[telltruth]

The data created by people should be owned by people. They should have right to decide if it can be distributed free or with charge through APIs, archrivals etc. I absolutely don't understand how Reddit, Twitter, Yelp etc think that they own the data and be the gatekeeper for the content they didn't create.

[trompetenaccoun]

The reason they assume they own our data is that when social media platforms became popular, they put these rights in their terms and got away with it, because most of us don't read the legal fine print. But now more and more are waking up to the fact that we got a bad deal. Take a look at Reddit's ToS for example (HN has a similar clause btw):

>By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

By moving to self-hosting through protocols like IPFS or Arweave, and having social applications built on top, two problems can be solved at once.

1. Your data isn't locked in anymore. All your social media posts, images, etc can be shared with multiple platforms at the same time. If you quit one of them your data won't disappear because all you did is grant them access, it's still in your control. This completely eliminated the issue with moving apps and having to start anew each time.

2. You can be in control of all rights. You can grant the platforms non-exclusive licenses if you see a benefit in that, or you can restrict them from making money with your content without paying you royalties. It's all up to the user.

[azangru]

> I absolutely don't understand how Reddit, Twitter, Yelp etc think that they own the data and be the gatekeeper for the content they didn't create.

Suppose you are hosting a wordpress blog with a comments section. Some people leave occasional comments in your blog — god knows why. Some people may even start arguing with each other in the comments section. Their comments are stored on your server. Don't you own them? Can't you delete them? Can't you disable the comments any time you wish?

Suppose now you are hosting a bulletin board, where more people are posting their messages. Don't you own all that? After all, the texts are stored on your server. Can't you delete the board at any point, or run data analysis on the posts, or even send targeted messages to your users, etc.?

Now scale this mentally to reddit, etc. At which point do you start arguing that the service doesn't own the data that it stores?

[dale_glass]

> Some people may even start arguing with each other in the comments section. Their comments are stored on your server. Don't you own them?

Kinda no. As per copyright law, each comment is automatically copyrighted by the poster. If somebody slips up and pastes their novel in a comment, that doesn't grant you permission to print and sell it.

> Can't you delete them? Can't you disable the comments any time you wish?

That you can

> Now scale this mentally to reddit, etc. At which point do you start arguing that the service doesn't own the data that it stores?

Copyright law always applies, and the post are always the property of their writer. The site has a license to use them in a limited fashion. To try to do otherwise is likely a terrible idea.

I'd argue while it's fuzzy, there's a distinction between people coming to your blog because it's your blog and leaving a "This!" or a question, and people building their own community on your infrastructure.

Eg, you probably don't want to grant that AWS owns your entire website just because it's hosted on it, right? The main thing about your website is your work, AWS is merely the replaceable infrastructure to run it.

[pjc50]

> each comment is automatically copyrighted by the poster

This is why services usually make it a condition of being allowed to post in the first place that you grant them a worldwide perpetual irrevocable license to the content, via the EULA.

And you can see why: having to ask all the users for permission in the future is completely infeasible, so just ask once upfront for everything.

[AndrewKemendo]

It’s not infeasible it’s just not in the near term economic interest of the server owner to help facilitate the commenter’s rights

This is one of the biggest STRUCTURAL issues with the legal structure of property - you are not incentivized for supporting a common good.

The technology to build an embeddable comment widget on top of a framework that would compensate commenters based on their inputs is trivial at this point.

Good luck funding such a project though because every source of capital wants infinite return. So unless you’re willing to volunteer your technical time or have your own money to spend nobody will create and grow services like that because the economic incentives aren’t aligned between people who want to invest and … society at large at this point

[PrimeMcFly]

> Kinda no. As per copyright law, each comment is automatically copyrighted by the poster. If somebody slips up and pastes their novel in a comment, that doesn't grant you permission to print and sell it.

The way around this is to make users agree to some terms of use to assign rights when signing up, which is what Reddit did.

[dale_glass]

Yes, but it's still a limited license to use it. The primary ownership is still with the comment writer.

[PrimeMcFly]

It really depends what's in the terms the user agreed to.

[dale_glass]

You can look it up, you retain copyright.

And while Reddit does have you agree to giving permission to almost anything, they'd be nuts to take that too far. If eg, Stephen King goofed and pasted his upcoming book into a comment mid-AMA, I don't think Reddit would fare well in court if they tried to argue the TOS gave them the right to do turn that into a book.