What is done if, say, there is a project where it is simply a flashing black/white screen at a high framerate? For those who don't know, epilepsy is a type of problem where flashy things give people seizures. I have seen many extremely flashy projects before which could cause a seizure to someone with epilepsy. Are these projects allowed? Must a warning be placed?

Furthermore, the Scratch Team should really place a warning somewhere on the site, maybe on an official rules wiki page linked from the main site, that some projects may cause the risk of having an epileptic attack. Why? First off, we don't want people getting seizures from an educational kids site, and second, we don't want Scratch getting sued. I can guarantee that if someone viewed a flashy project on here, got a fatal epileptic attack, and ended up hospitalized, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT would be getting sued. I'm not trying to put that in a threatening way; more as a caution.

People sue for whatever they can, such as the coffee from McDonalds being too hot, and other crazy cases. People want money, so if their kid has a seizure from a project on this site and the Scratch Team has no notice, they could go to court.

Scratch Team, we need an official rules page. This site's traffic and atmosphere has changed much since the 1.4 days. You should take all precautions as such to avoid being sued. There are definitely quite some out of the tens of thousands of active users who risk epileptic attacks.

-a somewhat question/suggestion /notice from turkey3

Well according to the stats page the majority of new users are about 12 years old so they should have a far higher intelligence than someone that needs to be told their coffee is hot or objects in a rear view mirror may be closer than they appear or all the inane drivel that comes from litigation.

I remember that in 1.4, a project couldn't do something like this:

when gf clicked
forever
next costume
end

It would just stay on the current costume. If this could be implemented into 2.0, this would be beneficial.

LeDerpy123 wrote:

I remember that in 1.4, a project couldn't do something like this:

when gf clicked
forever
next costume
end

It would just stay on the current costume. If this could be implemented into 2.0, this would be beneficial.

I didn't know that! But either way, someone can do things with the brightness effect to flash the screen, and more. There are other ways to get around that. But I don't think anyone makes projects like that to cause an attack; that's just the project itself.

First of

People sue for whatever they can, such as the coffee from McDonalds being too hot

The coffee was dangerously high (Spilling gave
third degree burns). I don't think she sued them because she wanted money but because it gave her a lot of pain and she wanted McDonalds to change. Also

drmcw wrote:

Well according to the stats page the majority of new users are about 12 years old so they should have a far higher intelligence than someone that needs to be told their coffee is hot or objects in a rear view mirror may be closer than they appear or all the inane drivel that comes from litigation.

what would that have to do with scratch in a civil court case of coffee being to hot.

There was something else about this somewhere…

Ah, yes-it was this one.
http://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/29096/

Support. I could agree to that!

Deerleg wrote:

Ah, yes-it was this one.
http://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/29096/

Hmmmm….. hard to say. This topic also gives suggestions about these types of seizures - it does have something different than that topic.

they-might-be-cats wrote:

First of

People sue for whatever they can, such as the coffee from McDonalds being too hot

The coffee was dangerously high (Spilling gave
third degree burns). I don't think she sued them because she wanted money but because it gave her a lot of pain and she wanted McDonalds to change. Also

drmcw wrote:

Well according to the stats page the majority of new users are about 12 years old so they should have a far higher intelligence than someone that needs to be told their coffee is hot or objects in a rear view mirror may be closer than they appear or all the inane drivel that comes from litigation.

what would that have to do with scratch in a civil court case of coffee being to hot.

Well perhaps we should sue McDonalds for insulting our intelligence that they have to tell us coffee is hot? Most things are common sense and litigation like that makes a mockery of it. Where does it stop? Should there be a warning on Scratch not to use it underwater?

BTW Scratch 1.4 would need safety warnings too as it does allow the forever, next costume to run!

^^^
Let's not argue about the McDonalds coffee case thing, let's keep it on topic.

+1 There needs to be legal or community rules like this. The sueing thing would be like the pacman thing, but on a massive scale.

OK then let's just have pages and pages of slowly scrolling legal rubbish that you have to click through for 5 minutes every time you want to firstly enter the scratch site then again when you want to run a project. Support?

drmcw wrote:

OK then let's just have pages and pages of slowly scrolling legal rubbish that you have to click through for 5 minutes every time you want to firstly enter the scratch site then again when you want to run a project. Support?

That was not my suggestion at all just something in the fine print somewhere on the rules page.

turkey3 wrote:

drmcw wrote:

OK then let's just have pages and pages of slowly scrolling legal rubbish that you have to click through for 5 minutes every time you want to firstly enter the scratch site then again when you want to run a project. Support?

That was not my suggestion at all just something in the fine print somewhere on the rules page.

I know. I was just trying to show that unless common sense prevails then things very easily become spoilt. Bit like a DVD or Blu Ray, you buy it to watch a movie but end up wasting 15 minutes while warnings and trailers delay the start.

Well maybe if people have that problem then they should think, “Hmm. Maybe since flashing is dangerous for me to see, maybe I shouldn't be on electronics.” and don't get on electronics. Simple.

AgentCNF wrote:

Well maybe if people have that problem then they should think, “Hmm. Maybe since flashing is dangerous for me to see, maybe I shouldn't be on electronics.” and don't get on electronics. Simple.

Um… That's not really the case. In the law's opinion Scratch needs to be kitted out to be safe, if Scratch does not have some legal thing saying about this stuff, they can get in serious trouble.

(What would happen if Scratch was shutdown by the law? There should be another forum where we can protest to get it back if it goes down!

cheeseeater wrote:

+1 There needs to be legal or community rules like this. The sueing thing would be like the pacman thing, but on a massive scale.

I remember hearing about that, but they we're actually sued?!? k9lego.

k9lego wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

+1 There needs to be legal or community rules like this. The sueing thing would be like the pacman thing, but on a massive scale.

I remember hearing about that, but they we're actually sued?!? k9lego.

No, they just had to take off the project. If they didn't, they would have met in court,