Juridical question...

[fellix]

It's simple as this -- does a [regular] member of a forum have the right to claim, that all of his/her posts are subject of Intellectual Property enforcement, and therefor can demand [from the administration staff] removal of the posts, on personal notice or through a legal action?

I'm asking this, be cause in my country here, in one of the biggest IT forums, such a case is on it's the way to emerge soon in the court.

 

[BRiT]

It depends on the Terms of Use the user accepts when they sign up on the forum.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Unless the terms of use are superseded by statute law, but you might have trouble applying it when the site owners are in another country.

For instance, you might post something freely, which would then be in the public domain, but you would still own the copyright on it. Someone can't take your copyright postings and (say) put them in a book and make money off them without your permission. That would break copyright laws in most places.

You don't give that copyright away just by posting publicly or posting on the forums. Terms and conditions of the forum that say you give up your copyright without any kind of written contract would be illegal in most countries, usually invalidating the whole of the terms and conditions. Forums that have these conditions would have no power to legally enforce it any more than an ISP which says that they own all your postings because it travels over their network infrastructure.

Countries that allow people to sue for online libel can't have it both ways. If someone has ownership over their words to the extent that they can be sued, so too do they have ownership of their words under standard copyright laws.

 

[Xmas]

It depends on the law of the country the forum is operated from, I guess.

Then the question is whether the forum posts can be considered an original work of authorship that is protected by copyright law. In the (presumably unlikely) case that the answer is yes, the next question is whether you're actually allowed to revoke the usage rights to the work that were granted to the forum owner before.

 

[Geo]

I'd think you'd have gift issues. You voluntarily gave us the gift of your post. I'm not sure you have a right to take it back, anymore than I have a right to knock on someone's door and demand a letter I sent them back.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I'd think you'd have gift issues. You voluntarily gave us the gift of your post. I'm not sure you have a right to take it back, anymore than I have a right to knock on someone's door and demand a letter I sent them back.

Certainly in the UK (and the US I think), giving someone your work doesn't mean you give up your copyright. Sure, they own the physical paper and ink that was gifted to them, but the actual words are still your copyright. They can't sell it, they can't legally claim it as their own.

People can buy first, second, serial, electronic, etc publishing rights, but you still own your own copyright. As posted above, a "by posting here you agree to give us all your copyrights" in the terms and conditions is illegal in most western countries and is superseded by law statues. There is no legal transfer of copyright regardless of what the T&C say or any gifting.

 

[Geo]

I could take a picture of a letter given to me and publish it, couldn't I? Even if the picture was big enough for the eye to interpret ink splotches on paper as words?

Anyone who posts at a forum did so with the intent of that post showing up at the forum, just like the person who sends a letter intended the recipient to have the letter. So long as the post isn't then tried to be republished elsewhere in a compilation or somesuch I don't see why copyright would come into it.

And, btw, you're really going to have to quit using the "quote" button on my posts or I'm going to have to sue your ass.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I could take a picture of a letter given to me and publish it, couldn't I? Even if the picture was big enough for the eye to interpret ink splotches on paper as words?

Not if someone else owned the copyright. You would be publishing someone else's work. Saying it's a picture of a letter that you can just happen to read the words of wouldn't be a workaround. It's for the same reasons that B3D don't allow scans of magazines in their forums - that's a picture of a page of printed words isn't it? It infringes on someone else's copyright because it is a reprinting or duplication of another person's work.

Anyone who posts at a forum did so with the intent of that post showing up at the forum, just like the person who sends a letter intended the recipient to have the letter. So long as the post isn't then tried to be republished elsewhere in a compilation or somesuch I don't see why copyright would come into it.

Legally, if you buy a book, you own the book. Can you then publish the book? What about an article in a newspaper? What about a one page story? The answer to all of these is "no you can't", because someone else owns the copyright on that work.

Suppose I write an analysis of the current state of the graphics chip market. I do it for the benefit of the other people on the B3D forum and I altruistically post it here. I still own the copyright. No one, including the owners of B3D can take that copyrighted work and do what they like with it. Nobody can take that copyright (and the legal rights that go altong with it) away from me just because I've circulated my article freely, whether I've posted it here, on my web page, on a flyer I've pinned up in the local library, etc

Just because I intend someone to have something I've written, it doesn't mean I've automatically given up all the rights I automatically get as an author once I've written it. Giving someone a gift of a physical or electronic copy of my work does not mean that they then own all the copyright (and the legal rights to reproduction) that go along with that.

Just like those authors that publish their work (even complete books that can be bought in hardcopy) to be freely circulated on the internet, we own what we write, we want other people to see it, but we don't give away the rights we have over our work merely by the act of circulating it.

 

[nthd]

I could take a picture of a letter given to me and publish it, couldn't I? Even if the picture was big enough for the eye to interpret ink splotches on paper as words?

I think people have got into lawsuits over that.

Anyone who posts at a forum did so with the intent of that post showing up at the forum, just like the person who sends a letter intended the recipient to have the letter.

Provided that the post was by or with the consent of the copyright holder, then fine.

So long as the post isn't then tried to be republished elsewhere in a compilation or somesuch I don't see why copyright would come into it.

The original creator of the physical work still holds copyright. They might ask the forum to remove the electronic copy - especially if the post was not made with their consent - and the forum might decide that it wants to do exactly that anyway. I do not think that you can bind a forum to display any post, and most forums reserve the right to modify or delete posts, usually giving reasons if they do so.

On the plus side - a post in a forum is itself under the protection of that forum's own copyright, and hence cannot be further reproduced without consent.

Edit: and also some of what ^he^ said, I am sure. Sorry, took a while to type stuff.
Edit2: Yes, especially the last bit.
Edit3: Why is this in Site Feedback?

 

[Geo]

I'm not talking about "doing what I like with it". Let's not miss who is trying to change the status quo here. It isn't the site. Someone made a post, presumably without a gun to their head, the site didn't do anything with it/to it, and now that someone is claiming the site did something wrong? Err, what?

 

[Geo]

It's for the same reasons that B3D don't allow scans of magazines in their forums - that's a picture of a page of printed words isn't it?

The no scans rule is about images of images tho, not text. And even so, that's a known commercial transaction. What you're suggesting is if they gave me the magazine for free they could then demand to have it back later.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The no scans rule is about images of images tho, not text. And even so, that's a known commercial transaction.

Doesn't B3D also have a rule about not cutting and pasting text from other sites or magazines for the same breach of copyright reasons? Sure, you allow small excerpts to be posted under "fair use" rules, but on the whole, content is content, whether it's text, pictures, or pictures of text.

What you're suggesting is if they gave me the magazine for free they could then demand to have it back later.

No, I'm saying that if they gave (as opposed to "lend") you the magazine for free, you would not have the rights to reproduce it's contents or do whatever you like with it as if you had written the contents yourself.

In fact there have been several cases where people who have tried to publish letters given to them by ex-lovers. Once they'd broken up, the person who had possession of the letters was hit with lawsuits for the return of the letters because they had tried to sell them to magazine publishers. The person who wrote the letters prevented publishing because the writer is the person who has the copyright, not the person who owns a physical/electronic copy of the work.

There have even been cases where photographs accidentally or maliciously circulated or found in trash were prevented from being published because the person who took the pictures (ie the owner of the copyright) threatened to sue not for libel, slander, theft or damage to reputation, but for breach of copyright.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I'm not talking about "doing what I like with it". Let's not miss who is trying to change the status quo here. It isn't the site. Someone made a post, presumably without a gun to their head, the site didn't do anything with it/to it, and now that someone is claiming the site did something wrong? Err, what?

No one is saying the site did anything wrong. What's being said is that just because a member of B3D voluntarily and freely publishes his work here, that doesn't mean B3D doesn't have to honour the author's legal copyrights. Unless you have a legal, signed contract to transfer ownership of copyright, the content is owned by those who write it, not by the forum that hosts it. A non-legal phrase in the T&Cs that fails to supersede statute copyright law does not transfer copyright to B3D.

It's a situation that rarely comes up, because people who post want to post, and because it doesn't usually mean enough to them to do anything about it. If you were to (say) bundle up the forums and start selling them in a book, I think you'd find more posters would become bothered enough to ask for a slice of the profits for the use of their copyrighted work.

However, say a member who did a lot of posting got banned. He could then have a change of heart and assert his copyrights over all his postings. He could formally revoke B3Ds right to reproduce his work electronically. In fact, if you look in the front of a paperback, most of the newer ones have a clause that goes:

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher"

The publisher is mentioned here because the publisher is the one that has got the current publishing rights (in most cases through an exchange of cash) from the author via a legal transfer of first, second, world, North American, etc, rights. Unless sold/transferred in some formal and legal manner, the copyright stays with the original author. Also note how the wording has been updated to take into account electronic reproduction, compared to a few years back.

If the banned member of B3D asked for all his work (in the form of postings) be removed,
and B3D didn't remove them, B3D would be breaching his copyrights. These are the rights he gets automatically in most western countries as soon as he writes anything regardless of the format, where it is published, etc. B3D doesn't get those rights merely by being a conduit of dissemination, any more than Microsoft does because you wrote a book in Word, or Xerox does because you photocopied it on one of their machines.

 

[Geo]

Still looks like horseshit to me.:smile: He excersized his copyright rights when he posted in the first place. Demanding removal, in my eyes, isn't any different than demanding a magazine publisher go around and collect all copies of a magazine to tear a page out because after agreeing to be in that magazine he changed his mind (months? years? decades?) later. Trying to position as "reproduction" what happens each time a database is read and written to screen for copyright purposes is evil, insane, and contrary to the normal non-technical understanding of reality (in my view, of course). Might as well argue that words on a page do not exist until I open the book and they are "Reproduced" on my retinas.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Still looks like horseshit to me.:smile: He excersized his copyright rights when he posted in the first place. Demanding removal, in my eyes, isn't any different than demanding a magazine publisher go around and collect all copies of a magazine to tear a page out because after agreeing to be in that magazine he changed his mind (months? years? decades?) later. Trying to position as "reproduction" what happens each time a database is read and written to screen for copyright purposes is evil, insane, and contrary to the normal non-technical understanding of reality (in my view, of course). Might as well argue that words on a page do not exist until I open the book and they are "Reproduced" on my retinas.

That is exactly the sort of thing that happens (or a great deal of money changes hands in compensation) when a magazine publishes something that they did not legally secure the copyright to publish. Books, CDs, movies, etc have been recalled and destroyed because of included copyright that the publishers did not have a legal right to publish.

Does the author give up his rights to Microsoft because he "agreed" to write his novel on MS Word? No, of course not.

Everytime someone logs into B3D and reads my words, it is "reproduced", it is "published". You can handwave about and get a little existential, but legally, that's what happens. When someone goes to the front page and reads a review or an article by the site staff, isn't it "reproduced" for that person? Isn't it "published" by the site staff? Maybe it would be clearer if you thought of it as happening on a piece of paper sent out to each person who reads the article. The legal tenents have (so far) taken the view that electronic publishing happens in the same way.

Writing stuff grants you copyright. Writing stuff in forums does not give away that copyright to the forum owners. Yes, I volunteered to come here, and yes I effectively give away my posts for no recompense, but I still have all the rights accorded me as the author of my work. Those rights don't transfer to B3D.

You can't show me any legal mechanism by which those rights have transferred to B3D, because there isn't one. Legally, they still belong to me. You have no signed contract, you have no legal T&Cs that can supersede statue law. At best you have some kind of implication which simply has no legal standing any more than if I claim that by you "agreeing" to send me you postings via my internet connection that you are giving up your copyrights to me because I'm taking the trouble to read them.

Seriously Geo, I know you won't have the time, inclination or cash to talk to a copyright lawyer, but any writer's guide to publishing will tell you the same.

 

[Geo]

No, no, no handwaving. Lead a revolution, that's what I intend. See you on the barricades! Or across them, as the case may be.

Why *is* this thread in SF, btw? (and now it's not)

 

[Xmas]

Author's rights and usage rights are two different things. The author can grant someone the right to use his work. Which is what happens if someone writes a forum post. He doesn't give up his rights. However, depending on the legislation, the author can only revoke usage rights that were once granted if certain conditions are met. "I want you to remove that" is not enough, usually.

But as I said before, the vast majority of forum posts does not qualify as an original work of authorship that is protected by copyright anyway.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

No, no, no handwaving. Lead a revolution, that's what I intend. See you on the barricades! Or across them, as the case may be.

Actually, I'm in favour of revisions to the copyright and IP laws. Instead of being used to protect innovations and work by little guys, they are just being used as big hammers by large companies to hit other large companies or squash little guys. At the same time you have other big conglomerates buying laws to extend their ownership over things they stole from us in the first place (Disney fairytales), and introducing technologies and laws to remove fair use and "monetize" everything they can get their greedy snouts into regardless of whether it screws over the customer or not.

So I would be on your side on the barricades, though I suspect that legal advances and a legislature that didn't whore themselves out to the media cartels would be a better bet.

Why *is* this thread in SF, btw? (and now it's not)

OP wanted to know if he could exert his copyright over his postings at B3D.

 

[Geo]

OP wanted to know if he could exert his copyright over his postings at B3D.

Maybe that's what he meant, but that's not what he said. What he said was generic.

If he really was asking our advice on how to sue us in particular, I have a few other words to offer him.

Time to get Dewey, Cheatem, and How on retainer, I guess.

Or just shut the site down until we write a forum agreement that gives us everything you've ever created, including "subsequent works" like first born. . .

 

[nthd]

Back to the top.

It's simple as this -- does a [regular] member of a forum have the right to claim, that all of his/her posts are subject of Intellectual Property enforcement, and therefor can demand [from the administration staff] removal of the posts, on personal notice or through a legal action?

I'm asking this, be cause in my country here, in one of the biggest IT forums, such a case is on it's the way to emerge soon in the court.

This thread should not be about copyright, it should be about Intellectual Property Rights.

What is the relevant law that is being used in the case, fellix?