I agree that a Creative Commons license would be a good default option. However, as Jaime said, you cannot release someone else’s content under a content unless they agree to it, so this can’t be applied retroactively to all content already on the forum, although it can be applied automatically to new content.
Many of my posts are crossposts from my personal blog; I thought about licensing my posts there under a CC license but was reluctant to. The main reason is that I want people to come to my website to read the content rather than some other site to which it was copied without my involvement. I could be convinced that this is not a good reason not to use a CC license, though—after all, most people read Wikipedia articles on Wikipedia itself, and CC licenses still forbid plagiarism without attribution. I feel like releasing all of my blog content on the forum under a CC license without asking me first would undermine the control I currently have over the distribution of the content.
For these reasons, I think it’s important to ask for opt-in consent. I suggest adding a global license option to the settings page where users can opt in to license all of their content under a CC license, combined with specific license settings for individual posts and comments. This would also have to be communicated to users via email.
Also, by the same token, posts that mostly consist of content copied and pasted from other sites (such as linkposts) cannot be licensed under a CC license unless the original content is so licensed. You would need to exclude such posts from being covered by the blanket license.
However, as Jaime said, you cannot release someone else’s content under a content unless they agree to it, so this can’t be applied retroactively to all content already on the forum, although it can be applied automatically to new content.
I agree that a Creative Commons license would be a good default option. However, as Jaime said, you cannot release someone else’s content under a content unless they agree to it, so this can’t be applied retroactively to all content already on the forum, although it can be applied automatically to new content.
Many of my posts are crossposts from my personal blog; I thought about licensing my posts there under a CC license but was reluctant to. The main reason is that I want people to come to my website to read the content rather than some other site to which it was copied without my involvement. I could be convinced that this is not a good reason not to use a CC license, though—after all, most people read Wikipedia articles on Wikipedia itself, and CC licenses still forbid plagiarism without attribution. I feel like releasing all of my blog content on the forum under a CC license without asking me first would undermine the control I currently have over the distribution of the content.
For these reasons, I think it’s important to ask for opt-in consent. I suggest adding a global license option to the settings page where users can opt in to license all of their content under a CC license, combined with specific license settings for individual posts and comments. This would also have to be communicated to users via email.
Also, by the same token, posts that mostly consist of content copied and pasted from other sites (such as linkposts) cannot be licensed under a CC license unless the original content is so licensed. You would need to exclude such posts from being covered by the blanket license.
This is an important point. Stack Exchange ran into problems when they tried to impose a retroactive license, so I hope we don’t.