That SA part needs to be tested in court against the AI models themselves
A lot of this shittiness would probably go away if there was a risk that ingesting certain content would mean you need to release the actual model to the public.
Yeah, their assumption though is you don’t? Neither attribution nor sharealike, not even full-on all-rights-reserved copyright is being respected. Anything public goes and if questions are asked it’s “fair use”. If the user retains CC BY-SA over their content, why is giving a bunch of money to StackOverflow entitling OpenAI to use it all under whatever terms they settled on? Boggles me.
Now, say, Reddit Terms of Service state clearly that by submitting content you are giving them the right to “a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness (…) in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.” Speaks volumes on why alternatives (like Lemmy) to these platforms matter.
The funny thing about Lemmy is that the entire Fediverse is basically running a massive copyright violation ring with current copyright law. The license bit every web company has in their terms exists because Facebook wouldn’t have the right to show your holiday pictures to your grandma otherwise. The pictures are your property, and just because you uploaded them doesn’t mean Facebook has the right to redistribute them. Cropping off the top and bottom to fit it into the timeline? That’s a derivative work, they’d need to ask permission or negotiate a license to show that!
The Fediverse runs without any such clauses and just presumes nobody cares about copyright. Which they don’t, because the whole thing is based on forwarding all data to everyone.
Nobody is going to sue a Lemmy server for sending their comment to someone else, because there’s no money behind any of the servers. Companies like Facebook need to get their shit together, though, because they have large pools of investor money that any shithead with a good lawyer can try to claim, and that’s why they have legal disclaimers.
That’s interesting. I was looking up “Lemmy Terms of Service” for comparison after getting that quote from the Reddit ToS and could not find anything for Lemmy.ml. Now after you mentioned it, looking on my Mastodon instance, nothing either, just a privacy policy. That is indeed kinda weird. Some instances do have their own ToS though. At least something stating a sublicense for distribution should be there for protection of people running instances in locations where it’s relevant.
The thing with many of these services is that they’re not run by companies with a legal presence, just by some guy(s) who do it for fun. For many laws, personal projects are considered differently compared to business/organisational endeavours.
It’s the same thing with personal blogs lacking a privacy policy: the probability of the thing becoming an actual problem in the real world is so abysmally low that nobody bothers, and that’s probably okay.
During the first wave of some troll uploading child abuse to various Fediverse servers (mostly Lemmy), a lot of server operators got a rough wake-up call, because suddenly they had content on their servers that could land them in prison. There has been an effort to combat this abuse for larger servers, but I don’t think most Lemmy servers run on the Nvidia hardware that’s strong enough to support the live CSAM detection code that was developed.
The funny thing about Lemmy is that the entire Fediverse is basically running a massive copyright violation ring with current copyright law.
Is it, though?
When someone posts a comment to Lemmy, they do so willingly, with the intent for it to be posted and federated. If they change their mind, they can delete it. If they delete it and it remains up somewhere, they can submit a DMCA request; likewise if someone else posts their copyrighted content.
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for their use. When you submit a post or a comment, your permission to display it and for it to be federated is implied, because that is how Lemmy works. A license also conveys permission, but that’s not the only way permission can be conveyed.
The idea that someone does this willingly implies that the user knows the implications of their choice, which most of the Fediverse doesn’t seem to do (see: people asking questions like “how do I delete comments on a server I’ve been defederated from”, or surprised after finding out that their likes/boosts are inherently public).
If the implied license was enough, Facebook and all the other companies wouldn’t put these disclaimers in their terms of service. This isn’t true in every jurisdiction, but it does apply to many important ones.
I agree that international copyright law should work like you imply, but on the other hand, this is exactly why Creative Commons was created: stuff posted on the internet can be downloaded just fine, but rehosting it is not allowed by default.
This is also why I appreciate the people who put those Creative Commons licenses on their comments; they’re effectively useless against AI, which is what they seem to be trying to combat, but they do provide rights that would otherwise be unavailable.
Just like with privacy laws and data hosting laws, I don’t think the fediverse cares. I think the fediverse is full of a sort of wilful ignorance about internet law, mostly because the Fediverse is a just a bunch of enthusiastic nerds. No Fediverse server (except for Threads, maybe) has a Data Protection Officer despite sites like lemmy.world legally requiring one if they’d cared about the law, very little Fediverse software seems to provide DMCA links by default, and I don’t think any server is complying with the Chinese, Russian, and European “only store citizen’s data in locally hosted servers” laws at all.
The idea that someone does this willingly implies that the user knows the implications of their choice, which most of the Fediverse doesn’t seem to do
The terms of service for lemmy.world, which you must agree to upon sign-up, make reference to federating. If you don’t know what that means, it’s your responsibility to look it up and understand it. I assume other instances have similar sign-up processes. The source code to Lemmy is also available, meaning that a full understanding is available to anyone willing to take the time to read through the code, unlike with most social media companies.
What sorts of implications of the choice to post to Lemmy do you think that people don’t understand, that people who post to Facebook do understand?
If the implied license was enough, Facebook and all the other companies wouldn’t put these disclaimers in their terms of service.
It’s not an implied license. It’s implied permission. And if you post content to a website that’s hosting and displaying such content, it’s obvious what’s about to happen with it. Please try telling a judge that you didn’t understand what you were doing, sued without first trying to delete or file a DMCA notice, and see if that judge sides with you.
Many companies have lengthy terms of service with a ton of CYA legalese that does nothing. Even so, an explicit license to your content in the terms of service does do something - but that doesn’t mean that you’re infringing copyright without it. If my artist friend asks me to take her art piece to a copy shop and to get a hundred prints made for her, I’m not infringing copyright then, either, nor is the copy shop. If I did that without permission, on the other hand, I would be. If her lawyer got wind of this and filed a suit against me without checking with her and I showed the judge the text saying “Hey hedgehog, could you do me a favor and…,” what do you think he’d say?
Besides, Facebook does things that Lemmy instances don’t do. Facebook’s codebase isn’t open, and they’d like to reserve the ability to do different things with the content you submit. Facebook wants to be able to do non-obvious things with your content. Facebook is incorporated in California and has a value in the hundreds of billions, but Lemmy instances are located all over the world and I doubt any have a value even in the millions.
That SA part needs to be tested in court against the AI models themselves
A lot of this shittiness would probably go away if there was a risk that ingesting certain content would mean you need to release the actual model to the public.
Yeah, their assumption though is you don’t? Neither attribution nor sharealike, not even full-on all-rights-reserved copyright is being respected. Anything public goes and if questions are asked it’s “fair use”. If the user retains CC BY-SA over their content, why is giving a bunch of money to StackOverflow entitling OpenAI to use it all under whatever terms they settled on? Boggles me.
Now, say, Reddit Terms of Service state clearly that by submitting content you are giving them the right to “a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness (…) in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.” Speaks volumes on why alternatives (like Lemmy) to these platforms matter.
The funny thing about Lemmy is that the entire Fediverse is basically running a massive copyright violation ring with current copyright law. The license bit every web company has in their terms exists because Facebook wouldn’t have the right to show your holiday pictures to your grandma otherwise. The pictures are your property, and just because you uploaded them doesn’t mean Facebook has the right to redistribute them. Cropping off the top and bottom to fit it into the timeline? That’s a derivative work, they’d need to ask permission or negotiate a license to show that!
The Fediverse runs without any such clauses and just presumes nobody cares about copyright. Which they don’t, because the whole thing is based on forwarding all data to everyone.
Nobody is going to sue a Lemmy server for sending their comment to someone else, because there’s no money behind any of the servers. Companies like Facebook need to get their shit together, though, because they have large pools of investor money that any shithead with a good lawyer can try to claim, and that’s why they have legal disclaimers.
That’s interesting. I was looking up “Lemmy Terms of Service” for comparison after getting that quote from the Reddit ToS and could not find anything for Lemmy.ml. Now after you mentioned it, looking on my Mastodon instance, nothing either, just a privacy policy. That is indeed kinda weird. Some instances do have their own ToS though. At least something stating a sublicense for distribution should be there for protection of people running instances in locations where it’s relevant.
The thing with many of these services is that they’re not run by companies with a legal presence, just by some guy(s) who do it for fun. For many laws, personal projects are considered differently compared to business/organisational endeavours.
It’s the same thing with personal blogs lacking a privacy policy: the probability of the thing becoming an actual problem in the real world is so abysmally low that nobody bothers, and that’s probably okay.
During the first wave of some troll uploading child abuse to various Fediverse servers (mostly Lemmy), a lot of server operators got a rough wake-up call, because suddenly they had content on their servers that could land them in prison. There has been an effort to combat this abuse for larger servers, but I don’t think most Lemmy servers run on the Nvidia hardware that’s strong enough to support the live CSAM detection code that was developed.
Is it, though?
When someone posts a comment to Lemmy, they do so willingly, with the intent for it to be posted and federated. If they change their mind, they can delete it. If they delete it and it remains up somewhere, they can submit a DMCA request; likewise if someone else posts their copyrighted content.
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for their use. When you submit a post or a comment, your permission to display it and for it to be federated is implied, because that is how Lemmy works. A license also conveys permission, but that’s not the only way permission can be conveyed.
The idea that someone does this willingly implies that the user knows the implications of their choice, which most of the Fediverse doesn’t seem to do (see: people asking questions like “how do I delete comments on a server I’ve been defederated from”, or surprised after finding out that their likes/boosts are inherently public).
If the implied license was enough, Facebook and all the other companies wouldn’t put these disclaimers in their terms of service. This isn’t true in every jurisdiction, but it does apply to many important ones.
I agree that international copyright law should work like you imply, but on the other hand, this is exactly why Creative Commons was created: stuff posted on the internet can be downloaded just fine, but rehosting it is not allowed by default.
This is also why I appreciate the people who put those Creative Commons licenses on their comments; they’re effectively useless against AI, which is what they seem to be trying to combat, but they do provide rights that would otherwise be unavailable.
Just like with privacy laws and data hosting laws, I don’t think the fediverse cares. I think the fediverse is full of a sort of wilful ignorance about internet law, mostly because the Fediverse is a just a bunch of enthusiastic nerds. No Fediverse server (except for Threads, maybe) has a Data Protection Officer despite sites like lemmy.world legally requiring one if they’d cared about the law, very little Fediverse software seems to provide DMCA links by default, and I don’t think any server is complying with the Chinese, Russian, and European “only store citizen’s data in locally hosted servers” laws at all.
The terms of service for lemmy.world, which you must agree to upon sign-up, make reference to federating. If you don’t know what that means, it’s your responsibility to look it up and understand it. I assume other instances have similar sign-up processes. The source code to Lemmy is also available, meaning that a full understanding is available to anyone willing to take the time to read through the code, unlike with most social media companies.
What sorts of implications of the choice to post to Lemmy do you think that people don’t understand, that people who post to Facebook do understand?
It’s not an implied license. It’s implied permission. And if you post content to a website that’s hosting and displaying such content, it’s obvious what’s about to happen with it. Please try telling a judge that you didn’t understand what you were doing, sued without first trying to delete or file a DMCA notice, and see if that judge sides with you.
Many companies have lengthy terms of service with a ton of CYA legalese that does nothing. Even so, an explicit license to your content in the terms of service does do something - but that doesn’t mean that you’re infringing copyright without it. If my artist friend asks me to take her art piece to a copy shop and to get a hundred prints made for her, I’m not infringing copyright then, either, nor is the copy shop. If I did that without permission, on the other hand, I would be. If her lawyer got wind of this and filed a suit against me without checking with her and I showed the judge the text saying “Hey hedgehog, could you do me a favor and…,” what do you think he’d say?
Besides, Facebook does things that Lemmy instances don’t do. Facebook’s codebase isn’t open, and they’d like to reserve the ability to do different things with the content you submit. Facebook wants to be able to do non-obvious things with your content. Facebook is incorporated in California and has a value in the hundreds of billions, but Lemmy instances are located all over the world and I doubt any have a value even in the millions.