Do you really need permission from a poster if you want to use something they said as a sig?
From the copyright section at the bottom of each page:
It seems to imply that if you want to use someone else’s work then you actually need CR permission. I would think that the last line about the users retaining the right to republish their work also gives hem the right to proide permission to you to use theiur work.
Remember that as soon as you publish something original, it is yours. If you would like to use something that someone else has published you should seek their permission.
IMHO (which this forum is not).
I think it’s just a polite rule of thumb that people follow out of a desire to be courteous. None of us hold any copyright over anything we post here, so from a legal standpoint no one can complain about someone reprinting their wit as a sig.
The Reader may be another issue, I understand that they hold exclusive rights to anything published on this board. I’m not sure how that copyright would apply to text that is solely reprinted ON this board.
So White Lightning assume I get CR permission (which in all likihood wouldn’t occur), I can take great swathes of posts and repost them elsewhere.
I would have thought some form of original posting copyright would have existed and you would have to get the original posters permission.
Well, take a look at this text at the bottom of your page:
Caught@Work, while I think your questions are valid, they don’t really address what the OP is asking. vanilla wants to know if, for example, he needs to ask your permission before he puts the line “I can take great swathes of posts and repost them elsewhere” in his signature on this message board (where I have – currently – a quote from WarGames in mine, for example).
vanilla, I agree with White Lightning. It’s polite but not required. I mainly gives the quoted person a heads-up and ego boost. 
“Fair usage” would imply that if you wanted to quote something that someone has said as your sig line on these boards (where you are not making any profit from it), it would be OK to quote them and attribute the quote.
Yes, thanks.
Fair use and great swathes are not the same and I apologise.
I am a she.
(and anyone may use that as a sig!)
Oh, good! Now I am karmically balanced for yosemitebabe’s waffling on my gender in the Pit!
Sorry, vanilla!