GDPR - Right to be forgotten #398 (probably)

born_again

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

That is where forum rules come in & it would be deleted 👍

RefluentBeans

born_again said:

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

That is where forum rules come in & it would be deleted 👍

Doesn’t matter - if you take ownership of it you are just as liable. There’s a reason Google doesn’t own YouTube videos. If they did, every time a video with music in it gets uploaded they’d be equally liable. That’s where the license comes in. If you ‘own’ the content on your site, then you have no excuse for hosting illegal content on your site - it’s the same as you putting it up on the site yourself. If that’s what your terms say, then I think it’s opening yourself up to a ton of liability. 

DullGreyGuy

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

That is where forum rules come in & it would be deleted 👍

Doesn’t matter - if you take ownership of it you are just as liable. There’s a reason Google doesn’t own YouTube videos. If they did, every time a video with music in it gets uploaded they’d be equally liable. That’s where the license comes in. If you ‘own’ the content on your site, then you have no excuse for hosting illegal content on your site - it’s the same as you putting it up on the site yourself. If that’s what your terms say, then I think it’s opening yourself up to a ton of liability. 

As always, terms evolve as the law changes and courts decisions come in. It used to be the case that forums etc claimed ownership of what had been posted but as you say, certainly the more legally astute ones have now evolved their terms to say you give them license to use it not ownership. 

I can say why Credit Hire rules changed from saying you wont owe them anything to saying you are only liable for what the TP is liable for but not website, though your rationalisation feels like it has some merit

born_again

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

That is where forum rules come in & it would be deleted 👍

Doesn’t matter - if you take ownership of it you are just as liable. There’s a reason Google doesn’t own YouTube videos. If they did, every time a video with music in it gets uploaded they’d be equally liable. That’s where the license comes in. If you ‘own’ the content on your site, then you have no excuse for hosting illegal content on your site - it’s the same as you putting it up on the site yourself. If that’s what your terms say, then I think it’s opening yourself up to a ton of liability. 

Clearly you have never uploaded a video to u-tube with certain music on it. It does not get published. It is picked up in the upload process.
As far as liability goes, that is down to the actual owners of the forum. 
👍
As you said this is off topic & is not worth derailing OP's thread over. 

MattMattMattUK

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

For those who say "Yeah, just ignore it, it'll go away", my username could easily be traced back to my home address, my job and other identifiable data.

I would suggest you follow the rule of not posting identifying information online, as well as not posting anything online that you would not be comfortable with a friend, family member, potential partner or employer seeing. Once it is out in the wild it can never be guaranteed to have been eradicated. 

Gavin83

DullGreyGuy said:

It will depend on what forum software they use and how it stores things. 

Changing a username is normally an easy task, that will normally change any posts made by that user. Where you are on much more ropy grounds is either inline quotes and/or where someone is just referred to in a post with or without an @ sign before their name. 

It may be their tools give no basic admin capability to remove all instances of your name and not everyone who runs a forum is competent enough to start running SQL queries over the raw database (considering they also have to do backups etc)

Yep, this.

I was until recently a DBA, so I understand databases/SQL, although admittedly I've never built any forum software. Were I to build one though I'd consider it bad practice to store usernames as raw text in quotes or @ comments. I'd use the ID of the user instead, so updating the username in the users table would also automatically update any quotes too. I suspect this is how most forums are built.

People just typing the username in their posts without the @ is a different issue. You could theoretically run a search on the post contents for any reference to that username but this could cause issues, especially if the forum is of a reasonable size and besides, this is probably beyond what they'd be expected to do.

Ultimately though it's semantics. The forum admin has a duty to follow GDPR, even if it's not a business and therefore if you request for the data to be deleted they need to delete it. If they refuse then report them to the ICO. They can potentially get fined for this.

RefluentBeans

born_again said:

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

That is where forum rules come in & it would be deleted 👍

Doesn’t matter - if you take ownership of it you are just as liable. There’s a reason Google doesn’t own YouTube videos. If they did, every time a video with music in it gets uploaded they’d be equally liable. That’s where the license comes in. If you ‘own’ the content on your site, then you have no excuse for hosting illegal content on your site - it’s the same as you putting it up on the site yourself. If that’s what your terms say, then I think it’s opening yourself up to a ton of liability. 

Clearly you have never uploaded a video to u-tube with certain music on it. It does not get published. It is picked up in the upload process.
As far as liability goes, that is down to the actual owners of the forum. 
👍
As you said this is off topic & is not worth derailing OP's thread over. 

Again - you’re factually wrong. When you upload copyrighted content to YouTube, the content gets flagged but more than often gets left up, but monetisation policies are then set by the copyright holder. The video is still published, but you have limited monetisation on it. 

When you upload to most forums, the copyright of your post still belongs to you. You give them a license to use your content. Read the terms of this forum, Reddit, Facebook etc. Not one states they ‘own’ your content. 

Okell

MattMattMattUK said:

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

For those who say "Yeah, just ignore it, it'll go away", my username could easily be traced back to my home address, my job and other identifiable data.

I would suggest you follow the rule of not posting identifying information online, as well as not posting anything online that you would not be comfortable with a friend, family member, potential partner or employer seeing. Once it is out in the wild it can never be guaranteed to have been eradicated. 

Quite.

Also - perhaps I'm being thick - but I don't understand the OP's comment that:

 "Due to the nature of the forum, we are forced to use, as our nicknames, something that can identify us (I don't want to go into further details, but let's just say that someone could easily find out my real name, my employer and for many, their home address if they're on the public electoral roll)..."?

I don't quite follow how a forum could dictate that you use a username that would necessarily identify you, or how they would verify it?

But if they could, and I was happy to continue using the forum on that basis, I'd make damn sure that I didn't post anything that I wouldn't be happy to stand by or be identified with.

Alderbank

I had assumed that the OP was referring to Facebook.
Facebook is a reasonably successful online public forum which has always had a strict real-name policy.
This policy has caused problems with non-American names. For example Vietnamese bank employee Phuc Dat Bich had to present his passport to Facebook before they would accept that this name was not 'false and misleading'.

eskbanker

Alderbank said:

For example Vietnamese bank employee Phuc Dat Bich had to present his passport to Facebook before they would accept that this name was not 'false and misleading'.

Although in that case it was false and misleading, as it was a hoax!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-34918491