Like I said, no uniform law. Plus, Berne applies this way even for user generated content. Again, companies or people can contest applications, but it depends on who’s willing to spend effort and/or money fighting.
This is the core issue, rather than the lack of universal law.
As I mentioned previously as well.
Gosh, what an interesting thread.
We’re not lawyers so leave the clever stuff to others.
But interesting to see THS tactics to protect its competitive moat.
Just seems a darn shame that THS appears to prefer to fund external lawyer fees to fight better mousetrap startups rather than invest capital to better technology platform and customer experience.
Mine only show the first sentence for each review
The new owners think that AI is the answer to everything. They’re removing the human touch as fast as they can.
Good plan. I’m leaning toward not renewing, because of things like this the new owners are doing. They are far too invested in AI running things – soon, we’ll be “chatting” with AI bots when we need help.
That’s not true in the United States. Unless it’s stated in your employment agreement and you’re an employee, you own your words. I have decades of writing experience, and I own my words. Contracts for my freelance writing may have some restrictions, like posting content that uses their branding, etc., but they are my words.
We did a video on this subject
That’s mostly true already.
Which may not be such a bad idea, as the human support is not always reliable. It varies a lot depending on an individual´s knowledge (or lack of) of a specific matter.
Exactly my thoughts. I’m glad you wrote this post. I was not able to manage a post that complied with the guidelines. I couldn’t stop thinking of Acronyms based on the opposite of AI 
Good morning.
After the new sit fee revolution, I moved to another petsitter community, because I wouldn’t accept the changes.
After a few months, now, the new community admin is advising all the users that the wonderful feature they had (Bring your reputation from another community) is totally useless, because apparently THS stated that all the reviews (received and written) are their property and not of the users.
So they want all the reviews to be removed from any other website except THS.
All the users must know that if they want to move they will have to save the reviews and share them privately, because THS is forbidding to let them use THEIR OWN reviews elsewhere.
A message to THS: You can go on with your clumsy attempts to bring back us users to you or to boycott competitors, but as far as you stay with the new policy, the ones that decided to go will stay with the other communities. I will personally provide all the reviews privately if the admin will be forced to erase them from the website.
< Moderator note: This post and replies merged into larger discussion on the same theme.>
There’s a previous lengthy thread about this topic.
Yes, it was very helpfully posted by @Colin
I’m sorry, I didn’t find it.
You’re here now 
I have a possible solution, but first it’s necessary to recognise that THS has ownership of your reviews.
- Submit a SAR (Subject Access Request) to THS requesting all of your data, including reviews and references. It doesn’t matter where you live, or your citizenship, THS stores the data in the UK and it’s the UK’s GDPR law that applies. THS is legally obliged to fulfill the SAR within one calendar month. There is a form on the website to submit a SAR, but it not a legal requirement to use it. Sending a SAR by email along with proof of identity and proof of address is sufficient.
- The data received may be redacted to remove anything that can identify the writer of the reviews, a legal necessity.
- As THS own the reviews (see Ts and Cs of membership) they cannot be copied and pasted, or imported to another site that provides a similar service. But it is legal to use an AI bot to parse the reviews received from THS as a response to the SAR and produce a summary.
- That summary can then be uploaded on to another platform.
- Hope this helps.
Yes, that happens when what started as a community is hijacked by an investment fund. I’ve added a line to my listing on MMH: “We’ve had various sitters through “that other website”. All gave us a 5 star review and we are still friends with most of them.” That’s at least showing we’re not new in house sitting. And we’ll leave this forum. Don’t want to take the risk that what we write here turns out to be owned by THS. And don’t like to contribute voluntary to the benefit of a hedge fund.
Which communities to go to? All of these pet sitting companies do the same with their reviews.
From a search I did:
Major pet‑sitting platforms do not allow their users’ reviews to be copied, displayed, or reused on other platforms, because each platform treats reviews as platform‑specific content protected by its own Terms of Service and intellectual‑property rules. This includes TrustedHousesitters, Rover, Nomador, MindMyHouse, HouseCarers, HouseSittersAmerica, and similar sites.
TrustedHousesitters — Reviews are part of its closed ecosystem; republishing them elsewhere would violate platform content rights.
Rover — Explicitly prohibits content violating privacy or intellectual‑property rights, which includes copying reviews to other platforms .
Nomador — Community‑based platform; reviews are platform‑bound and not transferable.
MindMyHouse — Directory‑style platform; reviews are part of member profiles and not permitted for external reuse.
HouseCarers — Similar restrictions; reviews are platform property.
HouseSittersAmerica — Reviews are internal and cannot be exported.
LuxuryHouseSitting — Same model: reviews stay within the platform.