Proper solution for legal questions?

Question

We get a question every few weeks that isn't really a question about game development, but a question about copyright or contract law.

I really do not think such questions have a place here; by their nature they are specific to the person only. The only acceptable answer is "talk to a licensed professional", and the answers posted by well-meaning users rarely disclaim being legal advice (and most are), which means they are possibly practicing law without a license, itself a crime.

The only allowable exception I can think of is "Where can I get a license for this common piece of development middleware?" which, in some cases, is obfuscated enough by the corporate site that I can understand asking it, and has a definitive answer of a website or mailing address.

Is there anyone that thinks the questions add something to the site? If so, is there a way we can accurately and legally answer them? Will such an answer ever be useful to someone else? Otherwise, I feel these questions need to be closed quickly and decisively.

Answer 1

The TL;DR summary:

• it is not a crime to answer SE questions (unless you deliberately pose as a lawyer, which is fraud).
• good basic questions will point out potential legal landmines to other developers.
• knowing where the potential landmines are, will allow other devs to design their games so as to avoid them.

The long version - First, regarding risk: I read your practicing law without a license, and it specifically says:

some of the commonly occurring activities that generally are not considered the practice of law in Oregon include:

• internet discussions groups without further personalized assistance in preparation of documents or court papers.

So we're fairly safe from prosecution by the Oregon DA. :)

Second, at least for those of us in the US, we have the First Amendent, which says we can speak freely - including answering legal questions. Granted if you claim to be a lawyer you'll get in trouble, but that's why people include the IANAL.

Now, as to whether we (gamedev) should be either answering, or asking legal questions - I think it's question-specific. Some questions will be too technical, and require a lawyer - but some questions, don't require any major legal knowledge.

You don't need a medical degree to tell someone that aspirin can cause Reye's syndrome in children, and you don't need a law degree to tell someone that copyright violation (of music) is illegal.

If someone asks such a basic legal question, that can be answered by quoting any of dozens of current copyright websites, I don't see a problem with the question. Assuming it's game-related, of course. :)

As the legal question gets more complex, it obviously falls more out of our domain (and gets too person-specific anyway), so it would be an off-topic question.

Where do you draw the line? That's something we're still trying to answer for a lot of topics :) But I don't think the answer is zero - I think some legal (game-related) question can be valid and on-topic for this site.

As to whether any given legal question would be useful to others, I think they could be - even if only to inform other devs that there is a legal issue that they need address, before releasing their game (and maybe before writing the game they can fix the issue beforehand).

Answer 2

Instead of responding in other comments with bits and pieces of what I want to say I'll just collate my ideas a bit more on my personal reason for not wanting to take a heavy handed approach at this point in time.

Of course this is subjective, but right now I don't see the current crop of legal-related questions to be so egregious as to require the "human exception handlers" to wield the banhammer on them.

At the very least, it seems that most of the the highest voted answers to those questions all eventually boil down to "get a lawyer", which makes it seem that the community-moderated aspect of the system is working.

If you want to convince people to downvote those questions, or eventually cast close votes (I realize that with the rep requirements raised it's impossible to get "community close" votes right now), then of course you're free to do so. Like I said, I don't disagree with you in theory, but the binding close vote is something that I don't want to use unless I'm sure that it's something that should be done. And I'm not 100% sold on the idea right now.

Now in terms of the comment you used: "When I use an SE site, I want as close to 100% accuracy as possible". If you look at it from a higher level standpoint, that isn't a really achievable goal. How do you apply an accuracy judgement to subjective discussions or professional experience? Try applying those standards to Moms 4 mom. The goal of SE, the company, is to "make the Internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions."

Now the people here may not be attorneys, but I would hope there are enough people here who are professional developers or have had to deal with common legal issues in the past that they can offer their "expert" advice and say things like "Here are the issues we had, get a lawyer."

Answer 3

The only acceptable answer is "talk to a licensed professional"

Definitively disagree here. It's one of the acceptable answers. Personally I wouldn't neither consider it a good one in most cases. I would assume that the user making the question would know there are "licensed professionals", but he wanted to collect the opinion of the users instead (or first, or beside...).

answers posted by well-meaning users rarely disclaim being legal advice (and most are), which means they are possibly practicing law without a license, itself a crime.

You seem to ignore that well-meaning users could also be very knowledgeable and experienced. Personally I met more than one barrister who knew less than me on free software and copyleft, for example. Now: I don't want to say that people here is better than "licensed professionals", but it's a known fact that being "licensed" doesn't mean you are good at what you do, just that you are entitled at doing it professionally and therefore you are also bound to certain laws and regulations.

Both things do not apply to GameDev.

Is there anyone that thinks the questions add something to the site?

Me! (Maybe not all questions, but in principle I don't see this kind of question as less or more useful than others per se).

If so, is there a way we can accurately and legally answer them?

You should define "legally answer" first. But in general, the usefulness of the answers will be validated as for any other answer here: with upvotes. As for the accuracy: GameDev is not a lawyer and while it would be nice if all upvoted answers would also be accurate, having an occasional inaccurate one is part of the... game! :o

Will such an answer ever be useful to someone else? Otherwise, I feel these questions need to be closed quickly and decisively.

If an answer is too localised it should be closed as any other too localised one. Yet, much of the legal systems concerning copyrights abide to the principles of the Berne convention, so I think the vast majority of the answers will be somehow useful to a large audience.

Answer 4

Constantly shunning (or plastering disparaging disclaimers on) any questions tagged legal seems absurd. While definitive legal advice can not be given here, some Q&A's can provide a good basis for initial research on what to look out for or talk with your lawyer about. Is providing and/or keeping that information bad or hazardous?

In the case of medicine, I could see it being that way; e.g. WebMD could cause patients to diagnose themselves and try to play their doctor to validate their own "expertise". Not sure if that translates to law though.

Could there just be some sort of automatic neutral statement that's attached to questions tagged legal?

Answer 5

Certainly as a game developer that collaborates with other professional indie developers, I've found that we have all end up asking similar questions over the first few years. For example figuring out the legalese jargon regarding whether or not a UK developer invoicing a US client must charge VAT on the invoices. The answer is the same for all of us, but consulting a lawyer to have that confirmed is costly. Often when I have a question I think that others will have come across, I'll ask around for advice.

A response along the lines of "when we asked our lawyers about this similar issue, they told us X" is not only useful, but often exactly what is being looked for. Obviously answers like that come with no guarantees, and would benefit from being disclaimed in some fashion so that anyone stupid enough to think advice from someone on the internet is legally binding is not caught out. But I would say that sort of advice is exactly the kind of useful information sharing that the game-dev community needs, and that this site is perfectly set up to provide.