Who owns the copyright to S[OFU] content?

Question

What with Jeff's blog post today, possibly this is a good time to ask: who actually owns the copyright to questions, answers and comments submitted to StackOverflow and relatives?

Over in this question about licensing, we have the OP reaching the conclusion that SO owns the copyright and is licensing it under CC-Attribution-Sharealike, with no apparent confirmation or denial from staff, and in an answer in another thread we have a moderator asserting that Jeff owns the copyright to SO content.

As I note in a comment on the latter, though (which was met with deafening silence), I'm failing to find any evidence that this is the case. I've looked for any kind of terms of service I may have agreed to indicating that I am signing over ownership of my words when I hit submit, and I can't find one. Certainly the fact that I'm agreeing to CC-Attribution-Sharealike licensing is clear enough, but it seems to me as if I am retaining copyright while agreeing to those licensing terms, and S[OFU] is using what I have written under that license.

What's the deal? Did I forget about something that I agreed to in the signup process (and if so, why can't I find it afterward)? Do the owners and administrators of S[OFU] believe that they own copyright to the UGC? Just what is going on here?

Edit as to why this matters (from answer comment thread): If I retain copyright, I can also choose to license the original content to other parties under other terms (such as using a zero-requirements license, using an attribution-required license without sharealike, etc). If SO has the copyright, I can't.

Answer 1

The footer says:

• site design and logo is © 2009 stackoverflow.com LLC
• user contributed content licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required

Honestly, you should consult a lawyer if you really, really need this answered in some highly legal definitive way. I suggest starting with the Creative Commons website?

How does a Creative Commons license operate?

A Creative Commons license is based on copyright. So they apply to all works that are protected by copyright law. The kinds of works that are protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for example. Software programs are also protected by copyright but, as explained below, we do not recommend that you apply a Creative Commons license to software code.

Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work. They do not give you the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted by exceptions or limitations to copyright—including, importantly, fair use or fair dealing—nor do they give you the ability to control anything that is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas.

Creative Commons licenses attach to the work and authorize everyone who comes in contact with the work to use it consistent with the license. This means that if Bob has a copy of your Creative Commons-licensed work, Bob can give a copy to Carol and Carol will be authorized to use the work consistent with the Creative Commons license. You then have a license agreement separately with both Bob and Carol.

You should be aware that Creative Commons licenses only affect your rights under copyright. You are not licensing your trademark or patent rights, if any, when you apply a CC license to your work.

Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different formats: the Commons Deed (human-readable code), the Legal Code (lawyer-readable code); and the metadata (machine readable code). You don’t need to sign anything to get a Creative Commons license—just select your license at our ‘Choose License’ page.

One final thing you should understand about Creative Commons licenses is that they are all non-exclusive. This means that you can permit the general public to use your work under a Creative Commons license and then enter into a separate and different non-exclusive license with someone else, for example, in exchange for money.

IANAL, but my interpretation of that is anything you post here, you are implicitly posting and licensing to Stack Exchange, Inc. under cc-by-sa 3.0. Which should be OK unless you're one of those people who wears a tinfoil hat, since it's an extremely permissive "everyone wins" license.

Answer 2

From the footer:

"site design and logo is © 2009 stackoverflow.com LLC; user contributed content licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required"

In other words, you own the copyright on the content you have generated, however, you have also granted a licence for it to be used under those terms.

Answer 3

Oh, what the hulk, let's make a shorter answer. SO owns the copyright over the domain, the graphics, the software of this site (if SO created it themselves) and basically any message that they posted themselves. They also require every member who posts here to license their post using the cc-wiki license. This means you're still the owner of your own posts. It's just that SO can use your post if they ever print all answers inside a book and all they have to do is write somewhere in that book that you're the author of certain parts. And no, you won't get a dime for your contribution.

Then again, once they print that book, it gets infected by the cc-wiki license itself, thus anyone could copy this book for free. That's because of the 'Share Alike' restriction. This would basically be a big showstopper to some commercial use of any content here, although it's still possible.

You wrote your question so you own the copyright over it. You could write the same question somewhere else with a different license without any problems. You are the owner. It's just that you also gave me the right to publish your question in my book, as long as I mention that I got this question from you. (And thereby, my book is infected with CC-BY-SA.)

Answer 4

Without question, the contributor retains copyright to their contribution. By their action of posting the content, they have agreed to license it under (in this case) CC-BY-SA 2.5. The terms of which is

grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license

That mean you can release it under other license if you want. The license is set out in such way to also mean you can't revoke the license you've granted to SO (and other people) to use the content, except under the explicitly specified terms, where there is only one way. If SO (or whoever) are in breach of the license, then the rights granted to that party, and that party alone, is automatically terminated. No termination occurs to any other party, whether using the original or derivative content.

(IANAL)

Answer 5

(For Dutch/European people mostly) A lawyer could provide more precise details but in general, when you write something original and with a personal mark (signature) then your comments would be protected by copyright. However, many responses here are just facts to help someone to solve a problem and facts cannot be copyrighted! However, comments could break certain laws, especially when you start to put a hyper link in your replies. Most links would still be okay, though. But a link to a racist site could be illegal in Europe. Or a link to illegal software. Or a trademark violation when the link claims to point to HP, yet the URL points to Dell... The author is the one responsible for these remarks, the site owners just have to remove those "illegal" remarks or become partially responsible themselves.

If comments would be owned by the site moderators, they could end up in a lot of legal problems. Basically, in that case a visitor could post a link to illegal software and the site owners would have to face legal consequences. They would not be protected by the safe harbour principle, since they own the comments! So smart forum-owners will never ever want to own copyrights to any comments.

Another interesting part is that posts here fall under the cc-wiki license. Basically, that's the main rule here when you start participating. This is a rule that you accepted when you joined this site, and it can be enforced simply because these rules are a visible part of every page here! However, changing those rules would not be allowed in Europe, so if the owners discover an error which they want to fix, they do need to notify the members about this change, allowing members to resign from this site! But what effect would resigning have for your posts? You could revoke the license on your comments but that would only have effect from that moment on.

And what does the cc-wiki actually mean? Well, it means that when someone is copying your comment, they will have to make it clear whom wrote the original text. (Attribution) Also, if your text becomes part of a bigger piece of text, that bigger piece of text would require at least the same CC license. But hey, I could publish a book with all the questions and answers from this site and sell it, without having to share a dime with any other visitor here! The book would just need proper attribution and others would be free to make copies of this book and share it for free in digital form. (Or Xerox the whole book and give it away for free on dead trees.)

And what if you don't agree with this? What if you want to comment, but you don't want your answer to be part of this license? Well, you could always put the answer on your own website and add a link here to your site. However, you cannot copy the question to your site because your site would then fall under the cc-wiki license. Then again, if the question is very simple and didn't need much creativity to write, you can use the question without being infected by cc-wiki. Why? Because the text still needs to be creative. Just asking if anyone knows a good Paint application is not creative. Asking for the risks of upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 isn't creative either. Telling someone how to install the latest driver for their network card is informative but maybe not creative enough to be licensable... (You're just mentioning facts.) Even the description of a film plot on the back of the DVD you just bought might not fall under any license since it just mentions what's happening in the movie. (Which are facts.) However, showing a 10-seconds preview from the same movie or even from the trailer might require a license, though. Unless you're describing that scene as part of a bigger article, in which case it becomes part of a "quote". You can't even use a screenshot from a movie, if it's just meant as decoration. An Ewok image which I saw somewhere on these sites might already be a violation. Then again, it was used as part of a document, referring to the movie and Ewoks in general, making it perfectly legal again.

Basically, licenses aren't black and white. They're just a whole lots of shades of grey. Some dark, some light. But just remember: if a forum owner claims ownership of every message in his forums, he also becomes legally responsible for all those responses. A smart owner would never even consider that kind of responsibility. (But they might add a restriction to the license that you can use here.)