Most instances don’t have a specific copyright in their ToS, which is basically how copyright is handled on corporate social media (Meta/X/Reddit owns license rights to whatever you post on their platform when you click “Agree”). I’ve noticed some people including Copyright notices in posts (mostly to prevent AI use). Is this necessary, or is the creator the automatic copyright owner? Does adding the copyright/license information do anything?
Please note if you have legal credentials in your reply. (I’m in the USA, but I’d be interested to hear about other jurisdictions if there are differences)
I think this is a very fine distinction that would have to be settled in court and could go either way. I can only say what I think it should do. And to be honest I think copyright is garbage, but for it be consistent I don’t think that this difference should matter.
I think an important distinction for me with federation though is that it’s not just a push, you have to subscribe, so it’s a two way street. It would be similar to an RSS feed, and I’m not aware of that having any particular implications for copyright. There is certainly no explicit acknowledgement of terms baked into either protocol, so I think the only reasonable conclusion should be that it doesn’t impact copyright either way. That remains unlicensed and subject to the normal rules, which presuppose that permission is not granted.