this post was submitted on 22 May 2024

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What is the Legal copyright on a Lemmy Post? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Whereas Lemmy and fediverse you’re giving your stuff out license free to anyone,

Unless you attach a license to your content.
Even if you don't license it explicitly, there's default implied copyright law on how your content can be used.
.

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.

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.

What does a judge say in that case?

"Other server owners, did you follow the license that the content is licensed with? No?"

You said not to use it, but you put it on a server that said they can use it however they want.

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)~

[+] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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 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)~

[+] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

You keep arguing the wrong point.

No one is saying you can't on your server create a TOS that says that anyone who puts content on your server that you then own that content, you become the owner. That's not what's being discussed.

The point is because of various reasons like safe harbor and PR, Lemmy World and other servers in the Federation are not claiming ownership.

When you post your comment on the Lemmy World server, you still own it, and you can license that content that you own in any way that you like, and that license is on the content, not on the server, so as that content is federated, that license travels with it and is still in action, and must be abided by.

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.

I feel confident in my position, because if we went with your position then it would be very easy to "money launder" anyone's content by just passing it through a third party Federated server with a TOS that says they own any content on their server. I'm pretty sure the big boys who own content aren't going to allow that to happen, and would talk to their friends in Congress about it.

It's really mostly existing basic content law. It's not as cloudy and up in the air as everyone wants to say it is, there's just a new wrinkle to it, and I'm pretty sure those in power will make sure everything stays status quo.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[+] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who cares what lemmy.world said?

It's where the content was initially posted, so any terms of service would be applicable to the content at the time of posting. That's why.

The onus is on the Federated server receiving the content that's already licensed to reject the content if they do not want to abide by the license. If they accept the content, they have to abide by the license.

And as far as the rest of you diatribe, I'll just remind you that licenses can't just be stripped from content because some third-party TOS says it can.

We would have seen much 'money laundering' style mayhem on the Internet with other people's content before today, if that was possible.

I think we've discussed this enough, so I'm just going to leave it with an 'agree to disagree', and move on.

Have a nice day.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~