@Liwott

So that we may end this long and dreadful conversation:

Your argument is that if you put no license on your online content, then it automatically becomes restricted, from a law perspective (at least in certain parts of the world). Meaning, in this case society does not care what the owner wants to do with their work, they force them to make them restricted from the get-go.

This could be true, I do not know. Let's take it as true. Ok.

Then your argument is that licenses are necessary in such a situation since they can allow others to use your content. With a license you have some "freedoms" that result from a default and restrictive situation to begin with. But without a license you are only left with the default restrictions.

In that sense, your argument is that licenses are good because they provide some freedoms.

I hope I got it right.

Now looking at things in this way, I can see how you are interpreting the situation as positive in terms of licenses that give you permission to copy, distribute, and so forth.

Now my argument is this:

I totally understand why many good people use licenses so that they can do all of these and protect themselves from future lawsuits too. They are forced. And I argue that this is done because of this trade-based society. If we were not to be traumatized every day by trade, trade, trade, and thus accumulate, own, accumulate more, we would not need any licenses to begin with, especially for digital stuff that can be endlessly replicated. I understand your argument that some may want some sort of “licenses” so that the credits are given to the originator, but I argue that this is not an important driver of how licenses are used overall.

I also say that the work I do is simply there and anyone can use it as they wish. I put no license to it because I fully disagree with how we do things today. I label my work as trade-free, so that no one needs to trade anything with me in order to get what I’ve created. A pure form of free. I understand that from a “legal” standpoint my work is restricted apparently, but not restricted by me (the owner) which is beyond ridiculous; but I give no fucks (to put it mildly). ‘legally” I was not allowed to share my life with Sasha, because of our “visa” issues. Laws are primitive concepts and I refuse to accept them as imposing over my life.

All that being said, licenses are mostly a reaction of a traumatized society, because of trade primarily. And I refuse the concept of any license. Everything we do, we do it in a humane way and ask nothing in return for it.

I do what I do at TROM, the way we do it, and that's the most important thing when it comes to our content. If I made the content, I have a say in what to do with it, not the society. And we say it is trade-free. If people cannot “trust” us from a “legal” perspective simply because we have no “license” attached to this work, then they do not understand TROM anyway and I could not care less.

Is this a fair analysis for you?

In practice, nobody imposes anyone to exercise that right.

True, but that "right" is added by default to your work. Which I think is not a good practice.

If you put your work online without any statement on whether people can use it, then you keep your right of accusing them of stealing it.

But online there can be no theft. Only copying. That's why I find these approaches "nonsensical". No one can steal your work. The only (or at least main) reason that people are bothered by that is as we explained: trade. They can lose their trading advantage if their work is attributed to others that are making a profit off of it. At times can be an issue of the owner not wanting their work to be attributed to others, I get that, but as I said before that is likely not a huge force behind this entire situation.

if I see a pie with a "free pie" note and take a bite, nothing happens; if I see a pie with nothing written and take a bite, I can be accused of stealing that bite.

The analogy cannot work for digital stuff. It is more like if you come across a pie recipe and you take a photo of it to make the pie at home. Even if the pie recipe doesn't have a sign saying: you can take a photo and make your own pie. Anyway....digitally all is different. When you publish something on a public website, you...well...publish publicly. Accept search engines to crawl and index your site and all that. It is like putting your apple pie on a public dinner table where you know everyone came to eat, and you expect others to eat your pie too.

If you want, it is about people so traumatized by trade that they cannot believe right away that your trade-free approach is genuine. Licensing your work can give them some garantee so that they can embrace the trade-free approach without having to bet on your good faith.

You can take it that way too, but since we always mention our stuff is trade-free and make it obvious, then whoever knows about TROM knows about that too.