All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part II

[robkelk]

However, there are a couple of wrinkles here: It's not on any page that users are required to see, so many users may not know that they are transferring ownership by editing. It's hard to argue that you agreed to a contract that you never actually saw.

Oh, definitely - any competent or even semi-competent lawyer would make the case that contributors hadn't actually agreed to that statement, and thus it is not a binding contract. Especially since the statement did not exist when the vast majority of accounts were set up on that website.

Decent lawyers could make some other arguments as well, but that's the one that's most likely to stand up in court.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012