[PrimeMcFly]

> Kinda no. As per copyright law, each comment is automatically copyrighted by the poster. If somebody slips up and pastes their novel in a comment, that doesn't grant you permission to print and sell it.

The way around this is to make users agree to some terms of use to assign rights when signing up, which is what Reddit did.

[dale_glass]

Yes, but it's still a limited license to use it. The primary ownership is still with the comment writer.

[PrimeMcFly]

It really depends what's in the terms the user agreed to.

[dale_glass]

You can look it up, you retain copyright.

And while Reddit does have you agree to giving permission to almost anything, they'd be nuts to take that too far. If eg, Stephen King goofed and pasted his upcoming book into a comment mid-AMA, I don't think Reddit would fare well in court if they tried to argue the TOS gave them the right to do turn that into a book.

[PrimeMcFly]

You don't retain copyright if you explicitly assign it to someone else, otherwise contracts for doing exactly that would be useless.

Besides, someone can retain copyright and still have granted an irrevocable license to use the content.

Agree about reddit taking things too far, but that's a matter for the courts.