This has always been an interesting topic of discussion to me: Who owns the rights to posts in your forums? You, the owner, or the creator, the one who posted it? Or even further...the host who owns the database?

I've always included a statement in my TOS that says all information posted in my forums remains property of the forums...and express permission must be asked for before posting it elsewhere. I'm not sure whether or not this truly holds any legal strength, but I would imagine that since they agree to the TOS upon registering and the forums are privately-run, that there is not much that can be done about this - That is of course, unless you, the owner, are exploiting their posts whether because it is confidential information (which shouldnt have been posted in the first place) or in order to blacklist their name.

I'd love to hear personal stories

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I always say that the information belongs to the creator and the forum, I guess. Really it soley belongs to the creator, I guess, but many hosts would tell you that your forum belongs to them, so in the long run, I guess the host claims rights on it.

Personally, I think that people should first contact the owner, and then the administration. If it is ok with both of them, you can post it somewhere else.

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You should pretty much forget about copyrights online. There is no way to prove you own rights, at all.

That is pretty true. The only way you can really keep track of something would be to have something very unique, so a Google search would turn up every place that had your article.

Or, you need a lot of members on your forum that are also members at other forums that are similar to yours. I have seen members point out that other forums have stolen skins that were uniquely made for one forum and stuff.

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I dont remember where, but I have been to forums where they said they will pay any member who reports a copyright violation to the admins. It's an interesting idea, but the problem I saw with it was one of honesty - What is to keep somebody from placing the copyrighted material on their own site and then reporting it? I don't know, there might be a way around it, but if you are willing to pay $ to protect your copyrighted material, it is something to consider.

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