|
It is a VERY complicated area, and no-one can make an unfair contract.
As stated above, it depends on the T&C at the time of registration. Changing the T&C can not be applied retrospectively. In theory the way it works is that the person who MADE the ORIGINAL (not copied & pasted from elsewhere) post owns the intellectual property Rights (IP) to their content, this is the law around the world. Effectively though as a member of the community you are granting that community the rights to display it.
I had a case a year or two back where a forum owner took some of my posts and passed them off a articles and added them to a blog. I went into orbit as this TOTALLY breached my IP rights. Thankfully the guy was ignorant of the law rather than deliberately breaching it. Initially he said that as the content was on his forum it was his, but when it was pointed out that this wasn't the case, he backed down and removed the content.
It gets even more complicated (oddly enough) if thy ALTER your posts and cite you! Odd as it might seem, if they take your content out of context and present it in a way that is different to the way it was originally wriotten, and they cite you as the author, you could have a case for damages.
|