Message Board Copyrights

Who 'owns' a post?

[thedagda]

I apologize in advance if this topic has been discussed already. I searched through the board, but was not able to find anything specific to my question.

The question that I’m looking to have answered is "Who owns a message board post/thread?".

Background to the story: We had a customer post some troubles he was having with our product on our message board. A couple of other customers joined in and related similar problems. Eventually, one of our reps got on the board and resolved the issues.
The problem here is a competitor went to the thread and copied (words, code, formatting) the thread (minus the resolution post, of course) and posted it on his site.

In searching the web, I think I've determined that the competitor has no right to post this information, but I have not been able to find out if we (mb owner) or the individual poster owns the copyright to the text.

Any advice or resources you can point me to will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Conor

[Mark_A]

Most forums (inc this one) have TOS (Terms of Service) which spell this sort of thing out.

Check some out and install something you think is suitable on yours.

[thedagda]

Adding a specific copyright disclaimer to the board is already an action item I'm working on. However, the content was copied before this verbiage was put in place.

I'm guessing this sort of thing has happened before and I'm looking to see what options I have available to resolve this situation.

Conor

[Mark_A]

imho because I am not a lawyer

and this applies if you are in the UK

At the very least the copy written by your visitors is their and in some way perhaps your copyright simply because they wrote it and wrote it on your site.

The copy written by your employees is definately your copyright, its company text generated by company emplyees in working time on their company website.

Imho You should be able to get it removed from the competitor site without a problem.

Assuming you are in the UK I would start by contacting them directly that you want this removed asap, then if that fails contact their ISP - check their abuse terms and conditions usually respect of copyright will be in there somewhere .. etc etc ..

I cant be sure what the situation is if you are not in UK, perhaps someone else will commment on that.

Where are you / they based?

[thedagda]

Both parties involved in this are out of the US. I'm not sure about the individual posters, but I can find that out. Everything that I've read so far agrees with what you said about the ownership.

I needed to show our GM that the competitor is in the wrong and we have legal backup to have him remove the content from the site.

Unfortunately, this is a long-running feud with this guy. He is a business/supplier but uses his website as an online tabloid against our company. It's almost comical.

Thanks,

Conor

[Mark_A]

thedagda for a positive legal position the fastest way you may find the sort of thing your GM is after (assuming you mean General Manager :-) is probably the terms and conditions and abuse policies of his ISP.

Slightly longer, you might get advice from your local goverment e-business advice teams, we have these in the UK and they used to provide a free initial legal consultation which has helped me in the past.

hope that helps.

[thedagda]

Thanks for all the advice. I just contacted our laywers to find out what they have to say. I took your advice and looked up the TOS for his host and it clearly states that no copyrighted material can be hosted on there servers. If it comes to it, I'm sure we can contect the host and have them weigh in on the matter.

Conor