Legal

The legal protections covering these sites (concretecms.com, concretecms.org, and related subsites) and the open source content management system we offer (Concrete CMS core code base) are very permissive, but sadly not brief.

Legal FAQ

Question:

Am I allowed to white label Concrete CMS? I want to put my own name in the corner and call it my own CMS?

Answer:

Yes you can! The MIT license basically lets you do whatever you want, just don't hold us responsible. 

Question: I purchased an add-on or theme that now says “Disabled in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice” in your marketplace. Am I in trouble? What happens now?

Answer:
First, this is not legal advice, and if your concerns are not addressed below we recommend that you hire an intellectual property attorney to address your questions or concerns. Here is additional information on our practices:

Before submitting any add-on or theme to our marketplace, we require that developers commit that they own the intellectual property in their add-ons/themes. See Marketplace Resale Agreement.

If a 3rd party submits a takedown notice to us that complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), however, we take the content at issue down without any questions or independent investigation into whether it infringes. We do that to qualify PortlandLabs/Concrete CMS for the DMCA's infringement safe-harbor. The developer may submit to us a DMCA counter-notice, refuting the takedown notice, but if we don't receive a counter-notice the theme or add-on will remain unavailable. Conversely, if a counter-notice is received and the 3rd party doesn't timely file a lawsuit against the developer, we will likely repost the content.

In sum, removal of content pursuant to a DMCA notice is not a determination by us that the content does in fact infringe someone's copyright. Copyright law is complex and we are unable to make that determination. Instead, removal in most cases reflects that we have received a DMCA-compliant takedown notice and we have not received a counter-notice.

If we ever receive notice of a court judgment finding that one of the add-ons or themes offered for sale in our marketplace infringes, we will (in addition to ensuring that the content is removed from our marketplace) attempt to directly contact all purchasers of that add-on or theme via email with that information.

Generally, for a copyright owner to escalate beyond a DMCA take-down request, they would have to:

1. Own a copyright registration (i.e., apply for and be granted a registration by the United States Copyright Office, not just claiming copyright ownership in a footer). They need this before they can file a complaint in a United States court and start a lawsuit.
2. They would have to file and win that lawsuit. 
3. If they won the lawsuit and you were not a party to the lawsuit, they would then have to find and contact you – claiming you’re infringing their copyright.
4. If the copyright owner does file a lawsuit against you, your intent may be a critical consideration in any damages award. If you are deemed to be an “infringer [who] was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright,” a court might enter a judgment against you at the lower end of any scale.

In any event, a determination of infringement, and an award of damages, would require a lot of expensive legal time from the copyright owner.

Again, none of what we’ve shared above should be considered legal advice. Nor do we want to minimize how seriously we take intellectual property here at PortlandLabs/Concrete CMS. Our platform is free and open source because we believe in building a web for the greater good. That includes protecting the creative work of every individual on it. Selling someone else’s work as your own is unacceptable.