Changing Terms of Service

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Dear Alex Plank

It has come to my attention that you have changed the Terms of Service since I first joined Wrong Planet, and are now claiming all sorts of rights over my postings.

"Rights
WrongPlanet.net reserves full rights to information and content posted anywhere within the wrongplanet.net domain by any of its visitors, members, and staff.
By posting to the forums, or any other sections of this site, you signify agreement that you are giving WrongPlanet permission to use, modify, and reproduce your submission, in part or in whole, in any way, shape, form, or method in which we decide to do so, at any point in the present or future at our discretion.
Any and all information posted on WrongPlanet.net may not be copied or used elsewhere, in any way, shape, or form, either on the Internet or in print without express written consent of an owner of WrongPlanet.net."

Please note that as I am not an American citizen, and that since I reside outside of America, international law is applicable to this matter. You can not retrospectively apply claims of copyright to my posts. They are and will remain my property to do with as I wish. I do not extent that facility to you.

In addition, the fact that you have removed my ability to delete these posts myself is a direct violation of my rights.

If you wish to maintain this claim you are required forthwith to remove ALL my existing postings, made under the name of CuriousPrimate, from the forum and from whatever database(s) they may stored on. Failure to do so is a violation of my rights and is unacceptable. Please note that if it becomes necessary to pursue this matter I will do so in a South African court of law.

I expect to receive an email notifying me that you have done so within the week, commencing South African time 23:30 Tuesday 16 May 2006.

Yours sincerely

CuriousPrimate

Sorry to tell you but if that's what the copyright says and your informed of it then there isn't much you can do. If you post on here it does become WrongPlanet's property. This isn't the only forum or website that does this you know. It's nothing to be angry over really.

Actually it cannot become WrongPlanet property, simply it cannot. It's intellectual properly, though I like this forum allot, peoples thoughts are people’s thoughts like in Hollywood or the music industry.

Perhaps the terms can be worded differently, I don’t think Alex intends to own other peoples thoughts, likely a basic policy or attorney’s work not entirely intended to mean that.

This is sort of a problem with legal standards. I imagine that Alex has a lawyer behind him whom gave him advice on how to utilize copyright laws.

With that said, many legal standards have a hidden repertoire of hypocrisy. Take, for example, the following:

The owners of WrongPlanet reserve for themselves the right to use anything we post for whatever reason they want. Now, if we were to take a post and use it for whatever reason we want, gee ... we'll get our butts hung.

It's like the owners of a shopping center allow the use of cameras inside their buildings, and then god forbid if we dare to take a few pictures inside the building without their permission.

Here's to the owners, not Alex or anyone in particular, but owners in general, landlords, whomever:

You don't own me! I own myself! I will do what I want! And I don't care about your permissive standards!

- Ray M -

I just got an idea for another interpretation.

That the statement is for general copyright protection of the individual inputting his or her intellectual property. This is so that it cannot be infringed, it is a shared protection perhaps of W.P domain sourced data and the inputer..

Could the rules and reasons for them be perhaps re-clarified in a more specific way so we are all on the same page so to speak? It is not worded as broadly as, say, the patriot act, but I wouldn't mind being told exactly what a person could expect their posts to be used for. For example, could the government demand the contents of the posts while investigating someone? Could an ex-spouse obtain them to use in a custody hearing? Could an employer use them to fire someone? I tend to think not but I am curious.

The law that was stated does not articulate it in that way. It basically gives the owner nothing but unprecedented rights. Sure, it is for copyright protection, but the owner is also perfectly in the right if he uses anything we say on here for media purposes, like giving it to Dr. Phil or whoever else may want to use info on Aspergers or whatever.

The thing is that if I ask someone to use his / her post for something, and the person agrees ... I can still get my butt hung, just because the owner has other rules.

Would this happen? I can't tell for sure. Probably not. But things like this happen in the real world. Our movements in shopping centers, for example, are recorded for marketing purposes, totally against our will.

- Ray M -

Yes, the government could demand the contents of the posts. That's part of the reason why laws like this are worded in the way they are. It gives the owners unprecedented rights, and it allows for law enforcement agencies to threaten owners against our will. This means that if the so-called authorities threaten Alex, demanding him to give it over, there's nothing we can do. The law has been stipulated.

I would imagine an ex-spouse proposes a different story, because Alex would have to agree to give it over. Law enforcement, on the other hand, can demand with a court order. Although, these days you don't even need a court order to place Internet talk under surveillance.

- Ray M -

The problem is, for instance, if W.P made a book and used contents without explicite permission as some informations are sensative it would be a conflict of a type of interpretation of copyright law. Or a problem of using contents without giving credit to an individual.

However the statement interpreted best it is for usage of inputed contents on the forums which are part of W.P, not non-permissional usage elsewhere.

A legal analysis:

This part has no real meaning or effect because "reserves full rights" is vague, and not a valid legal mechanism. Sure you can say it, but a vague "cover all bases absolutely" statement cannot be relied on for achieving anything.


It is debatable whether this is legally enforceable considering that no actual contract was signed. Without a signed written agreement, you are in the murky and unreliable area of what can legally constitute a valid/enforceable unsigned non-paper contract.

Also note it is NOT saying that WrongPlanet obtains the copyright ownership of people's submissions (it is not an assignment of copyright). Rather it more closely resembles the submitter giving WrongPlanet a LICENSE to use the copyrighted material, with no change in ownership.


This is definitely not legally enforceable via copyright law. WrongPlanet is not the copyright owner of the submitted material (and has not claimed to somehow obtain the copyright ownership) and thus does not have any legal right or ability to stop people from reproducing the submissions. Only the copyright owner (author of the submission) can stop people from reproducing a submission.

Also, even if WrongPlanet did give someone express written consent to reproduce submissions, this would NOT make it legal to reproduce any submission. Consent would need to be obtained from the copyright owner (the author of the submission).

That is what the Terms of Service claims, however I am pretty sure that part is legally unenforceable / invalid. It is like John Smith writes a book and then Warner Bros says the book cannot be reproduced. Warner Bros has no legal ability to do this unless John Smith signed a contract which assigned/transferred the copyright ownership of the book to Warner Bros. i.e. only the copyright owner has the legal right to restrict the reproduction of his/her/its material, and WrongPlanet is not the copyright owner of the submitted material (and has not claimed to be. WrongPlanet has just claimed licensee status not owner status. Licensees have no legal right to restrict the reproduction).

Another problem with the ToS is that WrongPlanet cannot be a licensee (or an owner) of any copyright rights because WrongPlanet is not a valid legal entity, and if something is not a legal entity, it typically has no legal rights. Yes, WrongPlanet has NO legal rights. I say this on the presumption that WrongPlanet is NOT an incorporated company. A legal entity can be a person, or it can be an incorporated company, or a few other types of organizations similar to companies. But AFAIK WrongPlanet is not incorporated, therefore it is not a valid legal entity, therefore it cannot be a licensee or owner of any copyright. It has no rights. But Alex Plank is a person so he does have legal rights, and thus he can be a licensee.

Regardless of what the ToS says, when people submit a message to the WrongPlanet forum, they are giving Alex Plank an implicit license to reproduce the message in the forum. That is how a judge would look at it. A judge would be reluctant to extend Alex's rights in this matter beyond the obvious (especially considering there is no signed paper agreement).

For example, if Alex published a book containing all of the messages submitted to WP (verbatim), he would be in risky legal territory. Regardless of what the ToS says, his legal right to do this is far from assured. On the other hand, if there was a big obvious notice on the post submission webpage saying "All submissions made via this form will be published in a book by Alex", then his risk would be substantially reduced because it could be claimed that the submitter granted an implicit license to Alex for the message to be reproduced in a book. However this would not retroactively cover previous posts made prior to the book notice, and his legal right would still not be completely assured because an implicit license is a somewhat nebulous thing, generally defined by what a normal person would reasonably expect to be the case.

For Alex to be properly protected legally, before publishing such a book he would need to obtain a signature from each copyright owner (the authors of the messages) or at least email each person asking for consent and receive explicit reply messages giving consent (consent actually constituting a license, and the emails constituting actual two-way communication with the person). Without this, the authors can slip out of it (it being the granting of a license to Alex) extremely easily in a hundred different ways, such as claiming they never read or saw the ToS or read it but never agreed to it, etc etc, which may well be true.

This does not mean that submitters can start extorting money out of Alex by claiming copyright infringement or improper use of their submissions, because Alex can rely on the fact that if he ceases reproducing the disputed message when informed of the dispute, he is highly unlikely to be liable for any damages to the copyright owner because copyright laws usually state that the infringer is only liable for damages if he/she KNOWS that he/she is infringing. So Alex can quite reasonably claim that he thought he was licensed to reproduce the message, and when he was informed he was not, he ceased reproducing, hence a judge would not impose any financial penalty even if infringement was found to be the case.

As the author of this message, I am the copyright owner of it, and I hereby give you the reader an explicit license to print 1 copy of this message provided that you then eat it

In order for alex to claim ownership of anything submitted to this site, he would have to include something like this into the TOS

Still remains the question: Who owns the right to retain, alter, or delete posts made prior to the current revision in TOS?

Minors are permitted to post on WP. Minors cannot enter into a contract. In additon, there may be other members here who post but who do not maintain the legal ability to enter into a contractual relationship.

Furthermore, lacking grandfather clauses, posts would be "policed" under the TOS in effect at the time the post was made. For example: If today's tos says People who drive red cars can't post in the random thread, I have a yellow car so I post there, then tomorrow the TOS changes to people with yellow cars, I can't be found to be in violation with yesterday's post.

As for the ability to edit, I would imagine that to avoid threads becoming nonsensical editing needs to be kept to a certain time frame. Otherwise I suppose a member could go back and edit a post in a thread to either completely change the meaning of the post and the responses, or to simply turn the whole thread upside down. The same probably goes for removing posts.

It is a sticky situation, but one that needs to be addressed.

Just start a thread to opt-out of handing over ownership of your contents, but the right of usage for contents being on a post.

I have several posts here that I really do not believe will be used, but are mine and no one elses unless kindly asked.