UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.classic UBB.classic 6 Support Legally who owns the posts?

Sorry if this is not the right place for this...but I could not find a more appropriate area for this question.

Does anyone know who legally owns the posts on a message board that you host? I host a UBB Classic board, and have had a couple of people threaten me with lawsuits in the last year regarding posts they either made, or I deleted. Their view is that they own what they post. My view is that it is my board, I have paid for the hosting and licensing, therefore I own the content that users post. Does anyone know where I could get some info regarding this? I'm sure it must have come up before with other admins of UBB boards...

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
Mark

By no means am I a lawyer, but that depends on your terms of service, and message board rules.

I agree that placing something in the terms of service and message board rules is important to help define this...but I guess I am wondering what others have done to address this? Any samples of what you have posted in your boards user agreements?
Mark

On terms of service of some boards I browse says that all moderators and admins have the right for deleting or editing messages. And also they add that the terms of service may be changed on any time and the users must follow that text. You can also add that all the members are supposed to accept all the rules by becoming a member of the forum. I think if you write this rules then they must obey them because they accept these rules by becoming a member of that forum.

Hi Mark, nice to see you here! I came on here wondering the same thing, regarding the same issue for a board I am affiliated with. Not having set up a terms of service from the start, the owner of the board is now concerned that he has created a sticky situation for himself which a TOS would not necessarily fix at this juncture.

So for anyone who has run into this situation, the question remains: what are the legal considerations and options when TOS had not existed formally prior to any issues arising?

While you can specify things regarding post ownership & post hosting in your terms of service, the situation you describe would be best solved by talking to a lawyer. Once you have a new rule set, you can switch a setting in the control panel (of recent versions) and force all registered users to re-agree to the new rules.

Thanks, Charles. I totally agree that a lawyer would probably be able to answer the question reasonably quickly. Just curious to know if anyone here has seen a precedent and can provide some informed speculation, as neither I nor the board owner I am working with are in a position to solicit a lawyer's aid at this time (and may not actually have a legal situation on our hands yet anyway). Surely if the issue (God forbid) escalates to become a real problem, contacting a lawyer will be our first step.