Does this mean what I think it does?

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From WrongPlanet's Terms of Service.

If so, goodbye, WP.

i think it does, but then if you've posted so much already.. why stop now?
they should say something about sharing info with third parties though..

Pretty much every single website you can put information onto has a clause like this somewhere. Facebook is a lot worse.

I'm pretty sure it does.

Question is, how often is content from the forums actually used in this manner? I've never heard of it.

This is intellectual property verses copyright, WP does not own the intellectual property of the individual, ie the person publishing the comment, because it's in the public domain. It does however protect WP and others mentioned by copyright, eg if a individual copied the information and compiled a book they would effectively be stealing intellectual property of the submitter and the copyright of WP. If WP used the information they would acknowledge the submitters contribution and their copyright use of the information. This is considered good practice and normal business use of the information.

Note: any original writing by an individual or original thought by an individual should be retained by the individual if they believe it as value.

example: a polling company fones you to ask if you will be voting for a particular political party. so what is happening in this situation, well the polling company is being paid to get the information, the person foning you is being paid, but you own the intellectual property of knowing how you vote, should you be paid for this information? Or do you give it away freely.
you make a informed choice is the information valuable to you or not.

I suspect this is a right that's quite capable of being given up, and the terms seem to imply this is the case: "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."

But that may well be subject to the (AFAIK) as-yet untested arguments against the use of 'click-through' agreements.
Also I don't think that by posting to what is essentially a privately maintained forum made accessible for use by the public, making a post would constitute the placing of it in the public domain. The public can access it, but it's not a public domain.
(and as if it's not already obvious - I am not a lawyer )

Yes. I seriously doubt there is anything remotely sinister going on and it seems to be a pretty standard style of user agreement.

cornflake wrote

Also I don't think that by posting to what is essentially a privately maintained forum made accessible for use by the public, making a post would constitute the placing of it in the public domain.

public domain refers to works, ideas, and information which are intangible to private ownership and/or which are available for use by members of the public.

We are all members of the public!

Yep, that's a good point - and nicely proves what I'd said about not being a lawyer.
Public Domain it is!

But hold on, websites are available for use by the public, but they still have copyright. So is Facebook, but again, it's copyrighted.

Wrong Planet, similarly, is copyrighted by Alex. So he owns the intellectual property to all of our posts, surely?

It means whoever wrote it hasn't thought about what they were writing, as "shape" and "form" are synonymous, identical and downright similar.

Should think you'll be fine unless you were planning to upload original works of art of whatever kind, in which case, don't do it if you intend to sell them.

Yeah, but what if they're publishing their own content? Surely they can be expected to assert and protect their rights to the content, and making it available to the public just allows the public to do certain things with it.
Just because it's accessible doesn't mean it's being given away as-is for the public to do as it pleases with it.

It's less obvious when a website is publishing information from which something can be learned and applied elsewhere: any copyright on the information used wouldn't extend to what became created through understanding and further development, but I think it's around here that IP would come in.
But the content's copyright would certainly extend to disallowing another website from simply pasting the same information on its own pages.

It only gets more convoluted once IP is invoked.
Although that cursed company in Redmond's created the algorithms for the FAT filesystem they were never originally patented and practically became public domain. But, Microsoft still managed to assert its IP rights to them (it was aiming for retrospective assertion) - and then <cough> generously decreed that anyone can still use them for free unless that use is for commercial purposes - at which point a license fee will be extracted.

The Wiki page on copyright says:So the WP agreement seems to me to just grant permission for WP to freely use our 'original works'.
In short; don't publish 'original works' here which may be of value to you elsewhere.
This doesn't seem unusual or restrictive to me, and especially when considering WP is effectively just a group of rooms for chatting in. No-one is likely to publish valuable source code here, for example.

Maybe another way of looking at the agreement would be to say that instead of Alex having to chase up and seek permission of all participants on a thread before being able to use or quote its content, users should understand this is deemed as already given and that no further permission will be sought.

Intellectual Property rights add another whole can of worms to this and as far as I can see, it refers to something more obviously created with the primary purpose making money.
Many classical composers' works are now in the public domain - anyone can play their music or do whatever they want with it. It's 'free as in beer'.
But a company which publishes a score owns the rights to that printing of it: you're not allowed to copy and distribute it. They own no rights to the music itself, and (I think!) their IP exists in the layout, style and manufacture of that issue of it.

Wiki has a nice quote about (and rightly, against) IP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

It has always been that way, but I'm sorry to see you go...

ASP-Z wrote

Wrong Planet, similarly, is copyrighted by Alex. So he owns the intellectual property to all of our posts, surely?

No, copyright and intellectual property are two separate things, IP( intellectual property) are your thoughts expressed in words, written or spoken, what value you give them is your choice. Copyright is the printed word. In other words the song writer owns the intellectual property which is the song, the music company owns the copyright of the song as written. This is the basis of the contract between song writers and music company. That's why many singers sue music companies, because the IP belongs to them. The music company only has the right to copy the song in order to publish it to market in multi copies format. If your IP is used by WP then WP should mention you as the submitter, this is the pay off for your intellectual property, and is thought to be suitable payment.

Once again if you think your intellectual property as value do not publish it in the public domain.

^^ Thank you. It's clear you're more of a lawyer than I am, and your explanation was much cleaner.

That's interesting information, thanks. I obviously wouldn't post anything on any public site which I didn't want to be read by others, but exactly who owns that content still interested me.