LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)
-
Who owns the copyright to this treasury of knowledge, wit and invention?
The site has had the same T&C since the vBulletin days, and the most recent wording was more than a decade ago:
You confirm that images, sounds, text or information that you submit or create ("User Content") whilst using the forum will meet the Rules of Acceptable Use.
You give us unlimited permission to use your User Content and allow others to do the same for no fee. In legal terms this means that you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and perpetual licence to use, copy, reproduce, distribute, adapt, re-format, modify, publish, translate, licence, sub-licence, assign, transfer and sell the User Content anywhere and in any form.
In essence you own the copyright to your content (i.e. you post that I'm replying to) but you grant a right to us to use it (i.e. to show it to others, re-format it, make it public, etc) and you grant a right for us to transfer the content too.
It's that set of rights that allow any public website to operate, and also allow it to be archived.
I draw a very strong line around private stuff regardless of whether it's covered by the T&C above (which it is).
Velocio-
As I read it that means you own the copyright to your own posts but in effect have simultaneously given it away.
Then, who have you ceded the copyright to? I suppose in the first instance to the Forum, however legally constituted, but the text also includes:
and allow others to do the same for no fee.
Does this mean that anyone could take this intellectual property and repurpose it for private or commercial use? So that for all practical purposes there is no copyright? Or are the 'others' to be determined by whoever represents the Forum?
rw101
Who owns the copyright to this treasury of knowledge, wit and invention?