Copyright laws and forum posts?

[tresmom5]

Can anyone answer this for me? I am working on finding an attorney to help with our website's terms of service & privacy policy, but in the meantime was hoping somebody could answer this question for me.

I own a fairly large forum website and the question has come up about photos posted on our site. We do have a growing "signature" board where members take photos and make signatures and post them. Now the question is do we have copyright to those signatures? Can we post them with or without permission on other areas of our site to promote this forum?

Thanks for any and all help on this.

[stapel]

I've seen sites with policies that said things along the lines of "anything posted to these forums becomes the property of the forum owners", but I've also heard that this hasn't stood up in court.

The people who created the images own the copyright, according to international law. By posting them to your forum, they, in effect, give you a license to display them. But that license probably doesn't extend to using the graphics as your own, in your own way, wherever and whenever you choose.

If your attorney isn't familiar with these issues, then you might want to get another one who is.

I could be wrong, of course....

Eliz.

[petra]

You are legally responsible for all copyright infringements on your board. If anyone complains and their complaint is justified then you have a legal obligation to do something to remedy the situation. N.B I am not a lawyer so take this response at face value.

[bobothecat]

I own a fairly large forum website and the question has come up about photos posted on our site. We do have a growing "signature" board where members take photos and make signatures and post them. Now the question is do we have copyright to those signatures? Can we post them with or without permission on other areas of our site to promote this forum?

Who ever took the photo owns the copyright (unless it was work for hire, or some other stipulated contract)... while waiting for your attorney, you may want to read here:

[copyright.gov...]