Copycenter is a method for guaranteeing user autonomy by using copyright not to restrict freedom, but to protect it. A Copycenter license grants broad rights to use, study, modify, and share the Software, while ensuring that no one can add systems that compromise anonymity, restrict expression, or impose identity‑linked compliance on any user.
Many licenses allow sharing but do nothing to prevent downstream distributors from adding surveillance, filtering, or other mechanisms that undermine user freedom. A program may begin its life as privacy‑respecting software, yet be redistributed later with tracking, biometric verification, or censorship systems attached. Users who receive that modified version lose the autonomy the original author intended to preserve.
Copycenter exists to prevent that outcome. It ensures that every user receives the Software free from Privacy Threats and Filtering, and that no intermediary can impose such systems as a condition of access. Anyone who redistributes the Software, with or without changes, must pass along the same freedoms and the same protections.
This creates a powerful incentive for contributors: improvements can be shared without fear that their work will be used to build surveillance systems or identity‑linked compliance tools. Copycenter guarantees that contributions remain part of an ecosystem that respects anonymity and expression.
To apply Copycenter, the author asserts copyright and then attaches distribution terms that grant broad freedoms while prohibiting the addition or enforcement of Privacy Threats or Filtering. These terms ensure that the Software and the freedoms it embodies remain legally inseparable.
Where proprietary licenses use copyright to restrict users, and traditional copyleft uses copyright to preserve sharing, Copycenter uses copyright to preserve autonomy. It is a licensing model built for a world where privacy is increasingly threatened, and where the ability to use software without identification, tracking, or censorship is essential to personal freedom.
Copycenter is a general concept; the specific terms used to implement it are defined in the E-1.0 PPL License.