Who owns my posts?

Steveire

As far as I understand it, anything I write is implicitly copyrighted to me.

When I post to boards, am I implicitly licencing it to give boards.ie Ltd the right to modify and display it publicly, or am I copyrighting it to boards.ie Ltd?

At the bottom of this page it says:
© boards.ie Ltd. (Ireland) - Hosted by Hosting 365.

I'm not entirely sure if that refers to boards.ie the website in it's appearance, structure and so on, or the user-contributed content. I don't remember seeing anything about licencing or copyright during the registration process either.

I read around here before that as publisher, boards.ie Ltd can be liable for the content, and have to act on claims of libel etc. That implies some sort of ownership or rights of some kind to me.

Wikipedia content remains copyright of the respective authors, but that's OK, because it is licenced under the GFDL. boards.ie posts are not licenced like that, so who owns the copyright?

Do you see the difficulty I'm having with this?

seamus

Wikipedia is in a different jurisdiction, so the same rules wouldn't apply there and here.

boards.ie is definitely liable as publisher in this jurisdiction, but I couldn't comment on the actual ownership or copyright. As you point out, it may be a case that ownership/copyright belongs to the poster, but boards.ie has been licenced to publish it on your behalf.

padser

Steveire wrote:

As far as I understand it, anything I write is implicitly copyrighted to me.

Correct.

Steveire wrote:

When I post to boards, am I implicitly licencing it to give boards.ie Ltd the right to modify and display it publicly, or am I copyrighting it to boards.ie Ltd?

Unless there was something specific about it in the registration process you are not transferring the ownership.

You are giving boards the right to display it. in fact with the way the board i would say you are almost displaying it yourself, rather like if you write on a wall somewhere, you would hardly expect to sue the walls owner for breaching your copyright by supplying the wall!!

It is however possible (and something that is never considered but to my mind is potentially more actionable against boards then defamatory material) that boards could face legal action when they modify your posts. They are in effect attributing an a statement to you that you did not make, and since its mods and admins that modify posts boards are more likely in my opinion to be open to legal action then by the action of a random punter who has just provided an email address and set up an account.

seamus wrote:

Wikipedia is in a different jurisdiction, so the same rules wouldn't apply there and here.

Not necessarily.

Firstly intellectual property is very much an international area of law (eg the berne convention etc), eu directives have harmonised the law across the eu. it is recognised that there is little point in getting copyrights and patents etc if the law is not uniform to some extend throughout the world.

Secondly content published on the internet can be subject to the laws in many different countries, not just the country the site is based in as is commonly believed.

Steveire

seamus wrote:

Wikipedia is in a different jurisdiction, so the same rules wouldn't apply there and here.

I only used the wikipedia example to as a system that does explicitly tell you what licence and copyright issues your contributions fall under. I'm wondering if there's an impicit licencing situation for this kind of thing.

padser wrote:

Unless there was something specific about it in the registration process you are not transferring the ownership.

Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything even vaguely related to the contibutions I make apart from the fact that they shouldn't contain bad content.

padser wrote:

You are giving boards the right to display it. in fact with the way the board i would say you are almost displaying it yourself, rather like if you write on a wall somewhere, you would hardly expect to sue the walls owner for breaching your copyright by supplying the wall

Indeed. So maybe it would make sense legally if the contributions were in the public domain? That way they could be used for any purpose and edited etc (I think). But can you implicitly put content in the public domain? Maybe you can say that it's intended to be a public forum with public access and contribution, therefore they can be treated as in the public domain? If that's not the situation, I'd expect something to that effect to be in the registration process.

There's my confusion on it anyway. Any more clarification?

dermot_sheehan

Although prima facie you own the copyright of anything you create, it could be argued that you implicitly assign either the copyright itself or a licence to use the material indefinetly, when you post to boards.

Steveire

Don't you think it's unusual that there's nothing stated explicitly about it?

Which do you reckon it is? assigning copyright or a licence to use it?

padser

gabhain7 wrote:

Although prima facie you own the copyright of anything you create, it could be argued that you implicitly assign either the copyright itself or a licence to use the material indefinetly, when you post to boards.

I would doubt that it could be argued that you transfer the copyright completely, and a licence can be revoked after all. I definitly think that a post still bearing your name as the author, but which has been edited by someone else, would be potential cause of action.