I submitted thousands of posts to a discourse platform (in the last 3 years).
Only about a dozen of them are guides (tutorials) and a few are (Java based) extensions. The latter (i.e. guides & extensions) of course have the necessary level of creation to be considered a creation in the sense of German and European copyright law (e.g. according to § 2 paragraph 2 UrhG in Germany, see here).
I would now like to have these guides and extensions deleted from the platform (forum), for good reasons. German courts have already ruled in this regard that the right to do so exists even if this is not provided for in the discourse (forum) guidelines.
(See e.g. here: Foren und Blogs: Haben Nutzer einen Anspruch auf Löschung von alten Foren-Beiträgen?)
This should also be the case internationally. How can (should) one assert this legal right?
(Maybe anyone has other information or even relevant judgments that say otherwise?)
The standard terms here are long-winded but seem clear:
Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license the company to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows the company to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.
Maybe the question was a little too imprecise:
Has anyone already made such claims for deletion and enforced them? Or does something contradict that from a legal perspective?
Yes, but that does not mean that this right of disposal / right of exploitation remains permanent.
I alone (as the creator / author of the work) have the exclusive right of ownership and disposal of my creations. I should therefore be able to exercise it (with a request to delete the relevant content) as long as my creations are creations that have the required level of creation (i.e. are creations within the meaning of copyright law).
(At least that is the current legal status (in Germany). However, since copyright law has been largely harmonized worldwide, it should also apply in general.)
It might be that you are right, but I don’t think this particular case helps you very much. The court rejected the claimant’s case that his posts must be deleted. We can guess that the court might have taken a different approach had he provided any evidence that his posts were copyright works. But, in any event, the court didn’t have to interpret a clause like the one we are considering here where the user gives permission for the forum to publish his posts.
Apparently German courts see it differently, see e.g. here:
Translation: “If it is substantiated that the contributions are works/creations protected by copyright or that the contributions contain personal data, the judges of the Ratingen district court say that you have a right to deletion under copyright and data protection law (despite the lack of a right to deletion in the board terms and conditions). Otherwise the forum operator is not obliged to delete the posts.”
That link appears to be to a commentary on the case rather than the case itself.
I don’t think the case itself decided that “you have a right to deletion under copyright and data protection law (despite the lack of a right to deletion in the board terms and conditions)”. That’s not an entirely unreasonable inference, but it’s not 100% clear what that court would have decided had there been evidence of the posts being copyright works and had there been a clause granting permission for the forum to publish those posts.
It also seems to be a court at the bottom of the food chain whose judgments are interesting rather than binding as an authoritative statement of the law (but please correct me if that is wrong). It would be good to know whether there is a more relevant case from a higher court.
I am not sure that my instinct is right. You might well be right: the right to have personal data removed seems to trump any prior permission, and maybe similarly the copyright holder can retrospectively revoke permission to publish his works in the absence of a word like “irrevocably”.
I am curious, what are the “good reasons” that you want to have these posts deleted?
I don’t think the summary in that blog post is correct. The verdict says something like “and the plaintiff claimed he had copyright but he did not substantiate it in any way, so we’re not even going down that rabbit hole”.
And then the blog post summarizes that as “If it is substantiated that the contributions are copyrighted works of language (…), the judges of the Ratingen district court believe that there is a right to deletion under copyright (…) law” which I believe is an incorrect conclusion.
I have read through those documents and I think the correct summary is (copy/pasted parts from Google Translate since I can read German but most of the audience here cannot)
The posting was also done voluntarily by the plaintiff in knowledge of the board rules, in which a claim for deletion is undisputedly denied.
(…)
Legal bases for the asserted claim for deletion of the forum posts are also not evident.
(…)
In particular, the plaintiff is not entitled to any removal claims under copyright regulations.
(…)
The plaintiff has not substantiated that his forum posts are a work that can be protected by copyright
In view of this, it was the plaintiff’s responsibility to provide detailed information on the content of all forum posts that he is requesting to be deleted and to state the circumstances based on which the plaintiff’s individual posts are copyrightable works. However, the plaintiff has not submitted anything about the content of his contributions.
And then
Please note that copyright laws are very different from country to country. For instance, in Europe, there is no such thing as “fair use”.
This implies that you cannot just translate German case law to any other country.
So that would then imply that I, as the owner of the creation, owner of exploitation rights and owner of distribution rights, have finally and irrevocably surrendered all rights (at least the last two) to the platform (forum) operator. Of course, I could publish my creation elsewhere, but the forum operator can dispose of my creation at any time (even use it monetarily).
If I now - for whatever reason - come to the conclusion that my (intellectual) creation is harmful to humanity (purely hypothetical), then I no longer have the option of removing it from the market or at least preventing its further spread. Can and should that be so? I do not think so!
Those are interesting questions but not all entirely relevant. You just need legal advice on whether you can revoke the permission you gave the forum to publish your posts. You might have an arguable case. It would be good to hear about the legal advice and the outcome, and maybe even read the court’s judgment if it gets that far!
No, it does not imply that. You most likely have given the forum operator a license to use it.
Let’s take a look at the relevant part of the ToS for this forum, which uses a very common construct:
You cannot make up all kinds of hypothetical situations and then draw conclusions based on case law. But yes, that’s my hobby as well. So
IANAL but if it’s harmful to humanity then it’s probably illegal, so I would suggest trying to get removed by EU Directive 2000/31/EC
They don’t need to monitor for illegal content, but once you point out to them that they’re hosting something that’s illegal, they should remove it.
Let’s be more specific:
If I made an (at the time, well-founded) endorsement for a product containing fluoride and now come to the (not so represented worldwide) conviction that my arguments, reasoning, and scientific interpretations) were wrong (and now I’m sure they were / are wrong), then I should actually have the opportunity as the creator of this opinion (which seemed justified to me from my conviction at the time) to withdraw this contribution (and to stop its further distribution).
Let’s continue to assume that my contribution at that time is / was considered a creation within the meaning of copyright law.
Note: It does not necessarily have to be a creation (post) that was unlawful. Of course, I could now publish a counterstatement. But, if (for whatever reason) I am no longer a member of this forum (or have been suspended from it), I can no longer do it (at least not there).
That’s another interesting question, but the real question for you seems to be whether the relevant law allows you retrospectively to revoke the permission you have to the forum to publish your posts. It may be that an expert comes along and answers that here! Or maybe it’s not even the right question
I also am interested in your reasons, in the exact terms of the forum, whether you agreed to them, which country you and the forum are in, whether your posts are copyright works, etc.
So again, IANAL and this is getting really hypothetical, but I think that the court would decide if the suspension was unlawful and/or whether publishing a counter statement elsewhere would be (much) less effective. If one of those questions would be answered with yes, I suspect they would allow you to publish a counter statement on the forum.
I do not think that you would be granted the opportunity to withdraw the contribution.
Fun fact: did you know that the inventor of leaded gasoline is the same guy that invented CFCs as a refrigerant? He was highly awarded and respected for these inventions. Later on he was called to have “had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”.
The basic idea of copyright law is to protect the creator’s property right (and exploitation right as well). In contrast to trademark law and patent law, no registration (and payment) is required. Copyright applies automatically.
However, it cannot and must not be the case (IMHO) that I am forced to have my statements published for life (and beyond) because of this (i.e. as a result of these possibly immoral terms and conditions). Because I can no longer remove the original post.
