Minds Post License Agreement Options

As many community members are aware, the Minds browser based user interface had a number of upgrades and changes being implemented back in March. One of these changes was the introduction of the new Compose modal dialog box with the inclusion of the already present visibility settings (which gives community members the ability to choose if their posts are accessible by non logged-in / non registered viewers, only logged-in viewers or have their posts be unlisted, so that the posts are not included within any feed). The Compose dialog box introduced a new group of options which allows the post’s creator to choose a license agreement (please note that as of the current date of publishing this blog article, the license agreement options are only available within the browser interface. The options are currently not available within the mobile app).

The licensing options provides community members with a choice of publishing their posts with the inclusion of either a “all rights reserved” license or one of several Creative Commons based license agreements. Currently, the post’s licensing options provides no actual functionality and are not displayed within the resulting, viewable posts (please note that the licensing options also include a number of grammatical errors, which I created a Gitlab ticket for in June and this issue has yet to be resolved). 

Back in May 2018, I published a blog article (entitled: open source, creative commons and license agreements) which examines aspects of various open source based license agreements, including exploring the differences between several Creative Commons based agreements. 

With the recent addition of the Quote Post facility, as well as the ability to remind posts, I consider that the usage of these license options have relevance when providing access to the posts.

I recently posted an enquiry to the official Minds Help and Support group. This enquiry asked about the purpose of the license agreement options. I also asked both staff and community members to add their thoughts within the post’s comments section (as well as further communicating with several community members within private conversations). Apart from a staff representative adding an initial comment (which I further elaborated on, as well as asking about the relevance of the license agreements in relation to both Reminds and Quote Posts), none of the staff provided any further comments (I would like to thank all community members who added comments to the enquiry).

After waiting 10 days after the enquiry was published, I reviewed the comment section and started preparing this blog article. After careful thought about the overarching issues and considering the various comments, I have come up with the following recommendations.

Remove The Creative Commons Attributions (CC BY) Agreement
Within the context of Minds, I consider that the Creative Commons Attributions ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license agreement serves exactly the same purpose as provided by the Creative Commons Attributions (CC BY) agreement and therefore, I am recommending that the CC BY agreement is removed from the available options.

Disallow Posts Which Have The “All Rights Reserved” Agreement Selected From Being Able To Be Reminded And Quote Posted
Considering the Remind and Quote Post facilities, I believe that it would make logical sense to disallow any posts which includes the “all right reserved” agreement from being able to be reminded and quote posted.

Disallow Posts Which Have Either The Creative Commons Attributions-NonDerivative (CC BY-ND) Or The Creative Commons Attributions-NonCommercial-NonDerivative (CC BY-NC-ND) Agreements Selected From Being Able To Be Quote Posted
Further considering the above “all rights reserved” point, I also believe that it would make logical sense to disallow any posts which includes either the Creative Commons Attributions-NonDerivative (CC BY-ND) or the Creative Commons Attributions-NonCommercial-NonDerivative (CC BY-NC-ND) agreements from being able to be quote posted.

It is worth noting that the contents of any post can be reused under certain circumstances (ie. for the purpose of criticism, parody, news reporting, research or education) without needing to seek the permission of the post’s creator, as defined by section 107 of the United States of America's Copyright Act - 1976 (17 USC § 107).

Provide The Creative Commons Attributions-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) Agreement As The Default Option
Considering that the “all rights reserved” agreement is currently the default option, as well as also considering the above Remind and Quote Post points, I am recommending that the Creative Commons Attributions-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) agreement becomes the default option. This also means that any posts that were published before this change has been implemented will also change from having the “all rights reserved” agreement selected to having the CC BY-SA agreement being selected by default.

Include A License Agreement Indicator Within The Resulting Post
As I have stated above, there is currently no indication of which license agreement is selected within the resulting, viewable post. This means that community members cannot see which agreement is applicable for any single post and therefore, I am recommending that an indicator (either text based or appropriate icons) is added to the resulting, viewable posts.

Include A Brief Explanation Of The Above Changes Within Minds Policy Agreement Documentation
As a means of providing clarity, I am recommending that there is additional information regarding the above changes to be included within either the Minds terms of service agreement or the Minds content policy.

On further reflection, I believe that the above recommendations give content creators more power to be able to decide how they distribute their posts. 

One of the fundamental principles of the open source movement is to give individuals the choice how their works are shared. I consider that without this principle, open source would be an irrelevant and non workable concept.

References & Other Resources:
* Help And Support Enquiry 
* Open Source, Creative Commons And License Agreements
* Post License Agreement Options (Gitlab Issue: Front#4222)
* Grammatical & Sentence Structure Inconsistencies Within Post 
   (Compose) License Agreement Options (Gitlab Issue: Front#3181)
* Technology & Open Source Blog