PSA: reminder that Minimax H3 is forbidden to use in 🇺🇸 US, 🇪🇺 EU, 🇬🇧 UK, and 🇰🇷 South KoreaTutorial

I see everyone and their moms posting on reddit, youtube and what not.. meanwhile no one took the time to read the licence.

The licence forbids you to use the model in certain territoires.

read it yourself:

https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3/blob/main/LICENSE

I am not a laywer but this is what i understand of it:

The MiniMax H3 Community License defines the “Excluded Territories” as:

🇪🇺 European Union 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 🇺🇸 United States 🇰🇷 Republic of Korea

The license's “Applicable Territory” is worldwide EXCEPT those four territories.

Section V.4 then states that you may not use, reproduce, modify, distribute, or display H3 Works or their Outputs/results outside the Applicable Territory. It explicitly says that such use is not authorized by the agreement.

So the community license is effectively not a license for use in the EU, UK, US, or South Korea.

One important nuance: the license does not explicitly say that merely downloading the model is forbidden. The problem is using, running, modifying, distributing, displaying, or otherwise exercising the licensed rights in an excluded territory.

MiniMax does provide a possible route for people in these territories: the license says you can contact MiniMax to obtain a separate license, subject to their controls and compliance requirements.

So if you're in the EU, US, UK, or South Korea and you're running H3 locally, showcasing a deployment, operating an H3-powered service, or distributing the model, don't assume that public availability on Hugging Face means the community license permits it.

This is a PSA about what the license text says, not a conclusion about whether every aspect of the territorial restriction would be legally enforceable under local law.

Also remember: this is not copyright (which as you know can not be enforced on the outputs in most territoires) but about usage: is like the Licence that microsoft grants you when you click on "i have read the terms and conditions"

This might be affecting you if you are a youtuber based on those countries.

So whenever there is a minimax release keep this in mind

TL;DR: The MiniMax H3 Community License excludes the 🇪🇺 EU, 🇬🇧 UK, 🇺🇸 US, and 🇰🇷 South Korea. Community-license use there is not authorized.