Banning the Sale of Minecraft Accounts

[Lotus]

Hey all,

Recently, MCM made a good step in the right direction by enforcing strict policies against resource leakers and those affiliated. However, in the eyes of many, it was a half-baked effort knowing that this site thrives on the Minecraft TOS violating sales of accounts (and the other range of TOS violating services this website facilitates). I wish to see the removal of accounts as a step towards making this marketplace a platform that actually cares about ethics.

Why would we want to ban the sale of accounts?

1. Legitimize the marketplace. The site hypocritically enforces Rule 5.4 by striking down those who violate product ownership rights heavily, yet turns a blind eye to the sale of Minecraft Accounts which violates Mojang’s TOS. Choose one or the other. Remove 5.4 and commit to being a black market, or equally enforce your own rules across all sections of the forum. Being inconsistent and half-assed only annoys the community even more.
   
   
2. Get rid of our most toxic and notorious members. The accounts market is saturated, comprising of crackers stealing accounts, returning ban evaders and is also the section holding the most linked scam reports often closing due to inconclusive evidence.
   
   
3. The site no longer needs to allocate resources to develop features and moderate the section. "Opportunity cost"
   
   
4. MC-Market will not die. By considering points 1 and 3, MCM can become an even better place for everyone and expand into even more markets. There are far more and far better opportunities out there.

Fun reads :

• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/81435/ (60% agreed)
• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/85005/ Announcement in the past for the removal of accounts.

The site doesn’t need to be plagued by accounts anymore. This site has a bigger future for itself by legitimizing itself into a community that leads others. Honestly, I shouldn't even need to be trying to convince everyone by explaining all the benefits of removing the section. This should not have been even allowed on this site in the first place.

 

[Doge]

I thought I'd represent this in an image

 

[dxn]

I thought I'd represent this in an image

You're the best ironic meme-maker in the community!

 

[HPC_G]

ok ill move to different forums joined to see some accounts since just got work

 

[Shizuka]

lol

 

[Justis]

Ivain katana2 fruitymc Terminated Zyger 0n. Bonsai.

There have been talks regarding Minecraft/Mojang’s EULA, and its commercial restrictions. Particularly, in regard to how they affect plugin sales on platforms like MC-Market, where the community’s work is uploaded as non-exclusive products to our resource section to be purchased and downloaded by other members of the community.

Note: This is not legal advice. It is always recommended that you consult with your lawyer before engaging in business where you may tread on the rights of other creators, including Mojang.

MC-Market does, however, encourage the sale and distribution of plugins on our platform, so it’s important that we provide an official statement on the matter.

Firstly, let us establish the meaning of the language that Mojang uses in their EULA:

If you've bought the Game, you may play around with it and modify it by adding modifications, tools, or plugins, which we will refer to collectively as "Mods." By "Mods," we mean something original that you or someone else created that doesn't contain a substantial part of our copyrightable code or content. When you combine your Mod with the Minecraft software, we will call that combination a "Modded Version" of the Game. We have the final say on what constitutes a Mod and what doesn't.

Mojang uses the words "modifications", "tools", and "plugins" to refer to what they call "Mods", which contains content copyright by Mojang, but not a substantial portion of it. If it does contain a substantial part of their copyright content, then they have not agreed to you redistributing it, and you may not do so.

The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we've made unless we specifically agree to it

Unfortunately, they do not specify how much "a substantial part" is. However, we know that Mojang has long approved of the existence of a project such as Bukkit (API) and Craftbukkit (implementation), https://bukkit.org/threads/62489/ which is more or less a reverse engineered copy of Mojang’s copyright Minecraft server software. The most recent and reliable statement that we have on Mojang’s position in regards to Bukkit is a thread created in 2014: https://bukkit.org/threads/309715/
Mojang’s support staff has a history of providing contradictory information: https://bukkit.org/posts/2791240 So we will be relying primarily on the thread by Mojang’s COO for the most accurate representation of Mojang’s policies and intent.
In here, among other things, he states:

we want to be able to support the community and the project BUT:
- we want the community and the project to maintain its independence;
- we won’t compromise our ownership of Minecraft and because there is open source code associated with it, we won’t authorize (and haven’t ever authorized) the inclusion of any of the Minecraft software we publish, unless we can be certain that our doing so won’t lead to people claiming rights over our Minecraft code.

Deciding how we can best help Bukkit and the community is going to take time, patience and some further investigation into the Bukkit project as a whole. We are only just starting to get our heads around all of this but we are committed to doing so and ultimately we anticipate that the result will benefit all those involved.

In the meantime we’d ask for your understanding, welcome your suggestions and ask that people don’t attempt to assert rights that they do not have, against us or anyone else.

Unfortunately, no follow up post was ever made, however, it’s clear that Mojang’s does not consider Craftbukkit to be a violation of their EULA, and that their intent is only to allow the most creative freedom within the Minecraft community, without putting their rights to their own work at risk.

It’s important to note that what the Minecraft community calls "Minecraft plugins" are not actually Minecraft plugins as they are defined within the EULA. They would instead be considered Bukkit plugins, or Spigot plugins, or Sponge plugins. A plugin for whichever server API you happen to be building against.

This definition is referenced and repeated here:

Any Mods you create for the Game from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don't distribute Modded Versions of the Game. Remember that a Mod means something that is your original work and that does not contain a substantial part of our code or content. You only own what you created; you do not own our code or content.

If you are creating a plugin using only Bukkit’s API, then your plugin does not contain any of Mojang’s copyright code or content.
Bukkit (API not containing any of Minecraft’s game mode) Not a mod.
Craftbukkit (Implementation of Bukkit containing reverse engineered Minecraft code) A mod.
A Bukkit plugin (Implementation of Bukkit to be loaded at run time by Craftbukkit) Not a mod.

To re-iterate: Unless your mod or plugin contains Minecraft's copyright code, it is not a Minecraft mod as defined by Mojang's EULA. Your work then belongs solely to you, and is not subject to the commercial restrictions imposed on Minecraft mods.
If your plugin does contain Minecraft’s copyright code, then your software is a Minecraft mod, and you may not sell the mod, although you may still distribute it and your unique work still belongs to you.

As for in game creations:

our "Assets" what we mean is the code, software, graphics, textures, images, models, sound and audio from any of our games and any videos or screenshots taken from or our games.

Schematics, world files, and the like are exempt from Mojang’s declaration of what they consider their assets. It’s fair use data, and you can do whatever you like with it.

 

[Khafra]

~~

You just gonna ignore the other arguments presented and talk about plugins?

 

[Justis]

You just gonna ignore the other arguments presented and talk about plugins?

I’ll respond to any good arguments that I see.


Here’s a quick response to the majority of the bad arguments I’ve seen:

"Doing the right thing is a bad business move"
It always is. There’s a lot of money to be made in every black-hat market. That’s not a justification.
We’re missing out on plenty of money right now by not allowing ewhoring, leaks, SEing, but we’re not going to add it.

"The people who are only here to sell accounts will go somewhere else"
As expected. If we allowed ewhoring, and there were people here only for that, even if they made up a large portion of the community, I’d still insist on removing it. If they need a place to do that, I’m very happy for it to be someplace else.
However, few account sellers only sell accounts, and there’s so much more to our community than that. MC-Market has the community and the resources to pull itself out of the blackhat pit we’ve got our foot stuck in and continue to grow and reach more entrepreneurs and content creators.

"Mojang’s rights aren’t as important because <insert nonsense>"
Everybody's rights are equally important, that’s why they’re called rights.
If we singled a member of our community out and said we’d protect everyone’s rights but theirs, there would be outrage.
Why is Mojang different? Because the company’s bigger? Bullshit. That doesn’t matter. If Mojang’s CEO were to join the website and report the people selling their accounts without their permission, what would we tell them?

"The website is run by adults, but the community is made of children, quit acting like it isn’t"
The website is run by adults. Adults who have the ability and responsibility to lead the youngsters down a more productive, responsible, respectable, ethical, and legal path when it comes to making money online, or at least to NOT to encourage these kids joining our website down that path of making money by engaging in blackhat activities.

 

[Khafra]

.

What about the good arguments brought up previously that have been completely ignored?

Because the company’s bigger? Bullshit.

So I can break the TOS of any number of sites as long as it isn't Mojang?

PayPal doesn't allow loans.
PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Twitter doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Instagram doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Snapchat doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
YouTube doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well.

If you remove the busiest and most popular sections of a forum, of course rule breakers will decrease. However, that's just because you have less people coming on the site lol.

 

[Doge]

What about the good arguments brought up previously that have been completely ignored?

So I can break the TOS of any number of sites as long as it isn't Mojang?

PayPal doesn't allow loans.
PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Twitter doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Instagram doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Snapchat doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
YouTube doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well.

If you remove the busiest and most popular sections of a forum, of course rule breakers will decrease. However, that's just because you have less people coming on the site lol.

I too would like to see a response to this, because it really feels like Minecraft accounts are being considered for selective ToS enforcement. If Mojang's ToS is enforced, then you'd need to enforce ALL ToS's. The point being made here is that to be consistent, a lot more sections would have to be removed, not just MC accounts and a lot more changes would happen. ToS enforcement goes much much further than MC accounts and will definitely lessen the userbase.

I'm seeing a lot of delusions of moral superiority in this thread and it's quite laughable.

 

[Doge]

they don't really care about this one just saying, its not against their tos

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full?locale.x=en_US

"(h)involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses"

And I've seen numerous people say they've been limited on PayPal or other similar platforms for exchanging crypto.

It's certainly not allowed, but unless you exchange a lot, you'll easily slip under the radar.

 

[Justis]

What about the good arguments brought up previously that have been completely ignored?

So I can break the TOS of any number of sites as long as it isn't Mojang?

PayPal doesn't allow loans.
PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Twitter doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Instagram doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Snapchat doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
YouTube doesn't allow the sale of accounts.
Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well.

If you remove the busiest and most popular sections of a forum, of course rule breakers will decrease. However, that's just because you have less people coming on the site lol.

Investments require pre-approval, and loans aren’t a violation of their acceptable use policy, you’re just not eligible for seller protection. I’ve actually already made a suggestion to remove the loans forum entirely, and looking at the agree and disagree ratio, it looks like it’s going to be accepted by a landslide.

> PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
I checked into this a year or two ago, and sellers aren’t allowed to request F&F payments, but I couldn’t find anything stating there was something wrong with accepting them. Unlike MC accounts, nowhere does MCM encourage that sellers pay with F&F. I’d like to continue not to encourage sellers to do that, however, it doesn’t involve buying or selling anything of PayPal’s. You’d just be using it wrong. If we’re enforcing that the same as we enforce the terms of our members’ services, that would fall into PayPal’s realm of enforcement unless a violator was reported to us by PayPal, in which case we could facilitate a resolution. Since PayPal is a free service, a scam report wouldn’t be applicable, but PayPal’s free to create a support request if they need help.

> PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Same situation as the above. However, we could easily provide a notice above the crypto section informing our members that purchasing crypto with PayPal violates their acceptable use policy and to use bank transfers, crypto, or another payment processor. This would save people from risking their PayPal accounts being restricted as well. The section is so simple, we could even make it form submitted, where you select the currency you have and the currency you want. Ensuring that PayPal and Cyrpto are not selected together.

> <Service> doesn’t allow the sale of their accounts.
These sections already hardly get any activity, however, they do also need to be removed. Clearing MC accounts is merely the largest hurdle. Everything else can be fixed very easily afterwards.

> Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
I completely forgot this was a thing, actually. Seems recent. Their percentage of the market it makes up is miniscule.
However, you’re right, in that these would be being sold without right. Any such threads should be removed.

> Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well
Examples?
Again, it’s the buying and selling of things without right on our platform which we are not currently enforcing consistently.
Violating someone’s terms of service is something to be reported to us by the product/service owner if they need assistance with a particular violator. That’s how it’s always been for every service on our platform.

 

[Khafra]

Investments require pre-approval, and loans aren’t a violation of their acceptable use policy, you’re just not eligible for seller protection. I’ve actually already made a suggestion to remove the loans forum entirely, and looking at the agree and disagree ratio, it looks like it’s going to be accepted by a landslide.

> PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
I checked into this a year or two ago, and sellers aren’t allowed to request F&F payments, but I couldn’t find anything stating there was something wrong with accepting them. Unlike MC accounts, nowhere does MCM encourage that sellers pay with F&F. I’d like to continue not to encourage sellers to do that, however, it doesn’t involve buying or selling anything of PayPal’s. You’d just be using it wrong. If we’re enforcing that the same as we enforce the terms of our members’ services, that would fall into PayPal’s realm of enforcement unless a violator was reported to us by PayPal, in which case we could facilitate a resolution. Since PayPal is a free service, a scam report wouldn’t be applicable, but PayPal’s free to create a support request if they need help.

> PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Same situation as the above. However, we could easily provide a notice above the crypto section informing our members that purchasing crypto with PayPal violates their acceptable use policy and to use bank transfers, crypto, or another payment processor. This would save people from risking their PayPal accounts being restricted as well. The section is so simple, we could even make it form submitted, where you select the currency you have and the currency you want. Ensuring that PayPal and Cyrpto are not selected together.

> <Service> doesn’t allow the sale of their accounts.
These sections already hardly get any activity, however, they do also need to be removed. Clearing MC accounts is merely the largest hurdle. Everything else can be fixed very easily afterwards.

> Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
I completely forgot this was a thing, actually. Seems recent. Their percentage of the market it makes up is miniscule.
However, you’re right, in that these would be being sold without right. Any such threads should be removed.

> Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well
Examples?
Again, it’s the buying and selling of things without right on our platform which we are not currently enforcing consistently.
Violating someone’s terms of service is something to be reported to us by the product/service owner if they need assistance with a particular violator. That’s how it’s always been for every service on our platform.

I'd love to see Mick's opinion on killing his own business.

 

[Grapefruit]

If you are creating a plugin using only Bukkit’s API, then your plugin does not contain any of Mojang’s copyright code or content.
Bukkit (API not containing any of Minecraft’s game mode) Not a mod.
Craftbukkit (Implementation of Bukkit containing reverse engineered Minecraft code) A mod.
A Bukkit plugin (Implementation of Bukkit to be loaded at run time by Craftbukkit) Not a mod.

I don't know what's wrong with you, but if you could actually read the quote you provided, you would see it says a mod is something you create for the game that is your own original content. That makes all three of them mods and all three of them wouldn't be allowed to be used for monetary gain.

 

[Terminated]

Investments require pre-approval, and loans aren’t a violation of their acceptable use policy, you’re just not eligible for seller protection. I’ve actually already made a suggestion to remove the loans forum entirely, and looking at the agree and disagree ratio, it looks like it’s going to be accepted by a landslide.

> PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods.
I checked into this a year or two ago, and sellers aren’t allowed to request F&F payments, but I couldn’t find anything stating there was something wrong with accepting them. Unlike MC accounts, nowhere does MCM encourage that sellers pay with F&F. I’d like to continue not to encourage sellers to do that, however, it doesn’t involve buying or selling anything of PayPal’s. You’d just be using it wrong. If we’re enforcing that the same as we enforce the terms of our members’ services, that would fall into PayPal’s realm of enforcement unless a violator was reported to us by PayPal, in which case we could facilitate a resolution. Since PayPal is a free service, a scam report wouldn’t be applicable, but PayPal’s free to create a support request if they need help.

> PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.
Same situation as the above. However, we could easily provide a notice above the crypto section informing our members that purchasing crypto with PayPal violates their acceptable use policy and to use bank transfers, crypto, or another payment processor. This would save people from risking their PayPal accounts being restricted as well. The section is so simple, we could even make it form submitted, where you select the currency you have and the currency you want. Ensuring that PayPal and Cyrpto are not selected together.

> <Service> doesn’t allow the sale of their accounts.
These sections already hardly get any activity, however, they do also need to be removed. Clearing MC accounts is merely the largest hurdle. Everything else can be fixed very easily afterwards.

> Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.
I completely forgot this was a thing, actually. Seems recent. Their percentage of the market it makes up is miniscule.
However, you’re right, in that these would be being sold without right. Any such threads should be removed.

> Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well
Examples?
Again, it’s the buying and selling of things without right on our platform which we are not currently enforcing consistently.
Violating someone’s terms of service is something to be reported to us by the product/service owner if they need assistance with a particular violator. That’s how it’s always been for every service on our platform.

> PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods

I checked into this a year or two ago, and sellers aren’t allowed to request F&F payments

Wrong - sellers are allowed to request F&F payment. The exception is that if they do this and the buyer says that they won't do that but they will pay g&s and cover the fees, the seller is not allowed to decline that. You are allowed to request to be paid f&f but there is ALWAYS a g&s option. Something which barely anybody on the site adheres to whether you "encourage" it or not.

More staff resources needed to police this.

you’d just be using it wrong. If we’re enforcing that the same as we enforce the terms of our members’ services, that would fall into PayPal’s realm of enforcement unless a violator was reported to us by PayPal

So it is PayPals job to enforce their own TOS, what a big surprise. Its almost like this is also the case for mojang when it comes to enforcing their TOS?

> PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.

Same situation as the above. However, we could easily provide a notice above the crypto section informing our members that purchasing crypto with PayPal violates their acceptable use policy

Again, it is against PayPal's TOS so you would need to police this section as there would be a lot of underhand deals where paypal would still be used. More staff resources that you don't have.

> <Service> doesn’t allow the sale of their accounts.

by fixed do you mean completely destroyed?

> Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.

Also literally every game I've seen advertised on this platform does not allow third party selling of accounts, items, digital content so those would need to be removed as well, i trust you're in agreement with that.

> Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well

- Established and premade server setups and networks being sold that violate the EULA?
- gift cards and licenses for ANYTHING being sold
- Discord services (ALL)

I could pick a random section and find more obscure examples but they obviously don't make up much site traffic so I wont.

Justis Why are you contradicting yourself?

> We need to enforce Mojang's TOS on the site!
> These other companies need to come to us if they want TOS violators dealt with.

Having 1 rule for Mojang and a different rule for everything else simply doesn't make sense. I fully agree that it is the companies responsibility to enforce their own TOS.

This should be the same for Mojang and any other company. If they wish to take issue with bob selling his 2016 minecon cape then they can contact you and give you the "Details of the violator" as you put it.

 

[Doge]

> PayPal doesn't allow sellers to accept F&F for goods



Wrong - sellers are allowed to request F&F payment. The exception is that if they do this and the buyer says that they won't do that but they will pay g&s and cover the fees, the seller is not allowed to decline that. You are allowed to request to be paid f&f but there is ALWAYS a g&s option. Something which barely anybody on the site adheres to whether you "encourage" it or not.

More staff resources needed to police this.



So it is PayPals job to enforce their own TOS, what a big surprise. Its almost like this is also the case for mojang when it comes to enforcing their TOS?

> PayPal doesn't allow buyers to use PayPal to buy cryptocurrency.



Again, it is against PayPal's TOS so you would need to police this section as there would be a lot of underhand deals where paypal would still be used. More staff resources that you don't have.

> <Service> doesn’t allow the sale of their accounts.

by fixed do you mean completely destroyed?

> Many MC servers don't allow the sale of in-game items.

Also literally every game I've seen advertised on this platform does not allow third party selling of accounts, items, digital content so those would need to be removed as well, i trust you're in agreement with that.

> Other services, etc. are filled with criminals breaking TOS' as well

- Established and premade server setups and networks being sold that violate the EULA?
- gift cards and licenses for ANYTHING being sold
- Discord services (ALL)

I could pick a random section and find more obscure examples but they obviously don't make up much site traffic so I wont.

Justis Why are you contradicting yourself?

> We need to enforce Mojang's TOS on the site!
> These other companies need to come to us if they want TOS violators dealt with.

Having 1 rule for Mojang and a different rule for everything else simply doesn't make sense. I fully agree that it is the companies responsibility to enforce their own TOS.

This should be the same for Mojang and any other company. If they wish to take issue with bob selling his 2016 minecon cape then they can contact you and give you the "Details of the violator" as you put it.

Exactly, if these companies want to enforce their own ToS's, they can go ahead and do so. Anyone who wants to enforce Mojang's ToS for them should just see if they're hiring and go work for them.

And interestingly, many times in scam reports, the ToS's of our own users aren't recognized by staff. Obviously if there is a ridiculous requirement, I get it, however many reasonable ones aren't recognized either. So what kind of ToS's are we going to be enforcing then? All user ToS's should be recognized in scam reports too then.