Intellectual Property on an Internet Forum

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Qute

Member
17 May 2014
1
0
1
Hi.
A member of an Incorporated Club's Internet Forum has resigned from the club and asked that ALL his posts be deleted from the Forum.

Are the Forum Administrators allowed to remove his posts? Are the Forum Administrators required to remove his posts? What about copyright?

Thank you for any insight you can give.

Cheers.
 

John R

Well-Known Member
14 April 2014
689
174
2,394
Sydney
Interesting question Dave!
  1. Does your forum's Terms of Use/Terms & Conditions have a section that covers copyright or use of user-generated content such as forum posts? If yes, what does it say?
  2. Does your forum's Privacy Policy allow members to request removal of their personal information (which may create a situation where you could agree to disable/delete the member's account and assign all their posts to an "anonymous" user)?
 

Tim W

Lawyer
LawConnect (LawTap) Verified
28 April 2014
4,913
820
2,894
Sydney
  1. As JohnR said, it depends on the T&Cs.
    But, having been a Mod/Admin myself more than once over the years,
    I would say that the club is almost certainly allowed to remove content.
    Apart from anything else, editorial discretion is almost always a default T&C
    of both proprietary and open source Forum software.

  2. Are the Admins required to remove them?
    I say no.
    In fact, you should probably hang onto them in archive
    for future reference in the event of dispute.