Forum:Just curious: does tvtropes have a leg to stand on regarding "their" content?

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I certainly never signed an agreement allowing my contributions to tvtropes to become FastEddie's private property. I don't understand how they can claim to own that content when it was created by community members who never agreed to relinquish control over it.

Is All The Tropes prepared to fight them if they attempt legal action? --Topazan (talk) 06:10, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Long story short: no leg, yes fight. The actual long story -- see my blog. These issues involve a lot of arcana in copyright law, but I am almost certain that the claims of ownership, as they are currently stated, are in fact illegal. For one, you usually don't enter into a contract without prior knowledge, lol. IANAL, but the way that they handle copyright over there is so bad, that I could probably get summary judgement in our favor.
The other half of the question is about being prepared. And on that, you can look around and see the amount of effort we put into this site every day. And the fact that we've been working on building this site for a 18 months now. We're not going away. And yes, I am the kind of person who would sink thousands of dollars of my own money into stupid litigation (even though I think we could get the EFF to help). Hope that answers your question. Vorticity (talk) 06:27, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Ok, so the situation is pretty much what I expected. Good to know you've thought these issues through. BTW, what's the correct way to make a response on this forum, with a timestamp and everything?
Add colons like I did here, and add ~~~~ as an automatic signature. Vorticity (talk) 09:54, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Again, thanks. Any chance we might get a more standard forum in the future? Topazan (talk) 11:06, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Apparently we're going to get the Liquid Threads extension installed soon, which might approve the appearance. The consensus seems to be "LQT sucks, but it's better than anything else right now". Our server admins are all on holiday right now, but should be back within the week, and we'll see it installed at some point in the near future. Vorticity (talk) 09:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)