Takeover of a forum

[Chippie]

Hi guys,

I wanted to see if I could get some suggestions from you.

I have been a member of a VB forum since November 2007, the forum is a support forum
for a software product.

For the past 2-1/2 months the owner of the products has dissapeared, he has not participated in his forum, he does not answer PM's and does not respond to emails.

I'm the top poster in this particular forum and the owner has never gived admin or moderator duties to anyone and the forum is being overun with spam. All the customers in the forum are getting very nervous because they are all trying to contact the owner of the software and they do not get replies. I think some PayPal reverses have been happening also because of no support.

My question is this. People in the forum are making noise about starting a fresh forum without the owners permission to support the existing customers. Several have mentioned copying the whole forums contents and populating the new forum with the content and everyone moving over and continuing business as normal minus the owner.

The new forum would have admin and moderators that would have full control and kill the spammers.

Do you see any legal issues copy all the content from the existing forum, we don't know where the owner is and we just want to keep things going.

Also, without admin access is there any software out there that could crawl a VB forum and use the information to recreate a new forum?

Thanks in advance for your input.

[Steve Machol]

You need to consult a lawyer but to my untrained mind that is a definite violation of someone else's copyrighted property.

[Chippie]

Hi Steve,

I had PM'd one of the people making the noise and my sentiments reflect yours. I had said "To answer your question, It's not legal to copy from this forum to another".

I'm just trying to get reinforcement but a lawyer would be the best thing I'm sure.

Chippie

[Joe Gronlund]

Unless he has been your best friend since age 5, or is your brother. I wouldn't copy a thing from the forums until you hear from him.

Don't give up, good luck..

[MRGTB]

Seems very strange that the owner just vanished like that, yet the forum is still online right now without any warning given at all. I guess you never know what's happened in that situation.

But I guess; if your posting on the forums about talking over support via another forum, and still getting no replies from the owner - which really should be prompting a reply! You have to start thinking the worse case scenario. I would take it there most be a very genuine reason why that person is not replying to posts like that. And it just doesn't make sense to vanish like that either, yet still leave the site online will no mention of other staff taking control etc.

Might be worth digging a little further in tying to contact the owner, or a person who knows the owner first to see whats happened. You never know, he might be seriously ill, or even might have died. So you need to dig deeper first before jumping to conclusions that the person has just run off and abandoned the site. I know that sounds a little extreme, but you never know though!

Have you tried doing a "Whois" on the domain, to see if the owner has taken out Whois protection, if he hasn't you might be able get his address and write to him. Just be sure to write a nice letter though, if your able too!!!

[Chippie]

I have his personal email address and also his paypal email adress that he is continuing to sell his script with. I have used both to try and contact him.

I have even sent several emails to him willing to make an offer for his business, the full rights to his script and code and the rights to the forum and no reply.

Whois has privacy but like I said I have used two good email addresses to contact him.

I'm just sitting back to see what the members of the forum do. I really hope they do not try to copy the forum and start a new one. I don't mind them starting one I just don't like the idea of copying all the content.

Chippie

[TheComputerGuy]

You shouldn't copy the forum contents.

However - if you want to create your own forum and discuss it there....there is very little to stop you.

[Lynne]

One of my forums was created because a forum I moderated had an owner that would just disappear (and not pay the server bills). The last time it happened, we mods said Forget It and decided to start our own site. I could have gotten a copy of the database, but I asked an attorney (another user on the site) about doing that and he said that would be real stupid and I could get in trouble if the owner wanted to cause it. So, we started from scratch. The owner finally came back just before we went live and said 'where are you guys? Let's get this going again!' and I told him we had had enough and he was on his own. He never brought the site back up.

[Nick]

I have his personal email address and also his paypal email adress that he is continuing to sell his script with. I have used both to try and contact him.

I have even sent several emails to him willing to make an offer for his business, the full rights to his script and code and the rights to the forum and no reply.

Whois has privacy but like I said I have used two good email addresses to contact him.

I'm just sitting back to see what the members of the forum do. I really hope they do not try to copy the forum and start a new one. I don't mind them starting one I just don't like the idea of copying all the content.

Chippie

E-mail isn't always the best route. Especially in this case.
His computer could have broken, been stolen, or maybe the internet in his local area is/has been down for a while.

Sending a physical letter would be the way to ensure he gets it.

But I guess it's too bad that the WHOIS info is protected.

[MRGTB]

Well, I guess what you could do for now is setup new forum and post an "announcement" on the site pointing to the new "support forum" that's taking over things.

If the guy is still around, but keeping a low profile, that's one sure way to temp him out "to delete the thread". At least then you can start to gather members from there by starting a new support forum to get things going right away. And of course, if the thread is not deleted, you can more or less guarantee something pretty serious is going on with the site owner.

What you have to keep in mind right now is this, if he's also not paying the bills for the server, at the end of the month it might be offline altogether, then your not going to be copying anything full stop. And seeing as only he has access to the database, you don't even have the option to create a backup in-case it does go offline.

If I was you, I would post an annoucement saying something like, this site may go offline at the end of the month because the owner is not replying to anything or anyone. So join this new support forum just in case this happens at the end of the month if the server cost is not met by the owner etc. Just give members a valid reason to switch over now to keep getting support no matter what happens to that site, they will then start posting threads. Meaning you won't need to copy anything. If this is a huge site, chances are he gets his server bill every month. So I doubt you would have the time anyway to clone the site, even if you had the go-ahead to do it!

Really, you should try and get in touch wit the server also, to see what there view is about the site if the bills are not met and paid. Ask if there not, is there a chance they can give you access and you will pay the cost of the site. Basically take over!!!