cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/2881638
The largest piracy community is hosted over at !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
lemmy.world has blocked it. It appears to have also blocked !piracy@lemmy.ml.
If this is a problem for you, I’d suggest migrating accounts using LASIM to an instance that doesn’t block it (such as lemm.ee).
edit:
An official announcement has been made:
Might be worth remembering here that Lemmy instances, including .world are hosted by regular people. Not massive multinational companies worth billions who can engage the best legal talent around.
If Hollywood comes after a Lemmy instance, Holywood have a huge legal team and endless money. The Lemmy instance has some guy. They could quite literally destroy a persons life. With that in mind, I don’t blame any instance owners for erring on the side of taking a stance that won’t put them in the legal firing line.
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It’s be nice if there’d been some discussion first, and perhaps a solution other than an admin vanishing a community without notice. Even just some text informing the user “You can’t see this content on lemmy.world. Please go to the instance directly”.
Regardless if the decision is understandable, the method used here is not going to sit well with people. After how many years of spez, these kinds of behind the scenes snap decisions that change the site overnight with no apparent regard for the community is going to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. It wouldn’t have hurt to bring it to the community rather than just shadow banning without a word.
Not even because there needed to be a discussion, but just as a basic courtesy.
It doesn’t inspire confidence or endear the instance to its users.
Even just some text informing the user “You can’t see this content on lemmy.world. Please go to the instance directly"
That would have to be supported by Lemmy, which I believe is currently not the case.
You’re welcome to go to a different instance. That’s the entire point of lemmy. If you don’t like how an instance is ran you can go somewhere else.
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Protecting himself from what? The community hosts literally zero pirated content.
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I’m confused, Are they actually hosting anything illegal?
No. .world is just afraid of everything. Better they shut down their instance.
Not sa far as I know.
No, but that hasn’t stopped IP holders from bad faith litigations in the past.
Why would Hollywood come after them? It is not like people are sharing movies there. Posts there are etremely mild.
Sony Music is currently coming after DNS provider Quad9 for resolving a piracy related domain, and they’ve succeeded in two courts so far. At this point I don’t think any copyright lawsuit is too stupid to happen.
Oh man I had forgotten about that thing, it’d be so awful if they end up never winning the case, I really like what Quad9 does and stands for
I’m not saying they are or aren’t. I’m simply saying that we all know the big media companies go after people at the drop of a hat. They recently tried to get reddit to expose the identities of people discussing piracy over there. To their credit reddit told them no and defended themselves legally. And that’s the issue. The media companies can accuse anyone of anything if it even slightly smells like piracy and the target has to legally defend themselves. This is fine if you’re a multibillion valued company. Not so fine if you’re just some guy who just wanted to run a Lemmy instance out of his own pocket.
For me, it looks like people are mad at the US defaultism of the decision.
I understand why. It makes for part of the users no sense as they are protected by the law. It looks like a US “shitshow”. Countries are protecting the IP of the person, making it nearly impossible to pursue someone. Others have law allowing the use and the copy of copyrighted material for educational purposes. Some allow the download of copyrighted material.
It’s the same with GDPR. Meta must comply. There is no exception because US defaultism.
And we can understand this point of view too. It’s not binary as the US people think it is. It’s more mixed depending of the country.
Generally, outside of this drama, on the internet, people are reclaiming they right and don’t want the US “example” anymore. They want the internet following their local laws like the GDPR for Europeans. They have the right to claim it. Thanks to GDPR, mandatory usb-c, battery replacement and others laws in Europe and outside, the consciences of are awakened that the US is not the model to follow in terms of law on the internet and technologies.
lemmy.world is hosted in Finland hence they don’t probably live in us
Some of the comments in here are a fucking disgrace and a disappointment.
I just shut down my own self-hosted instance the other week because of legal concerns. Caching anything and everything that gets pushed to my server and basically having to put all my faith in other admins taking care of illegal stuff in a timely manner was stressful and not worth the risk. And that was a solo instance!
It’s only a matter of time until lawyers backed by millions of dollar come knocking on the door of lemmy admins and I can’t fault lw for being pro-active. Whether or not it’s legal in your jurisdiction to host communities like this doesn’t matter at all if you’re not the one with a name attached to the server. Even wrongful legal claims by copyright holders are costly and time intensive to fight back against.
Why should a private person who hosts an instance for thousands of users for free subject themselves to such a risk?
It’s unfortunate, but it’s kinda understandable why they chose to do so. The admins are just a bunch of regular people, they may not have the financial security to risk the legal issues that could come from having any sort of piracy related content.
I guess I’ll just be using my alt acc for piracy stuff.
Situations like these are the strength of the fediverse. Move your account to an instance that shares your values or doesn’t care about stuff like this.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Edit: Didn’t mean to ridicule any of you all. I based my comment on my experience when I signed up. At that time there were plenty of instances to pick from and getting approved at my instance of choice was very quick. My bad.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Maybe I didn’t have my crystal ball nearby when I was creating my Lemmy account.
Maybe many users will have an account on the largest server, because by definition it’s the largest server, with the most users. 🙄
I highly recommend opening a lurking account in one of the NSFW instances. They are probably some of the fastest, most progressive and best funded instances on Lemmy. You do not have to browse the NSFW content.
I don’t think that makes sense if you’re worried about defederation. Porn instances are particularly at risk of being defederated from (and thus you potentially can’t interact with large communities).
No I swear I just have an account there for all the SFW stuff!!!
Also, they don’t ask for your email! A friend told me that.
What’s their email? ;-D
It’s so easy to change instances, and there are extensions and things to export/import your subscriptions, etc. Just head over to one ones that’s hosting the content, or check out others to see if they will keep federated with the pirate communities. Make the same username, and most won’t even know that you’re posting from a different instance. You can still see everything you did before, just also possibly some other stuff. You might also get beehaw and hexbear (for better or for worse is up to you)! I feel like I might hop instances a few more times before I settle.
It’s so easy to change instances, and there are extensions and things to export/import your subscriptions, etc.
Hmmm
Okay, you’re not on Reddit anymore where things are just easy because they spent time to figure it out. Fediverse is just a fledging group of sites that are getting an influx of users, while still trying to figure out both their instance, and cooperative rules that fit both their values and the wants/needs of their users. You want a well oiled machine, jump back into the mainstream where they use your data to personalize the adds they place between all the things you want to see. Or, you can go with the flow as this new ecosystem forms, sans ads, and free of data collection.
It’s fine if you’re not ready.
because by definition it’s the largest server, with the most users. 🙄
Which generally means it’ll be the slowest and most overloaded. With federated systems, it’s best to avoid large instances.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Some of us made our accounts on lemmy.world within a week(?) of its creation when it was tiny (June 5 for me). Doesn’t stop it from belonging on mildly infuriating
It wasn’t the largest when some of us joined…
There was 1000 people about when I signed up.
I don’t remember where it was for me, but I do remember it being the hop-on point for me into Lemmy because it was already well populated, so I figured it meant “good”. Now that I understand lemmy better, I’ve realized I don’t need to patron it anymore - there are better instances for me. I suspect that this is a good thing that something is causing users to move. I’m sure .world is the face of fediverse, or at least lemmy, for many at this point and will continue to grow in user base. Maybe losing users on the back end will satisfy the DDOS attackers, and also lighten the load while .world’s admin get it figured out.
Maybe this is a natural process of the fediverse?
Maybe this is a natural process of the fediverse?
on the mastodon side at least quite a few people started off on mastodon.social and migrated over to smaller instances (or in some cases migrated to entirely different software families like pleroma or misskey)
i’d go as far as to say (jokingly ofc) that you aren’t a true member of the fediverse if you didn’t migrate at least once
Is there an automated way to move my account and all content to another instance?
no
the only thing that exists is LASIM which will allow to transfert your communities, blocks and profile settings from one account to an other (but you need to create the new account first)
Keep getting an error when I go to download - “Cannot write file - access is denied”, and this is after it says that login is successful.
Not sure what OS you are using but make sure you have write permissions in the folder you’ve extracted the app to. If you’re on Windows you might want to try running it as administrator.
Thanks, that did the trick! (Additionally, moved the file from downloads to a new folder in windows)
I think the answer is not yet, but unless you’re some kind of fediverse celebrity it shouldn’t be that burdensome, right?
One benefit the Fediverse has over a centralized site is that, as long as you set the same display name and avatar, most people will recognize you after a migration. For example, I know a few fellow Lemmygrad guys who have alternate, identical Lemmy.ml accounts for posting on instances that block Lemmygrad, and you can’t even tell which account they’re using unless you visit their page.
You can use lasim.
No but I believe there is something on GitHub to help subscribe to the same communities once you create a new account.
What a snarky thing to say
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
To give credit where it’s due, when the big Reddit migration happened many instances could not handle the influx of migrating users. Some people might have only had .world as an option.
Situation still sucks tho. Hope upcoming Lemmy updates make moving accounts between instances easier.
https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim is already a pretty easy option
It was the only server that was accepting when I joined. I still have applications at a few, but never got approved. Signed up on startrek.website yesterday. I was motivated by the ddos more than any thing else.
A strength and a weakness. The strength, as you say, is being able to move to a different instance. However, the weakness is that Lemmy (the software) requires each instance to keep a copy of every federated post for its users to interact with. This means they have to host (and be legally liable for) data that they can’t police beyond blocking the community / instance.
You are completely right, but account migration also needs to become available for situations like this.
I went with lemmy world so i could catch the widest net in content. And up till now i agreed with the reasoning of the other defederating.s But it seems like it won’t take much to provoke more restrictions. Guess i will have to lurk in other shores.
This is basically what I did not that long ago.
Situations like these are the strength of the fediverse. Move your account to an instance that shares your values or doesn’t care about stuff like this.
its not a bug, its a feature! the faceless admins get to tell you watch content you can get now, not a faceless corporations! its so good that all the instances are starting a war with each other over the content they host because it means we have the choice of who gets to decide what content we like to see!.
I can sense the sarcasm of your post, yet the words you’ve written are actually true. This is exactly what decentralisation is all about. on some other websites you might lose access to the content entirely, on the fediverse you can just go there direct and still get all of the content, nobody can ever take that away from you except for the people who manage that content.
That’s literally the main selling point of this kind of setup. Nobody, faceless or otherwise, can stop you accessing any of the content.
decentralize a centralized socialmedia format. amazing strategy.
This is probably the best option for Lemmy.world. It’s not being run by a big company, after all. Normal people often get screwed when their servers have anything related to piracy on them.
I think people forget that decentralized doesn’t mean anonymous, and it also doesn’t mean that server admins and servers aren’t beholden to local laws
Wtf dbzero was a huge proponent of the fediverse and has been a part of the recent swell in users. I don’t agree with this decision at all
Remember that lemmy.world has to keep a copy of whatever content appears in a federated community on their servers, making them legally liable for the content. At least they just blocked the community instead of defederating.
At least they just blocked the community instead of defederating
Would you mind explaining the difference?
Blocking the community just blocks those specific communities. Defederating would be blocking everything on lemmy.dbzer0.com.
Basically they blocked the communities but not the instances they were hosted on, so people on lemmy.world can still interact with posts and comments made by people like me
Defederating cuts off the whole instance. They just blocked those three piracy communities as far as I understand.
Only here because of my instance.
I’m late to comment, so I may be typing into the void.
I understand the admin’s decision to limit their exposure to legal risk. I had similar experiences as a small business owner and you would be surprised how quickly most people’s idealism is tempered by the risk of potential legal action. It’s totally possible to believe strongly in the legality of something and its benefit to society (in this case piracy) and still choose to limit your own legal exposure. As far as I know, none of us paid to be here, so the polite thing to do is say “thank you for hosting us” and move on if it’s not your thing (or just make a second account).
I believe our current copyright/intellectual property scheme is broken at best, and designed to fuck us out of every bit of culture that has ever existed, at worst. Piracy exists because the system is broken and the industry is entrenched and refuses to adapt to customer demands. It screws music fans, artists, and probably the individual low-level employees of many music industry companies and organizations.
Given lemmy.world’s uptime vs how well pirates keep torrent seeds up, I’d be surprised if anyone in that community actually uses lemmy.world as a primary instance lmao
I love these comments. It shows the federation is working. If reddit did this it was “oh no what now” but with lemmy it’s just “time to move to another instance”
And here I thought that Fediverse was serious about being an alternative to heavily censored platforms. Now I see it’s just a joke.
This is not difficult to deal with, setup an account on another server and stop using lemmy.world
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Huh, isn’t this Spez strategy?
5D chess in all its glory!
No need to stop using LW. I’ve got three accounts on different instances plus kbin. Oh, and I fifth on if you count my nsfw login. Partitioning your online life is nbd, really. And the fediverse makes it easy.
Why bother to have 5, an account on a single decent instance should be sufficient.
Sopuli was my original instance from before I knew what the Fediverse was but however they have their server set federated community discovery has been broken from the beginning. World is my reddit migration account and I moderate a couple of communities there. I really like some of the communities on Beehaw, and they defederated pretty quickly from just about anyone with more than a few users, so I got an account there. Kbin didn’t seem to work as well cross-federation so…number 4. And I use a different handle for NSFW. It would be nice to have an app for aggregating usernames across instances, but I much of my browsing from desktop so it’s really nbd.
Beauty of fediverse, people can just find another spot or move to another instance while most of the community continues no problem.
Just an example that system working as intended
but only if you know enough about the fediverse to be aware; if i had no logged into like i usually don’t do on these days, i would never know and spend the rest of my time on lemmy.world trying to figure out why i can’t find any pirating stuff to share.
I would think it would be the responsibility of lemmy.world to put up a notice of why they’ve done this, if they’ve not then that potentially reflects badly on them (but I don’t know enough about the details and reasons).
True, would have expected something in !lemmyworld@lemmy.world but there’s been nothing announced there.
Makes me a bit suspicious that there is any credibility to the claim. We’re going off a supposed screenshot of what looks like a Discord message?
If you try to access one of the blocked communities from lemmy.world you’ll see it’s blocked, dude
That… would’ve been a good idea to try ha.
True but nothing a little education can’t fix.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Is there an automated way to move my account and all content to another instance?
Check this program: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
NO idea tbh but looks like someone already thought about it lol
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Despite reports I have decided to keep the comments open and the post up. I think removing this will only add fuel to the fire.
Thank you for your work!
Ok … do people not think that lawyers send out DMCA takedown notices and coerce police into taking into custody entire servers? Because lawyers send out DMCA takedown notices and coerce police into taking into custody entire servers…
I guess it would be Hetzner instances, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266, and it would be Hetzner who would get contacted and potentially shut down lemmy.world in their case. Let’s not even talk about the people launching DDoS’es against lemmy.world and how they could abuse it similarly.
It seems lemmy.world has only blocked communities, not entire servers in this case. I mean, get behind all the comments calling for a migration to “avoid instances moderated by clowns” and migrate all you want (wishing migrating was actually possible instead of simply creating new users), but I personally will stay in the server who has a code of conduct that considers legal concerns and doesn’t think that just because they are on the internet in a less popular medium that will eventually grow that it will get ignored.
I’ll just move if it gets taken down for incompetence or bogus reasons anyway, because all the dumb drama doesn’t really matter in the fediverse.
People are missing the fundamental point of defederation. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
You can have an absolutely squeaky clean instance for memes, news and generally huge sharing communities. Instances that dont have to worry about DCMA notices or having their servers seized and you can have instances that are willing to run those risks for niche content. If legal threats start being thrown around, the meme and hobby communities dont suffer. The piracy instances can shut down, migrate and start again, making the lawyers play whackamole.
