I have a forum whering members post in as attachments articles some of which are their own and some of which are from google search etc. I wish to know if I can have the copyrights to all this which is post by my members so that other site cannot steal my content . Some sites have started using these articles contributed by users on my site and started making their own site. Is there a way to get my forum copyrighr or to take legal action against them?
If your members find articles on Google and post them on your forum, I think you are violating the author's copyright.
In short- No. You can't. Two reasons: 1. Just because they publish an article on your site doesn't make the ownership of the intellectual property your own. You are merely providing an information resource and relying on others to create the content. You didn't create it, so it is not yours. 2. Assuming that you are located in the United States, copyright laws for articles differ greatly according to the agreement between writer and publisher. You can: A. Purchase full copyright for their work (work-for-hire) and do with it as you will. This is the only scenario where you could try a cease-and-desist order on these other sites. B. Purchase varying degrees of Serial Rights. I.E. First American Serial Rights would mean that you and the columnist agree to a stated sum of money to publish their article for a set amount of time before they can re-sell their article to another site/publication. If they break this agreement, you can sue the author but that's about it. I think that you are assuming that other sites are "stealing" your published articles. In fact, it is slightly more plausible that the authors of the articles you are publishing are providing the exact same articles to these other sites...which is perfectly within their rights since they retain ownership of their intellectual property.
Also, people who are publishing articles are not submitting it to them ( those sites ) ....they (those sites ) are just lifting articles so that they can have a static html site visavis my forum
you do understand that "those other sites" can simply claim they also got the articles from google and not your site . [ not mentioning the main point even ]
Could you clarify what you mean? Listing the source doesn't have anything to do with copyright (although it is good practice). The copyright resides with the person who wrote the article. Unless they give up that right, they have the say in where it gets published. If your users are taking articles off the web without seeking permission from the authors of those articles (or otherwise clear statement from the copyright holder that they can be distributed), it is your forum that is engaged in copyright infringement. Now, if you are seeing the same articles published on other sites, you could notify the author and s/he could decide whether to ask the other site to take down the article or not. One way around this might be to change your terms of service, requiring that anyone who posts an article on your forum : 1) state that they are either the author or have the right to republish the article 2) give you the exclusive license for the article's publication IANAL, and you need to consult an attorney with expertise in copyright law to confirm that this would be enforceable and for the appropriate wording. I doubt you could make such an agreement retroactive, so it wouldn't cover the articles currently on your site.