Topic: TOS for the Digital goods section (Read 1308 times)

Yes, taken from here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa537127.aspx

"MSDN Subscriptions are the ultimate resource for professional developers, teams, and organizations engaged in application development. Learn more about MSDN Subscriptions in the blue box at the right of this page."

In rare cases, if you have a project and need an activation and purchased a license is in shipment or whatever, you can workaround an activation using MSDN keys. Every MS consultant will tell you this.


First off all: I wouldnt buy MSDN keys because i fully understand what they are used for. This way i dont have any feelings about it. It would be the correct thing to tell customers, yes. Overall it wouldnt change the matter. imho.


Not exactly what you asked for but a quick research brought up this: https://leakforums.net/thread-317022
NOTE OP seems to changed the topic but as far as i see he sold MSDN Keys.



If you sell something that isnt "technically" yours nor ment to be used "in production" it is stealing. Those people would normally have to buy a legit lic which they dont do because they have a MSDN key. If you give me something and tell me: "Use it and learn from it" and i sell it off, how would you call it?


If we speak about ratings from DT members maybe no, but i remember posts from users in the SA section complaining. If you want to nail me on that, i will look it up.


Casinos state clear about how they work and operate (on most markets not on all). Speaking about RL Casinos they are regulated (on most markets not on all). They have stated RTPs etc (on most markets not on all).
A seller of an MSDN Key can not estimate if one of his customers reports a key, which will end up in all keys becomeing invalid. We both know where those screwed customers will pop up and what they will call the seller. I think, someone selling a high number of MSDN key is not trustworthy as he exactly knows what he does.


i dont judge you on this one.

Replace the term TOS with the word Agreement. Because you agreed to the TOS when you obtained your service. Is it alright for people to not honour their agreements? Would you leave negative feedback for people that do not honour their agreements?

#1 I was under the impression that MSDN keys were for educational(?) and developer purposes only. Regardless of this, I see the selling of keys as a speech issue. I understand that the sale of a MSDN key would happen something along the lines of this: Person A has a MSDN subscription; Person B sends x amount of BTC to Person A who then tells Person A the key code they see in their MSDN account.

#2 Maybe a good way to address this issue would be for MSDN key sellers to disclose the risks of a key going bad in the future. I have seen some MSDN sellers disclose on their threads that the keys they are selling will go bad in the future, yet sill have negative trust. How would you feel if a seller were to disclose that a key will/may go bad in the future?

#4 I do agree that stealing is stealing regardless of who the victim is. This is regardless of who the victim is. However I disagree with your conclusion that the (re)selling of MSDN keys is stealing from Microsoft. Do you have a court case that would back up that (re)selling MSDN keys is stealing that could be used as a precedent?

#5 I don't think you would receive negative trust for reselling something your purchased from another member on here? Do you have any examples as to when this has happened? The only examples that I can think of this happening would be when a user bought a dice script, then threatened to start reselling such script if he did not receive payment from the seller and then made good on his extortion threat -- in this case he would receive negative trust for the extortion attempt, not the reselling of the script.

#6 I am not saying that the (re)selling of MSDN keys is morally right, nor am I saying that I think it is a good idea to engage in this kind of trading. It is actually my opinion that engaging in the trading of MSDN keys is probably going to be a bad idea. I am saying that someone who is (re)selling MSDN keys is not a scammer. A lot of people believe that gambling is morally wrong, however these people are not running around saying that the operators of (legit) casinos are scammers. I believe there is a difference between doing something immoral and scamming.

7 I don't dislike Microsoft, in fact I have held fairly decent amounts of Microsoft stock in the past and was able to profit from doing so.

1.: MSDN Keys are for evaluation purpose only. It seems people dont get what this means so let me explain: If i have a customer that wants to try out a product or i am waiting for the license, i am allowed to use those keys to get a product running. Take this as an example.

2.: The keys are only valid while the orginal subscription is alive. This means: If someone reports one of those keys, MS will most likley take the account down and all keys will stop working.

3.: Yes, MS is a huge company and wont die because of it, but people that pay full for those MSDN subscriptions have to deal with stupid changes and limitations, because some people think its a smart thing to make money by selling those Keys.

4.: I dont know about your or others moral standings but stealing is stealing. No matter if you steal from the rich or the poor. If you want to use free or cheap software, go with other products like unix or open source.

Its funny, if i resell something i bought from a member here, no matter what, i would get -ved because everyone would call me a scammer. But if its a large company its suddenly a cool thing to do. It is not up to me to judge your moral standings Quickseller, but from the point of view you seem to have, your moral just seems screwed to me.

Dont get me wrong, no hard feelings. As a funfact, i dont like MS either...

Right, this is not the forum moderating deals, but rather the community.

I would say that a very few select number of people seem to think of MSDN keys as morally wrong, and that those that are affected simply take the negative trust knowing that there is no arguing with those who leave it. 

@ OP

If you are selling legit product you should not have any issues,its when you dip into the darker sides you will run into issues.
Its best to just stick to the dark webs if you are wanting to sell anything crazy. There are areas that are gray/grey and some users
will tag you with negative trust if they think you are being deceptive(ie. Ponzi) or selling giftcards at a massive discount.
If you sell forum accounts that is another gray area and could potentially get you negative trust.

Few days of watching the section will help you learn the boundaries and I suggest that most people do that before just posting in the area.

People could decide to moderate via trust sales of all materials made with carbon if they decided they wanted to do so. You lose your credibility if people don't support you however. People seem to find selling Microsoft keys morally wrong, which is why they leave negative trust. That has nothing to do with moderation policy.

I personally think people who violate TOS generally speaking aren't hurting anyone either, but that is decided on a case by case basis by users, not moderators. (Unless the TOS you are violating is also illegal) My point was that moderators are not responsible for upholding every company's individual policies, if you do something that violates a company's TOS and you get banned from their services, or your buyer gets banned from the service, its up to the individuals to deal with any consequences of that.

Over the past several weeks, accounts that were clearly stolen/hacked/cracked have been removed from the digital goods section, all of which are clearly stealing (and clearly illegal), which is very different then selling something that is against the TOS of the issuing company.

If you hack a netflix account and then (re)sell said account then you are not giving any consideration to Netflix (or anyone) in exchange for the account, however you would be receiving consideration for the account that you are (re)selling.
Regardless of the legitimacy of the purchase of Amazon gift cards, it is against the TOS of Amazon to resell an Amazon gift card. So if I were to receive a $50 Amazon gift card from my Aunt for my birthday, and I do not wish to purchase anything from Amazon, then I may consider selling said gift card (in violation of the TOS of Amazon) for a discount (of whatever the market will bear). Amazon will have received consideration in the form of a (legit) credit card payment from my Aunt, I will benefit because I will have received $40 (or whatever amount I sell it for) in exchange for my gift card, and the buyer of my gift card will benefit because they will be able to purchase $50 worth of goods from Amazon in exchange for $40 (or whatever amount they pay for the gift card).

The more common reason why people leave negative trust for violations of TOS is due to the reselling of Microsoft MSDN keys. For the record, I have no interest in, nor intent to start selling these keys in the future, nor have I engaged in the trading of these keys in the past. If person "A" were to purchase a MSDN account from Amazon (which I understand is generally the case with MSDN sellers), then they will have given Microsoft some amount of consideration in exchange for Microsoft giving Person "A" access to a large number of product keys. As part of the TOS, person "A" will have agreed to only use these keys in a very narrow set of circumstances, and person "A" will have virtually zero ability to negotiate such terms. If person "A" were to go and sell these keys for $10 each, then Microsoft will still have received their consideration for the MSDN account, person "A" will have received consideration in the amount of $10 for each key they sell, and the buyer of the key will be able to purchase said key for a large discount. Even if person "A" were to sell his entire MSDN account to person "Z" and person "Z" were to turn around and resell the keys, Microsoft would still be receiving consideration for the MSDN account. I am not saying that no parties in any of these transactions would be subject to any kind of civil liability (I am not an attorney and cannot say with certainty), I am only saying what I believe is to be fair.

Reselling something that has been paid for (still against the TOS for most things in the digital goods section) is very different then selling something that is stolen/hacked/cracked. I am against the trading of things that are stolen/hacked/cracked while I do not have issues with the trading of something that has been fully paid for.

If you disagree with me, you are welcome to try to refute my argument and/or make an argument of your own that might disprove/refute the statement that I "personally think that people that "violate the TOS" of "whatever" are for the most part not hurting anyone" then I am willing to change my stance if you can present a strong enough argument. I am willing to keep an open mind.

td;lr: you are saying the cleansing of the DG ddint work while looking at it now compared to eight weeks ago shows something different.

Sorry QS somehow i respect you but saying "personally think that people that "violate the TOS" of "whatever" are for the most part not hurting anyone" is the worst comment i have ever read from you...

This is something that has applied for a long time, many years even. However over the last several months, a select few people have been attempting to moderate (via trust) people that violate the TOS of a few companies, primarily Microsoft.

I personally think that people that "violate the TOS" of "whatever" are for the most part not hurting anyone, and generally speaking everyone is on the same page of the trade so I really don't see the reason to try to stop TOS violations.

No, this cleanup started long before.

It's supporting the change, but not initially the reason for it.

The forum might be cracking down more on illegal digital goods for sale, since a week or two ago there was a thread here in the meta section where a user claimed to receive a PM from theymos telling him that the forum received a DMCA for his thread (which was selling Microsoft keys illegally) and because of that, had to remove it. I suspect the forum would rather not receive more DMCA's like that, so that could be part of the reason.

Simply illegal or morally wrong goods, or ones that were obtained illegally. In some cases, things like cracked accounts are excepted. If you're unsure, put a comment saying that you don't know if it's against the rules or not, and will delete it if it is.

Define grey stuff for us please. Thank you.

Correctly, threads that are dealing in illegal goods are removed, digital or non digital. To the point about the people moderating the section, moderators do have a bit of discretion. If it is illegal for you to buy oranges that have been dropped on the ground at some point in Ethiopia, and someone is selling dropped oranges, the moderators will probably not care enough to touch it.

Another thing to note, the forums doesn't care about individual service TOS. For example, if you are selling an online game currency, but its against the game TOS, we don't care to uphold their TOS. That pretty much applies across the board.

No,the forum doesn't enforce any such terms unless it is illegal in either buyer or sellers region but the people moderating might be less tolerant for a particular category.

You're contradicting yourself. To be clear, grey stuff is allowed as long as its written on the OP. Straight up illegal stuff like selling credit card info, or cracked accounts are not allowed

Its not allowed.

Selling anything illegal is against forum rules
you can't sell hacked,cracked or any kind of illegal goods or services.

Can somebody tell me what is allowed and what is not and why some posts are sent to the trashcan and others are not and why some accounts are banned and others are not, It seems like most of the items for sale in the Digital goods section is on the grey side of things. Is it just a senior member being holy and all mightly or is it against the TOS to sell cracked accounts?