Excessive use of "specific legal advice" closure reason

Question

The question Are the title and author of a song protected by copyright? is written as "I am doing X, is that legal". The actual question is a basic principle of copyright law, and in no way requires giving specific legal advice, and indeed does not depend on even the level of detail given in the question.

Nevertheless, this question has attracted three close votes on the grounds of asking for specific legal advice, and one suggestion by an experienced user that it be rewritten to be more generic. It seems to me that users should know better than to VTC on a question of this sort, and some are all too ready to VTC on any question that lists details in the first person. I think this misunderstands the policy, and does not help the site or its users.

Is it appropriate to close, or vote to close, questions phrased in an 'I did X is that legal?" or 'I want do do/plan to do X, will there be legal problems?" sort of way? Do such questions need to be edited to make them acceptable? If so, should users edit them rather than using a VTC? When the actual legal issue is clear, does the first-person phrasing matter?

(Note, the link now goes to a revised version of the question. Look at the revision history for the original version.)

New instance:

An additional example: Is this copyright or am I allowed to have this in my math textbook?

Again a poster has describe a proposed activity and asks if it is legal. Again the answer is basic law, with no lawyer needed for a good answer. Again the poster has not asked "what should I do?" but rather "is this illegal?". Two users have so far VTC this as a RSLA. Again I disagree. I hope for addition discussion of this new example.

Additional instance

What legal rights does ownership of music grant me? has accumulated 2 close voters so far. It is written in the first person, but does not ask any version of "what should I do?" nor ask the risks or chances of a court verdict. It asks what right the law and a specific widely used TOS statement. It seems to me clearly on topic, and I have posted an answer. But some vote to close apparent;ly largely because of the first person form.

Further instance, 4 May 2021

Reusing copyrighted content (science/EU) has at the moment two close votes as a RSLA. It makes no "what should, I do?" request. It does not ask for an assessment of the risk of any particular course. It simply asks if copyright law applies in particular circumstances. It is stated in the first person,but can easily be edited to be put in the third person, which i will probably do shortly. But it is not an RSLA even as it stands. The only "advice" it asks is if certain actions would constitute copyright infringement, actions which, even if they did constitute infringement, are highly unlikely to form the basis of any lawsuit or legal proceeding. No legal action seems to be pending or contemplated. I do not see why anyone has voted to close this.

Two Further instances, 3 March 2022

In Can I issue my own 'fines' the OP describes clearly hypothetical conduct, and asks how the law would view such conduct. The OP does not ask whet the hypothetical people involved should do. The question is purely what law applies in a rather unlikely but possible case. I think this is exactly the sort of question for which this site is designed. But it has in two hours attracted two close votes on the grounds of it begin a RSLA.

How can a person legally create a site to download an app and profit from the site? has actually been closed as a RSLA. As I write, it has three votes to reopen, one of them mine. It does ask how a person can get copyright permission for a certain kind of site (the basic answer is "Ask the copyright owner(s) for permission"). It does not ask what the person described should do, it only asks what the law permits or requires. IMO this is not quite as clear a case as the one just above, but is still quite clearly not a RSLA in my view. Why did users vote to close it?

Further Instance 18 March 2033

UK: is it legal to display a flag in front of a store? now has four voted for closure as a request for legal advice, although it simply asks if particular acts, in a particular jurisdiction, are legal or not.

Further instance. 8 April 2022

Does obscuring personally identifiable and directory information avoid potential FERPA violations? has recenrtly been posted, and an experienced user here has called for its closure as a RSLA.

Further instance. 30 May 2022

What does HIPAA say about a third party reviewing protected health information and related records? This question was closed by the single vote of a moderator. As I write, it has two reopen votes from experienced users. Note that it has been edited since it was closed, so to see the version which was closed, use the revision history.

In my opinion, the initial version of this question was not an RSLA. it did use the first person, and it did include the words "What do I need to do", but the question was clearly what did the person need to do to comply with the legal requirements, in other words it was asking what the law required. That is exactly the primary on-topic question here. While I dis edit this to make it more =clearly not an RSLA, I am of the strong opinion that it should not have been closed in the first place.

Further instance. 24 June 2022

Is it necessary to be certified before opening a photography studio? This question was closed by the single vote of a moderator. As I write, it has three reopen votes. It was a simple request to know what the legal requirements are in a particular country for a particular activity. Nothing in the question asked "what should I do?" or anything similar. The mod, when asked to retract the solo close vote, wrote that it seemed likely that the poster would act on any answer given, so it constituted legal advice. Nonsense!

Answer 1

These sorts of questions should be edited to remove requests for legal advice

...but without such edits, it's off-topic (though it's a closer call than a lot of the ones we see).

This question contains phrases like:

what information can I show without risking of being sued?

This is clearly a request for legal advice, because answering it would involve assessing risks and providing advice specific to that person's situation about what they should do to avoid the risk of being sued (which is a very different question than what the law is).

However, there are also questions in it about the law that can be answered without giving specific legal advice, such as whether the combination of title and author is protected by copyright.

Personally, I prefer to edit questions to salvage them where I can. I've now edited the question accordingly, and voted to Leave Open after having done so.

Answer 2

I agree that the particular question does not clearly ask for legal advice, but it also is possible to interpret it as such a request. My guess is that the OP does actually want to know legal facts that could be applied to his personal interest, as is the case with the majority of LSE questions. The official policy, written at the start of LSE's existence, offers operational tests for "being a request for advice", which I also disagree with for a fundamental reason: That reason is that it doesn't say what it means to be a "request for legal advice".

"Legal advice" is a request for a recommended action, based on professional knowledge of the law and a study of an individual's circumstances. The one diagnostic proposed in the diagnostic list that is strongly indicative of "a request for legal advice" is asking "What should I do?". The remainder of the diagnostics don't constitute proof of the act of "requesting legal advice", they are evidence of "having a personal interest in a legal question". The overwhelming majority of questions asked here, as asked, are inappropriate for a purely academic research venue – but SE is not a purely academic research venue, in fact it is "required" by SE that questions be practical and issues that you "actually face".

I have argued here (somewhere) that answers should not give legal advice, which puts the burden on the answerer to restrict what they say so as to avoid saying "You should do this", or "If you do that, you are legally safe". Since "closing" is about the questions, that means that a question that can only be answered by giving legal advice should clearly be closed. However, the way the close-reason seems to be interpreted (by some statistical margin) is as a judgment of a person's subjective interest in asking a question. If a question is sufficiently specific that it could lead to an answer applicable to the OPs personal interest, that does, by some standards, constitute a request for legal advice. I just don't agree with that standard.

I don't see an obvious alternative to the current guideline. The fundamental question is, what is the "purpose" of Law SE (compare that to Superuser, or other SEs)? Our guidance simply says "You should only ask practical, answerable questions and questions about general legal information", which doesn't distinguish asking legal advice from asking abstract academic questions like a law student might ask (we also get those and there have been expressions of concern over allowing such questions).

Answer 3

Obviously, I think that the linked question, and others like it, should not be closed. The poster of the linked question, and the posters of similar questions, are not asking "what should I do?" Rather, the question is "Is this thing I want to do (or have done) legal? What are the legal issues with it?" The details, which may or may not be a description of a real-life issue, only serve to illustrate or define the legal issue involved.

I think that some users are too ready to VTC when an issue like this comes up, which is a general legal issue presented in specific terms. I think we should more clearly understand that such questions are not requests for specific legal advice, in the sense that our policy makes off-topic.

To be clear: my argument is not "This question is off-topic, but we should make an exception and answer it anyway". My argument is that the linked question, and question like it, are not off topic in the first place, and do not need to be either closed or edited.

However, anyone who thinks that such a question is off-topic should IMO seriously consider editing to make it on-topic rather than voting to close. It takes actions by multiple users (five in most cases) or by a mod to close a question, while any user with enough rep to edit may do so in a single action, which often will not take long. I have done so in many cases.

The policy seems to be spelled out in Policy for questions that clearly ask for specific legal advice. In the accepted answer, it is said that questions that exhibit the following are likely to be requests for specific legal advice:

• They use pronouns that indicate a personal relationship
  "My mother was involved in an accident around the corner from my house..."
• They contain highly emotive language
• They explicitly ask "What should I do?" or something similar in the question
• The only answer that you could safely give is "You should engage the services of a lawyer/attorney"

In the first linked question an I-pronoun is used. But I see no "emotive language". I see no "what should I do?" or similar question. I see "What may I do legally?", which is just a way to ask "what is the law". There is no need to consult a lawyer to answer the question, and two users found it perfectly possible to give an answer other than to consult a lawyer.

The policy suggests that multiple items from the above list often indicate a question that violates policy. Here I see only one, and perhaps the least important. Beyond that the policy says:

If you can edit the question to make it a question that asks for general legal information while preserving the original author's meaning, then you should edit rather than close.

But in the linked case, several people voted to close rather than editing.

Edit

Pretty much the same reasoning applies to the second example.

Answer 4

As written, they are both off-topic

Whether a question is a request for legal advice or not is a function of the question, not the answer.

For example:

1. I have been charged with X. What's going to happen to me?
2. If a person has been charged with X, what is the legal procedure and likely consequences?

Have the same basic answer. However, 1. is clearly a request for legal advice and the other isn't.

Now, 1. can be edited into 2. but editing is a privilige, not an obligation. Some users may, out of the goodness of their hearts, fix the OP's question; others will VTC and move on - both types of users are using the site correctly.

Answer 5

As written, the question is off-topic. The fact that it can be made generic, does not mean it is generic.

When a question is off-topic and requires changes, it must be closed until those changes are made.

That is the entire point of closure, as opposed to deletion - to prevent answers from attempting to respond in a way that is outside the scope of the site, so that the question can be repaired without wasting the effort of answerers or causing confusion when those answers no longer apply.

Once corrected, the question can then be reopened.

This is the universal standard on Stack Exchange, it is the exact purpose of closure and reopening, and once again, we are expected to create some new policy or method that

1. goes against the existing functionality

2. is unnecessary when network policy already exists

Instead of being fools and fighting to keep things open when they should not, use the tools we already have - closure and editing and reopening - to create a Q&A that is helpful in the future, not yet another specific case of the same things we've answered dozens of times before.