Blogs vs. Forums and transfer of copyright A very good (in fact, I'm married to him) friend of mine frequently publishes very technical, well thought-out, posts to various engineering and car forums online. He has designed various aspects of engine performance upgrades and ECM work. He noticed that many of the boards recently updated their pages to say that they own the copyright to any and all content posted to the boards. He asked me if they can do that. I don't know but I think it's possible.

My suggestion, of course, is for him to create a blog (copyright statement on there, if he likes), and insert a permalink into the forum post. This way he might be able to wean some of the forum junkies to blogs and eventually publish a collection of his designs in a book.

It's scary that the boards are doing this. How do they intend to use the information? Do they intend to use it without citing the source? Is it even legal?

I would refuse to post any designs anywhere I don't retain my copyright.  ¶ 10:30 AM| |cites (technorati) |