After all how else would you describe someone allowing Netflix to stream your content?
You can't restream Netflix and Netflix is restricted on how it can stream to you. Both rooted in the original Copyright protection and the licenses to content given out by intermediaries.
Most posting platforms give themselves very broad rights with what they can do in a transitive fashion.
But that is "companies don't want to get sued for user uploaded content and are lazy" not "you don't have any rights over things that are published".
If you want to place downstream restrictions on your content then you have to license it (and get someone to agree to your license). You have rights over how you license content. Yes. And users may agree that they're only "viewing" a copy and don't in fact own it when engaging with your licensed content, sure. But my main point was that you don't get to publish content to the public domain and then say oh wait no I didn't want Meta to see that oops #privacy #cancelmeta. And further that it's kinda silly to imagine a world where everyone licenses every little toot they make. At some point we're in a public forum and we just all need to understand what that means, including that someone you don't like might be listening.
Anyway, I don't think licensing content is a positive thing for society. It may benefit media conglomerates, but not individuals. Arguably, creators shouldn't be allowed to say "Netflix you can stream this content to users but not in Brazil". I don't think it's a sealed deal that downstream restrictions on content distribution are healthy or in any way in the public interest. Charging a royalty for a views/streams of some show is one thing. Saying "only on Tuesdays and not in Brazil" gives too much control to creators to dictate how their art should be interpreted. And nobody can prevent you from using Netflix to stream a show to your Brazilian friend on the couch next to you... nor should they ever be able to. That would be really really bad technology, were it to exist.
So short of attaching licenses to every post you make, no, there's not a socially healthy, let alone even viable, strategy to control content distribution in the "fediverse".
I think you have this backwards. Full copyright protection is the default for all content not licensed otherwise. Publishing does not put content into a "public domain" status. Social media platforms already have strong legal terms around every piece of content. If you violate that license, platforms may choose to fuck you up. E.g.: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/untraceable-s...
It would be easy enough for particular Mastodon servers and/or accounts to be explicit about their downstream licensing.
I'm arguing that it's pretty preposterous for a global decentralized federated social platform to assume some authority (enforced by whom, that'd require a central group of enforcers) over the licensing of posts on the network by invoking US copyright law. Conceptually it doesn't make any sense. So the only thing Mastodon can do is at a protocol/code level require that public content flowing through the pipes be licensed for public consumption (copying and distribution) on the network, the colloquial "public domain".
> It would be easy enough
I can't really imagine the matrix of which nodes can federate with which others based on the default content license they impose on posted content. "Oh you can only view my post if you use this server over here because it uses a compatible downstream licensing configuration." Would that really "work"?
This could be guaranteed by laws rather than tech. Laws don't do much to protect big companies from the little people. That's why DRM is currently about technical solutions. But laws can have a huge impact on protecting little people from big companies. That's why big companies lobby!
I don't doubt that such 'license encoding DRM' as I envision will be abused by media publishers by linking it to cryptographic protection. But the underlying idea is pretty nice.
That's not how copyright works like... at all. HN needs a license to display your comment right now (see here: https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou). Copyright works by default (in the US) of being the most restricted. The first sale doctrine applies but online when you distribute something you're not making 1 copy.
Like, by quoting me on HN you're actually violating the content license and terms of use agreement (you're only allowed to use your "user content" not mine). You'd argue fair use, and you'd probably win. But nevertheless you'd have to argue it.
I think we're in the weeds with copyright. What's the problem we're trying to solve? A federated public communication protocol/system. What do centralized platforms do in the face of copyright? Require users essentially forfeit their copyright over the content they post (if they're nice limited to the scope of the content traversing their network). Why? Because it doesn't work any other way. What is the expectation I have when reading a public post? I expect I am allowed to read it, quote it, remix it, etc. because it's been posted publicly. Nobody asks permission to quote each other even though they technically should in accordance with US copyright law. How would a discussion transpire without a shared understanding of how the content is allowed to be used on any network?
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And I mean if you really want to get into the weeds, copyright prevents you from e.g. playing a digital music file on your computer since the bytes need to be copied over the network, into memory, onto output devices, etc. This was the original observation: copyright basically prevents you from doing anything digital with any digital media. That's why everyone needs a license and we're in license hell. In digital it's copying all the way down so hit it with the copyright hammer.
Imagine if we applied our digital understanding of copyright to traditional artwork. I have a painting. You visit. By shining light on the painting I'm reproducing the image on your retinas. You say copyright violation? I say preposterous! What if I take a picture of the painting that I own and show you? Uh oh.
Copyright just doesn't make sense when applied to a public social network. At all. And it doesn't make any sense because a social network isn't about artists trying to make money off their works, it's about anons trying to win internet points for the day.
The license associated with physical media does have restrictions. You can't mount a public display of the work without acquiring a separate license. E.g., you can't buy a DVD of a movie and then screen it for a group (outside of what's permitted under fair use). If you sell tickets to that screening or intersperse ads, thereby infringing copyright for commercial gain, you're in even hotter water.
Do you feel the same way about restrictive open source software licenses like GPL3?
Not to mention the millions of derivative works where the definition gets fuzzy: I applied a filter to someone else photo and put an emoji over it, is still the same work? Should FB algorithm be smart enough to classify it as a copyright violation? It would be unsustainable economically to run that algorithm against the millions of posts, and even if they told the user "stop! that is copyrighted!" a huge chunk of users would just edit their post a bit and just try again.
