The Wholesale Forums

[Pete]

Interesting turn.

Who does own the posts and articles?

And what is the difference, as the articles are all posts as well?

Should people writing article type posts include their own copyright claims with the article?

I know it says "original, never published before" in the competitions, but does that prohibit an author from posting it elsewhere?

Glad this came up, the end results may indeed be interesting......
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[Anthony]

Well, in terms of the article competition as stated in the disclaimer; upon entering articles into our competition you agreed to pass all copyrights over to TWF. In essence this just protects us by ensuring the article remains here on the forums after the competition is over and that you aren't permitted to publish it elsewhere. So in terms of articles within the official article competitions that we have run, we own the content and all copyrights to it. (Those were the terms of entry which all those who submitted articles agreed to).

With regard to general posts, we control the content that is published here but cannot be accountable for, or responsible for, posts made by users, other than ourselves. In that respect, you retain ownership of the postings you make here but we have overseeing control over it, whilst it remains here on our forum. Once content is published here it is under our control, you can request its removal but we are under no obligation to comply.

I'm sure we could make it a whole lot more complicated for all concerned but we've never really needed to. The one thing I certainly don't stand for is copyright infringement, which refers to all content published on this message board and its prohibited re-production on other websites outside of our control without direct permission or official referencing from/to TWF. This not only refers to our own content/design and so forth, but all of your posts too as it applies under the entire website copyrights.

If members decide to post their own content elsewhere on the net or in another form of media then I don't have a problem with that, and why would I? They are your posts. It only usually becomes a problem when they either don't own the copyright or aren't the original publisher of the content, as according to UK Legislation this would breach copyright law. (You know the types of people I mean, those who think they can fill their website with a nice bit of free content and pass it off as their own. They are a publishers worst nightmare!)