up in my research and had to go and explain to some who have quoted me because I was doing some legal research in response to someone and messed it up.
The community isn’t made of lawyers and even when there are some, none of them ever speak up here. Allowing this to keep on going will only hurt someone in the future as they do as they hear from someone here. Only real legal conversations that should be happening here is about the things that truly matter to the community and is often ignored - copyright, but even then there is a lot of material from the US Copyright Office that is able to educate anyone on how things work.
I do hope that this gets solved as letting those conversations drag on here can cause some serious harm in the future that could end up being very expensive to fix.
The above thread is a ‘legal’ thread that is specific to the ToS of the 3rd party they are discussing (so it wouldn’t necessarily be useful to simply check the US Copyright Office). The obvious good this has done seems very clear to me, since it’s preventing people from making a (potentially) accidental copyright infringement.
What this comes down to are posts being well-researched and/or originating from someone with a credible background. That’s something that individual users should be deciding forthemselves (or doing themselves).
While the DevForum (imo) shouldn’t be the first place someone goes to for legal information, a lot of ‘legal’ hurdles encountered by one developer may have already been experienced by another developer. That developer should be able to share their experiences, lessons learned, etc. with other developers. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the reader to determine what to do with the advice. Like all things on the DevForum, advice can be taken or left aside (and that applies to lots of interactions here, such as critiques on modeling, programming advice, legal advice in this context, etc.)
That discussion doesn’t have to involve legality - it could just be “Don’t use these assets without a license”. Plus, I don’t think it is what the OP is targeting.
There are threads that are specifically asking for legal advice, and often getting some very bad advice. People should be speaking to lawyers rather than trusting someone’s second hand knowledge on copyright law if they’re in a situation that is as some of them describe.
Yes, that is pretty much what I meant. I do understand why they ask here instead of going to a legal advisor (one being monetary reasons), however, no legal advise is better than a bad one from someone who doesn’t have the proper knowledge and understanding of the law.
In the first, it was off topic. Also OP stated that he knows law stuff and roblox ToS. Then he says that you should not be able to purchase robux with a credit card because bitcoin exists and money is against the law. In the example post it is clearly what is wrong.
I’d really agree. It’s getting out of hand with misinterpretations and impulsive responses without proper research, or posts based on one (unofficial) source like a YouTube-video (which hasn’t any legal authenticity at all). Additionally, most DevForum users base their research on one country (like the US) and assume that as legal basis for all countries, however people underestimate how different laws are on specific subjects.
Giving one example to elaborate my statement, the US is very tolerant towards privacy in comparison to Europe. I’ve seen earlier that people reference to solely US privacy laws, without taking the GDPR into account for visitors from the EU. Although I can’t find the post anymore (it was a time ago), this gives an example of insufficient research for a person’s question, causing misinformation to spread around.
On the other side, by not allowing starting game developers to ask questions about a legal concern/inquiry, there’s a higher chance that they misinterpret appropriate laws, causing them to potentially infringe or provide insufficient compliance with applicable legislations.
My own suggestion: Disallow legal inquiries to be asked on the forum, and provide answers to the most common legal inquiries on Roblox
For example, Roblox Copyright Guidance provides information related to intellectual properties. Pages like those help newer developers to kickstart their games with compliance in mind, so I would love to see an official Roblox Privacy Guidance page for example.
tl;dr
Disallow legal inquiries to be asked on the forum
Provide answers to the most common legal inquiries on Roblox
I mean yea but also this wouldn’t put anyone else who can’t afford to defend themselves against legal liability in danger of getting sued over misinterpretations and even when you’re innocent in this, it still takes money just to have a motion written and sent to dismiss yourself. As I already mentioned already, no legal advice is better than a bad one.
I second that, disallowing legal conversations on the DevForum will also remove Roblox’ liability for moderating these topics. (Many legal-discussion topics are taken down within 24 hours of creation, because they’re not constructive for a discussion)
I’ve seen way too many legal questions and conversations on this forum and this really needs to be stopped; DevForum is not LawForum and developers are not lawyers.
Many users are now making “will ____ get me a DMCA takedown request?” or “Is ____ against the TOS?” topics in Development Discussion and these topics are usually 30+ replies that are all filled with speculation and guesses and do not cite any laws or rules.
It’s too hard for me to answer these kinds of questions when they pop up since I can’t answer them because, like I said, I am a developer, not a lawyer.
Here’s the thing. Both of those are easy to answer questions, and you don’t have to be a lawyer to answer.
It’s extremely unfair to ban all legal talk, because then you have 13+ yr olds who have no clue what will get them in murky waters in legal issues. The devforum is not the place for getting a licensed legal answer, but any developer can answer a mass amount of questions.
It’s unreasonable to have someone >18 to have to look and talk to someone about case law, when it should be developers learning about it too. We cannot give legal advice, but we can give insight onto a lot of the questions asked here.