Notice is hereby given to #Meta Corp. by this account, and all signatories, that all data rights are reserved. No license is granted other than those limited rights as per the account's instance Privacy Policy (eg. https://mastodon.online/privacy-policy).
Specifically no authorization is given for: 1) Monetization in any way, 2) Profiling for targeted advertising or other purpose, 3) AI, LLM or algorithm training.
@nicktron The difference is you have not agreed to Facebook (or Meta) Terms of Service. There is nothing silly about admonishing someone that they can not legally exploit your data. It is your copyright.
@mastodonmigration look I wish you well on your adventure here but it has no teeth and would never stand up in court. If you were fishing for engagement, well you got it. Sorry it’s not working out for ya.
@mastodonmigration You do realize these pseudo legal sounding crap posts do absolutely nothing right? It's just like those old email forwards you'd get from your parents.
"Send this to 10 people or your dog will become a cat at the next full moon and eat your birthday cake"
@taubin There is nothing complicated about notifying someone that you are aware of your rights and reserve them. If you do not think it would be of any use, you are under no obligation to do so.
@wendinoakland Of course not. But it is a statement, analogous to putting up a No Trespassing sign. It won't in itself keep them from doing whatever it is they intend to do. But if they do overreach, they will have been on notice that you explicitly did not consent.
It has been noted by @codepope in the comments that this notice could be interpreted as an "implicit grant of license to do all those things as long as you aren’t Meta." This is expressly not the case. "All data rights are reserved." No license is granted to any party. #Meta is noticed specifically because of their potential federation with the #Fediverse and their history of user data exploitation.
@mastodonmigration@Extelec Explicitly not signing this. If nothing else because it’s an implicit grant of license to do all those things as long as you aren’t Meta.
@codepope@Extelec Hmmmm. Appreciate your comment, but disagree with your premise. By analogy, giving someone notice who has a history of trespassing that they better not trespass on your property does not invite everyone else to trespass on your property.
Agree that the scope could be widened for clarity, but not that there is any implicit granting of rights in the notice.
Agree that this is not going to deter any behavior, but may have some value in a subsequent enforcement action. That is, "we explicitely warned you, and you did it anyway..."
@mastodonmigration@Extelec also if you want to make it explicit, doing it in the unsearxhable fediverse is going to count against you - consider driving it as a change.org petition with a time limit and when that limit is hit, it’s printed and physically served on Facebook/Meta - Nick Clegg would be the ideal target.
@mastodonmigration@Extelec it does though tell everyone your attention is focussed on that party and not them. If you are concerned about the issues, then the “notice” should apply to all or you move the fight to getting instance owners to add it to their terms. As it stands a lawyer could make a pretty good case that where the data I question was outside the domain of a formal regulatory work, it would, despite any notice be fair game for analysis.
@btaroli The authority is copyright law. When you create something you own the copyright to that content, so long as you do not give those rights away no one can use your content without permission. The Mastodon Privacy Policy implies certain limited permissions, but nothing like what Meta users agree to. If Meta exploits your content in ways you have not authorized they are violating the law, and could hypothetically be subject to legal consequences.
@btaroli You are probably right. But they have been held to account in the past by the Justice Dept., EU authorities, and some well financed legal actions. The goal at this stage is just to create a record of notification, in case it should ever have relevance at some point in the future.
@mastodonmigration Doesn't this kinda break the #ActivityPub protocol in the first place? Like if you're supposedly not sure if you're legally allowed to reproduce data from another site.. How can federation even work? I suppose the protocol should have some legal writing saying that whatever you put at an API endpoint must be free to copy/show to users etc..
Can we please just abolish copyright and all IP? #aboliship
@stevenroose ActivityPub works just fine. There is a difference between displaying something which is authorized by virtue of the Privacy Policy and monetizing or scraping some else's content which is not.
@mastodonmigration Not every ActivityPub endpoint might have a privacy policy or any legal writing on what can happen with content written by its members..
Would like to answer some comments questioning the "enforceability" or "legal validity" of this notice. There tends to be a general misunderstanding of these things. The words are the words. There is not some sort of legal magic that makes them "valid". A notice is a notice. In this case, it is just saying we are giving you notice that we reserve our rights, and we expressly don't agree to let you use our content for things you do not have the legal right to do.
The context in which such a notice could potentially come up, is in some hypothetical future enforcement action. This notice would not secure any rights as those are defined in the Privacy Policy, but it could potentially be relevant that prior notice had been given.
Let's try a simple analogy. Generally people are not allowed to trespass on your property. You don't have to put up a sign. However, if you do put up a sign and they do it anyway, it is relevant if you subsequently take action. There is no "legally valid" sign. Pretty much any No Trespassing sign will do.
@mastodonmigration
Also, copyright is copyright, and is yours unless you sign it away... a point that seems to be lost on some U.S. judges. Being publicly available doesn't mean you're free to do what you want with it! That's like saying it's legal to record things off the TV/radio and do what you want with it. i.e. piracy. Songs are broadcast on the radio (via licensing), but the artist retains copyright - not sure what's wrong with the lawyers who failed to bring up this simple analogy.
In other words, nothing has changed between legal, data and tech since 1995 in a lot of businesses. The first ones who did make a "little bit" of change are typically in the EU.
@mastodonmigration Don't see the harm in this, even if it's likely unenforceable. Few #OSS licenses that probably wished they'd contemplated AI training etc
@leafless AI training is going to become a major issue in the future. It makes sense to be explicit about not allowing use of one's content for this purpose.
As to enforceability, it seems there is some misunderstanding about this. The context in which such a notice could potentially come up, is in some hypothetical future action. This notice would not secure any rights as those are defined in the Privacy Policy, but it could potentially be relevant that prior notice had been given.
@leafless Right. There again, there tends to be a general misunderstanding of these things. The words are the words. There is not some sort of legal magic that makes them "valid". A notice is what it is, a notice. In this case, it is just saying we are giving you notice that we reserve our rights, and we expressly don't agree to let you use our content for things you do not have the legal right to do.
@leafless Let's try a simple analogy. Generally people are not allowed to trespass on your property. You don't have to put up a sign. However, if you do put up a sign and they do it anyway, it is relevant if you subsequently take legal action. There is no "legally valid" sign. Pretty much any No Trespassing sign will do.
@video_manager The purpose is simply to give notice for the record that we retain all our data rights. That's it. As to "binding effect", not sure what you mean. The words are the words. The effect is to serve notice.
It serves notice of nothing. It is every bit as adult and relevant as a three year old telling mommy "I hereby serve notice that all requests require you to give me ice cream, including bath time"
@video_manager In this case, it is explicit notice to a major corporation that we retain our content data rights, and do not consent to them using our copyrighted content for purposes other than those defined in the Mastodon Privacy Policy. That's it. Your dismissive analogy is flawed.
@video_manager@mastodonmigration AFAIU the situation here, this is not eben trying to be legal text. The legal text is in the copyright laws. That protect ones work as property and disallows anyone else to use your work without your consent. So given that many of us here have in no way relaxed these rights we have as wel copyright law, no party has the right to use what we write here for comercial or other purposes. The OP is just trying to remind Meta of that fact.
@video_manager@mastodonmigration The only relevance that might have in any legal potential future legal proceeding might be that when Meta claims "we didn't know" or "why do you tell us now and not earlier?" that you can point out here that we told them.
I guess that only holds if due diligence is taken to ensure this post actually reaches them.
@alexpostfacto It is just a simple statement notifying Meta that they do not have a right to exploit our content. Nothing fancy about it. If you feel that it is useless, you should not sign it. You have not signed up for Meta ToS so they do not have a license to your content anyway.
@simmagolda Just making it very clear to Meta that they do not have permission to exploit Fediverse content the same way they exploit the content of users of their software who agree to Meta Terms of Service when they sign up for Meta applications like Facebook, Instagram and now Threads.
@mastodonmigration@simmagolda
But isn't that why they're here?
And, just hypothetically, if you post a toot and it appears on a thread timeline, and M monetizes that toot, how would anyone know?
@arthunter@simmagolda Good question. It could possibly become known if there are gross obvious violations. It is impossible to predict what might happen. The purpose here is simply notify Meta that we reserve all of our legal rights to our content.
@mastodonmigration@1dalm Google books successfully argued fair use for their work because they added search functionality to paper books.
Say that Meta add search functionality to Mastodon posts which don't have search in most cases, what is to stop them arguing the same fair use pattern?
@merospit@1dalm This is certainly a complicated area of the law, and it is impossible to predict how future data rights lawsuits might be resolved. The purpose here is to give notice that we reserved all of our data rights. Should it ever become necessary to defend them at some point in the future, this will be part of the record.
@sammydee It may not be necessary, as Meta's content rights are limited to all Fediverse users content by the respective Privacy Policy, but it does not hurt to provide specific notice to #Meta of the limitations of those rights. If they violate these rights, they will have been specifically enumerated in this notice. We are building a record.
@mastodonmigration Was the language reviewed / created by a lawyer? Does it actually do anything or is it just worded fancy to make non-lawyers think that it does? Best to focus people on things that actually work legally, not hopeful snopes-level magic. Folks post stuff like this to FB itself all the time, legitimately deluded into thinking it works. Best to make the effort here more fact-based than that. :)
@sammydee It is a simple restatement of our rights to our data. There is nothing fancy about it. The purpose is to clarify to Meta that we understand our rights and do not consent to exploitation of our data beyond those uses defined in the Privacy Policy to which we agreed. If you do not want to notify Meta that you are aware of these rights that is fine. You are protected anyway, but it seems like a good idea at this time to create a record of such notification.
@staidwinnow@sammydee This is true. But Meta and Twitter are not above the law, and they have been burned repeatedly by violating it. We are not powerless.
@staidwinnow@mastodonmigration Perhaps. And yet it's better to have actual lawyers helping out than well meaning amateurs writing pseudo-legal things. The former MIGHT be useful. The latter clearly won't be.
@sammydee@staidwinnow That is your assertion. It may or may not be true. Whether it does any good or not, it is never-the-less part of the record that they have been admonished by signatories to this notice that we do not consent to their exploitation of our data. In any case, you are correct in that it certainly would be good to have a professional legal component to the defense of the Fediverse from Meta.
@mastodonmigration so it's like that chainmail that was circulating Facebook a decade ago,.except that this time it might mean something because it's "our" servers, not "theirs"?
@TOrynski@mastodonmigration My thoughts exactly. I've been seeing similar stuff on different platforms since 2008, but only because that's around the time I started to frequent online spaces. Older users have probably been seeing them for even longer.
@targea_caramar As @TOrynski points out, the difference here is that your content rights are defined by your agreement, the Privacy Policy, and not by the Meta Terms of Service. In the Facebook case, those rights had been assigned, here they have not.
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