Are there legal ramifications when changing group ownership?

Question

Are there any legal ramifications when changing a yahoo group owner? In other words, is it legal/ethical to "handover" the entire list to a new person if all members have not agreed, prior to the change? Is it better from a legal standpoint to just start a new group and have existing members re-join if they want to? Advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

it's perfectly legal and this happens all the time. I suppose however it may matter if you belong to an ORG. but yahoo TOS has nothing on this. owners 'own' the group, members do not have to agree and it's not a choice based on members. it's a choice based on owner.

Answer 2

Making someone else an owner is totally up to the current owner and is totally ethical/legal.  Any member of any group can start a new group and invite members of old group to join it.  It would be up to the group owner to allow any announcement of a new group to be posted on his/her group site.  If not allowed, if you have email addresses of members, you could send personal emails to them to tell them about your new group or invite via the new groups Invite feature.

Please consult Yahoo Community Guidelines relating to groups and Yahoo TOS  for absolute information.  Links for both are at the bottom of any group page.