Re-rewrite the Terms of Service

gem1001

The old one was long-winded and poorly written
The current one is one of the worst things to ever happen to Scratch

To elaborate further:

The current Terms are an extreme 33-and-a-half pages long
The current Terms are less clearly organised
The current Terms say you have to be 18+ to sign up without parental consent
The current Terms say Scratch can train AI on our stuff
The current Terms say Scratch can charge money for anything
The current Terms explicitly list 5 social media sites ('TikTok, Snap, Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter/X')
The current Terms hint at AI image generation
The current Terms ban all crawlers
The current Terms have a no-reverse-engineering clause

I suggest a simple, brief Terms, comparable to Snap!'s, also without any of the unreasonable terms mentioned above.

My drafts for a new new Terms:
Latest draft
Draft #7
Draft #6
Draft #5
Draft #4
Draft #3
Draft #2
Draft #1

Last edited by gem1001 (July 21, 2026 08:00:06)

DarthVader4Life

I'm pretty certain that writing/re-writing Terms of Service requires some form of review process. Hypothetically, they could just revise it again, but you really want the Terms to cover your legal bases as much as possible. There were things about the old Terms that I liked, such as being told what license Scratch Projects are under.

I do think some additional revision is needed, but not a whole re-write.

gem1001

bump

redspacecat

The only plus is that the new ToS doesn't mention disallowing projects uploaded from Scratch editor modifications (like TurboWarp), so we can assume that it's now allowed

CoolLock

To be honest I haven't read the entire thing, why do you think it's bad? Can you elaborate?

kip22s wrote:
mingo-gag wrote:
gem1001 wrote:
The new one is the worst thing to ever happen to Scratch
April 25th 2025 on the Explore Page, If you know you know
What about the 2024 December 7th Top Loved and the explore page at that time too?

Neither of those are related, this is a legal matter.

Last edited by CoolLock (Jan. 23, 2026 06:08:35)

gem1001

CoolLock wrote:
To be honest I haven't read the entire thing, why do you think it's bad? Can you elaborate?

I have updated the OP with more information.

TheIlluminatiExposer

i mean you could just not sign on to ToS

CoolLock

gem1001 wrote:
CoolLock wrote:
To be honest I haven't read the entire thing, why do you think it's bad? Can you elaborate?
I have updated the OP with more information.

Thanks, now I understand. Full support, this is outrageous. If I hadn't been here since 7 years ago I would've thought that Scratch was a malicious corporate entity but can you really tell me it isn't now?
(i'm aware i am exaggerating)

Za-Chary

Scratch does need to include a lot of stuff into its Terms of Service. I'd have a hard time believing that they could make theirs as short as Snap!'s. I do think that the new Terms of Service is significantly longer and less organized, though; the old Terms of Use was at least somewhat reader-friendly and generally unambiguous in language.

Note that the 18+ clause was likely implemented to comply with new child safety laws. I don't think the Scratch Team can change this one, unless they agree to just make Scratch an 18+ website, which isn't going to happen.

nembence

Another problem: I think the new Terms don't allow remixing old projects, because old projects were licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you can't license the remix in the way the new Terms ask

Edit: The ToS says you give the new license “to the maximum extent of your rights to do so”, which might means that you can remix old projects and then you don't have to give the new ToS's license for the remix but I'm not sure

Edit2: 8.5 says you have to have rights to license the remix, this makes it more likely that remixing is not allowed

Last edited by nembence (Jan. 25, 2026 15:14:50)

medians

Za-Chary wrote:
Scratch does need to include a lot of stuff into its Terms of Service. I'd have a hard time believing that they could make theirs as short as Snap!'s. I do think that the new Terms of Service is significantly longer and less organized, though; the old Terms of Use was at least somewhat reader-friendly and generally unambiguous in language.

Note that the 18+ clause was likely implemented to comply with new child safety laws. I don't think the Scratch Team can change this one, unless they agree to just make Scratch an 18+ website, which isn't going to happen.

Yeah, I feel like the only one that was confusing to me on the old one was probably the modifications one

redspacecat

nembence wrote:
Another problem: I think the new Terms don't allow remixing old projects, because old projects were licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you can't license the remix in the way the new Terms ask

Oh I didn't think of that…

So old projects ARE still under CC-BY-SA, right?
Doesn't that mean that Scratch has to credit when they use old projects, or is the new ToS revoking that and overwriting it?

If it's only for new projects then that's fine, just don't post new projects.

gem1001

redspacecat wrote:
nembence wrote:
Another problem: I think the new Terms don't allow remixing old projects, because old projects were licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you can't license the remix in the way the new Terms ask
Oh I didn't think of that…

So old projects ARE still under CC-BY-SA, right?
Doesn't that mean that Scratch has to credit when they use old projects, or is the new ToS revoking that and overwriting it?

If it's only for new projects then that's fine, just don't post new projects.

I don't think Scratch can just change the licence of a project you release under a licence without your consent

redspacecat

gem1001 wrote:
I don't think Scratch can just change the licence of a project you release under a licence without your consent

What I'm trying to figure out is, does consenting to the new license override the license of old projects.

DarthVader4Life

redspacecat wrote:
nembence wrote:
Another problem: I think the new Terms don't allow remixing old projects, because old projects were licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you can't license the remix in the way the new Terms ask
Oh I didn't think of that…

So old projects ARE still under CC-BY-SA, right?
Doesn't that mean that Scratch has to credit when they use old projects, or is the new ToS revoking that and overwriting it?

If it's only for new projects then that's fine, just don't post new projects.

From what I understand, old projects have to be still under CC-BY-SA. The license is irrevocable. However, you can add onto it, I think. I don't think the new ToS can just revoke, let alone overwrite it.

gem1001

redspacecat wrote:
gem1001 wrote:
I don't think Scratch can just change the licence of a project you release under a licence without your consent
What I'm trying to figure out is, does consenting to the new license override the license of old projects.

It says ‘By Posting User Content to or via the Service’ and makes no mention of existing projects, so I presume it only applies to new projects.
What I just noticed that seems even more concerning is this detail:

you hereby grant: (a) other users of the Service a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, and create derivative works of such User Content solely for personal use

This hopefully doesn't mean remixes will be banned. see #21

Last edited by gem1001 (Jan. 23, 2026 16:02:07)

redspacecat

gem1001 wrote:
It says ‘By Posting User Content to or via the Service’ and makes no mention of existing projects, so I presume it only applies to new projects.
What I just noticed that seems even more concerning is this detail:
you hereby grant: (a) other users of the Service a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, and create derivative works of such User Content solely for personal use
This hopefully doesn't mean remixes will be banned.

I thought that just meant non commercial use.

nembence

redspacecat wrote:
nembence wrote:
Another problem: I think the new Terms don't allow remixing old projects, because old projects were licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you can't license the remix in the way the new Terms ask
Oh I didn't think of that…

So old projects ARE still under CC-BY-SA, right?
Doesn't that mean that Scratch has to credit when they use old projects, or is the new ToS revoking that and overwriting it?

If it's only for new projects then that's fine, just don't post new projects.

I think Scratch can't change the license until the user who made the project logs in, so it's still CC-BY-SA only.
After the user logs in, Scratch can get permission to do the things that the new ToS says (without credit). The CC-BY-SA will probably stay there and allow people from other websites to use the project with credit

Edit: as @gem1001 said above, the current ToS doesn't seem to actually get permission on old projects even if you accept the ToS, if you don't update the project after accepting the new ToS
(btw I'm not a lawyer so the things I said can be wrong)

Last edited by nembence (Jan. 24, 2026 14:07:59)

gem1001

redspacecat wrote:
gem1001 wrote:
It says ‘By Posting User Content to or via the Service’ and makes no mention of existing projects, so I presume it only applies to new projects.
What I just noticed that seems even more concerning is this detail:
you hereby grant: (a) other users of the Service a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, and create derivative works of such User Content solely for personal use
This hopefully doesn't mean remixes will be banned.
I thought that just meant non commercial use.

Given that the only other use of the words ‘personal use’ in the Terms is

and publicly display that photograph for personal use

, you're probably right.

King

Last edited by gem1001 (Jan. 25, 2026 12:51:09)

nembence

I edited my post because it's possible that it allows remixing old projects
(btw I'm still not a lawyer so the things I say can be wrong, also I should probably stop disecting the ToS now)

Edit: I edited it again because I re-read 8.5 in the ToS. Now it seems like it doesn't allow remixing

Last edited by nembence (Jan. 25, 2026 15:18:14)

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