Do we own our posts?

Nobody. It's a public forum, anyone can take what you said and use it as their own.

From technical side, instance admins, community moderators, and you have the ability to remove them.

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I think some user content may be subject to copyright. Depends on local law.

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- In very limited circumstances. While copyright applies automatically, it has to be registered with the Copyright Office for you to be able to enforce it. I doubt Lemmy posters register each of their posts with the Copyright Office.
  
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Might we easily make it more clear that the poster or the server owns them outright?

Hypothetically, a corporation federates and wants to monetize my posts. Can they do this? I’m not personally fixated on ownership (which could easily be viewed as my systemic privilege), but the pathway out of this type of thought in general doesn’t seem to be yielding all power to already powerful growth-based corporations. I didn’t create the current systems, but I do acknowledge their existence.

5
- Anywhere where you're a repeat customer is probably selling your data. Any service you repeatedly use could also sell your data. Unfortunately it's just a way of life these days.
  
  Who says that no-one is sucking up all of the Lemmy data right now and selling it to some entity? There is no way of knowing and there is no way to combat it.
  
  1
- How would that even fundamentally make sense? Define "own". If you post the comment "lol" does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to post "lol" since you "own" it? How would simply posting something establish ownership? What if you had copied it from a different site?
  
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Well, let's see what the ToS says. sh.itjust.works here.

Legal:

TBD

Oh.

39

They were too busy getting shit to just work.

23

To add to this, can we "disown" what we post? If it can be used against me but isn't "mine", it just seems like I'm always getting the short end of the stick.

16

As far as any legal liability, no, unless you're successfully anonymous (VPN, tor, etc)

3
- So shouldn't some of the legal repercussions be shared with whomever "owns" what I post?
  
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I host my own instance and use the Creative Commons Non-Commerical license on my content. The idea is that this makes federation with other non-commercial instances no problem, but as soon as an instance mixes in ads in the feed, they (technically) can't show my posts alongside it.

I know Pixelfed has a license field for every post/picture so you get fine grained control, but I don't believe this is the case for the Mastodon API yet, so I have added the license information in my bio. It would be nice to attach license information to individual posts, and to assign a default license.

My hope is that this will make it more difficult for Meta and the like to mix in ads with my content. Time will tell if it works 😆

14

Thanks for sharing. I honestly was wondering how people were thinking about this. I was wondering why not include a license specified per post in the client UI as that seemed quite explicit. Yet, I was wondering how this might prohibit federation from being controlled at the server level.

I had considered ads in clients and llm training. Both of which, people in need should be paid for if it is using content they generated if at all possible.

4

Each instance has complete control over what is posted on it. The only way to truly own your posts is to set up your own instance and interact only with communities on it.

10

An interesting thought. I’m not sure this is entirely true though in many jurisdictions. It is clearly possible to post something on someone else’s server and still maintain ownership of it. Platforms like SoundCloud have you specify a license in the ui client at the time of upload. While this might seem performative, it is explicit.

2
- True, but if server owner pulls the plug, all the content you have there is gone. They can also unilaterally delete your posts.
  
  I guess my point is ownership isn't as important as control.
  
  SoundCloud vapes content and entire accounts all the time.
  
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Permanently Deleted

8

I think this is something that should be clarified in the terms of service of the instance.

8

"I made this..."

6

You own your original ideas, technically speaking. Just other people that view the board can use the ideas, copy it, or remix it into their own ideas as well.

As an analogy, say you buy a brand new red car, and you drive it on a public street. People who take a picture of the car don't own the car, you do of course. They, however, own the picture of your car and can sell it, copy it, post it, whatever as they please.

4

It's a little more nuanced than that. My understanding in the US, if you copyright your building, a person can't sell the picture of your building standing alone, but can sell the picture of the landscape it's in. In your example, If you took a picture of the car and said you designed and manufactured and are trying to sell it, that's absolutely illegal. Litigating it and getting money from it is a different matter.

3
- Yep all valid points. Asserting your rights are another matter entirely, and there are many intricacies and nuances that vary from place to place but boiled down to a basic principle I hope my version was apt.
  
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They, however, own the picture of your car and can sell it, copy it, post it, whatever as they please.

That depends on your jurisdiction.

1

im to lazy to check my instance

1