Most instances don’t have a specific copyright in their ToS, which is basically how copyright is handled on corporate social media (Meta/X/Reddit owns license rights to whatever you post on their platform when you click “Agree”). I’ve noticed some people including Copyright notices in posts (mostly to prevent AI use). Is this necessary, or is the creator the automatic copyright owner? Does adding the copyright/license information do anything?
Please note if you have legal credentials in your reply. (I’m in the USA, but I’d be interested to hear about other jurisdictions if there are differences)
I don’t think it exists at all on the fediverse. I’ve talked about it before, not a lawyer, but from a technical standpoint I don’t know how anyone can claim copyright.
All fediverse apps start on your instance, you write a post. Great, maybe there’s a disclaimer there. But then it’s shotgunned out to literally anyone or anything that’s listening. Other instances, governments, corporate, whatever. You’re literally giving it to anyone who would listen.
So to me copyright is like saying “only people I approve of can look at this sign” and then posting that sign on every tree and post in town
Copyright isn’t about who can look upon something so much as who can reproduce it. However, due to the way federation works, it has to be assumed that fediverse users are agreeing to allow anyone using the protocol to reproduce their “works”
Copyright is more than that, like who is allowed to make commercial use of a given work. Just because something is written down in a public forum doesn’t give everyone free rein to do whatever they want with it under copyright.
But the fediverse isn’t them taking that data, it’s you giving your data to them. It’s you placing your data directly on their server.
It’s more than my flyer metaphor, it’s you literally placing your flyers in someone’s house and then saying “but you can’t do x y or z”. Even if morally you are in the right, how would you ever enforce that or prove something in court? You still have the hurdle of “if you didn’t want them to have it, you shouldn’t have handed it to them”
Uh, copyright always works that way. You’re not supposed to make copies of movies most of the time, but people do, and it is virtually unenforceable as long as they take basic precautions. One of the only times it is reliably enforceable is when a business tries to make money off of your work and you can sue them.
Movies though have a license that you accept, and it comes encrypted. License is on the box that you are allowed to watch it at home, with so many people, on approved devices. By buying it you are accepting the license. Even modern day blurays have a license, and they can actually revoke the license (by pulling the encryption keys). If you don’t approve of that license, you simply don’t buy it. (However people get around it and as you said it’s unenforceable).
Whereas Lemmy and fediverse you’re giving your stuff out license free to anyone, and any other server can have their own terms. Such as “By giving me your data you are giving it to me license free, and remove yourself of all ownership.” Unless it’s specifically defederated, well there’s no way of you knowing and so you give your data. What does a judge say in that case? You said not to use it, but you put it on a server that said they can use it however they want.
I agree with you mostly, just pointing out the slight differences on how movies and studios get around that little hurdle of “ownership”. (i.e., we don’t own it)
Sure, but I would say that there’s a reasonability test there. Like, I could have a posted note somewhere on the internet that says, “by allowing my computer to download your content you grant me full license to use your intellectual property for any purpose in perpetuity throughout the universe,” but that doesn’t make it binding on anyone. Federation means other servers pull the data, so you don’t have control over it, so you can’t be considered to agree to a random server’s terms.
The same thing happens when you download a website. The website always allows others to download its content, but that confers no license no matter what anyone else says.
“License free” doesn’t mean “free license”, it means the opposite. No explicit permission is granted.
ah but an important distinction. The servers aren’t going out and asking for data from other servers. Federation means instances push data to listening servers. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s an important difference when we’re talking about it. So for me, I view that as a whole different thing, because by pushing data you’re saying “I don’t care who is listening, I’m sending it anyway”. If it were a pull model then it would be like what you are saying “Hey, I only give you access to this on my terms”. By pushing, you remove your server and it’s rules completely.
and that’s why I keep going back to my imaginary court. If you’re trying to tell a judge that “They shouldn’t have used it to train AI/write a book on, I didn’t want them to do that” the obvious next question is “Well, why did you give it to them then?” They didn’t take it from you, you gave it to them.
I think this is a very fine distinction that would have to be settled in court and could go either way. I can only say what I think it should do. And to be honest I think copyright is garbage, but for it be consistent I don’t think that this difference should matter.
I think an important distinction for me with federation though is that it’s not just a push, you have to subscribe, so it’s a two way street. It would be similar to an RSS feed, and I’m not aware of that having any particular implications for copyright. There is certainly no explicit acknowledgement of terms baked into either protocol, so I think the only reasonable conclusion should be that it doesn’t impact copyright either way. That remains unlicensed and subject to the normal rules, which presuppose that permission is not granted.
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If you license your content, that license travels with the content, and has to be honored on other servers (Federated or otherwise).
The license is with the content, and not the server the content is first posted to.
“Other server owners, did you follow the license that the content is licensed with? No?” <smacks them with the gavel>
Lemmy.World’s TOS does not claim ownership of our content that is posted/shared to their server. So they can’t use it however they want, they do not own the content, each individual poster still does.
And they don’t want to own our content, as that’s one hell of a ‘safe harbor’ law exposure/risk for them, if they start to do that.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
I’d argue that isn’t settled yet. Take this. I run my own server, I don’t want your “licensed” comment. I can go and add that to my ToS right now, that anything you give me will be trained. I say in there that I will disregard any license on there, and by placing anything on my server you are relieving yourself of any license. Since it’s my server, I can say that. “If you don’t want your data trained on, don’t put it on my server.”
So, I don’t think it’s as simple as you make it out to be. It’s exactly the same as Facebook’s ToS, they state in there that by using their service and putting data on their servers that you allow facebook to use that data however they see fit. Why is me doing the same thing on my server any different?
So, to use your own format
"No, you’re honor, you can clearly see on our homepage that it’s stated that any and all licenses are lost when they give us information.
“That’s irrelevant, our legal terms are clearly stated on our website, if they didn’t want their information shared to us, then they shouldn’t have shared them with us.”
This format isn’t well designated in the courts, there are no real precedents for the fediverse or how it works. You’re arguing that it should work that way. I’m arguing that how it should work is irrelevant, and right now there is nothing stopping anyone from using unencrypted data given to their server in any way.
What could happen, but isn’t really set up at least on Lemmy yet, is that when one server federates with another the receiving server sends a ToS/license that is server wide, forcing the subscribing server to accept or to not federate. I think that would shore up gaps in the law here, because in your example they could respond with “Your honor, we gave them terms and licenses to subscribe to our updates, and they accepted”. I also think that then would be required for new users signing up, to see how data is licensed from other servers. If this were a github issue I’d back it 100%.
However, in both scenarios, both current and what I’d like to see, I don’t see that adding a license at the bottom of your comment will ever hold up in court.
(Of course I’m not actually doing that, this is all a thought exercise, but I do 100% guarantee someone is just accepting all of our data and using it, license linked or not)
So you’re setting up a straw man by adding the TOS clause of ownership on the posting server to your example. I’m not saying that. The issue being discussed by me in response to your comment was if a license on content that is being federated stays with the content or is somehow magically stripped off when its federated.
As far as your TOS example goes, If Lemmy World added to their TOS that any content added to their site they own, then I wouldn’t post any content on Lemmy, as I want to keep ownership of my content.
But since Lemmy World does not do that (smartly so for safe harbor reasons), then the creator of the content is the owner of the content, and if they license that content it carries forward as the content is federated. Its up to the receiver of the federated content to reject the content, or abide by its licensing.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Me giving an example of something that might break what you’re saying is not a straw man. A straw man is if I said “oh so you think no one should be allowed to train any data ever”.
I hold to my argument. In the current Lemmy (and fediverse environment as a whole) I can put on my server that my placing data on my server, you forego all licenses, and I can do what I like.
At this point, I don’t see anything legally that prevents me from doing that. I think that would be a valid argument, unless you can show me where it says I can’t do that, because I don’t think that is law that has been made.
I know what you’re claiming. I understand what you’re claiming, that you retain ownership. I think this is a new area that doesn’t have a clear definition yet, and since other sites can have clauses saying you give up ownership by using it, I think that could be argued here too.
This.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
In legal terms, what does that mean? Every post is presumed to be public domain? Or in the process of posting, is there an implied license to generate unlimited copies for the purposes of federation? If someone likes a post and decides to make it into a chapter in their book, which they sell, is the original author entitled to attribution? To compensation?
I would argue that yes, you’re posting publicly on a public forum, whose contents are shotgunned out to any listening servers/apis/whoever.
If this were in a courtroom, I’d expect the defense to say that the poster chose to post it on a public forum which was then shared with whoever was listening, that there was no way to expect it to remain private, and there is could be no assumption of privacy with the way it was shared.
For enforcement, there is no way to enforce any sort of licensing with the fediverse model, you handed your post to me, if you didn’t want your post handled in a certain way then the response is “Why did you hand it out in the first place?”. If someone did make your post into a book, then it’s on you, the poster, to make the case that what they did was wrong, and I think it’s enough of a grey area here to say that they were simply listening. To flip it around, what if their server has posted terms saying “Anything you give to us will be used for training and publishing.” You sent it out to anyone listening, they posted their terms, who is right then?
This is different from normal social media where you posted to a walled garden, where you’re bound by just their terms. Now any server can have any rules or terms, and we’re blasting our data out to all of them (unless they are explicitly defederated)
You forgot about the web client.
The quantity of sharing does not dimish the licensing of the content.
I mean, ProPublica has explicit instructions on how to share their content with others, content that is licensed with a Creative Commons license, and that includes displaying the license number, when you share the content.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)