[wp-forums] DPA & Copyright in Forums [was: RE: another one asking for deletion]

[Gavin Pearce]

Hi Otto,

Thanks for the detailed reply - more an "out of interest" question, than
any issue.

Gavin

-----Original Message-----
From: wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com
[mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Otto
Sent: 22 November 2010 19:02
To: wp-forums at lists.automattic.com
Subject: Re: [wp-forums] DPA & Copyright in Forums [was: RE: another one
asking for deletion]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Gavin Pearce
<Gavin.Pearce at 3seven9.com> wrote:
> And following on from this, who owns the copyright on a post made to
the
> forum? Is it the user, or WordPress foundation, or Automattic? AFAIK,
in
> the T&Cs, you don't assign any rights other to the latter -
technically
> giving the user the right to request their copyrighted information is
> deleted?

I don't want to get all legal, but seems like I have to.

The forum is based in the US, so US laws apply. In the US, the author
of anything owns their own copyrights to that material. Furthermore,
that copyright cannot be reassigned automatically, through an
automated agreement or T&Cs or some such. Copyright remains with the
author unless there's a written transfer of copyright.

But there is also the fact that the author submitted the post
themselves as well. This gives an "implicit license" to the forum they
submitted it to, for the purpose of reproducing the material for the
intended purpose of the submission. This is *implicit* in the act of
submitting the material itself, and does not need to be spelled out.
The author submitted material with the intent of having it on the
forum, therefore there must be a narrow permission granted to
reproduce the material in the forum itself. This is a common-sense
legal interpretation, since the contrary position would allow a user
to submit material to a forum and then sue the forum for automatically
displaying it, which makes no sense. You can't take an action and then
sue other people for actions that you yourself initiated.

So while anybody can request a user to delete anything they like, a
forum provider is under no obligation to honor their request.
Copyright doesn't really enter into it. They put the information there
with the intended purpose of displaying that information. They don't
get to put a burden on the provider later because they changed their
minds. Implicit licenses are not revocable by one-party only.

On the other hand, copyright does still apply. Primarily this matters
when the purpose or format of the material changes. There is an
implicit license granted to use the author's material for the purposes
of which it was submitted, but *only* for that purpose. Implicit
licenses are as narrow in scope as it is possible to be. The original
author retains copyright, so if the forum owner wants to republish the
material in another form (say, make a book out of it), then he'd need
to get permission from the author of the posts to do so.

And that's basically how forums work.

-Otto
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