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What copyright license is content posted on this instance (or Lemmy in general) assumed to be? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by zerakith@lemmy.ml to c/meta@lemmy.ml

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Since Reddit is now explicitly planning to sell user generated content for AI training. It got me thinking about Lemmy.

What license are posts and comments assumed to be under on this instance? Is there an overarching lemmy policy (there doesn't seem to be)?

Is it down to the user to specify, if so how?

Are there any downsides with adopting a Creative Commons or other copyleft license?

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[–] peto@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

IANAL, of course.

My understanding is that there is no such thing as an assumed licence for copyrighted work. The default is that there is no license and the owner reserves all rights. A license is a way to assign some or all of those rights to another entity.

The downside to copyleft is that you are giving up some of the ability to control the work, and it becomes harder to monetize as some people will question why they should pay for something they can have for free.

As far as I know, you can't use copyright to prevent someone from reading something that has been legally distributed to them. There are also some exceptions your government includes in copyright, like you can be quoted for the purposes of commentary and criticism, there may be exceptions for copies made for educational purposes or an exception that allows the government to make a copy for their archives, or if someone has legal access they might be able to make copies for personal use.

In all cases check your local laws. Copy left is a way to exploit these laws to allow humans to more easily benefit from your work but keep exploitative entities away. All of these only work within a legal framework however.

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

Had introductory courses in Germany, and here it's pretty much like you say. By default, any content has all protections by law, i.e. it basically can't be used for anything except fair use like you say, satire or something.