So I began with the forum that I have used the most recently, and that is World of Warcraft. Very simply they say:
“NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN ANY ACCOUNT STORED OR HOSTED ON A BLIZZARD SYSTEM, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO SUCH ACCOUNTS ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD.” — notice the caps?
WordPress has a little more refined ToS, yet does little to protect content:
“By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog. If you delete Content, Automattic will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.”
In comparison, LiveJournal takes the time to be specific about the rights of its users:
“LiveJournal claims no ownership or control over any Content posted by its users. The author retains all patent, trademarks, and copyrights to all posted Content, and is fully responsible for protecting said rights. While LiveJournal will comply with all lawful DMCA claims and remove copyright- and/or trademark-protected Content in a timely manner, it is not responsible for policing said rights for its users. By posting Content to LiveJournal, you hereby acknowledge and agree that you have all rights necessary to post such Content (and for LiveJournal to serve such Content) without violation of any laws or regulations, and/or intellectual property or other rights of third parties”
Lastly, I went back to the first site I ever created a blog on, Blogger:
“Much of the content of Blogger.com and Blogspot.com — including the contents of specific postings — is provided by and is the responsibility of the person or people who made such postings. Google does not monitor the content of Blogger.com and Blogspot.com and takes no responsibility for such content. Instead, Google merely provides access to such content as a service to you.”
With regards to all the language above, it appears that LiveJournal has the tightest terms of service for the user. While I don’t expect students to be writing about material that could be intellectual property (ex. recipe for cold fusion), I do feel they should know that what they compose does belong to them.
Since many of the weblogs online are free, I would find it hard that students could demand that the company owes them something if it is shared with world. Yet, the WoW ToS does make me wonder about property rights. Since I paid for the game, and the monthly subscription, I should feel entitled to using at least something from the game without receiving a legal notice.
Overall, when using a weblog (or forum), the student and teacher must realize they are giving something up in the controlling of content. It would make sense for any educator to read through the ToS of any site, before they allow their students to post content.
— On a side note, I am curious as to why content was spelled with a capital “C” in two of the four ToS’s?
Dunno. 🙁
But I wonder: the WordPress one was for blogs hosted on their server, rather than an external installion, no?
Yes, you are right.
I scoured the internet and the UBC site to try to find the ToS for using a blog through CMS. I even tried to create a new site to see if an agreement would pop up that I would have to agree to, but no luck.
Would I be right to assume that any content that I create becomes property of the university as well (ex. like a thesis paper)?
Cheers,
RM