Can someone provide clarity on data ownership ? Can we make it so the data can’t be sold, monetized or used in any detrimental way towards society via an ELA?
The lemmy.world admins have full control over all the instance’s data, including the accounts of everyone using the instance. They seem like nice people, but there’s no real way to enforce the conditions you’re proposing.
I would love to see something like a blanket Creative Commons Non-commercial Attribution license applied across the instance.
I don’t think that would cause issues with federation, but I’m no expert.
Also like, how can this website survive? Server costs will grow but we’re all very against ads which is why we left Reddit basically. Is lemmy just going to rely on donations?
I think donations via something like Patreon, or subscriptions via an app are eventually totally reasonable for a Lemmy instance. I got enough utility out of Reddit that I would have been willing to pay a few bucks a month for an ad free app subscription. Reddit’s unreasonable, shortsighted management was the problem there. Once Lemmy starts to mature more and there is content worth paying for I’m ready to do my part to make sure it can continue without corporate involvement.
It is up to Ruud and Admin crew. If you want to own control, self host your instance, but read the terms of every provider as you’re likely still not in full control with cloud provider, DNS, and any other middle persons tapping your data at all times, even your VPN and ISP are likely mining you.
ELAs are not enforceable in a federated world. Once the data is copied to another instance, it falls under their domain. And in turn their admins would have to make sure their users accepted the ELA before interacting with the content mirrored from lemmy.world, and so forth. That would be the death of federated networks.
Consider all your content to be public domain by default, including private messages, because admins can access those in unencrypted form.
Says who? Just because I download a copy of a photo from Getty Images doesn’t mean I now own the copyright on it or I can do whatever I want with it. The image needs to be licensed to me, and the terms of the license dictate exactly what I can do with it.
You can grant federated instances a license to download and display your content without the right to monetize, package it, or distribute it in certain ways. This is what licensing was made for.
Instance owners can make each other agree to a license before federating.
If they were to add an EULA or privacy policy it would most likely say that by using Lemmy you agree to make all your content public domain. If you do not agree, then don’t use Lemmy. Probably a good idea to make it explicit.
As others have noted there’s no way to do otherwise in the fediverse.
Your example works because Getty as the copyright holder will actively pursue violations.
The instance admin has no intrinsic motivation of doing so, and certainly won’t go to court on behalf of a user.
You’d be better off to finish every one of your comments with “licensed under MIT v3.0” or something.
And forcing admins to agree to terms with others before federating will lead to no federation. If I’m running an instance with no financial incentive whatsoever for the benefit of the public, the last thing I want is to get wrapped up in legal red tape. And as a layman, I couldn’t possibly understood all terms with their implications and ramifications, and would require legal council to proceed. That ain’t free either.
