Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:

We took this action to protect lemmy.world, lemmy.world’s users, and lemmy.world staff as the material posted in those communities could be problematic for us, because of potential legal issues around copyrighted material and services that provide access to or assistance in obtaining it.

This decision is about liability and does not mean we are otherwise hostile to any of these communities or their users. As the Lemmyverse grows and instances get big, precautions may happen. We will keep monitoring the situation closely, and if in the future we deem it safe, we would gladly reallow these communities.

The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.

  • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    These communities are not even hosted on lemmy.world, this is an absurdly overreacted response. There were no signs of any legal trouble and I can’t understand how lemmy.world specifically would be the target of such legal action. If you want to host an instance, you should do everything in your power to allow discussions on any topic, while in necessary cases disallowing direct posting/linking of illegal content. Instead, you chose to block a community that has long been known to avoid having any trouble with the moderators.

    • TurboLag@lemmings.world
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      11 months ago

      And on top of this, the removals were done following the request from a troll account, by a user involved in far more questionable discussions than the legal discussions currently going on in the now-removed communities. Should no attempt be made to differentiate between a legit legal concern and trolling?

      • OverfedRaccoon 🦝@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Good ol’ Bungiefan_ak, creating troll accounts on any instance that’ll have them to troll all things piracy and post transphobic and hateful shit wherever they go.

          • TurboLag@lemmings.world
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            11 months ago

            They only do it because it works. Had they been given the level of attention—and interaction—that trolls deserve, they would quickly move on to doing other things with their life. But as long as one single well-placed comment can result in so many people getting annoyed from so many different perspectives, it’s easy to see the appeal that these trolls see…

      • madeofstown@sedd.it
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        11 months ago

        If you post to a community that isn’t local, the content of the post is stored on your local server and the remote server just makes a copy. The posters home server is where the illegal content is hosted.

        • silentdon@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yes, so illegal content will end up being stored on both servers. The thing is that the piracy communities don’t allow illegal content to be stored or linked to for the same liability reasons.

          • obosob@feddit.uk
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            11 months ago

            Any specific infringement material (by which I mean media) would only be on the user’s home server. Links to content aren’t what is actionable for a DMCA notice as far as I’m aware. And the DMCA does not require platforms to actively monitor or remove potentially infringing content, only to follow the takedown procedure when sent an appropriate notification. If they follow that then they are protected from liability. That’s US law but IIRC the implementations in most of the rest of the world are similar if not the same. And here’s the rub: even without those communities, LW will still need to have a DMCA agent and take action against content when notified because people can and will upload infringing media here on other communities.

            They’re not exposing themselves to additional risk by having the piracy communities unblocked. People can and will discuss piracy, in abstract terms at the very least, all over the place. And discussion of copyright infringement is not copyright infringement anyway. Any liability and risk they do hold they will still have to worry about now regardless.

    • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

      Doesn’t matter if they are hosted here or not. The way federation works is that threads on different instances are cached locally.

      We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.

      • comfortablyglum@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        “we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more.”

        This is an unfortunate aspect of individuals/small groups housing the fediverse vs big companies. Big companies have lawyers and the capital to back them, individuals do not.

        If I was in your shoes, I’d do the same thing. I appreciate your wish for thus to be temporary. I hope you will share your findings once you come to a final decision; information like this is relevant to all those managing servers.

      • nfh@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        What needs to happen for you to be confident you won’t get in legal trouble, and thus unblock them? Change on the db0 side? Lemmy.world admins getting legal representation/advice? Something else? I’m curious how you all see this playing it out in the future.

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Highly doubt there’s anything db0 can do. lemmy.world is in Europe, piracy has hefty legal ramifications.

          Like you could argue that it isn’t piracy all you want, but if faced with the possibility of your hobby landing you decades in prison and millions in debt, would you do it?

          Just create an account at db0, this really isn’t the big deal people make it out to be.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            11 months ago

            Not all of Europe. In most parts (especially Eastern Europe) the most you will get is a slap on the wrist if you are really really unlucky. And decades in prison aren’t a thing anywhere for simply sharing links to pirated content.

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              11 months ago

              No one thinks of Eastern Europe as European beyond geography, excepting perhaps Eastern Europeans themselves.

              Prison notwithstanding, financial ruin is a definite possibility.

              People are making a mountain out of a molehill over this. The instance owner doesn’t want to risk any legal issues over hosting this instance, and I get that. Just create an account on db0 and use that. It’s not a big deal.

              Instance admin isn’t some big corporation trying to silence your free speech. He’s just a dude that doesn’t want his hobby to bite him in the arse.

              • nitefox@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                I don’t think I ever heard of a case where somebody has been condemned for piracy in Italy; I also know plenty of people who torrents/stream, yet none who uses a VPN to do so.

                In Germany though, afaik, they are quite insane with their anti-piracy laws.

      • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Discussing piracy isn’t illegal. It would be one thing if they were hosting pirated content, but they don’t even link to anything.

        If that were to change I’d understand the decision, but this just seems silly to me.

      • 💡dim@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        as far as i have seen (as a subscriber to c/piracy) there is no links to pirated content and they are very clear that that is not allowed

        the vast majority of the discussion is on morals of piracy, anti piracy measures, etc etc

      • tcj@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I feel like there should be a major distinction between caching remote content and hosting that content yourself. Does Cloudflare get in trouble every time the FBI seizes a site that used Cloudflare routing, CDN, or caching? Not as far as I’m aware.

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        11 months ago

        Soo ultimately you personally will be the only person determining what people can and can’t see, based on your perception alone. You don’t like something, you’ll ban it. You worry about something, you’ll ban it. And there won’t be a trace without you saying “we banned something”. Which means there are no checks at all to you powertripping in the future. How is this supposed to be free, open and general then? This is even worse than reddit was.

      • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Well, caching content is not the same as copying it. The major difference in the court would be that caching is automatic - and as such you are not in complete responsibility of what it is you copied. If you do everything in your power to comply with any DMCA notices, then I couldn’t realistically see lemmy.world being targeted. This is an analogous situation to eg. accidentally opening a website containing illegal content. Sure, your computer did download the contents to the RAM, but what matters is that you acted in good faith and did not attempt to get the contents, it just happened in the process of browsing the web and as such you could not reasonably expect to receive such content.

        • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          11 months ago

          In a world where Quad9 is in the middle of a giant lawsuit over simply serving DNS records, I can’t blame anybody for being extra cautious.

    • majere@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The great thing is, now you’re 100% empowered to move forward and host the responsibility yourself. Demanding volunteers shoulder potential liability (when you yourself admit you can’t understand how there’s any in the first place) is juvenile.

      The moment a volunteer is hit with a DMCA notice or any threat of legal action, you think they have any interest in going through the court system? You can do it first.

      • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I think you don’t understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content. The “threat” of legal action won’t actually result in anything, provided you comply, and that is exactly why I do not understand the preemptive actions, when there is basically no such thing as immediate legal threat in case of DMCA notices. The copyright holders often do not want to go through the court system either and will gladly accept pre-legal-action compliance.

        • benji@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          The power of the panopticon lies not in being able to see and punish all deviant activity, but to encourage self-correction in all potential deviants who must always assume they are being watched.

        • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You seem to know your way around the law then, so please be the change you want to see in this world. Host a piracy instance and show everyone here that we were wrong and that the admins were just overreacting.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I can openly admit I am breaking the law for example by using torrents for piracy - and I seed as much as I can, though it in theory makes me liable. So yes, I am the change I want to see - piracy should be free to discuss everywhere

          • Squander@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Be the change you want to see -should be the catchphrase specifically for lemmy trolls

              • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Criticism is not attacking. They made an unpopular decision for a flimsy reason. Its their right to do it, just like its their right to be wrong about it. But if they can’t handle mild criticism, then maybe hosting a lemmy instance was a bad idea.

                I think lemmy world will be fine with mildly annoyed comments and a bunch of down votes.

        • echo64@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I think you don’t understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content.

          it really isn’t, the whole point is to streamline the capability for copyright holders to remove content they think they have rights to, without a lengthy court cases. it’s still a lot of overhead for any service to manage and also still opens you up to legal action.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            From DMCA.com:

            The document stipulates the content that has been stolen and republished without permission with a request for removal. It must be created and submitted in a specific manner so as to comply with the law. Failure to do so means the “notice” to remove the content will not be followed by any party involved in the infringement.

            In exchange for the immediate removal of the content the publisher receives safe harbor from litigation regarding the illegal publication of copyrighted content.

        • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It doesn’t really have anything to do with DMCA (a US law). Lemmy world is hosted in Germany which is even harsher on copyright than the US with much stricter penalties.

          The world doesn’t revolve around the US.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            It does have a lot with DMCA. Maybe not specifically the DMCA, but all the relevant regulations all around the world that are equivalent to DMCA because of copyright treaties. And yes, while you are right about Germany being more dangerous in terms of piracy (mainly because of copyright trolls), the relevant authority handling the case could very well be the USA court system.

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I agree with the point, but US-wise, especially if you aren’t even the site actually as the source of truth for the community, you almost definitely don’t go to court unless you counterclaim. If you get a claim and nuke the offending communities in response (assuming you don’t have tools to block specific posts in the communities, but that would also work), you have protections built in.

    • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The content is hosted on lemmy.world - that’s how the fediverse works. Each instance pushes updates to other instances and they host it locally for their users. The issue is that the admins here can’t moderate a community not on their instance. So if an instance is located somewhere it is legal, it might not be legal at the location of another instance.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. It’s a cache. Is Cloudflare liable for hosting lib genesis then? Because cliudflare caches much worse stuff than copyrighted pictures and books.

        There’s a lot to talk about but afaik Section 230 that defines every website in US says that host is not responsible for user content and I honestly don’t see how big copyright could prosecute lemmy.world here that’s not even hosting data directly.

        • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
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          11 months ago

          It’s actually a “mirror” moreso than a cache. There’s a complete, distinct, URL for each piece of mirrored content, that points a specific server and is indexable by search engines independent of the original. Instances ARE hosting the data directly.

        • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          They could unsuccessfully prosecute lemmy.world. Of course it won’t really be unsuccessful if the instance folds from legal fees long before any verdict is reached.

        • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          That’s not true unfortunately. Any user posting on any instance to that community is cached locally and served from .world and the admins can’t do anything about it when the community is hosted on another instance.

      • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        What content? You mean the comments generally discussing piracy? Because there’s no actual pirated content being hosted, or even linked to, in that community.

        • Spedwell@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I have seen you comment in several comment chains. Please just understand that there is risk even if by the letter of the law everything is legal. There are plenty of cases with copyright / fair use where very expensive and long lawsuits were made against parties who did nothing illegal.

          LW mods are clearly not comfortable with the risk with their current situation. Respect that, and don’t expect them to take risks beyond their comfort on your behalf. If you want someone who is willing to serve you content at that level of risk, you can create an account with one of the other communities.

          • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Believe it or not, I do respect their decision. After all, this is their instance and it’s their right to decide what to do with it.

            This is also a complete overreaction started by a transphobic troll account, that doesn’t actually protect anyone from anything. Both can be true.

    • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Lemmy.world maintains a local copy of every external community. This is how federation works. Any piracy related posts on those subs will be copied in their entirety to lemmy.world servers, so lemmy.world could potentially be sued for hosting that content. Being the largest instance makes it a target.

      It is rare to get advanced notice of legal problems. Usually the first you hear about it is a cease and desist, or a lawsuit. Lawsuits are costly to defend even if you’re doing nothing wrong.

      I don’t like this decision. But it is a sensible one to protect the instance. If you care about piracy discussions you can visit those communities directly or on a different instance that made a different decision.

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        11 months ago

        There is no suing for that, talking about piracy is perfectly legal. That’s called freedom of speech for your information

        • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Anyone can sue anyone for anything. All it takes to have a lawsuit is to submit a filing fee to a court, and someone to serve the papers.

          There are many lawsuits that are baseless. There are many lawsuits that are frivolous. If your instance is on the receiving end of one of these lawsuits you will have pay for a lawyer to defend yourself regardless of the merits of the case.

          Courts don’t proactively decide whether someone can or cannot be sued.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          To encourage and aid in crimes is not covered by free speech in most countries like all of EU. And Lemmy.world is in Finland AFAIK.

        • bitvoid@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Of course there is suing for that. You can sue for literally anything. They probably wouldn’t win such a lawsuit, but they can still file it, which means LW now needs to spend money to fight it.

    • hydra@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I enjoyed helping this place grow and doing my part to discuss here but I disagree with this decision and I’m going to evaluate looking for a different home instance.

      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I’m not sure anyone cares if people leave this instance, no one is making money off of you. This isn’t reddit or any of the other big places, this is volunteers.

        • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
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          They probably won’t if it’s individual people, though they are donation funded so if they show their supporters that they don’t care those supporters might stop financially supporting lemmy.world. So telling them they should just leave because you don’t care or handing out petty bans like “let me help you” isn’t going to inspire these people to continue contributing donations.

          This website doesn’t make a profit, but that’s all the more reason there should be an effort to not make people hate them, because I don’t know anyone who would enthusiastically donate to support people or an organization they hate.

          • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Nah, it probably be best if you go to another instance, we’ll all be happier.

            • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Aww you didn’t seem to like what I said did you, darling. I’m not planning on not saying things just because it bothers you, Stay mad, trolls 😎 🏳️‍⚧️

              • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Interesting, you’re not horrible at it but you’re not one of the good ones. Anyone who uses emojis like that is hilarious.

        • M0oP0o@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Did they get any? I mean I have got some and I don’t even host anything at all. I am wondering what they did or did not get in relation to legal action.

        • tabular@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I can’t speak for other’s hosting peoples comments but I would rather avoid getting DMCAs or C&Ds in the first place.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I understand that receiving DMCA’s may cause fear, but keep in mind that online communities are very exposed to such action, and handling DMCA notices should be a part of normal operation. Someone always isn’t going to like what you are hosting and will try to shut you down legally.

            • tabular@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              You can’t stop any random person sending you DMCA, even if they don’t actually own the copyright. If you can avoid the sincere and likely to win DMCAs then you mitigate some of the work. In a big company that’s no work at all, by myself that’s my limited time alive wasted on outdated foreign law.

    • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Let’s also not ignore the fact that these communities literally prohibit Links or content from being posted to them. So even if people make the Federation argument about cross-hosting it’s all moot in the end because the community doesn’t allow it in the first place.

      Here is a link to the rules of the Piracy community you will notice if you have any form of reading comprehension (or if you actually read it and aren’t just trolling, like many people here) that rule 3 specifically prohibits linking to or hosting files, which many people making the federated hosting argument seem to leave out of the equation, likely because it destroys their argument altogether since their argument is about illegal content being hosted, but no illegal content is hosted in the first place (and any that is usually is removed by the mods for breaking the rules, just like it is here on Lemmy.world).

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I can’t understand how lemmy.world specifically would be the target of such legal action.

      Because they’re the largest instance and therefore the biggest target.

      • tcj@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        But the content in question isn’t hosted on lemmy.world…?

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It sure is, because that’s how the fediverse works - every community is copied to every other federated instance.

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
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      I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content. They effectively copy the content from that community onto their server to distribute it to all the users of their lemmy instance. So from a legal perspective they are hosting the content and they would be held liable for a distributing it.

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
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    11 months ago

    Please make announcements on lemmy instead of exclusively on discord moving forward. That is the biggest issue here, the lack of public transparency. Such a decision affects all instances, not just lemmy.world and making it publicly known is important

  • Noble Shift@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This isn’t about what laws are on the books, or morals or ideologies, this about getting sued in court and ending up living in a gutter.

    The greed in Entertainment / Films / Television knows no bounds and will gladly throw a paltry million or two (dollars / Euros / etc) to bankrupt those they see as encroaching on their profits.

    Litigation is prohibitively expensive to survive let alone prevail against when it’s just a couple of regular ass people with regular ass jobs making regular ass pay. [spelling]

  • joe@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Uh, @lwadmin@lemmy.world … what’s up with the banning going on in this thread? I noticed on a.lemmy.org that someone was labeled “banned” and their comment was simply “Ight, I’m out”

    The mod note was “Let us help you”.

    There are more similarly weak (spiteful?) bans that certainly don’t seem to be at a standard for a ban. “Litterally 1984” was another one. Is that all it takes to be banned here?

    Edit: Many (all?) the users I referenced as banned are now unbanned from the site, but now banned from this community.

  • DharkStare@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Reading all these comments it’s clear that a lot of people have unrealistic ideas regarding what Lemmy and the Fediverse are supposed to be (or maybe it’s me with weird ideas).

    The Fediverse is just a bunch of apps that can all communicate with each other through a shared protocol. There is no requirement for them to be free speech platforms or host everything. The whole purpose of defederation supports the idea that instances are free to associate or disassociate with whichever instances they want. Furthermore, nearly every guide I read on joining Lemmy state that you should choose instances to join based on shared ideals/beliefs.

    For everyone saying “I’m leaving lemmy.world” I say “Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” When the instance you join no longer aligns with what you want, you go to another instance and then you’ll be back to viewing all the communities you want to see. That is what the Fediverse is all about and how it’s designed.

  • zikk_transport2@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    What part is illegal? Are they sharing files on that instance and your instance re-hosts it?

    From my understanding, discussions are legal, guides are legal, tips are legal, but actual files (aka “copyrighted content”) is illegal. There are no files shared there, links at maximum, but institutions should be after those content-sharing websites, not forums.

    I am against this decision and I am happy that I am not part of admins team.

  • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    And still people are crying about this.

    You can literally change to another instance. That’s the entire point of the Fediverse. If you don’t like a decision the admin has taken, you can move elsewhere.

    The entitlement of some people these days is ridiculous.

  • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Surely there is a discussion to be had around what is and isn’t allowed, there are plenty of subreddits discussing piracy without dolirect links that are playing within the rules.

    • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      Especially because discussing copies of your own data also happens in such communities. There must be clear guidelines what can and cannot be discussed. Also, it would have been nice to have those communities selfregulate. For example, giving them 30 days to comply, e.g. removing any content that breaks the law.

      Because the fediverse i about democracy. If laws stand in the way of democracy since they have been brought up by governments influenced by global corporations (which are by definition autocratic) then they must be ignored.

      So, striking a balance to not get anyone in trouble while not working for IP holders is the way.

      • TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Because the fediverse i about democracy.

        Isn’t it, like, the opposite? With the main assumption being that you should find an instance that aligns with your interests and values, not find an instance and try to vote for it to become something you like? That is technically “voting with your feet” but instances don’t actually need a large population to stay running.

        • M0oP0o@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          But we have no tools to migrate users or communities. We can not vote with our feet so much as start over and over and over.

          • GodzillaFanboy129@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I highly recommend people go to the issue relating to account migration on the lemmy software github and explain why account Migration is as important as it is and should not be considered as a second thought. Not being able to migrate ties you to an instance if you’ve been there long or participated a lot, it makes you dependent on them, this is not a good dynamic to have in the Fediverse, it’s why other platforms like Mastodon have profile migration.

        • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 months ago

          Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.

          You’re not wrong. It’s not the same as voting for a desired outcome and if owners/admins push for something, they can usually get it until people leave.

          But the system is open source so they can’t just shape their server how they like. They can’t keep others from getting news from outside and they also can’t push their own agenda imo.

          So I‘d say you‘re right, it’s not „democracy“ but its either something else entirely or it is „about democracy“. Maybe power equality through federation?

          • TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            What it’s about, in my opinion, is trust. To tie it back to Reddit yet again - on Reddit, if the admins of the site did something, their word was final and there wasn’t much you could do about it. On Lemmy, if the admins of an instance do something, even here on the biggest one, their reach is limited to their own space; they cannot affect what happens beyond. This means that instead of having to do a big ol exodus to try and prop up a new network, people can just pick another instance and continue where they left off, outside the reach of the admins that did the thing they dislike.

            Therefore, the instance admins and the users (and also the mods) need to actually have trust in each other to stick around, as there are viable alternative spaces they can go to if that trust is broken. Additionally, the entire concept of federation is also built on trust - “we will allow an exchange of content between our instances because we trust you”.

            I don’t agree with this decision, but I understand it, and I still trust LW admins because they’ve had a good track record so far. For those reasons I’ll stay here. I don’t fault anyone leaving, though, if their personal threshold of trust has been broken. The only thing I’m really wary of is the free-speech absolutists that insist no one should be defederated from; the tool exists for a reason. There’s not many of them, though.

            • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
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              11 months ago

              I agree on practically everything you wrote there. Thanks.

              I‘d like to add that I was a little upset first by their childish action but then came to the conclusion that they in fact have very little power compared to the whole platform. So yes, it‘s still not ok (and I would be furious if my content just gets deleted) but it is not that big of a deal.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It’s only about democracy if you make your own instance. Otherwise, you have to follow the rules of wherever you’re signed up.

          • TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            If you make your own instance, as a one-man thing, then it’s not really democracy at all either. The only way it would be democracy is if you made your own instance and specifically said “all decisions will be made via vote” and you actually had users around to participate in those votes.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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        11 months ago

        Yes. The thing is there is zero content breaking the law, so they would have looked ridiculous

        • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 months ago

          From the other comments here I think these people are not very smart. Probably should make new sailor sub somewhere else soon. Obviously with relatively strict rules. For example: only trackers, no direct links etc. (I‘m not a pro at this. What I know is from reading)

  • xaon_rider92@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The fact that there was no announcement before the banning of the communities is not great, but good on you for acknowledging that mistake.

    It’s unfortunate that this action had to be done, but it’s also understandable. It’s not about what’s right or wrong, and it’s not even about whether there actually is any illegal content in these communities. It’s about the fact that the Big Entertainment Companies don’t care about the difference and see it ALL as bad, irregardless of whether it actually is illegal or not. If the admin team had a legal team and the financial security to fight back, then it wouldn’t be as much of an issue. But they’re not, they’re just a bunch of regular folks, so they’re being cautious and trying to pre-emptively prevent these problems from coming up, especially as Lemmy continues to grow every day.

    The beauty of the Fediverse is that you can always switch instances or make an alt account.

  • Cam@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Thanks for only banning the communities and not the entire instance as a whole. That is a much healthier approach to deferation.

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    11 months ago

    I don’t understand why people are upset even a little about this. This is a prefect advert for the fediverse. If you are not completely happy with an instance(which can never realistically happen) then you just host your own or have multiple accounts. Apps have this built in and easily accessible. Why do people want to concentrate everything they want into one instance? What if that instance goes down? This should not be hated or applauded… just ignored as the way the fediverse should work. Don’t get too attached to any single instance.

  • Odo@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Lovely this happened because someone complained after being banned from the piracy instance for being a transphobic asshole.

  • derf82@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The people whining are not the people that could face multimillion-dollar lawsuits over the issue. Like it or not, media companies are powerful and will go after websites seen as promoting piracy. Do what you reasonably have to do.

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    11 months ago

    While I’m not ethically opposed pirating, I understand and would probably do the same for a server I was hosting. Anybody remember Kim Dotcom’s mansion raid?

    What I do not understand is blocking a community surrounding magic mushrooms… No one is going to prosecute the L.W admins for people discussing shrooms/their use…

    Substances are legal/illegal depending on where one lives, just like weed which is apparently perfectly fine to post here, even tho possession is a death sentence in some countries.

    It simply doesn’t logically follow that weed, or even alcohol communities are permissible while a shroom community is not.

    Banning any content deemed illegal in any country in the world establishes a very dangerous precedence (if that’s the justification here). Free speech/dissenting from the government is illegal in many places in the world.

    One thing the community must remember tho, is that you have to operate your server in accordance with the law in which country you’re hosting it (in this case Germany).

    I’ll gladly admit I’m not too familiar with German law, but it seems unreasonable to expect government persecution for hosting servers which hosts a shroom discussion community.

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    11 months ago

    Oh no. Wtf. Do you know what’s funny? I actually joined this instance from piracy subreddit.

    I guess it’s time to leave.