Content theft - need some advice
 

I am going to lay out a scenario that is taking place in the hope that people can give me some insight.

A partner and I founded our forum 8 years ago on an older version of vBulletin. My partner had ftp access and gave ftp to one of our web masters. Said web master gave ftp to one of our community admins who said he wanted to do some clean up on the server (he made a mistake by not consulting with my partner and i), but instead the community member just stole the content and relocated to a new domain.

Another community member donated our vb4 license, but happens to be friends with the offending community member, and therefore switched the license over to the offending website. We have no problems buying a new license, thats not the issue.

The issue is...
1- They are using our custom design which we had designed for us. I can have the designer vouch for me as the original purchaser of the design
2- They are using our community name
3- They are using a duplicate of our website with all of our posts / threads that have cumulated over 8 years. Our content is our primary concern here.

My partner and I are the original owners of this content and we founded the community. The offending members were previously in the community playing admin roles and are actively attempting to steal members from our boards along with our content. We do not own an LLC under the community name, but we have the following proof of our ownership...
1-webarchive that shows we founded the community in 2004 and we can show dated posts and other archives that demonstrate we are the original founders/owners of the community. We are also listed as userID1 and userID2. We have plenty of content to prove that we were the original owners.
2- testimonies from our web designer who made the skin and from our custom coder (the offending parties are planning on changing the design/site name but keeping all of our content on their board)
3- testimonies from our current community members and past members who can vouch for us being the original owners, but the offending party also has some people who would vouch for them because they are a part of the faction as well.

Because it is a forum board, copyright laws seem to be slightly convoluted. What I am wondering is this...
- Do my partner and I have copyright to the content on our forum? In this sense, can we claim that the offending party is breaking copyright by stealing our content even though the content consists of peoples threads/posts?
- Do we have legal grounds to sue?
- What measures can we take before having to take a legal route, we would prefer not to spend money. But we have put nearly ten years into this project and would be willing to take this to court if we have a case.

I hope someone can bring insight into this situation. Also you can PM me and I can give you my skype information so we can talk about this further. Thanks

Have you tried contacting their host and explaining the situation?

Yes we have tried that, they can just move their host though. We are continuing to pursue contacting the host but are also looking into our other options. Thanks for your reply. At any rate the offender has our content on his hard drive and can just put it up on a new host/domain if he chooses to do so, which is unsettling.

If the content was yours first under your domain then they'll have trouble getting ranked and they'll not be able to have adsense...etc, this may help you http://www.ecreativeim.com/blog/2011...ent-to-google/

Forum content is the property of the individual who posted the content. If it wasn't forum owners would be liable for the content posted by their membership, including but not limited to warez, child pornography, and content which violates 17USC107 Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act. Where you may have them on legal grounds is regarding infringement of intellectual property. The theme itself and any proprietary content would be subject to de facto copyright under creative commons or other similar licensing. Unfortunately, the only person qualified to give you legal advice is a duly licensed and retained attorney at law. While I can speak in generalities the rights, limitations and exclusions vary greatly from state to state, and there is no overriding law which pertains to the internet at large.

My best advice is to consult qualified legal counsel as to your specific available remedies.

thanks for the advice so far people.

Actually, it becomes the property of the site when it is posted. Just like the accounts themselves, are property of the site..

My advice is based upon the following:

http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

If there is specific law which grants "the site" property rights I would like to see it. Link?

You give me a massive bunch of text to read through without citing a specific part of it. Therefore the "specifics" part is on you, since you originally claimed it.

But of course, you're not thinking. Let me help.

When you create a account on a forum, you do not own the account. The site does. They can ban you, moderate you, erase you. Anything they want. Because it is theirs.

When you use that account to post on the site, the post is the site's property as a matter of physical fact. They can edit it, moderate it, delete it. Anything they want. Because it is theirs. AND, it is recognized as the site's property under the DCMA as posted earlier in the thread:

http://www.ecreativeim.com/blog/2011...ent-to-google/

Your account and posts are NOT yours, they belong to the site you post them on for them to do with as they wish and also for them to protect as they wish.

Content isn't copyrighted just because you have a website. I think you're misinterpreting the DMCA. You have to hold a legal copyright of the material. How many websites actually file legal copyright of their material? How many originate 100% of their material? One can only copyright material one originated. You can't copyright the written, recorded or graphic work of someone just because they post it on your website.