[grellas]

While it is true that comment submissions to HN give an implied license for HN to post the content, with copyright being held by the submitter, you can't copyright names, titles, or short phrases (see, e.g., the 6th entry down in this FAQ section from the Copyright Office - http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html). Because of this, there is no license needed to amend a title to an article as no one owns rights to it legally.

That said, I once had a legal submission amended to a title that was really wrong legally and therefore sympathize with the sentiments expressed by tokenadult. It is one thing to clarify or to trim fluff from a title but it is another to guess at what a better title might be for a technical area that is beyond the expertise of a moderator. Hence, caution ought to be used. On balance, though, I have found the moderators to be thoughtful when they do make such changes and so I am sure this is just one of the hazards of trying to monitor a site that can include complex materials from varying sources.

[tokenadult]

That said, I once had a legal submission amended to a title that was really wrong legally

Because I always appreciate your posts, and I would hate to be misled by any title that was put on them by someone else, I'd love to see the link to the example you have in mind.

Thanks for your comments on the legal background to the issue at hand. Certainly my claim is not that HN cannot do whatever HN's leaders like. I am simply suggesting that I would like to be on notice, as one user among thousands, about what best behavior here is.

[pbhjpbhj]

>you can't copyright names, titles, or short phrases //

That's not quite true.

The "title" of a submission is part of the submission the submission itself being the work. As long as the work is sufficiently substantive then copyright will protect it as a whole.

The linked document refers to things like the title of a book wherein you wish to use the title separately to refer to the work. An author can't claim that you infringed their copyright simply because you referred to their work. This is not the situation at hand. HN is not merely using the title it is altering it and presenting it as the substantial part of the complete work that it indeed is. If you think about it you'll see how untenable your limited interpretation is, under your interpretation I can take a Harry Potter work and retitle it and add my name as author because all I've altered is the title and name ... to recap it is a particular use of the title that your link refers to and not to modifying without license.

Now, arguably in the listings of stories HN could write a new title but on the page when presenting the submitted work they would still lack license to present the work modified (ie with their title).

HN should either reject the work as a submission, retract the work or seek a license to modify it. The simplest thing would be to just add some boilerplate that says "by submitting content we reserve the right to alter it for editorial purposes". Though it would be nice to allow the user to choose to retract the story or allow it as edited.

There may well be a fair use argument for content created in the USA. I doubt there is for content created by European users.²

FWIW altering a title could also cause defamation or be an act of libel but such situations are relatively unlikely. Modification of a substantial part of a copyright work without a license is infringing already. IANA(IP)L but arguing that a HN submission¹ is a work for copyright purposes seems pretty straight forward.

--

¹ that's not machine generated or particular short so as to lack discreteness or substance enough to qualify for being a work.

² I've not seen enough case law on internet content to determine how location of created content is judged; is content created via your form considered to be created where I am, where your company resides, where your servers are or what.