> In exactly the same way that the books in my local public library are freely accessibly to the public, yes. I'm sure that you're aware there are so many things you can't legally do with books in your local public library. Reddit isn't substantially different... go read the "User Agreement" contract that governs use of the site when you get a free hour or two.

I don't think those user agreements are really enforceable or should be enforceable given how the public utilizes them. That's a digression though.

With respect to your library example, the difference is the author made the big with an intent to sell. There is a market for the book, it has some value as evidenced by the sale of the book. Public Reddit comments have no marketable value on their own. If Reddit doesn't want the public to use them, they must protect them. Potentially via the State, but generally they would have to take some other protective measure.

> You can totally prevent me from -among other things- making many sorts of commercial uses of your post, but -as I'm sure you know- the made-up system you're gesturing at not how software licenses have worked for roughly as long as software has been a thing that was commonly licensed.

How things work now or in the past can change. Maybe you're just slow to adopting a new paradigm? I can't prevent you from doing anything with my post unless you go on to make enough money that it is worthwhile. But if you just use it for your own private coffee cup there's nothing I can do nor is there anything the State is interested in doing about it. Similarly you can deconstruct Reddit comments into individual ones and assess the value, but the value is 0. Aggregating those into something useful is economically useful and Reddit doesn't really own the data if they are publishing it for free, the users do, despite what either party says.

It's similar to how copying != stealing. First you have to prove I'd have bought the movie. Second of all you have to enforce cases where I might accidentally see it I was walking down the street and someone was playing it in their living room. If you can't enforce it, you don't really own it.

Information economics is difficult because it's a mix of different things.