[Air-L] Death/Migration of an online community

[ruth]

 Hi everyone 

Yesterday, the owner of a large online fan community that I'm on the
fringes of announced that he was closing the site, and this has caused a
lot of uproar as the membership (41,000, with 16,000 active posters) are
dealing with the news and looking at what to do next).  It'll make a
fascinating study to look at how the community deals with the transition,
but I was wondering about the permissions involved for such research: the
forum rules state posters' words are their own and can't be reproduced
without their permission, which is fine, but in such cases where there's a
site owner, is it best practice, or even essential, to go to them first
and then ask the posters?   

(The same is likely to apply to the forums they migrate to) 

Thanks 

Ruth