Most forum software lets you pay to remove their copyright notice - but is it really worth it? Have you ever bought copyright removal, or do you prefer to leave it as is?

 

Personally, I don’t mind keeping the copyright visible so others can see what software we’re using and where to get it! What’s your take? Are you for or against it? 😃

I've personally never felt any need to remove a copyright on any software I've used - most of the software I have used has been free and open source so definitely not in those circumstances, but even if I was paying for a software, I don't see the need to hide the software that I'm using from others, so no need to pay for that kind of upgrade for me. :)

I dont have a choice on the XFcloud, but if an add-on is good enough, I don't mind paying the extra. But that's rare.

I never purchased copyright removal, I think this option is there for big businesses who want to keep their branding on the community and don't want branding from any other company listed. I prefer to keep the copyright information visible.

[mention=62]Ravenfreak[/mention] While I do agree with your sentiments, I am certainly not big business by any measure. But you know everyone that builds forums has their own pet peeves, mine is a trashy footer. I like it tight and neat as possible and as such I don't like footer data. I know I will always have footer data, but to me it becomes confusing when there are multiple copyrights down there.

 

That said, I rarely buy add-ons, but I feel the vendor is better supported with cash than just free advertising.

 

And that said (lol), it better be a pretty danged good addon to have a footer copyright placement in the first place.

Honestly, I keep the copyright in tact. I’d rather keep my money and invest it in other things that are more important & vital to my community. The removal of the copyright isn’t something that bothers me that much.

I feel I need to add, I currently have no add-ons or themes installed that require a copyright nor ask for a removal fee. Currently. But I felt compelled to post here as I am planning on purchasing an add-on that offers copyright and removal fee. And in that case, I will pay for the removal.

I've removed the copyright footer on two XF licenses (and paid DBTech $300 or something for global on all their add ons for one forum).

 

There is a noticeable difference in spambot registrations with the copyright footer vs. forums without it. A forum with the copyright footer seems to be hit almost as soon as it's indexed in Google (as they can easily scrape new forums by searching that phrase, or for instance, "Community platform by XenForo"), while a forum without it can go months before seeing 1 automated spambot signup.

 

I've tested this across 4 different live forums and, since all use the same methods to prevent spam, I can only conclude it's the copyright footer that draws them in.

 

That said, if you launch with the copyright footer, it's probably not going to make a difference to remove it a year later because it'll already be added to spambot lists as a forum that can be spammed. But you will notice a difference when you launch one without the footer.

 

Prime example: FD was attacked almost instantly (copyright footer)... RS/ROFL hasn't been hit but by 1 or 2 automated bots (could be human) and 1 or 2 human spammers. FD was online for a much shorter period, but ROFL has been online since August 8, 2024 (nothing), and after the rebrand, and has yet to be attacked like FD.

 

Your forum (should) eventually become too big to ignore and get added to the list, making it moot. But, it's a lot less work in the beginning, where you could spend the time you would've been fighting spam to build more content.

Edited March 11Mar 11 by frm

There is a noticeable difference in spambot registrations with the copyright footer vs. forums without it.

Interesting you said that. My traffic is small reletive to most forums. But I have a domain link in the footer that just points to a theme based page within my forum. So it's really easier analyzing traffic and sources. And almost all of my hard and soft 404's come from that domain. And no, it isn't residual traffic from before I got the domain. That can be determined when you look at the strings they used when they entered the site.

I've removed the copyright footer on two XF licenses (and paid DBTech $300 or something for global on all their add ons for one forum).

 

There is a noticeable difference in spambot registrations with the copyright footer vs. forums without it. A forum with the copyright footer seems to be hit almost as soon as it's indexed in Google (as they can easily scrape new forums by searching that phrase, or for instance, "Community platform by XenForo"), while a forum without it can go months before seeing 1 automated spambot signup.

 

I've tested this across 4 different live forums and, since all use the same methods to prevent spam, I can only conclude it's the copyright footer that draws them in.

 

That said, if you launch with the copyright footer, it's probably not going to make a difference to remove it a year later because it'll already be added to spambot lists as a forum that can be spammed. But you will notice a difference when you launch one without the footer.

 

Prime example: FD was attacked almost instantly (copyright footer)... RS/ROFL hasn't been hit but by 1 or 2 automated bots (could be human) and 1 or 2 human spammers. FD was online for a much shorter period, but ROFL has been online since August 8, 2024 (nothing), and after the rebrand, and has yet to be attacked like FD.

 

Your forum (should) eventually become too big to ignore and get added to the list, making it moot. But, it's a lot less work in the beginning, where you could spend the time you would've been fighting spam to build more content.

Interesting take I never really thought about spambots making a search for the copyright text and then joining a bunch of Xenforo forums. I still wouldn't have the funds to pay for copyright removal for the paid software I use either way.

Interesting take I never really thought about spambots making a search for the copyright text and then joining a bunch of Xenforo forums.

They're scraped and most likely added to (shared) lists XRumer can get.

 

It was a tactic I used for blog commenting way back when (when it worked and was profitable) using a scraper search "Powered by WordPress" to do automated comments with another program, posting comments written in another program that could spin text (now you have AI that can "spin", but it took time to spin unique comments [iCODE]{{Good morning,|Good afternoon,|Good evenening,} {all readers|everyone|all who came here}}...[/iCODE] to get random comments like [iCODE]Good afternoon, all who came here[/iCODE] -- except I sometimes went 4-5 levels deep).

My blog is on Wordpress. Right now, I'm doing the free option but if I pick one of the purchase plans, then it'll remove the "this blog is on Wordpress" that you see at the bottom. Right now, I'm trying to figure out ways to make money on my blog.

Well, it all depends on individual preferences but for me, I don't see the need to remove the copyright notice because it's another way to give credit to the developers who created the software and that can even help others to discover the platform as well.

I think I will eventually purchase copyright removal, but that's way down the road. But a must, is removing add-on copyrights, I don't mind leaving the XenForo one for now. It just helps establishing your brand as your own, but definitely not required. It's my preference at this point.

Well, it all depends on individual preferences but for me, I don't see the need to remove the copyright notice because it's another way to give credit to the developers who created the software and that can even help others to discover the platform as well.

This is kind of an irrelevant point because if you were looking to start a forum, you could view the source of any forum and find out what software it's running. This goes for branding free as well.

 

Branding free, to my original assessment, only stops forum spam because spammers are running searches for forums and grabbing forum URLs... you can't search for HTML.

 

Why would users care what forum software is running for as long as they can communicate? Unless, the community grows and likes one forum over another, so they decide to migrate together.

 

It's more likely than not the intention to advertise the software to people that might want to start a forum (and get a ton of backlinks to support "forum software", etc. for search engine rankings). But, any "tech-savvy" (in which you should have the basic HTML skills to run a forum) user should be able to determine the forum software without a branding footer.

 

Without looking at the copyright header here, you can view the source:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html id="XF" lang="en-US" dir="LTR"

And should be able to tell off the bat what forum software it's running.

 

While developing ForumDirectory, I've only run into very few highly customized forums (less than 5) where I would be like, "This is running the link structure like vB, but it also has HTML elements that are seen in both Invision and XF... so what is it? 🤔"

 

(Link structure is also a way to tell too... i.e., /1234-thread-name/, /123/thread-name, /thread-name.1234/...)

 

I have about 10 forums' code on every platform saved in order to compare 1 forum against to quickly determine software automatically (if it doesn't catch the immediate signals like [iCODE]id="XF"[/iCODE], etc.), from phpBB to myBB to Woltlab to XF1 and vB3, etc.