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”
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)
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.