Is it legal to make mods for Minecraft?

I am a Minecraft modder, and I have a youtube channel teaching other people how to make mods for Minecraft (www.youtube.com/henrythecoder). Recently, youtube has offered me to participate in "revenue sharing", where basically youtube puts ads on my videos, and in turn I get paid a small amount of money per view. However, in order for me to qualify for this, I have to certify that I own the rights to everything I do in the video, and that what I am doing is legal. Thus, I need to find out if it is actually legal to make mods for Minecraft.

For those of you who may not know Minecraft very well, it's a game with a very large modding community. I don't know if the makers of Minecraft "officially" support people making mods (Minecraft isn't open source), but they certainly make no effort whatsoever to stop it. In the next update of Minecraft, the makers of the game have also revealed that the game may include built in mod support (making it easier to install mods).

Anybody know the answer?

Comments

[Johnnykid12]

with the exeption of version changers and some hacking devises (i believe nodus is allowed)

[Johnnykid12]

yes it is legal, if it wasn't then why would minecraft wiki make this, http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Minecraft_Coder_Pack which makes it a lot easier to create mods, come on we are talking the actual wiki supporting minecraft mod-maker, the coder pack is used to decode minecraft so y not exactly?

[caasi88]

Of course its legal. but if your considering on uploading your mods to minecraft then you have to have notch's(creator of minecraft) approval.

[R.A.T.M]

yes it is the only thing minecraft care about if u mess it up no refund but yes minecraft actually encourages it

[AlternateLives]

If you mess it up, you can just delete your minecraft folder, and it will download again when you log in. The chances of completely destroying your minecraft purchase is very slim.

Trust me, i've probably installed ModLoader 20 times (thanks to updates and corrupted installs).

[AlternateLives]

As long as you:

~Purchase Minecraft
~Don't distribute the minecraft.jar file
~Don't distribute decompiled source code (Mojang's stuff)
~Don't create a mod that bypasses the login (making a premium account unnecessary)

you are free to make whatever your heart fancies for a mod!

[MI16007]

Of course! Over 9,000(see what i did there) mods have been mare and used. Also notch supports it and wants to make modding much more easier

[spizman]

it is most defineiteley legal. in fact, notch plans to make it easier and more supportive for modders!

[NatNoBrains]

It is 100% legal!
If you get fined, it's on me :)

[lemonie]

I believe that it is modding a game that causes problems. If the actual mod'-code you produce is wholly-original and free from intellectual property conflicts you'd be OK.
People using it do so at their own risk.
?

L