Hi, Over a year ago a group of us got together to set up an online community at title.ning.com. One of my friends did it by setting up a ning network and came up with a title for the community. I purchased www.title.com and have been redirecting it to the network ever since. Seeing as i was the techie and an admin i put in most work into the site thinking that i was a founder. Also at the time i set up an online radio station for the community called www.titleradio.com and put a lot of work into that too. Couple of months later, i stopped and gave ownership over to another original member. He put a lot of work into it. Fast forward to about 2 months ago the new titleradio owner started up a new ning network using the titleradio.ning.com. This started a row between the owner of title.ning.com and titleradio.ning.com. So they both slandered each other and then the owner of title.ning.com wrote up a copyright notice saying he is the owner of the title and that titleradio is using his intellectual property. Considering how myself, titleradio owner and others put work into this community (and i own www.title.com). Who is the real owner and copyright holder of the title? Thanks for reading and looking forward to your replies
You owning the "title" domain has nothing to do with it, since titleradio is a different domain name. If you did not put in writing that you gave ownership of titleradio to the other member, by law you are still the owner, because you bought the domain, and you paid for the hosting. In other words...it's in your name. I would think that it would be obvious. Did this really have to be asked?
Hi thanks for replying. Perhaps i didnt explain what i mean properly. I dont care about the titleradio domain. I gave away titleradio domain and dont want it back. I'll try to sum it up. Myself and 2 friends brainstormed for a title. Friend 1 came up with the title and then created title.ning.com. I bought title.com and forwarded it on. I did most of the work on the site, and i also created titleradio.com. I gave away titleradio.com to friend 2 about 6 months ago. Friend 2 two months ago set up another ning network at titleradio.ning.com. This pissed Friend 1 off and they got in a row because it was 'splitting the group'. So Friend 1 wrote a copyright notice to Friend 2 claiming that he is using his intellectual property/title. What im trying to ask is, does Friend 1 really have copyright over title? From my understanding of it is that to copyright something you have to actually put some work into it? Is just the idea/thinking of the title sufficient enough to copyright it? See im just trying to get some understanding incase Friend 1 pulls this on me by claiming title.com is his or something.
I saw your thread over at legal, but I'll answer it here. They make things WAY too complicated over there. The bottom line is, brother, YOU call the shots. The domain is in your name. The host company does what YOU say. But, as for the legal aspect, which has already been mentioned, let's put that aside. Since you all had a play in this, why don't you all just get together, as friends, to work out a compromise? "If you let me do this, I'll let you do this" sort of thing. Then put ALL your names on the site's homepage ("About Us" section)? You can briefly tell how this got started, and that you decided to move on, leaving the other two to continue the work...sort of speak. Your name is still attached to the project, even though you have decided to move on. But, again, you call the shots, so you can do what you want if you are not happy with any of the pages. Also, if you do not want anything to do with it, period, why should you care? ... Because one of your friends is going around saying he owns it? So what. ... Let him tell a few here and there. Think about it...is it really a big deal? And you are the one who can pull the plug on the whole thing.