Sarah Jamie Lewis
The more conversations I have, the more convinced I am that if larger actors in the fediverse wish to move from an implicit licensing to an explicit one; the only sound strategy is for all accounts to communicate licenses on a per-note/activity basis.
It would sidestep many (but not all) annoying legal questions like "if you author a public post, and send it to a remote server, are you considered a "user" on that server for the purposes of licensing of public posts for wider distribution"
Sarah Jamie Lewis
Do I think it's a good use of energy to append a "licensing" field to every activitypub json object in existence?
No, adding more bloat to more json to the world will always make me a little sad (and see also: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114711054937026982)
But it would have some nice properties, for some definitions of nice and other definition of properties e.g. allowing tighter user control over transformation, and possibly some additional weight in tackling non-consensual distribution.
feld
Sarah Jamie Lewis
To be clear, in the case of remote parties mastodon instances sometimes act like email servers (distributing private content to defined parties) and sometime act like public noticeboards/social media sites (when remote public posts get boosted / end up in "trending" etc.)
These two cases are distinct enough that they both technically and legally have different considerations when it comes to how content is treated and the expectations users have.
Sarah Jamie Lewis
Just because you use a middle-party (your local instance) to send a post to a remote instance it does not automatically exclude you from being bound to the terms of the remote service - especially if you have been notified of the terms.
If is arguable that follower-only posts and tights scopes are much more limited in how they can be bound to ToS conditions than public posts (as they are email-like)
(tl;dr if you wanna make things legally explicit, the fediverse becomes legally complicated)
feld
feld
Sarah Jamie Lewis
@feld strictly no, there is an inherent processing right ascribed in sending a post to a remote service - (and for the behaviour, the "post visibility" / to /cc fields already cover closely equivalent semantic meaning.
(also important: the idea related solely to distribution, and potentially transformation, rights; not to the full gamut of terms that might apply; and such a field is designed to strictly limit the liability of instance admins - which is the fundamental topic of discussion)
feld
HighlandLawyer
@feld @sarahjamielewis
And there is demonstrated one of the big complications - from which jurisdiction(s)?
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