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?
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.
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.
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.
