They are a US company, they host their data in the US. Yet users in the US are being told discord is now following european commission regulations on behalf of all users regardless of your locale. Not only that they say they have a right to sublicense and modify anything you upload even if you don't own rights to do so yourself.
for example, if someones uploads a game you made without your permission when you licensed your game to forbid modifications, discord is saying they have a right to modify it. This is inherently illegal because they are gaining their permissions from a third party that does not have the legal or documented authority to grant them the permissions they are demanding, and with their intent to bypass the rights of the legitimate owner. Further more if you or someone on behalf of your company does agree to the ToS whom has the authority regarding something your company has made and uploaded, then discord gains all rights to use distribute and modify and redistribute whatever it is as if they own it, even for profit.
I do not agree.
I will not be using discord any more.
they've proclaimed themselves under the law of the EU even though they are a US company. - this has got to be illegal where there are conflicts of law between the US and EU.
and they say they have rights to sublicense and modify your uploads, even games you don't own the rights to yourself. this is a big legal no.
also you cannot opt out of the arbitration clause any more.
It's all a contract under duress, a forced contract.
It's actually violating multple consumer and product protection laws in the usa, no wonder they'd rather say they are following eu law. eww. insert meme "this is illegal you know"
do not agree. if you agree as a developer, close that account, it's not worth it as a developer "but I'm not releasing anything via discord" that doesn't matter any more, if you agree to this ToS they have a right to use distribute and modify your content that's uploaded by others!. oh and they claim the right to profit from your stuff by using it in advertisements and sharing it with partners. they name google as a partner.
discord has breached law of it's governing country and it's really, really bad for you if you are a content creator or developer.
They will arbitrate for their company's benefit in case of a legal problem where they have wrongfully modified and used something for profit that they got from your uploads and someone sues them,
They WILL blame YOU! and likely continue using it.
For me this new ToS visibly violates multiple product and consumer protection laws. It's illegal. it's not something I want to get wrapped up in. again when they get caught because of their illegal ToS they will blame the user, as you've agreed to let them arbitrate you have no way to defend yourself from this gross abuse of a use agreement and companies that come suing because of it. Get out while you can.
lets say in example you upload or link CoH sourcecode docs to discord, and Discord uses them for profit by selling them to google for $1.5 million, and NCSoft finds out. NCSoft will sue discord and Discord will arbitrate for you and say you the user should have known they would sell it, and so discord waives all liability. now NCSoft comes to you demanding $1.5 million you did not make and may not have.
Unless of course NCSoft themselves have an official discord account which has agreed to this new ToS. then they lose all right to sue and would legally lose ownership of the game according to EU law (and whoever discord sells it to would be the new owner. the ToS is a nightmare for developers.
Now lets say you as a developer make a game. through hard work blood sweat, tears and headaches. and you do not upload it to discord, but you agree to the terms of this ToS so you can use discord, and then some other user uploads your game, possibly in source because some games are in source. Discord sells it to google, and you try to sell your game and find out it and many other copy cats are on the google play store without your permission and google is profiting from it. you can do nothing because thats what you agreed to in this ToS. Now google is suing YOU for selling a game you made, that they bought from discord because it was uploaded by another user!
It's not safe for developers, your only safe bet is to not accept their ToS (meaning you cannot use discord), if you already accepted it, you'll need to close that account to nullify it. or disconnect your discord use from your development projects (meaning you can't share nor admit affiliation with the dev of such a project). For me that's already too late so I am hitting the red X reject button in the browser tab. good, I don't like keeping a modern browser open all day anyways, good riddance I'll go back to my flash enabled browser. again they do all sorts of tracking now too, it's in their ToS, they'll track you by device, so if they can link you to a dev project that way, then they'll assume you've accepted their right to steal your work.
so that's my reasons for not using discord now. this is a protection for if someone other than me uploads my game in the future, then having not agreed to this I can sue discord if they try to use, modify, profit from or sell it without my permission.
maybe this is a bit over the top for some people, but I do not want to have to spend time arguing against this ToS in court later.
now if you are not a developer and do not plan to even have your own company or your own products, then you can just be careful to not share things you don't own. and yes that can mean not sharing videos or images others own by legal registration. for example you cannot use any images containing trademarked characters or otherwise intellectually protected, otherwise if Discord does an advert and uses that image in the background "All rights reserved" the owning company will be told by discord to sue you.
for me, even as a user, that severely limits me from sharing content and engaging in a social way. so at that point it makes no sense to continue to use discord.
oh by the way, their ToS covers anything in "private" messages too. which means they are not private and anything uploaded there is now able to be used, distributed and modified by discord and their partners for profit.
it's a shame that we can't have anything nice, that a bad ToS will always kill it.
