If I post my essay on College Confidential, then I don't own my essay anymore(?)

College Essays
1

A moderator brought this to my attention:

“Copyright. All content on the CollegeConfidential.com web site is the property of CollegeConfidential.com, Inc., and CollegeConfidential.com reserves the right to publish and/or distribute such content, including discussion, commentary, and chat posts by visitors to the web site, in printed and electronic form, including media that may become available at a future date.”

I don’t know that much about legal stuff, but it seems like if I PM someone my essay, then College Confidential has copyright on it. I hope this isn’t true.

2

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
The quote above pertains to posted material, not PM’s. In any event, we have no access to your PM’s.

3

No copyright - but you risk someone plagiarizing your content.

4

@skieurope

Ok, phew. Thanks for clearing it up. I’m glad that wasn’t the case.

But if I post part of my essay publicly, then CollegeConfidential owns it?

(Yes @ClarinetDad16, good point. There’s many more reasons why I wouldn’t want to post my essay publicly in the first place.)

5

@coterie I’m not going to speak for the legal team, but I believe that you own it, but CC can use it.

Having said that, and taking of my moderator hat, I would never suggest that a student post all or part of an essay on any internet site.

6

It seems some are conflating copyright and ownership.

One does not give up one’s copyright of authorship UNLESS one actually signs that right over; that requires a copyright transfer agreement or, in case of a company, an employment agreement that specifically states all rights for work done by employee for said company are the property of the employer. It often happens that the creator maintains copyrights, but another entity actually owns the product. This is very common in the music industry. Musicians often retain copyrights to songs, but do give up ownership of same songs for distribution and sales purposes.

In this case, a public board, authors of posts retain both copyright and ownership of their posts. CC cannot just claim those two rights because you use its board, as there is no agreement to write for CC between the posters and CC; there is only an agreement to use CC platform. However, what CC does have copyright over is the entirety of the forum, including threads and posts on its forum.

What is means is CC cannot take individual posts and use them as if the posts are property of CC, and CC cannot claim the posts belongs to it. In practical terms, this means two things: 1) CC cannot change the name of the username of the poster associated with a post to falsely indicate that CC has copyright and ownership of the post. And 2) this further means CC cannot sell the content of the posts as its original product/work without compensating the authors (posters), as the author still retains copyrights and ownership.

However, CC can use, distribute, advertise and even sell the forum as a collection of threads and posts of people discussing different topics. CC has copyright over the structure of the forum and over the collective threads and posts voluntarily placed in its forum. However, CC does not have copyright or ownership over individual posts’ content.

The only danger here really is that posters’ essays and ideas are public and subject to stealing. But, even here there is distinction to be made. An author of an essay retains copyrights and ownership, and, if plagiarized, the poster can seek legal remedies. However, one cannot copyright an idea, so if one posts a great idea and it gets copied, then there is no legal recourse.

Therefore, I also recommend you follow this advice: