Question about copyright link

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so, as far as i can discern, a member may be held liable for their words if a third party chooses to (i.e.) sue for libel, but said member don't own the rights to such words, in the sense that they cannot be republished without the permission of the site owner. seems pretty straightforward to me.

all members agree to these terms when they sign up. i suppose if a person had a problem with this, they could either:

a. ask the site owner for permission to publish elsewhere
b. sue the site owner for the full rights (not likely to be successful if the terms were agreed upon when membership was obtained, but still a valid option)
c. stop posting on the site

EDIT: if i am off base, feel free to correct me.

So it still leaves the most controversial question, does or does it not mean that a user can be banned or have legal action filed against them if they re-post their own post on another message board?

i think i already answered that. according to my interpretation of the Terms of Service, yes.

EDIT: keep in mind i am neither a lawyer nor the site owner, so it is just my own interpretation. for more specific answers, ask alex.

On a technicallity (oh boy, A technicallity)

If YOU posted it, then yes YOU may copy and paste it wherever YOU like.

What you post is rightfully yours, or that is the case on Most forums I am a part of.

My take on this is that the TOS are written from a legal "catch all" point of view. In reality, as far as I'm aware, no moderator has ever made an issue of members making the same posts elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned it is a non-issue.

I think that part of the TOS is intended to legally protect posts from:

a) Automated bots copying / cloning the posts to another website. i.e. copying hundreds or even thousands of posts to another site.

b) People copying other people's posts to other sites.

I'm no lawyer but I see no problem with anyone making the same post on several sites, just so long as they aren't quoting other people's posts in the process, which may be on more shaky legal ground.

I remember post that Alex himself made, in response to a question like this, that it's ok if you repost your own posts elsewhere but not someone else's.

ok, so i did a little research. this is fairly common on internet forums. it seems that technically the site owner does own our posts. usually that right is not asserted beyond the site itself, so that the owner uses that right as a means to edit/move/delete/remove said posts as per the needs of the forum (and the right to NOT edit/move/delete/remove a member's posts on the demand of the member). technically, that right could extend beyond a site itself, and in fact some forum owners (NOT alex) have published forum posts made by their members.

HOWEVER, alex seems to have made it clear that he does not intend to do any such thing and he apparently does not mind if people repost their OWN written words elsewhere.

i do not know how well this copyright issue has held up in court, because in places like Canada we supposedly own all of our own written works. but forums seem to be a bit of a grey area.

Again - ownership is not copyright. Ownership typically remains with the author, absent a specific transfer of ownership. Copyright (the right to control where a work is published, on what terms, etc) and other rights (that are mostly irrelevant to this discussion) can, and frequently are, transferred away from the owner. An example is an author of a book assigning copyrights to the publishing company. The author is still the owner (and must be attributed as such), but the publisher controls when, where, and how the work is published.

yeah i was mixing up the words copyright and ownership. what it boils down to is the fact that when a members post on a public forum, they don't necessarily get to decide what ultimately happens with their words. i almost didn't sign up with WP when i read that (imagine! some people actually read the ToS before clicking), but i decided that it was worth the risk.

So, Says railpage too:

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To be succinct, I contacted a lawyer who deals with contracts and asked him to clarify these clauses. He said that no, they do not prevent us from posting our own content elsewhere.

Interesting. I was just looking at this and thinking of posting these terms.

The answer to your question is "yes.". The language is strong, however the actual abilities WP has are in reality somewhat limited when it comes to reposting things you have written yourself. The question for them is whether coming after you for it is worth the trouble.

Copyright law is clear. Once you have written anything, unless what you have written is in the course of employment for a company for which you have signed a written agreement giving up your rights to what you write during your employment, you OWN the rights to what you have written. Simply stating in its terms and conditions does not necessarily mean your rights to what you write here are null and void. Legally, without a signed release of your rights, you can repost things you've written here on WP anywhere you want to.

But here's the sticky-wicky. By signing up for WP, and checking the box that says, "I agree to these terms," you are effectively signing over PUBLISHING rights to anything and everything you write on WP. In other words, legally, yes, WP CAN request or insist that you NOT repost anything you've written here.

Reposting anything you DID NOT write, is already protected by law, unless permission is obtained from BOTH WP and the author. WP would effectively give you PUBLISHING rights, and the author would give you permission to COPY it. Usually you would be asked to give credit to at least the author, and in many cases both the author and the publisher (in this case WP).

In other words, and this can be a little confusing because the difference is only legal, but for all practical purposes pretty much amounts to the same thing in reality, you are signing over publishing rights to WP for anything you write here. They can do whatever they want to with it. You may still legally own the copyright, but you can no longer publish your own writing done here anywhere else legally, UNLESS you obtain WP's written permission to do so.

What you CAN still insist on is that IF WP does use what you've written here, they must give you credit for being the author. Nothing in the terms causes you to give up that right.

The only real differences between these terms and terms you might sign with a book or magazine publisher are that WP retains publishing rights indefinitely (because no length of time is spelled out in the terms), AND, you don't get paid.

So if you've got a great idea for a blog that you might want to turn into a book, or have published in a magazine someday for pay, don't post it here, either on a forum or in the blog feature.

The reality is that if you REpost your own writings from WP onto another site, but aren't making any money from doing so, there's not much for WP to go after in court, unless your site is a high traffic site in competition with WP, and it can be reasonably demonstrated that you're hurting WP traffic. WP isn't likely to go hunting down small time bloggers with little to no traffic that make no money. Legally you may be wrong to do so, but nobody sues the homeless now, do they? Keep in mind though, that it doesn't take much time or money to simply notify a web host that material from your site has been copied to a site on their server. Most hosts won't even blink before shutting down your account. They're not going to care much about whether you actually authored the material to begin with. They're only going to care what the original site's terms are, and WP's are pretty clear. "Don't copy anything from WP."

You agreed to it when you signed up. You can take your chances if you want to, but they can do what they want to and are legally allowed to as well.

If you think what you're about to write has value, and you may want to use it to generate income or traffic to your own web site, DON'T post it here.

At the very least they may just ban you from the site, which is easy, painless, and costs nothing for WP. Quick emails to web hosts are equally painless and free for WP, but not for you. I've done it, and I've never made a dime from any of my sites. Copied music of mine appeared on some site and it was shut down in a matter of minutes, costing me utterly nothing. It would really suck to have just spent a couple of hundred bucks renewing your hosting account only to have the entire site shut down right afterward just for copying an article. I know of NO hosts that will refund your money for that.

He's right. It doesn't PREVENT anyone from doing anything. Laws against running red lights don't prevent people from running red lights either.

I highly doubt WP would go after anyone for reposting what THEY'VE written, if we could show them it is our own writing. I really don't believe that's the purpose of the terms. The terms do read as they do, and we DO agree to them. The TOS make no distinction between our own writing or the writings of others.

IMHO, it's always best to cover your arse and get permission.

Here's the thing:

Can you PROVE what you've copied was originally authored by YOU?

In many cases, the authors can't prove it. In most cases, WP would have no way of knowing what was copied was copied by the author.

Good idea to keep that in mind.