I have a notice like this on the registration page (before users can make any posts):
"The exclusive copyright on each and every post is irrevocably transferred to the administrators of this site (company name) at the moment the post is made."

Is invalid fake legalese ..means nothing ..binds no one ..certainly doesnt give you the copyrights to the posts

Would that hold up in case there is a dispute?

No ..because of the foregoing ..you can't assign yourself copyright on someone elses post ..even via T&C such as those ..( and the acceptance of "electronic signatures" and "electronic copyright transfer" varies with the attitude of each judge in the same courthouse ..even in the same county let alone country )..so dont bet the farm on it ;-)

The way to defeat scrapers is not to do so in away which also trys to usurp the rights of others ..

And before the argument shows up ..the situation is not the same as newspapers whose readers contribute letters ..and even then the newspapers do not claim that the letter writer may not publish their own letter elsewhere ..which is what yout T&C is attempting ( perhaps inadvertantly ..:) but thats also what it is trying ..

Is invalid fake legalese ..means nothing ..binds no one ..certainly doesnt give you the copyrights to the posts

Why not? In order to post on my board you need to register. And by registering you accept the terms of use, one of which states that you transfer copyright for the content you post to me.

Had the same questio few months ago excepted it was for pictures submission...

As said above, legally you can't take over ownership of someone else post, and this even if you stipulate in your terms that there is a transfer of ownership...

You better do as me, that is change your terms of use to that - most important point being number 3:
1. They are not releasing copyrights to you and still hold copyright of the work and the rights to publish, distribute and exhibit the pictures.
2. They will not transfer copyright of the work to a third party without notification to us;
3. They are transferring to us non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free licence to use the picture in any of our web pages, publications or exhibitions and to distribute it in a variety of forms for its educational and/or promotional activities and products;
4. It is their responsibility as owners/copyright holders to obtain any permits required to photograph protected places, animals or plan species and will be also responsible for any claim or complaint that may be filled by a party who has rights to a person, building, trademark or any other subjects depicted in the submitted picture.
5. Work published in our website may be distributed or used by third party under the "fair use rule" (non competitive, non profit, non commercial and personal use).

because the laws on copyrights dont work that way ..the specific variant you are trying to use was debated here many times in the past and very specifically and at great length earlier this year ..

a short version of why not is ..your sites terms and conditions are not legally binding upon anyone and the act of registering cannot under law deprive someone of other rights ..

you need to get straight wether you want to block scrapers ..or try to claim copyright on what isn't yours via your registration ..

the formere is admirable ..

the latter is not ..( and you seem to be more interested in the latter )..:(

and legally if I registered to your site and posted anything ..I would still own all the copyright to my post and you would own none of it ..no matter what your registration said ..

for details of why ..ask a lawyer specialised in copyrights ..be prepared to pay handsomely for the advice ..and even more so if you don't take it ..and try to use your T and C to do what you want ..first poster takes you to court ..you lose your shirt , pants , house , car ..add your own items to the list :)

BTW ..from the foot of each page on this board

All trademarks and copyrights held by respective owners. Member comments are owned by the poster.

that is the way to do it ..Brett isn't trying to take any "rights" away from us when we post ..because that would be dishonest ..and he knows he cant do it anyway ..

I'd love to discuss it more ..but I've got content and other stuff to create :)

Tomda ( bonjour :) posted in the meantime ( I type slow on this azerty keyboard ) and pretty much gave you exactly the way to go ..

And a T&C like that proposed by Tomda will get you more and happier users / posters / contributors / links and thus more traffic ..for longer :)

tomda, thanks. That gives me something to think about.

I'd love to discuss it more ..but I've got content and other stuff to create :)

Good. Don't come back to this thread. Your assumptions are offensive.

Your assumptions are offensive.

as are your T&C

which I assumed nothing about ..you told us clearly what they are and what you designed them to do ..attempt to transfer the copyright of posters to yourself ..

the way to prevent scrapers is not to try to claim copyright on the work of others ..

one does not fight theft with attempted fraud ..

if one has honest intent ..

edited to clarify:)

[edited by: Leosghost at 10:27 am (utc) on Dec. 18, 2006]

the way to prevent scrapers is not to try to claim copyright on the work of others ..

And your way of dealing with scrapers is....

Here's the relevant part of YouTube's user agreement:

First they, state that users retain whatever rights they have in uploaded material. They then go on:

However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

It suspect that if YouTube didn't have some pretty good attorneys before, they do now.

Certainly, if this is not valid, YouTube is violating the law on a daily basis, by giving permission to hundreds of TV stations to rebroadcast user's content.

This concerns me directly, BTW, as I am developing a site that I hope will ultimately publish a print edition using user-contributed content.

If this agreement is not binding, then it's not possible or at least not practical to produce such a printed edition, as it wouldn't be practical to obtain indivudual, signed agreements with each of thousands of contributers.

The piece from YouTube that's been posted can certainly be valid because it doesn't transfer copyright. Yes, the creator is giving YouTube a very wide license to use his or her material, but the statement doesn't take away the right of the creator to use the material in other ways, too, so the creator still holds copyright. The license is "non-exclusive." Licensing can legally be accomplished by an electronic signature or a button to push saying you accept the agreement. A copyright transfer cannot - at least it can't in the U.S., where it needs an actual on-paper signature of the person who's transferring the copyright (unless the law's been changed since I learned that a few years back).

The bit about scrapers goes over my head. How would transferring posters' copyright stop scrapers? -- Admitting that this isn't an area I know much about.

The bit about scrapers goes over my head. How would transferring posters' copyright stop scrapers? -- Admitting that this isn't an area I know much about.

It would allow me to file DMCA complaints.

So would including some of your own content ..in your own fora ..ie ; some of your own posts ..in reply to other posters ..to which you would own the copyright ( and thus have no need to try to take theirs ) ..and thus you would have the right to issue DMCA notices ..

thats one way :)

of many ..

means you have to participate in your own fora on a regular basis ..but it is a foolproof way to be able to issue DMCA's and stay ethically a good guy ..

no pain ..no gain ..usually ..

edited ..typo and clarify

[edited by: Leosghost at 1:44 am (utc) on Dec. 19, 2006]

thats one way :)

of many ..

And what are they? Enlighten me.

only friends get that much free advice ..

only friends get that much free advice ..

In other words, most of your posts are nothing but hot air.

you already had your quota of free advice ..

you are the one who came asking ..

and then was rude about the answers that you got ..( mine called you on your self admitted attempted self attribution of others copyright to yourself ) so you ain't no friend o' mine

I charge for security work / advice ( defeating scrapers is security ) ..and I dont tout for business on fora ( not that IMO you could afford me ..plus I can afford to be real picky about who I work for ..like many others here ) ..but I ..like others ..tomda , jtara etc do give out all kinds of advice for free ..

looking over your back posts ..one cant say the same for you ..lot of "me too's" in there ..

you've had some good advice already in this thread ( and having been watching your posting hours you apparently got back from your real 9-5 day job and posted again ..instead of implementing some of it and writing some of your own material..so as to be able to write your own DMCA's ..for your own site ..)..if you actually have one ..

plus I make sure that I know the law ..and dont try to twist it ..nor ask for approval on anonymous public fora for the twisting ..copyright lawyers dont cost that much ..or perhaps you think I should pay for you to talk to yours :)..

edited clarity and spelling

[edited by: Leosghost at 10:25 pm (utc) on Dec. 19, 2006]

ROFL. Grow up.

Well ..hopefully at least others who think that they could get away with what you proposed in your first post in this thread ..will now know different :)

and you are now boring and unimaginative in your dissimulation ..

so I'll let you apply your "plan" without wasting my time with further comment ..

let us know if/when you get scraped ..doubtless adsense figures highly in your "business plan" ..usually does to those who post hoping to use others material to get out of their day job ..in the copyright forum ..

can see why you dont like writing copy ..too many coherent syllables at once :)

Please guys, you need to cool down...
WW Senior battles give a bad image of yourself and WW.
No offense here :)

Leosghost (bonjour), I understand that you hate site scrapers and people stealing content from other (everybody does) but from what I seen in Bcc1234's first post, he is not trying to steal content but he is trying to find a solution to fight against site scrappers that steal posts from his forum...

My feeling is this: if he is planning to contact a lawyer regarding this issue, then he is presumably not a site scraper. And if he is, then he is not welcome here :( but again, I doubt he is...

Laslty, don't blame him/us for writing bad T&C because Internet is full of such T&C and many of us (me first) did the same error; post like this one should help others to write good T&C. Indeed, I even had to change my T&C after reading numerous post on the same subject in Webmasterworld.

This topic is interesting and your suggestion (that is posting in your forum so that you can track sites crappers that steal YOUR posts) is good. I even suggest Bcc1234 to register himself under numerous users (different usernames but same person) and create its own discussion.

Nonetheless, I still have few issues with work submitted by users. In my website (gallery of photos), I have done the following:

1/ Members that wish to protect their work -> must put their full name so that it appears below each photo (good for professional photographers).

2/ Members that don't care much -> don't need to put their full name. But because copyright notice should mention the full name of the author, I have decided to put the following "Posted by USERNAME - Copyright DATE MY_WEBSITE". I know its wrong but what I can do since I don't know the full name of the author and still want to put a copyright notice on the photo.

3/ Guest (those posting pic without registering) -> same problem here, what should I do since I don't have any personal information about the poster... I have put the following "posted by GUEST - Copyright DATE MY_WEBSITE".

So what can be done to place a copyright notice under work submitted by anonymous persons (either guest or username)?

I hope this cooled down things a bit!
Cheers

tomda - If you're in the U.S., or probably a lot of other places, a copyright notice isn't necessary. The creator holds the copyright as soon as the work is finished. That's why it's often mentioned here that anything on the web should be assumed to be copyrighted unless there's a notice otherwise, or notice of some kind of open use license or permission to use. The wording that WWW uses for this seems pretty good; I use similar wording on a section of one site that contains contributed artwork, but I post it prominently on the page instead of just in the TOS, so anyone visiting that page will see it. The copyright stays with the contributor, which is exactly what you're trying to accomplish.

As far as scrapers, besides the "post some of your own" idea, there's also a copyright provision about compilations (such as books of short stories by different authors). You'd need to check the law/with a lawyer to see exactly how to apply this, but it has been used in regard to a forum owner holding the copyright of the "compilation" of posts on the forum. It wouldn't have anything to do with individual posts or other contributions, but might have some impact if the "compilation" is taken wholesale. Somewhat iffy as to whether a forum owner actually "compiles" anything.

ETA: The site owner claiming copyright of individual posts or other contributions would not have the desired effect when it comes to protecting the work. It's a simple fact that copyright cannot be transferred by someone agreeing to TOS; in the U.S., it's statutory law, not case law - that is, it's "on the books" rather than something that would depend on interpretation. Claiming copyright of someone else's work through TOS or some other kind of notice would be like saying you own anything your friend brings into your house, so you can file charges if it gets stolen. Saying it doesn't make it true. [ETA my ETA: Yes, I do know copyright infringement isn't the same thing legally as stealing, but on one cup of coffee I can't come up with a better comparison ;) .]

[edited by: Beagle at 2:17 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2006]

there's also a copyright provision about compilations

Now this is a great idea, which is worth checking out with a lawyer. Thanks a bunch. I can't believe I didn't think of that.