who is the owner of an forum posting?

what happens if one of your forum members asks you do delete all his postings? is he the ower of his postings, or who? whats with other peoples postings who quote him? can you demand a fee (1-2$) for each posting you have to delete?

anyone experience with this?

 

under almost all circumstances the content of the poster still belongs to the poster. if they're under a contract and you paid them things may be different.

just because he owns the content of the postings legally does not mean you have to delete them, however. I usually refuse to delete my members posts because I know I'd get a lot of "I'm leaving forever! delete every post I've ever made" and then they'd come back in a week or two and want it reversed...

 

I have it in my rules: the messages they post become "mine" as soon as they are posted. I won't re-publish in another place, but I reserve the right to edit/delete.keep the messages. It's true that my members keep the forums alive by posting, but they're also promoting themselves in my forums. So I don't owe anyone anything

 

What forums do you run? I'd like to take a look and promoe myself too ;-)

 

I don't delete user accounts. Only delete posts if I feel they are warranted.

 

I usually do not delete posts or threads unless it *is against the rules* but on a members leave or request? Not likely.

 

Yeah just establish in your T's & C's that once you post any content to the forum, that content becomes the property of forum management.

...and no, I don't mess with my users stuff, unless they post copyrighted material, or something illegal. In those cases i'll usually edit accordingly.

 

its a rare case that member will ask to delete his posts
i won't really demand any fee just to delete their posts, if the user doesn't really want them ill just chop off the id in the worst case.

 

Well you don't really lose anything if you delete them but why would it matter if they are deleted or not? That's just stuiped. I wouldn't charge I would just tell him to go back to all of his posts and edit them so they say I didn't really post here.