Do you own what you post on a forum?

Are you talking about this forum or forums in general?

You also need to be specific about what you mean by "ownership". Does anyone ever "own" something in the digital space? Do you mean copyright? Do you mean something more specific? Having certain rights over the content? You may or may not consider that you own something - but the important question is - what does that actually give you the right to do with the content?

I can only comment about PropertyChat, not about other sites.

As per the Terms & Conditions that you agreed to when you joined PropertyChat:

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.
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So you retain copyright over the content you create, meaning that we cannot republish it claiming it was our work. We can republish it in connection with the forum - for example, if we upgraded the forum software and republished your content as part of the new forum site - but again, you still retain copyright over that content.

We don't claim exclusivity, so you would have the right to take your own content and republish it, for example, in a book form - but you do not have the right to use any other content from the site that you did not create (not without explicit permission from the individual copyright holders).

However, you also grant us (Property Chat Pty Ltd) a permanent and irrevocable license to publish what you create on this site, meaning that by posting here - you are allowing us to publish your content in perpetuity - because that's what a forum does.

PropertyChat is an online community - it works by people posting questions or discussion points and then other people responding. It is an ongoing discussion where later posts in a thread build on earlier posts. It is not a work of individuals - it is a work of a large group of people collaborating together.

Removing an individual's posts in bulk, breaks threads by making later posts less meaningful - it also affects other users who have spent time writing replies. My position is that content in a discussion is not really "owned" by the individual as such (copyright notwithstanding), but rather the thread is "owned" by the community who all contributed to it. This is not a legal position - just trying to explain where I'm coming from.

Unlike other social media platforms or blogs where you create your content and then everyone else makes comments on your content (and you generally have full control over your own content) - the discussions here are a collective work rather than an individual - a thread does not have an "owner", it only has a starter (which in some cases is arbitrary when threads get split) and then the community contributes to make it into something more meaningful.

Think of forum threads more like a collective work of art - where a bunch of people get together to create something bigger than an individual contribution. Removing an individual contribution diminishes the collective work - it is important to preserve the group effort to retain meaning.

That doesn't mean it is impossible to remove content - it just means that we won't remove it just because someone demands we do so. This is an anti-rage-quit measure - if someone dislikes my moderation policy and decides to metaphorically take their bat and ball and go home - then they cannot demand that we remove all of their content. Personal user data can be removed if requested - but content is not personal data.

If you wish to have specific content removed from PropertyChat, report the post and explain why. The moderation team will assess the request and take action we feel is appropriate. To be clear: we will assess content removal requests on a case-by-case basis but will never bulk-remove content.

In general, only content which is against the rules or contains personally identifying information will be removed - or in some cases, if we deem that removing the content will have minimal impact on the forum community, then we may also remove it (for example, a post with no meaningful replies).

 

Are you referring to PropertyChat? The T&Cs haven't changed since the site was launched and have never mentioned public domain.

 

As a general approach - I suggest contacting the moderators or administrators about any old content you would like removed and respectfully explain what you would like removed and why.

Policies will differ from site to site - but it never hurts to ask.