The first 2 links below are to articles at the Passive Voice. They relate to the acquisition of KBoards by a Canadian Company called Vertical Scope which operates a business of buying online forums in the course of its search engine optimisation business. It is alleged that this company has little interest in actually maintaining the communities it acquires. In the case of KBoards it seems to have quietly introduced a new Terms of Service document with a rights grab and claims ownership of at least future posts and possible past ones. An intemperate representative of the company apparently went online and poured oil on the growing fire, claiming ownership of all data and expressing the view that they did not need to delete any posts even pursuant to the GDPR. They claimed the right to use posts for purposes of their business together with the poster's full name. Mods were apparently instructed not to remove any posts.
Dumpster Fire at KBoards
Passive Guys Comments
I highly recommend reading the comments but If you did not you should at least read the comment to the first linked article by Paul Sadler. This is a direct link:
Paul Sadler's comment to first post linked above
I suspect that Vertical Scope is over-reaching, at least in the case of posts existing before their acquisition. However, no one wants to incur legal costs to enforce their rights on something like this if they can reasonably avoid doing so. I also suspect that KBoards as a continuing community is doomed.
Mobileread may well find that we have an influx of new members, and/or existing but not very active members who start contributing more extensively. But the obvious question this raises is can it happen here. I certainly have no right to expect that the owner of a board like this one will resist temptation if it comes in the form of a reasonable sum of money. If Vertical Scope or a company like it was to acquire Mobileread my understanding, unless I have missed something, is that each of us retain the copyright on our posts and would be able to delete them. Certainly I would not continue to post under terms such as Vertical Scope used on KBoards. But the major problem for me would be the loss of the Mobileread community, to which I attach some value. This of course is not just a concern in the case of Mobileread but with virtually all similar forums.
Over to you, Alex.