mastodonmigration

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

Twitter and Bluesky (and almost all corporate social media providers) say they need a broad license to do what they do. But the truth is that they don’t need a license to publish your content—or they could take a much more limited publishing only license—but they don’t because the way they make money is processing your content, profiling you, and selling information about you to ad tech companies. For this they need to co-own your content.

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#twittermigration #ContentLicense

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

So it’s up to you whether you want to give away licenses to your content. You have been led to believe that the necessary cost of using internet services is to give away a broad license. It’s not, you have options.

(1) Twitter Terms of Service: https://twitter.com/en/tos
(2) Bluesky Terms of Service: https://staging.bsky.app/support/tos
(3) Mastodon Privacy Policy (mastodon.social): https://mastodon.social/privacy-policy

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#twittermigration #ContentLicense

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@gme @tchambers Actually, they are different, in that the Bluesky terms are a lot more restrictive than most. But, you are right that corporate social media has led you to believe you need to give them a license to your content in order to use their service. That's because they want to process and monetize your content. Mastodon does not do that. Most Mastodon instances don't take a license to your content.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@NeedlousWorm Nope. The words are the words. It is a legal agreement. While you retain ownership of your content, you are giving them a full non-exclusive license to your content for the purposes cited. Which is pretty much anything.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@alastor8472 Do not really care what they say the intent is, it is what is in the agreement that matters, and what is in the agreement is a full non-exclusive license of your content to their company for all the purposes listed.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@alastor8472 It would certainly be possible for them to narrow the scope of the license to just those things you mention, but they do not do so. The fact that the CEO asked for help in revising these terms is silly and further calls into question their good faith, as they certainly have the legal resources to do so without outside "suggestions."

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@haayman No, not the same. There is no Mastodon legal clause where you grant Mastodon or any instance server a license to your content.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn They do not need a license to process, adapt, and modify your content for the purpose of publishing it.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn What they are getting with process and modify is much broader than reformatting, resizing and translating. What they are after and what they are getting is the legal right to consume your content and use the results to build a profile of you that can be put into their algorithm and also sold to ad tech companies to determine what ads should be placed alongside your content. If that is what you mean by "etc." then I guess we are in agreement.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn The problem is that it is not so limited. In book publishing for example the rights are very clearly limited and the contract between the writer and publisher defines those limitations. It is entirely fine for social media users to grant permission via license for social media sites to show (reformat, distribute) their content and it is entirely possible to limit those rights, but that's not what they are doing. Users should understand what rights they are granting to these companies.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn Agree that it is a more nuanced issue. Disagree it is disingenuous to raise the matter. The Faustian bargain is that they give you free stuff and they get to consume your data and monetize it as they see fit. Users should understand what they are giving away and where in the terms of service they are giving up these rights. If they want to retain these rights to their content then they can choose a social media publisher that does not take them away as part of the deal.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn We seem to be in some agreement. There needs to be a clause, but it should be more limited. Question, as cloudisland.nz admin, what are your terms of service? Can not find anything at all for mastodon.online or mastodon.social. It would be really useful for this conversation to contrast the Mastodon license terms with Twitter and Bluesky, but can not find any terms for Mastodon.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn Which is a whole lot different from use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute. This is entirely the point. A user should be very comfortable with your license.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@simon_lucy @haayman Should have been clearer. No Mastodon license to use, process and modify the content. Granting a license to publish is one thing, but what you are granting to Twitter and Bluesky is much broader than that.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@simon_lucy @aurynn Depends on the publishing contract, but the publisher is generally not given the right to modify the content or process it for whatever purposes they want either. Just be aware of what you are giving Twitter and Bluesky when you hit post.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@aurynn From this conversation it seems like Mastodon and the Fediverse need to not just wing it, but rather have recommended terms of service for instances that are not overly broad but give the instance the protections it needs without taking rights it does not require. In essence, a good contract. IANAL, but your terms seem fine. It would be very surprising if simply reformatting content were determined to be in violation.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@simon_lucy @haayman Not all contracts are the same. It depends on the fine print. You grant them whatever rights you have agreed to in their terms of service. It is necessary to grant them the right to publish and reproduce, but these terms are much broader, and give Twitter and Bluesky effectively unlimited rights to your content. That is not necessary.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@simon_lucy @aurynn Those things will be detailed in the contract. You are not granting the book publisher an open ended right to your content.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@lookitmychicken @aurynn What is interesting here is that this recommended boilerplate Privacy Notice does not seem to contain any license. This is consistent with mastodon.social 's privacy policy: https://mastodon.social/privacy-policy

It seems that the policy describes what the server does with your post, but does not assert a license. Missing something here?

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@lookitmychicken @aurynn Seems fine. It would definitely be good to have these things "lawyer tested." The distinction might lie in whether something is a transmission medium versus a publisher. For instance, an ISP does not need a license to your content since it is a transmission medium. If something wants to do something with your content that's where the license comes in. It would be very interesting to get a real copywrite/intellectual property lawyer to comment on this.

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@maria @anildash We are at a time of the Faustian bargain: "I will give you this lovely thing, and in return all your data is mine." Unless and until, people reject systems that exploit their intellectual property out of hand, it will continue. There is a better open systems way forward, but it requires a level of technological sufficiency. The reason corporate traps continue to thrive is that they are flashier for now. The next Mastodon upgrade is critical.

#twittermigration

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@maria @anildash Yup. Something new comes along (ie. nice paved roads, mass transit, water, power, telecom) the developer tries to exploit it for as much as they can. The technology becomes sufficiently easy that the public takes it over in some fashion. Rinse repeat.

#twittermigration

mastodonmigration, 1 year ago

@hatter @maria @anildash Taxes mostly pay for roads and mass transit, utilities are tightly regulated, and telecom has been subjected to a monopoly breakup and is now a pretty well regulated system. By "easy" what is meant is sufficiently technologically mature.