Terms of Service

[veenuisthebest]

1. Is there any special reason to make certain points in the TOS written in capital letters? Like in vborg TOS (points 6,7,8,9). I have seen few points in caps in almost every site's TOS.

2.

Originally Posted by vborg TOS

All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest ? 2006 by xxxx.

With the above statement in TOS, can a member claim to have his posts be removed off the forum? What if I make the comments be the property of the site too? Will it be alright?

Thanks

[Bawtneez]

1. Those are probably VERY IMPORTANT POINTS.

2. Staff technically has the right to do whatever to the post, to a point, however you can enable the feature to allow members to delete their own posts. A member could ask though, yes, if there is a good enough reason the staff should at least consider removing posts.

[veenuisthebest]

Originally Posted by Bawtneez

2. Staff technically has the right to do whatever to the post, to a point, however you can enable the feature to allow members to delete their own posts. A member could ask though, yes, if there is a good enough reason the staff should at least consider removing posts.

Thanks for the reply.

I have even disabled editing of posts after 24 hours, so there's no way I'd want them to delete their posts themselves.

Yes, i understand, if the reason is good enough then we should consider removing their posts, but what if the reason is not good enough.

Then based on the TOS, can they claim to have their posts removed if I make comments the property of posters? AND WHAT IF I MAKE THEM A PROPERTY OF THE SITE ITESELF? Can it create some kind of problem?

Basically what I want is to make the posts a property of the site, and at the same time make the site not being responsible for the content posted.

I am sure above can be achieved with a line in TOS. So if I mention this, is it fine?

[Princeton]

Basically what I want is to make the posts a property of the site

I don't recommend that. Facebook just did something similar and the community fought back. In the end, Facebook apologized and negated the new Privacy "amendments" (edits).

People don't want to hear that YOU own their comments, files, ideas, etc.

[veenuisthebest]

Thanks a lot for telling this. I currently have this in my TOS:-

Originally Posted by my TOS

All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner, all the rest ?2008 by my Site. All messages express the views of the author, and the owners of my Site will not be held responsible for the content of any message.

Does it look good??? Or should I specifically mention that the posts/messages are property of the posters.??

Thanks

[vbplusme]

I think its a fuzzy place that most TOS statement weasel word around. Technically the post is the opinion of the post but the POST belong specifically to the service as does all the content. The members usually agree to terms and conditions when they sign up for membership. I am pretty sure that the reason it isn't carved in stone is that some countries like the US specifically prohibits a person "signing their rights away" - can't be done there. That kind of stuff is what keep the sleazebag lawyers from going on welfare , they can always find someone who can be persuaded to file a lawsuit for stuff exactly like this. The bottom line is, put weasel words there the protect YOUR interest and that of your website. I would even put a clause in there that members agree to a coauthor copyright for anything they post or don't post. HTH

[SEOvB]

if your going to take "ownership" of posts, then you better be ready to be held responsible for the content of those posts

[Aerdan]

What FRDS said: if there is certain uploadable content that they post that you want to be able to use for publicity use, you're certainly allowed to put that sort of information in a TOS, but even Facebook (as mentioned) took a huge backlash from that. Most importantly, if someone were to post something illegal on there and someone sees it and reports it, that's on your hands now because of the ownership claim.

You may want to consider the route of "XXX is not responsible for any comments, defamation, etc" type of clause to cover yourself legally from lawsuits. You never know who may try it, and the trickiness of legal wording can bite you.

[veenuisthebest]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I have added this clause in the TOS, does it look good and safe now

All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest ?2008 by MY SITE. All messages express the views of the author, and the owners of MY SITE will not be held responsible for the content of any message.

And btw, "the site not responsible" clause is already mentioned in default Forum Rules phrase i.e. when a person registers and agrees to site rules. Though I have still mentioned it in my TOS.

Thanks