Drat and blast. There is no character limit on Desura, meaning I can't make another large worthless wall of text. I can do that on my twitter account (twitter.com/oldtopman) though.
Today, as my (likely only) blog post, I shall discuss the Desura Terms Of Service (.desura.com/terms-of-use). I will not transcribe it, so you should have it open in another window for reference.
Section 1: You may not play your subscriptions except through the Desura client. That sounds a bit harsh. Actually, this only applies to Subscriptions. You are not prohibited from playing your games through other means.
Section 2: By publishing a game to Desura, you allow us to grant users to play your games. More detail can be found in another document. I don't publish games (yet) so I really can't say much on this.
Section 3: You are not allowed to sue Desura over issues related to mods. This is fantastic for Desura, as it can be illegal(violate the game's TOS) and this gets Desura out of the legal crosshairs when the company that owns the game tries to sue. How so? All Desura is doing is hosting mod files. The users are the ones hacking the game. And with this clause, the users cannot sue Desura.
Section 4: You are not allowed to post fradulent payment information (read: commit fraud) and the ads within Desura are not offers to sell. NO FRAUD. If there is an inaccuracy between an ad and what you paid, the ad is a lie. Just like the cake.
Section 5: You allow Desura to automatically charge your card for Subscriptions. You are not allowed to cause chargebacks. You cannot sue us for charging your card for a subscription. NO FRAUD.
Section 6: No posting copyrighted material, malicious software, pornography, online gambling; No defamation, hacking, false identities, e-mail harvesting.
Section 7: You do not have the right to use Desura. Desura is still trademarked to Desura.
Section 8: If you participate in a contest, you agree to the contests rules.
Section 9A: Desura is provided as is.
Section 9B: You cannot sue Desura.
Section 9C: You cannot sue Desura.
Section 9D: We do not guarantee flawless service (read: You cannot sue Desura.).
Section 10: You allow Desura to collect information on you. More information can be found in this document (desura.com/privacy-policy). getting credit card information is often illegal. With this Section, you allow Desura to have it.
Section 11: We can ban you from Desura at any time, for any reason. You still have to keep Sections 1, 2, 9, 11, 13, and 14. This means that you cannot leave Desura just so you can sue them.
Section 12: Desura is not responsible for the sites that they link to.
Section 13: All problems with this agreement must be handled in the Courts of Victoria, sitting in Melbourne. (What if the court stands?)
Section 14: These terms are binding, legal speak, it applies to all of the people you give the account to, and so on.
Section 15: Here is our information. Basically have a nice day.
Last Updated: November 8, 2010
We should all be thankful to Desura for posting clear and easy to read TOS. There isn't anything in here thats particularly tricky. Nothing in here is out to get you either! \o/
Please correct the following to save your blog:
- Because you are a new member, you cannot include URLs until you are activly visiting the site and have been registered for 7 days. This measure is in place to prevent spambots you find on other sites like Youtube.
That sucks. Links will have to be added yourself >:D
AFTER ALL THIS, THERE IS NO TEXT LIMIT!!!!
I'll edit it when I'm allowed to post links I suppose.
Hey, thanks a million. I was never that good with legal stuff, so your text helped a lot.
Only thing I'm wondering now is: how will all this affect the new open-source policy they adopted for the client?
I have no idea. Now that I have a request though, I'll have to see what the license there is. As fas as I can tell, the client could be zlib, so long as you don't do anything against the TOS with it.