This gets you right back to the issue of having to transmit licenses with all content. Which is fine - this can absolutely be a thing which exists within the protocol.

But then people are suddenly going to find they don't get the impact they want either: because the immediate outcome is simply going to be "license for public distribution or we'll reject your content" because everything else is too much hassle.

Blocking Threads doesn't prevent your content from getting to Meta. Some other instance that you federate with might not block it. See: TFA.

Would you like to elaborate instead of just a snarky "that's not how that works" with no real contribution to the discussion?

1. Who would enforce copyright on a globally distributed content platform? Which country's "copyright" laws does a node follow? Who is responsible (who do you sue) when Meta federates with a node and receives a copy of content it allegedly isn't licensed to have or doesn't have copyrights over? (Hint: not Meta, they didn't make the copy.)

2. Why do you think I used "colloquial"? On a platform where people are free to publicly view, share, copy, remix, etc. the content then the content is said to be in the public domain. In the US specifically (post 1988) the terms of use of the platform would probably need to explicitly have you release your copyrights on the content before you post, to make it clear that the content is to be treated that way. But I'm saying, the spirit of a public social network where everyone is free to engage with the text of other people's posts, is that the content is "in the public domain". Unless you can provide an alternative context and definition of "public domain" where you're technically correct...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

> That is not what public domain means.

FWIW, I've had a discussion with a British lawyer, IIRC British law has no specific term for what is named "public domain" in US copyright law, and the term "public domain" in UK law means "the public can access it".

How can the node copy the bytes to display the post to users and to send it to other nodes, if obeying US copyright to a T, if the node does not either have copyrights over the content or the content is sufficiently licensed in a way that allows the node those privileges?

I can see how my wording was confusing. Sorry. Just focus on this:

> 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'm arguing that copyright in and of itself does not grant you the right to control how owned copies of your work are used. This is evident by the first sale doctrine.

You can choose to only distribute your work with an attached license that does not confer ownership rights. And because of the license I've agreed to I can't do anything with that work that would breach the license agreement. And because you didn't transfer ownership to me of an actual copy of the work, the first sale doctrine does not apply. And I'm not allowed to copy that work, because of copyright. The limits you've imposed on the work are because of the license not because of copyright.

There's no component of copyright that statutorily grants an author any control of the transitive flow of copyrighted content. It's all in the license.