unfortunate, but the people who ran the forum always had the option to walk away from the deal or try and work with a less oppressive funding source clearly they would rather have taken the money.

in IT, “venture capitalists” are not called “vulture capitalists” for nothing…

other than maybe gov.uk and eu.int run websites paid for by taxpayers there isn’t such a thing as a public domain webspace.

The whole internet is run on contracts between large private buisinesses such as BT, cable and Wireless, Virginmedia, Sky, all the foreign telcos/ISPs and the hosting companies.

Websites are private property and ultimately the majority stakeholder (whoever pays for the majority of the resource costs) has overall control of them. Users are guests on this property.

If the site then becomes of value to another company and the owner chooses to sell the site and content to another company, in most cases they have the ultimate right to do so, unless a formal legal structure was set up for the venture such as a making it a workers co-operative.

Users could argue there is added value in their content, but the site owner could counterclaim value in the content was the contribution for being allowed to use the resources.

This appears to be the precedent the social networks operate on. Most have a contract (buried in the small print often ignored when you register) that if you don’t want the site to use your content for their marketing purposes you have the right to delete it from there (or ask for it to be removed).

If (for a subscription site) those who have paid subscriptions are unhappy with the level of the offered by the site owner (old or new) they can ask for a refund, or as an extreme complain to the civil courts of their country (but the costs of doing so often far outweigh the benefits).