₦airaland Forum

repogirl: So anyone who wants to su'e the guy, please do so freely. I dey your back.

Thanks[b] repogirl[/b] as you clearly understood what i was explaining there but registration of your work goes a along way to benefit you more than just going about it without registration.

If you want compensation, legal evidence of your copyright and commercial exploitation of your works then registering it is the best option and you can do that any time you want.

Inosenduatall: If the copyright of Nairaland served as protection not just of its coding and layouts and graphics but also of the contents of the Literature/Writing section, then that means that all our works are now the sole property of Nairaland which belongs to Seun Osewa. Which means if we decide to duplicate our works somewhere else, it will be well within Seun's rights to sue our asses off. After all it is now the sole property of Nairaland.

Una get my drift sha? Let us protect our own works.

Thank you too for understanding my write up there and in relation to what you have there in your comment, then i must say you guys are totally safe from that.

I have searched through nairaland to find something that gives up the rights to the contents we post on nairaland and there is nothing of such so you all are safe and still retain full rights to your works.

You only need to read the terms of service, policies and user agreements of any other site you decide to post your works. So you guys should thank seun a little bit as he also knows that the stories here have been beneficial to him and his site as well. The moderator cuddlemii of this section should also be thanked as she really rallied behind the scenes to work with seun in resolving this issue for you guys and you can see that from the committee which seun just created.

I am sure nairaland has been a beneficial platform to you guys also in one way or the order to share your stories.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

The way this issue has been approached by the writers in my opinion shows some level of ignorance I must say and hope no one is offended by my directness.

First I will begin by saying I sympathize with you guys that your work has been plagiarized and you must have toiled very hard to produce these stories.

I feel it is important at this point to clarify some issues and point at the direction each and every one of you should follow whenever there is a future reoccurrence of this kind of situation.

WRITERS COPYRIGHT RIGHT

Nigeria is a signatory to the Berne Convention so therefore you do not need a registration to claim full ownership to your created original works.
Once you have transmitted your work to a platform or medium of distribution to the public then you automatically acquire the right to your works and every territory where the Berne convention is in place.

You lose this right when you agree to any medium or platform requires you to give up those rights vested on you under the Berne Convention. You also give up this right when you sign agreements with a publishing firm or transfer this right to someone else.
I don’t know why you people are attacking seun as he was magnanimous enough not to take this right away from you through the nairaland privacy policy or requiring any form of user agreement before using this forum that would have required you to give up those copyright.

ABOUT NAIRALAND COPYRIGHT POLICY

“COPYRIGHT NOTICE - All content posted on the message boards of Paradox is the exclusive intellectual property of Paradox. Copyright ownership of that content resides with Paradox and the Company is free to use any of the content as they wish. Anyone other than Paradox seeking to reprint, republish, or reproduce content posted on the Paradox message boards must receive the express written permission from Paradox Interactive. By posting on the Paradox message boards you are agreeing to the above and relinquishing all copyright to the contents of the post(s) to Paradox.”

The above is an example of a copyright agreement you will find in some message boards or forums and it is usually embedded in the privacy policy or user agreement that is signed when registering to the website.

Luckily for every one of us, nairaland does not have anything of such, so we all have full rights to whatever thing we post here on nairaland and that goes for all your stories provided they are not copyrighted materials.

If you post copyrighted materials here illegally and the original creator finds it here then the rightful thing they do is to inform nairaland of this issue. The owner of administrator of nairaland will delete those comments and place your handle on a ban.

They can also go ahead to require seun to give them your private information through a court order or without a court order if you have given seun the right to use your private information through a user agreement.

RIGHT OF ACTION IN CASES LIKE THIS

I noticed that everyone has been disturbing seun and the moderator to do something about this issue but in truth they absolutely should not do anything concerning the request being made of them. The best they can do is to ban offending members, delete posts, investigate and reveal private information or cooperate with a court process.
The copyright notice at the bottom of this site is more focused on the programing code used to build nairaland, the graphics, features and various designs found all over nairaland. This same copyright could have extended to forum post if we all gave up those rights in the terms of service, privacy policy or user agreements when registering to Nairaland.

Nairaland is not a publishing house and posting your stories here does not transfer any form of ownership to seun and therefore he is not under any form of obligation to go to beyond nairaland to help you guys as his powers are limited to nairaland based on the various agreements found here.

The truth is that you guys retained full ownership to your works, they are already protected by posting it here on nairaland and should you find it anywhere else on the web without reference then it is your duty to go after the infringement yourself.
It is not the duty of nairaland moderators or seun to go to Facebook and ask them to bring it down as they are not the owner of those works but you guys. Putting a copyright notice or disclaimer with your work is actually not needed under the Berne convention and you only do that so people like the offender will not claim ignorance.

You are good to go by showing them your written works on a producing platform like a word document or showing them the difference in date between the post on nairaland and Facebook. You can also register your works and notify NCC so that you can get a certificate of ownership and this serves as a legal proof should you need that but it is not actually required to obtain copyright for your works or prosecute cases.

So please this post is just trying to point it out to you guys that the onus to protect your works rests solely on you guys as you are the original creators and still retain full rights to your works even if they have been posted here on nairaland.

If you post your works on naijapals originally and you find it here on nairaland without reference then you have the right to inform seun about this to delete the post and ban the poster and request for personal information to prosecute the case. That is the way the owner of a work goes about issues like this, so in this case and for future purposes . . .it is your job to go against the offender yourself and not nairaland, the moderator or seun.

Now i expect you guys to be angry with me by focusing on the writers only but here is it . . seun can be of help to you guys because he benefits one way or the order from you guys posting stories here so i will not expect him to leave you guys solely to fight this issues alone.

Love you guys and kudos to the wonderful stories you post here. . more grease to your elbows. I sympathize with you guys but it is important we know our rights and how to go about this from now on.
I can answer more questions if there is any and post links to copyright materials for you guys to read yourselves.

Regards
Pharoh