Notices by Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)

The idea that I would be deemed to agree to the vile Mastodon.Social ToS because I use another instance that federates with m.s and don't block m.s/have followers from m.s/whatever..

is just as preposterous

..as the idea that I agree to Google's ToS because I communicate by email with someone using Gmail.

@rcombs I thought the argument that it needed to be perpetual rested on a claim that it needed to be sublicenseable.

But really I don't understand where you're coming from with these *harmful* takes.

Is it just "I'm worried about legal liability for folks running instances and this matters more to me than autonomy and consent for participants"?

Or something else?

if you see a kidnapped person escaping from ICE, NO YOU DIDN’T
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/new-jersey/feds-double-reward-for-2-escaped-nj-ice-detainees-as-national-raids-intensify/6305525/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

#fascism #slavery #USpol

@rcombs However that's NOT EVEN HOW FEDERATION WORKS. If I post on my instance A in a way that someone on instance B needs a copy, or if someone on instance B explicitly fetches a copy, it does not get further propagated from instance B to instances C, D, E, and F!

Other instances might come to know of the existence of the post via instance B (reply chains, etc. involving one of their users and someone on instance B), but the actual content is fetched directly from instance A.

The only way other parties acquire permanent copies of my post via instance B is if they are *intentionally and maliciously scraping the public web interface*. Not via following the AP protocol.

B does not need any permission to do anything with my posts beyond "ephemeral display to folks with permission to view my posts [which may be public, depending on post]". It does NOT need "permission to relay".

@rcombs *Even if* you think there are technical issues about how federation works that make it risky for them, "perpetual license" is not the right tool.

They could instead just have the terms be that you won't hold them accountable for failure of other parties to honor revocation, and that any infringement by third parties who received your work thru them is a matter between you and those parties, not involving them.

@hedders Yes absolutely. I've seen plenty of "boilerplate" contracts with utterly bullshit terms that are not appropriate for the nature of the work or relationship involved.

I strongly suspect this is one of those cases.

@rcombs That is not a "clearly" at all.

Most likely explanations are one of:

1. They just did copy&paste, possibly even from LLM slop, and didn't even think about it.

2. They did it maliciously in the interest of their relationship with Facebook.

@hedders OK I stated that poorly. Yes a good lawyer should be thinking about these things. But an organization should not just give their lawyers free reign to fuck up their relationships with people and other orgs by dictating policy, without other folks who care about those relationships having a chance to review and veto.

@rcombs Um, no, not any moreso that the postal service being slow delivering a letter creates legal peril.

@rcombs But I'm really bothered by your insistence on spreading an unforced narrative that they're legally entitled to disregard our wishes.

I don't understand what you get out of that.

And it hurts us all.

@rcombs I'm sorry, that is nonsense.

There are multiple clear mechanisms by which you could "revoke all sublicenses". Both within the protocol (block, delete, etc.) and outside it (contacting the instances who did not honor that with takedown notices).

Just because they might, maliciously or by incompetence, fail to honor an obligation to delete doesn't mean any legal permission they had to keep distributing it hasn't been revoked. It just means they're now undeniably infringing.

@pcalcado Clearly that can be solved just by giving the "AI" the password to your registrar account and root on the servers the certs are installed on.

@glyph Oh, the FSF folks were there own kind of messed up, but it wasn't the whole ancap-libertarian thing that the wannabe-hacker who deemed himself the master of our stories brought later.

@TheBreadmonkey LMAO is that what the flagship's bullshit ToS data-grab is about? Giving it to Threads? 🤡

@Dtraslerwriting OK but they're probably ok with that. Their whole deal is pushing back consequences over and over until it's somebody else's problem.

@sarahjamielewis "by extenson users on your instance"

Nope. Nope nope nope.

Unless users on your instance agree to this (i.e. unless you're a malicious admin and try to make them agree), they are not party to this bs and don't have to care about it one bit.

On your second point, yes you're in violation of the flagship's data-grab ToS by refusing to make your users agree to it. Nobody gives a fuck. Make them defederate us all if they deem us in violation of ToS. They'll cave.

@hedders @sarahjamielewis The problem isn't that the lawyer (or worse, chatbot) who wrote it didn't think about any of these things.

The problem is that someone else who should have been in a position to read it and tell them "no, this is completely unacceptable" didn't do so.

@sarahjamielewis In any case this whole thing is an utterly stupid self-own by the asshats running the flagship that will hurt the fediverse for utterly no good reason. They did not need to do this. They could have just kept their lawyers' mouths shut and on proper leashes.

@sarahjamielewis IANAL, but my view is that the ToS is irrelevant to anyone not directly in a relationship with the instance(s) with the malicious ToS.

Even if the instance I use federates with one and supposedly, by federating, "accepts the ToS", I did not enter into any agreement with my instance to allow them to sublicense my writing in any way, much less under some third party's ToS. So the instance has no standing to license it.

@rcombs You don't have to write down that there's no implicit license in order for an extremely permissive implicit license not to magically materialize out of thin air.

Even if you somehow believe there is an implicit license, it would be minimal not maximal.