I'm not suggesting the society do anything with the database at all. Only that it is deemed their property. Not Daniel's. Not PP's. Not Parsifal's. The content was generated by the society, it should belong to the society.
All this Lord Dave bollocks about hosting and maintenance is nonsense. The IP should belong to the society.
What do you mean by "own" it? It's not possible to own a database, and the only IP law I'm aware of which could possibly apply to a forum database is copyright law. Since (in most jurisdictions) authors have automatic copyright over their work, we would need to get everyone to agree to hand copyright for their posts over to some legal entity, which would need to be valid in the USA (where the primary copy of the forum database is stored) and Australia (where the backups are stored).
Even assuming you did all that, what are you going to do to enforce it? Take me or Daniel to court if things don't go the way you like? Seriously, Thork?