I recently sold a free web host and am building a new one as a research tool for my book I am currently writing and was wondering if it would be ethical if I used content from the site of the host that I sold?

Particularly I would like to use the content from my Knowledge Base that I compiled and wrote myself before selling the site. I also wanted to re-use some of the e-mail, report, and other templates I used that I also wrote myself because I will be enforcing the same rules and restrictions and using almost the same configurations as my previous host that I sold.

I have attempted to re-write them to the best of my ability but unfortunately for most of them I worded so perfectly that to re-write them could cause some misunderstandings to the clients.

So what route do you think I should take?

Contact the new owner and ask if it's okay to use the content.

It depends if the content was part of the deal, maybe its worth asking. Ethical its not because you no longer own the rights to the content, but i cant see anything wrong in asking :). Good luck, merry christmas!

If it was part of the sale, and not specified that you retain rights to any of it, then it would be unethical to use it. You can ask, as was mentioned.

If you used a form-letter/template for the contract for the sale, you might wanna double check you didn't sign a non-compete agreement as well... new owner might not only object to you using your old KB, he might well object to you even starting one. :(

In my opinion no, as it was included with the sale. Contact the owner and find out.

Thanks all. There were no contracts signed during the sale and the content wasn't specified in the sale.

Because of the new owner's current situation I will just go through and re-write the content rather than bothering him unnecessarily.

All you want is the knowledge base? Joe have at it I mean he doesn't care and nor does he know about your new site :P words might have been changed a little so there's my warning. PM me if you need anythin else

If it was part of the sale, and not specified that you retain rights to any of it, then it would be unethical to use it. You can ask, as was mentioned.

Precisely. But if you merely sold the DOMAIN and didn't specify that any of the content was included, then you may have a case on your rights to the content.

Thanks all. There were no contracts signed during the sale and the content wasn't specified in the sale.

Because of the new owner's current situation I will just go through and re-write the content rather than bothering him unnecessarily.

Then just copy it to new one. It's yours

It would be unethical to use the content if it was included in the sale. Unless the contract said you retained the rights to re-use the content.

You could always ask to use the content.

If you included content in the sale, then you're in a pretty tight situation, because since you're the one in the first place, even if you tried to rewrite it, it would probably come out almost exactly the same.

Ask the owner of the content it's okay.
It's slightly unethical to just use it anyways, but as you wrote it originally you could always take the articles and then just re-write them enough to make them different