Who owns forum posts?

I had a matter to deal with this weekend, that involved posts from one forum being reprinted on another forum. The problem being, that the admin of forum1 did not at all give permission for the admin of forum2 to reprint the material - which the owner of forum1 was claiming copyright for. My problem was that I was hosting forum2, so was caught up in the argument.

I’ve had to look into copyrighting issues as part of being an aspiring writer, but I still have a very imperfect understanding of copyright. Part of that understanding is that anybody’s writings are copyrighted to themselves - and that forum owners are simply republishing that material under a non-exclusive license - unless clearly agreed to as otherwise in a user agreement (not in a footer copyright notice).

However, as raised in the Who do forum posts belong to? thread on the Platinax Community Forums, the issues regarding copyrighting of posts is still unclear.

The reality of the matter seems to be that there is as yet no clear legal precedent made on the matter, and therefore until there is, then the issue will remain vague and uncertain.

As for the original contention between forum1 and forum2 - they reached an agreement, not least because fighting over the issue was not going to benefit anybody. Which I am thoroughly glad about.