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Your understanding is flawed. Copyright is 100% okay with transitively controlling production of content. After all how else would you describe someone allowin

Your understanding is flawed. Copyright is 100% okay with transitively controlling production of content. After all how else would you describe someone allowing Netflix to stream your content? You can't restream Netflix and Netflix is restricted on how it can stream to you. Both rooted in the original Copyright protection and the licenses to content given out by intermediaries. Most posting platforms give themselves very broad rights with what they can do in a transitive fashion. But that is "companies don't want to get sued for user uploaded content and are lazy" not "you don't have any rights over things that are published".

dcow 3y ago
It's not that simple. If I sell you a book, I cannot place a restriction on that sale saying you can't resell that book (first sale doctrine). You're allowed to do that because you own the copy of the book. You can't copy the book and sell it, because you don't own the copyright, but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc. It's not that "copyright is okay with transitive licensing" but more that "copyright simply prevents you from copying a work you didn't create (or otherwise don't have copyrights over)". That's all it does. If you want to place downstream restrictions on your content then you have to license it (and get someone to agree to your license). You have rights over how you license content. Yes. And users may agree that they're only "viewing" a copy and don't in fact own it when engaging with your licensed content, sure. But my main point was that you don't get to publish content to the public domain and then say oh wait no I didn't want Meta to see that oops #privacy #cancelmeta. And further that it's kinda silly to imagine a world where everyone licenses every little toot they make. At some point we're in a public forum and we just all need to understand what that means, including that someone you don't like might be listening. Anyway, I don't think licensing content is a positive thing for society. It may benefit media conglomerates, but not individuals. Arguably, creators shouldn't be allowed to say "Netflix you can stream this content to users but not in Brazil". I don't think it's a sealed deal that downstream restrictions on content distribution are healthy or in any way in the public interest. Charging a royalty for a views/streams of some show is one thing. Saying "only on Tuesdays and not in Brazil" gives too much control to creators to dictate how their art should be interpreted. And nobody can prevent you from using Netflix to stream a show to your Brazilian friend on the couch next to you... nor should they ever be able to. That would be really really bad technology, were it to exist. So short of attaching licenses to every post you make, no, there's not a socially healthy, let alone even viable, strategy to control content distribution in the "fediverse".
- wpietri 3y ago
  > So short of attaching licenses to every post you make I think you have this backwards. Full copyright protection is the default for all content not licensed otherwise. Publishing does not put content into a "public domain" status. Social media platforms already have strong legal terms around every piece of content. If you violate that license, platforms may choose to fuck you up. E.g.: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/untraceable-surveillance-firm-sued-for-scraping-facebook-and-instagram-data https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/untraceable-s... It would be easy enough for particular Mastodon servers and/or accounts to be explicit about their downstream licensing.
  - dcow 3y ago
    I understand that generally you retain the copyright to your works implicitly and that you don't have to actively file for copyright in order to gain the protection of copyright law. I'm arguing that it's pretty preposterous for a global decentralized federated social platform to assume some authority (enforced by whom, that'd require a central group of enforcers) over the licensing of posts on the network by invoking US copyright law. Conceptually it doesn't make any sense. So the only thing Mastodon can do is at a protocol/code level require that public content flowing through the pipes be licensed for public consumption (copying and distribution) on the network, the colloquial "public domain". > It would be easy enough I can't really imagine the matrix of which nodes can federate with which others based on the default content license they impose on posted content. "Oh you can only view my post if you use this server over here because it uses a compatible downstream licensing configuration." Would that really "work"?
    - onlymonkeys 3y ago
      [dead]
    - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
      Mastodon-the-software doesn't have to do anything. Mastodon instances have to choose whether to block Threads or not. Of course there is no 'central enforcement', that would be at odds with the very principle of federated social media (namely, that instance admins are free to choose how they run their own instance).
mattigames 3y ago
Is Facebook supposed to scan all Twitter everytime you post something to check if it's not violating the copyright of someone there? To know every paragraph of every single book? Or scan the entire internet for that matter? That is not "lazy", that is just a ridiculous expectation, no (legal) social network would survive if that was necessary to operate Not to mention the millions of derivative works where the definition gets fuzzy: I applied a filter to someone else photo and put an emoji over it, is still the same work? Should FB algorithm be smart enough to classify it as a copyright violation? It would be unsustainable economically to run that algorithm against the millions of posts, and even if they told the user "stop! that is copyrighted!" a huge chunk of users would just edit their post a bit and just try again.
- dcow 3y ago
  That's the point, they're not. Copyright is a dumb concept when applied to social network posts (let alone the internet) and we shouldn't be wanting to emulate it on a decentralized social network.

dcow 3y ago

It's not that simple. If I sell you a book, I cannot place a restriction on that sale saying you can't resell that book (first sale doctrine). You're allowed to do that because you own the copy of the book. You can't copy the book and sell it, because you don't own the copyright, but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc. It's not that "copyright is okay with transitive licensing" but more that "copyright simply prevents you from copying a work you didn't create (or otherwise don't have copyrights over)". That's all it does. If you want to place downstream restrictions on your content then you have to license it (and get someone to agree to your license). You have rights over how you license content. Yes. And users may agree that they're only "viewing" a copy and don't in fact own it when engaging with your licensed content, sure. But my main point was that you don't get to publish content to the public domain and then say oh wait no I didn't want Meta to see that oops #privacy #cancelmeta. And further that it's kinda silly to imagine a world where everyone licenses every little toot they make. At some point we're in a public forum and we just all need to understand what that means, including that someone you don't like might be listening. Anyway, I don't think licensing content is a positive thing for society. It may benefit media conglomerates, but not individuals. Arguably, creators shouldn't be allowed to say "Netflix you can stream this content to users but not in Brazil". I don't think it's a sealed deal that downstream restrictions on content distribution are healthy or in any way in the public interest. Charging a royalty for a views/streams of some show is one thing. Saying "only on Tuesdays and not in Brazil" gives too much control to creators to dictate how their art should be interpreted. And nobody can prevent you from using Netflix to stream a show to your Brazilian friend on the couch next to you... nor should they ever be able to. That would be really really bad technology, were it to exist. So short of attaching licenses to every post you make, no, there's not a socially healthy, let alone even viable, strategy to control content distribution in the "fediverse".

wpietri 3y ago
> So short of attaching licenses to every post you make I think you have this backwards. Full copyright protection is the default for all content not licensed otherwise. Publishing does not put content into a "public domain" status. Social media platforms already have strong legal terms around every piece of content. If you violate that license, platforms may choose to fuck you up. E.g.: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/untraceable-surveillance-firm-sued-for-scraping-facebook-and-instagram-data https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/untraceable-s... It would be easy enough for particular Mastodon servers and/or accounts to be explicit about their downstream licensing.
- dcow 3y ago
  I understand that generally you retain the copyright to your works implicitly and that you don't have to actively file for copyright in order to gain the protection of copyright law. I'm arguing that it's pretty preposterous for a global decentralized federated social platform to assume some authority (enforced by whom, that'd require a central group of enforcers) over the licensing of posts on the network by invoking US copyright law. Conceptually it doesn't make any sense. So the only thing Mastodon can do is at a protocol/code level require that public content flowing through the pipes be licensed for public consumption (copying and distribution) on the network, the colloquial "public domain". > It would be easy enough I can't really imagine the matrix of which nodes can federate with which others based on the default content license they impose on posted content. "Oh you can only view my post if you use this server over here because it uses a compatible downstream licensing configuration." Would that really "work"?
  - onlymonkeys 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Mastodon-the-software doesn't have to do anything. Mastodon instances have to choose whether to block Threads or not. Of course there is no 'central enforcement', that would be at odds with the very principle of federated social media (namely, that instance admins are free to choose how they run their own instance).

mattigames 3y ago

Is Facebook supposed to scan all Twitter everytime you post something to check if it's not violating the copyright of someone there? To know every paragraph of every single book? Or scan the entire internet for that matter? That is not "lazy", that is just a ridiculous expectation, no (legal) social network would survive if that was necessary to operate Not to mention the millions of derivative works where the definition gets fuzzy: I applied a filter to someone else photo and put an emoji over it, is still the same work? Should FB algorithm be smart enough to classify it as a copyright violation? It would be unsustainable economically to run that algorithm against the millions of posts, and even if they told the user "stop! that is copyrighted!" a huge chunk of users would just edit their post a bit and just try again.

dcow 3y ago
That's the point, they're not. Copyright is a dumb concept when applied to social network posts (let alone the internet) and we shouldn't be wanting to emulate it on a decentralized social network.