More Glitches in the ATS Matrix

[FlyingClayDisk]

That's true, but the "owner" of the content is not just the member that made the post, as ATS members "relinquish all exclusive copyrights to any materials" they post and "grant TAN non-exclusive, non-revocable worldwide, royalty-free rights to copy, distribute, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, create derivative works, and publicly perform the materials in perpetuity in all forms", so TAN (The Above Network, an entity that I don't know is still in existence) is considered a kind of co-owner.

Right, but still there has to be an 'injury' for there to be legal standing.  So, as long as there is no injury to TAN by using the data, then there is no legal foul.
 

That's covered by the Creative Commons License used by ATS: no commercial use, no derivatives.

I was referring to the new user of the data, but yes, agreed.
 

If it's available on the Internet its possible to make copies.

Correct.  Or at least this is my understanding.  The question is 'how' you do it, and this is really more of a user problem than a legal one.  The other element is 'what' you do with the data.  This last part is where any legal issue might reside.  However, as long as you don't monetize the copied data then there is again no foul.  In fact, you could probably even monetize the data if you drew clear attributions to the source (and there's probably a requirement to notify that entity in writing this is your intent, but all of this is irrelevant in the case at hand).
 

I did it by making a program that reads all thread titles on a forum list then reads all pages of those threads. When reading the individual pages it extracts the individual posts' HTML and saves it on a database, with thread ID, post ID, member name and post date. That way it's easy to search for any post and to recreate it if needed.

It sounds like a pretty efficient process.  I think I'd probably be inclined to export the data into an application where I could easily cull out the extraneous data.  For example, Post and Thread ID aren't really relevant to anyone other than ATS.  But otherwise it sounds like you've developed a solid approach.  Is your program automated, or do you have to extract the data on a manual thread by thread basis?  In other words, do you have to know the name/title of the the thread before you can capture the data, or have you developed some kind of a wildcard to automate this process?  I would think it would be a pretty tedious slog through the mud without some automation like that.

In summary, I guess my posture would be; things being what they are over there on ATS, I seriously doubt there is anyone with enough legal standing to care one way or the other what happens to the data.  They don't seem to care about anything else, and I think we all agree that the content data is the most valuable part of what remains of ATS.

I always split my answers in shorter pieces because it's easier for me than to get all the text in my head, translate it to Portuguese, think of the answer to all and translate it back to English.

Well, you have one of my highest compliments if you do it like that.  You speak excellent English.  When I first started learning Spanish I used to do it that way also, but it became too difficult after a while primarily because of the differences in sentence structure / word order.  I think native tongue English speakers are at a disadvantage learning other languages because of exactly this.  After a while, I had to switch my brain to Spanish (generally Mexican Spanish) so I wasn't doing translation anymore, I was thinking and responding in Spanish (not sure how to describe this really, but to me it's like a switch).  The trouble with this method is, you have to do it frequently or you lose the skill set, so it's not like riding a bike where you never forget.  If I don't do it for a while, I forget how, and then I have to go back and re-learn stuff. 

I really ran into trouble with my skills while working down in Peru.  There, Portuguese and other dialects of Spanish creep into the language.  We were working with a team out of our Madrid office, and I had a gal tell me one time that she was born and raised in Mexico and now lives in Spain.  That transition was no big deal to her, but when she attempted to communicate in Peru..."people look at me like I have two heads; they don't understand a word I'm saying"  I was sure glad to learn I wasn't the only one!!  It's like a whole other language.