[Cthulhu_]

Agreed, this is what you agreed to (implicitly or explicitly) when uploading stuff to the internet. In fact, open source embraces this (hence the 'open').

But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license. Not that a license stops things from being indexed.

[II2II]

> Agreed, this is what you agreed to (implicitly or explicitly) when uploading stuff to the internet.

A more pragmatic approach is to acknowledge that concerning one's self with how something is used once it has been released is an emotional drain. It is a bit much to suggest that someone agreed to something, even if that agreement is implicit, just because they released it.

> But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license.

Licences are meaningless unless you have the ability to enforce them (e.g. to sue). That's why so many companies are willing to ignore the terms of open source licenses. It's also why the attempts of enforcement that we do hear about are usually backed by a third party, rather than being done by the software developer themselves. Simply put, the individual developer (or even small project) trying to make a contribution to the community would be better served by not publishing (instead of using a restrictive license) if they are concerned about how their work is used.

I don't even know if there is a good way to resolve the problem. Consider something like a DMCA Takedown notice. It removes the administrative and legal overhead to copyright infringement, yet it is also easy to abuse. For example: businesses have weaponized it by using it against individuals. Perhaps my cynicism is taking over here, but I suspect any easily accessible mechanism for enforcement would be similarly abused.

[TeMPOraL]

> But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license. Not that a license stops things from being indexed.

Right. In fact, people are also free to publish things with licenses that condition access on compensating the author/publisher, and they have both social and legal backing to enforce it. This is called "proprietary", and it's not a wrong choice - in fact outside of software, it's the default choice.

The problem is when people publish "free" and "open" as a marketing tactic, where in fact they really want to control and charge for access (whether dollars or karma or credit). That is just plain dishonesty.