<story><title>Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code</title><url>https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/10/trumps-new-social-media-platform-found-using-mastodon-code/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>usui</author><text>Does a history of enforcement help in cases like this? The article itself says that Truth Social is &amp;quot;antithetical&amp;quot; to Mastodon&amp;#x27;s values, but that there&amp;#x27;s nothing they can do about the usage of their software other than license violations. It sounds like they have a bias to enforce their license in this case.&lt;p&gt;If Mastodon has a weak history of enforcing their license to other organizations, does it weaken the case? I&amp;#x27;m wondering if selective enforcement in the software-licensing world hurts the authority or credibility of a license, in the eyes of the law.&lt;p&gt;My wondering was somewhat inspired by the way Nintendo aggressively polices the appearance of its video game trademarks on places like YouTube and basically the rest of the internet. I hear an argument is that if they don&amp;#x27;t aggressively enforce their trademark policing, their legal position wouldn&amp;#x27;t be as strong if they want to pursue a big violation in the future.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FemmeAndroid</author><text>No, unlike trademark law, copyright law does not require consistent enforcement to maintain.  (Copyright law is the basis of the license.)&lt;p&gt;Also, stating a bias does not imply selective enforcement.  I don’t think there are many examples of mastodon instances breaching the terms of the license, and certainly not at this scale.</text></comment>
<story><title>Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code</title><url>https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/10/trumps-new-social-media-platform-found-using-mastodon-code/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>usui</author><text>Does a history of enforcement help in cases like this? The article itself says that Truth Social is &amp;quot;antithetical&amp;quot; to Mastodon&amp;#x27;s values, but that there&amp;#x27;s nothing they can do about the usage of their software other than license violations. It sounds like they have a bias to enforce their license in this case.&lt;p&gt;If Mastodon has a weak history of enforcing their license to other organizations, does it weaken the case? I&amp;#x27;m wondering if selective enforcement in the software-licensing world hurts the authority or credibility of a license, in the eyes of the law.&lt;p&gt;My wondering was somewhat inspired by the way Nintendo aggressively polices the appearance of its video game trademarks on places like YouTube and basically the rest of the internet. I hear an argument is that if they don&amp;#x27;t aggressively enforce their trademark policing, their legal position wouldn&amp;#x27;t be as strong if they want to pursue a big violation in the future.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cedilla</author><text>In general, you don&amp;#x27;t have any obligation to enforce your rights.&lt;p&gt;There is the well-known exception of trademark law, but that&amp;#x27;s in the nature of the matter. If PepsiCo sells Coca-Cola and the Coca-Cola company doesn&amp;#x27;t react, then the trade mark obviously doesn&amp;#x27;t allow customers to identify genuine Coca-Cola.</text></comment>