Short version: crates.io is a critical resource for the Rust ecosystem, which hosts a variety of packages from a diverse group of users. That resource is only effective when our users are able to work together as part of a community in good faith. While using crates.io, you must comply with our Acceptable Use Policies, which include some restrictions on content and conduct on crates.io related to user safety, intellectual property, privacy, authenticity, and other limitations. In short, be excellent to each other!

We do not allow content or activity on crates.io that:

• violates the Code of Conduct of the Rust project
• is unlawful or promotes unlawful activities, incurring legal liability in the countries the Rust Foundation officially operates in
• is libelous, defamatory, or fraudulent
• amounts to phishing or attempted phishing
• infringes any proprietary right of any party, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of publicity, or other right
• unlawfully shares unauthorized product licensing keys, software for generating unauthorized product licensing keys, or software for bypassing checks for product licensing keys, including extension of a free license beyond its trial period
• contains malicious code, such as computer viruses, computer worms, rootkits, back doors, or spyware, including content submitted for research purposes (tools designed and documented explicitly to assist in security research are acceptable, but exploits and malware that use the crates.io registry as a deployment or delivery vector are not)
• uses obfuscation to hide or mask functionality
• is discriminatory toward, harasses or abuses another individual or group
• threatens or incites violence toward any individual or group, especially on the basis of who they are
• is using crates.io as a platform for propagating abuse on other platforms
• violates the privacy of any third party, such as by posting another person's personal information without consent
• gratuitously depicts or glorifies violence, including violent images
• is sexually obscene or relates to sexual exploitation or abuse, including of minors (see "Sexually Obscene Content" section below)
• is off-topic, or interacts with platform features in a way that significantly or repeatedly disrupts the experience of other users
• exists only to reserve a name for a prolonged period of time (often called "name squatting") without having any genuine functionality, purpose, or significant development activity on the corresponding repository
• is related to buying, selling, or otherwise trading of package names or any other names on crates.io for money or other compensation
• impersonates any person or entity, including through false association with crates.io, or by fraudulently misrepresenting your identity or site's purpose
• is related to inauthentic interactions, such as fake accounts and automated inauthentic activity
• is using our servers for any form of excessive automated bulk activity, to place undue burden on our servers through automated means, or to relay any form of unsolicited advertising or solicitation through our servers, such as get-rich-quick schemes
• is using our servers for other automated excessive bulk activity or coordinated inauthentic activity, such as:
  • spamming
  • cryptocurrency mining
• is not functionally compatible with the cargo build tool (for example, a "package" cannot simply be a PNG or JPEG image, a movie file, or a text document uploaded directly to the registry)
• is abusing the package index for purposes it was not intended

You are responsible for using crates.io in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and all of our policies. These policies may be updated from time to time. We will interpret our policies and resolve disputes in favor of protecting users as a whole. The crates.io team reserves the possibility to evaluate each instance on a case-by-case basis.

For issues such as DMCA violations, or trademark and copyright infringements, the crates.io team will respect the legal decisions of the Rust Foundation as the official legal entity providing the crates.io service.

Package Ownership

crates.io has a first-come, first-serve policy on crate names. Upon publishing a package, the publisher will be made owner of the package on crates.io.

If you want to take over a package, we recommend you try and contact the current owner directly. If the current owner agrees, they can add you as an owner of the crate, and you can then remove them, if necessary. For security reasons, the crates.io team will not transfer ownership of existing crates without the explicit approval of the current owner.

If you are the author of a crate that another person wants to take over: keep in mind that the new owner might develop your crate in a way you never intended it, or might completely repurpose your crate. Transferring a crate to a malicious user could have a significant impact for any existing users of your crate.

Crate owners can delete their crates under certain conditions: the crate has been published for less than 72 hours, or the crate only has a single owner, the crate has been downloaded less than 500 times for each month it has been published, and the crate is not depended upon by any other crate on crates.io. If these conditions are not met, the crate will not be deleted. In exceptional cases crate owners may contact the crates.io team to request deletion of a crate that does not meet these conditions.

The crates.io team may delete crates from the registry that do not comply with the policies on this document. In larger cases of squatting attacks this may happen without prior notification to the author, but in most cases the team will first give the author the chance to justify the purpose of the crate.

Data Access

Details on how to access the crates.io data can be found on the dedicated Data Access Policy page.

Security

Please see the Security page.

Sexually Obscene Content

We do not tolerate content associated with sexual exploitation or abuse of another individual, including where minors are concerned. We do not allow sexually themed or suggestive content that serves little or no purpose other than to solicit an erotic or shocking response, particularly where that content is amplified by its placement in profiles or other social contexts.

This includes:

• Pornographic content
• Non-consensual intimate imagery
• Graphic depictions of sexual acts including photographs, video, animation, drawings, computer-generated images, or text-based content

We recognize that not all nudity or content related to sexuality is obscene. We may allow visual and/or textual depictions in artistic, educational, historical or journalistic contexts, or as it relates to victim advocacy. In some cases a disclaimer can help communicate the context of the project.

Violations and Enforcement

crates.io retains full discretion to take action in response to a violation of these policies, including account suspension, account termination, or removal of content.

We will however not be proactively monitoring the site for these kinds of violations, but instead relying on the community to draw them to our attention.

While the majority of interactions between individuals in the Rust community falls within our policies, violations of those policies do occur at times. When they do, the crates.io team may need to take enforcement action to address the violations. In all cases, content and account deletion is permanent and there is no basis to reverse these moderation actions taken by the crates.io team. Account suspension may be lifted at the team's discretion however, for example in the case of someone's account being compromised.

Reporting

Please report violations of this policy to help@crates.io.

Credits & License

This policy is partially based on PyPI’s Acceptable Use Policy and modified from its original form.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.