Kolya on 22/5/2007 at 16:33
Who has the copyright to text, images or other contents released by members on TTLG?
I would of course assume it stays with the author. But I do remember a change to the TTLG policy about two years ago or so, where TTLG claimed the rights to everything released by it's members on the forums.
Sounds almost unbelievable, eh? Yeah that's what I thought too. Especially since claiming these rights would mean TTLG could be held responsible for all the content too...
Anyway, why do I ask such annoying questions?
Well I was writing a short story lately and planned to release it here when I remembered this policy. I thought a while about it and wondered why I had never read anything in discussions about that. Then I started reading TTLG's (
http://www.ttlg.com/legal.asp) legal info (Yes, I actually read that.) as well as the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/regs/) posting guidelines. The legal info had nothing about it but the posting guidelines say:
Quote:
TTLG takes no responsibility for the content
and
Quote:
You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages
So have I all imagined this? It starts to seem like a bad dream or something.
But I'd like to know definitely now. Who got the rights?
David on 22/5/2007 at 16:41
This is probably what you are referring to this, from the posting guidelines:
Quote:
TTLG reserves the right to publish forum post content (in whole or in part, and with appropriate credit to the original author) on any or all of TTLG's associated sites.
It was mainly envisaged around the time T3ED came out to allow us to construct tutorials from material posted by users who no longer visited TTLG.
Kolya on 22/5/2007 at 17:44
Ah yes, that's the part I meant.
So TTLG claims free usage rights for the content created by the forum users. And I take it, that doesn't influence the original author's rights to publish the same content anywhere else?
Gingerbread Man on 22/5/2007 at 19:57
Right. Like Dave said, that addendum was really just to make it so we could pillage forum content for use on the other sites. But even then the appropriate author would be credited.
Bottom line is that you have full proprietory rights to anything you publish even if you "publish" it by disseminating it through the forums. TTLG can exercise a certain measure of non-exclusive reproduction rights -- basically just so we can post things to the daughter sites or wikis or whatnot -- plus it relieves us of the headaches of having to get usage agreements etc from everyone who makes an FM etc.
Basically, if you release / publish / preview a short story here, the rights remain yours. We aren't interested in dicking anyone around, that's just mean.
Kolya on 22/5/2007 at 22:33
I didn't expect you wanting to "dick anyone around" but the question was still itching me. Thanks for answering it. :)
PigLick on 23/5/2007 at 08:48
Yeh GBM is only interested in dicking certain people, not just anyone
