Removal of piracy communities
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.
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.
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?
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.
dude is such a piece of shit
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...
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.
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.
Which has me wondering why these moves make sense at all. So many people are jumping to the defense of a knee-jerk reaction to a 10h old troll account. Why was that the admins' solution to a random post from a new account? Plus, pirate communities shared vast amounts of information and a lot of it is not directly related to piracy itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lemmyworld is hosted in Germany, they have agressive anti-piracy laws
Wasn't it hosted in Finland? Or have things changed?
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What signs of legal trouble are you referring to?
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
This was a misunderstanding from one of the team members. It has since been discussed and will not happen again. Lemmy.World and this announcement community is our primary platform,
Thank you. It is appreciated.
Thank you for this
Misunderstanding eh?
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.
The "ight I'm out" ban note was.... hm. Not a great look. Comes across as petty and vindictive.
There are worse, imo.
user @snake posted:
and was banned for:
Definitely not a great look.
Lemmy.world admins, I am truly asking you to please reflect on how bad this looks. It honestly makes you seem like you can't handle criticism and if people get that vibe they will use it to absolutely fuck with you. I know from my own personal experience. I understand that you're volunteers but this is a step in a very bad direction that will only serve to cause more issues.
Agree.
This decisions seems emotionally driven. That will not work on the internet.
You created rules. Use your rules to make your decisions. Don't use your emotions.
It won't only bring the site into disarray, it will bring you moderators and your emotional states into disarray.
Make your rules as black and white as poasible. where grayness raises, create new rules.
Can someone please post this stuff on lemmy world in its own thread? This needs to be brought to attention.
The people responsible for this need to then either concede that they have done wrong, leave or otherwise be made to leave.
If that comment is truly the reason the person was banned that’s unacceptable and makes me wonder about the viability of this as a platform. Even if you move instances you need to create a brand new account with username, history etc it’s not the easiest transition.
I hope that this demonstrates to people that the oppressive reddit behaviour is not confined to special individuals (such running major social media sites), but is a systematic occurance in online forums. Simply switching from one toxically moderated space to another is not a solution. But this is where the strength of ActivityPub/fediverse lies: we are able to leave for another server while still using the same fundamental service and being able to interact with the same content as before. I would recommend startrek.website as a new or second home for those who wish to migrate.
I'm probably being overly cynical, but I have a pretty unflattering option of volunteer moderators and the type of people that seek out such seemingly thankless positions-- and their motivations for doing so. I know this might seem-- bizarre-- considering where I am posting this, but I think it nonetheless.
I like lemmy because there's a modlog to see these things. I do not believe that these users would be unbanned if it hadn't been noticed in the modlog. And it appears they're unbanned from the sitewide ban, but still banned in the community. Not sure what sense that makes.
If your instance gets big enough, you'll also have to deal with petty tyrants seeking out positions of petty power.
Just wondering and looking at the mod log for one admin and maybe I am crazy but are they unbanning and rebaning users? (Keep in mind it goes new on top):
They're unbanning them from a sitewide ban and then immediately banning them from the lemmyworld community.
What in the hell?
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.
If people leave to run their own piracy lemmy depending on where they host it they will probably get raided and have no lemmy.
The commenter obviously don't understand that at lemmy.world it hosts copies of content outside its instance which is why you block communities if you don't defend the whole instance.
The "FAFO" approach
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.
Keep in mind, The Pirate Bay is "technically" not breaking any laws... how has that been going for them? You don't have to break laws to get in trouble if you are pissing off rich people. They'll find something, anything, to nail you on. It's totally ok for random normal people to not want to be "heroes" to a bunch of other random people they don't know. Heroes attract villains, and instability. And while it's just starting to get off the ground, lemmy doesn't need villains or instability.
Let the smaller, less visible servers do the shady but "totally technically legal" stuff. Big servers with big targets on their forehead need to be stable and drama-free.
The right and wrong doesn't matter, what matters is the cost of defending oneself against a multi million/billion dollar organization armed with a boatload of lawyers.
People are terrified of the possibility of litigation to the point that they won't even host conversations about piracy on fringe community subs for fear of reprisal.
Its just the state of play for everyone on the Internet. Terrorized by the spectre of a frivolous lawsuit.
Linking is enough to be illegal in places. A torrent file or magnet link is just a link and contain no pirated content itself yet here we are.
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.
I moderate/founded six communities hosted on lemmy.world. There isn't a way for me to transfer those to a different instance.
It seems like it would be difficult to keep track of all the instances that have/haven't banned the communities/instances you're interested in.
Like if someone wanted to move to an instance that hasn't banned these piracy communities, how would they even know where to look?
EDIT: I found this:
People can call me a shill or whatever, but a large instance like lemmy.world should absolutely be careful of what communities are allowed to appear here. A volunteer operation can't handle the legal bills that come from pissing off rich people.
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.
Yeah I'm subbed to few piracy comms just because I like to see how that side of things is going. I've never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I've never even seen anyone link to a website. It's all been news and discussions and that's it.
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.
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.
Whoa wait wtf, they blocked a mushroom community? I didn’t hear about that
Oh no. Wtf. Do you know what's funny? I actually joined this instance from piracy subreddit.
I guess it's time to leave.
Same here. Guess I've got to go to a new instance.
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.
Thanks for only banning the communities and not the entire instance as a whole. That is a much healthier approach to deferation.
I much prefer this over how lemmy.blahaj.zone defederated the entire lemmynsfw.com instance for one post the admins didn't like.
Lovely this happened because someone complained after being banned from the piracy instance for being a transphobic asshole.
Not sure why people are downvoting you, since that's exactly what happened. It's Bungiefan_ak, a troll that admins are playing wackamole with, as the person keeps appearing on new instances and pulling the same shit.
Is there any indication this happened because of that? The reason people are downvoting is because such a link seems tenuous without proof.
https://lemmy.world/post/3175920 this is the post the user created. It was their first post and they weren't even on lemmy.world
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.
I'm not sure about the legal implications here. None of those communities are on Lemmy.world, google isn't liable for websites that exist so a lemmy instance shouldn't be liable for a community just because it exists.
It's a similar claim that torrent sites have been using for years and it's just not working in court.
This is true, but the cost to defend this in court can be insane, especially against a media conglomerate.
Your analogy to Google is flawed. Google links to content on other sites. Lemmy sites host distinct copies of content on each instance. While the communities aren't @lemmy.world communities the content is 100% hosted on Lemmy.world by nature of federation.
https://lemmy.ml/post/3375472
https://lemmy.world/post/3234363
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2148792
All this post. Hosted on three completely different instances, with different admins. "It's not actually my community" doesn't work in the Fediverse.
Ight, I'm out
From the modlog
That is petty and thin-skinned af lmao
EDIT 1: Account has been unbanned sitewide
EDIT 2: Banned from !lemmyworld@lemmy.world instead, for "trolling" \_(ツ)_/¯
At least there is a public modlog for accountability on Lemmy
The modlog is a great feature. Thank you for sharing
This is one of the features I like in Lemmy so far. Accountability for actions.
Here's my new account. I found a random tiny instance and am chillin. I'd rather you not ban my new account (since I did nothing wrong) but bygones will be bygones.
Between Beehaw and LemmyWorld, I'm on my third account at this point. What starts as an alt quickly becomes the main under the right circumstances. 😂
Gotta choose progressively smaller instances until you self-host.
Understand that Lemmy.world is run by volunteers. It is not a company. They don't have the resources to fight legal battles. The Fediverse is big, feel free to migrate to another instance if you want to participate in that community.
Even if we look past the issue that all of this was in response to a 10h troll account, there was no cease and desist, no threat of a lawsuit, nothing credible AT ALL.
Let's ignore all of that and say there was, it still means this instance is completely ill equipped to provide any sort of resistance, to something trivial.
It's like it's hosted in the middle of Illinois, by John Frank, at 3125 maple lane... Zero layers of protection.
That is awful and means no meaningful discussion can ever happen here. Nevermind piracy, what if people want to criticize the government? Or public figures?
If this instance can't fight a fake troll it can't fight and protect anything.
Which means we need to pool resources and fund instances that can and will fight back.
And yes that means fundraising to build up a defense fund and hosting outside the US etc.
I think a this is a bigger issue then just .worlds stance on piracy. Lemmy.world has put it self forward as the "front page of lemmy" but has now also removed one of the largest community using lemmy. And did so with no input on a discord server (not on any instance). This front page status was already shakey with all the down time and clunk. This seems like maybe not the best side to show new users.
People shouldn't be congregating on a single instance anyway. The federation shouldn't be focused on trying to make centralization, communities and people need to spread out
Time to host my own instance. I disagree with this move.
That's your prerogative and the upside of the fediverse, as a whole.
The downside is that you may be held legally liable for something you completely had no part, or even knowledge, of simply because your federation has caused content to propagate to your instance. Now it's on your instance, you're hosting it and you're potentially liable.
Time to switch instances
It's a tough decision.
There's a target on the collective back of Lemmy, its developers and this instance. Rooting out these issues early is part of it. One of my first recommendations to @ruud@lemmy.world was to start putting aside contribution dollars from donors for a legal fund to manage liabilities like this. This decision is just solid management and avoiding issues well ahead of time.
I wish the admins well. And for those who have had their communities 'snipped' from being connected to Lemmy.world, I hear you. It's hard when you have built a connection and a sense of self on a platform, and then it becomes severed. That's hard.
"Alright let's all be adults about th--"
reads comments
¯_(ツ)_/¯
You dropped this
\
Y'all realize that saying things like "You've just lost a user!" or "Deleting my account!" or "This is now the worst instance on Lemmy!"... you sound like a Karen telling the kid at the register in CVS that she's leaving a bad Yelp review... right? Y'all seeing this? Am I going crazy here?
Plus this is the Fediverse. They're effectively just saying "yo, I'm gonna reduce your server costs!". Oh no! What a horrible threat!
You're not allowed to discuss piracy. You wouldn't talk about stealing a car would you?
Delete this.
QQ: Have there been other communities removed and was it communicated?
I have just realized that c/Shrooms has been banned too, but I cannot find a statement regarding this particular ban.
Are or will there be more bans? I am not asking to complain about it or make remarks about which the decision is correct to me or not, but rather point out the lack of communication or unfortunate communication.
I doubt there will be a statement on the shrooms one as it was a niche community, with far less outcry than the piracy ones.
Also to all the people sticking up for lemmy.world and saying the ones bothered by this should just leave without a fuss. If it wouldn't have been for the people who were and still are being vocal you likely wouldn't even have had this announcement or transparency (which is what many of them were vocal about), and the mistake wouldn't have been realized, they'd just keep posting updates to the discord and left us here on the service in the dark about announcements, so would you rather have a people complain when something was done wrong and badly and get transparency or would you rather be left in the dark to wonder why something was done or happened.
I can understand this. This is a server hosted by an individual who doesn't want the potential legal headaches that may arise. Everyone is free to make another account on another instance, or create their own instance.
Seems overly cautious, or lemmy.world is trying to find excuses to cut off content they don't like. Legal trouble for allowing access to those communities, which aren't even based on lemmy.world, would be so much of an overstep, they'd probably be able to get free legal counsel from the EFF or a similar organization.
Anyways, this will be my last post on this server. Even though I don't use any of those communities, I don't want to have to constantly monitor what has been banned to see what I may miss out on.
Apparently, lemmy.world also removed c/shrooms, which I didn't even know about. And again, risk of legal trouble for that would be extremely low.
I do understand that you would remove them if they were also hosted here... But they are hosted on other instances so I don't understand the issue? Is linking to that specific instance via comment the same issue as if they were visible for everyone on this instance? Or even mentioning it now in the OP like it is?
Oh no! Users are complaining and downvoting. They just need to get inline and do what they're told. Okay for real, you people are worst type of people. Lemmy users are just showing their disapproval of the action. They have the right to do.
Do those communities house copyright content? The answer is no. Having discussions, giving guides & tips are are legal. So I don't see the problem. If someone going to get sued for it. It will be dbzer0.com and lemmy.ml due to said communities being part of the instances not LW.
Don't instances cache the content from federated instances? I can still view content from vlemmy.net from other instances, even though it's been permanently shut down.
From the OP:
Reddit has gotten into legal trouble numerous times regarding r/piracy, despite it not hosting any copyrighted material either.
Why is anyone complaining about instances not taking the same legal risks as a massive corporation? Just use another instance that fits your needs.
Would be great if they actually tried to understand the underlying issue instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions.
Aight peace ✌️ you do you. Gonna go sail my ship over to another instance.
What is the legal theory being used here?
People chatting about piracy is now a crime in US? I thought the crime was uploading or downloading copyrighted content...
The DMCA has a provision on circumventing technical protection measures. It is illegal to break DRM. And it is illegal to "offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology... primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure"
Hosting discussions, or linking to anything that defeats any DRM scheme would have them offering that to the public. A lawsuit would likely cite the specific sections of the DMCA about circumvention.
The other thing to remember, is that you have to pay to have a lawyer defend you in court. Even if you're innocent. Even if they are 100% wrong, you have to have enough money to defend yourself. And a community hosted non-profit instance doesn't want that expense.
I wish the state put this much energy into defending my property too
Either way, fuck media companies, they can keep trying.
DMCA isn’t particularly relevant here though.
US lawmakers are much better at marketing than making laws. Hence the US's abundance of terrible laws with really memorable names.
The DMCA is the US's implementation of the terms of the WIPO Copyright Treaty. EU's implementation are EU Directives 91/250/EC, 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC. Despite being less relevant to lemmy.world, DMCA rolls of the tongue a little nicer.
Lemmy.world is based in the Netherlands, not the US. I don't know what the law is there.
lemmy world is hosted in Finland. the owner, ruud, is in the Netherlands
I can still access r piracy on Reddit, i thought lemmy.world had more freedom of speech than corporate sellouts. 💀
Reddit has more lawyers
This is a bit concerning… why is Lemmy censoring things that not even Reddit is censoring? This seems like a bleak warning for the future of the platform. I understand censoring illegal content, but if nothing is hosted on Lemmy, then what’s the problem?
It’s not “lemmy”. It’s lemmy.world and I feel like there should be a clear distinction here friend.
I am strongly opposed to the way this is handled. Discussing piracy may not be censored in any way and being afraid of shady lawsuits is not good, this is one of the main responsibilities of a server admin of such a grand operation. Especially so for what is effectively an image board which is grey zoning on copyright all the time. It is fine to ban communities who direct link to well known piracy sites, both because of the legal and perhaps ethical complications this brings.
We need now more than ever platforms where we defend basic freedoms as discussion of hot topics. I view the negative impact of this as banning discussion on drugs. Disclaimers about dangers and help lines for addiction should be forced, as the banning of purchase options, however please stay out of experiences, discussions and warnings on them.
Honestly fuck off. I came to Lemmy because I'm sick of people telling me what I can view and how I can view it. Guess I'll go find another instance again.
You can view whatever you want anytime you want and your don't need kemmy.world's permission to do it. This is the point of the fediverse.
But users expressing their opinion about the policies of the Lemmy servers they use is part of that
Of course, but the reason is also understandable, no?
Imagine you run your own instance. Imagine after starting it up with sparkly eyes and going "OMG, people are joining my instance", one day a friend makes you aware "Hey you do realize you're hosting a social media community, yeah? Have you ever looked into the legal part of that? Like what content is or isn't okay, what users are allowed to post according to your country in correspondence to each other, how you'll handle DMCA and Netzdurchsuchungsgesetz takedowns, and who represents your site in court if you get sued?"... and then you realize fuck, you have no clue.
Now imagine then realizing you're the largest instance, and hence the target for anybody wanting to come after Lemmy as a system in any legal way.
It's fun to rant at the devs. However, unless you're the admin(s) of either
lemmy.mlorbeehaw, the only two instances large enough to potentially worry about this, you really don't have a good perspective on things. But imagine you were one of these instances:lemmy.worldis hosted.Now, of course, the number of exposures, the total sum and the idea that it's your link can all be attacked in court, to various degrees of ease.
However, you need lawyers for that. Specifically, you need money that makes those lawyers outlast the other side, as in these cases it's mostly about whether your money bin is deep enough so you can even see the case through to the end.
Imagine that, as a private person: Someone suddenly gives you the prospect of having to pay 5-6 digit legal fees. That's just the legal fees, this is all assuming you win, otherwise you're also looking at some 7-9 digit figure maybe. Would you keep federating with piracy instances? Or would you also go "Fuck it, this is my hobby project and IANAL, this isn't worth it"?
(edit)
Basically, from the perspective of the lemmy admin: If you want them to stay federated with piracy content, would you also be fine if they put your name (and you sign documents to this effect IRL) on the site as the legally responsible person for all content on it? Probably not, right? So saying they should keep content up is a bit weird. They're responsible for it, they are the only ones with any say in it. If you want your own say, make your own instance. But be aware that this also makes you legally responsible for anything, of course.
Unfortunate, but I understand the necessity of avoiding legal troubles as a volunteer group.
The copyblight strikes again.
This decision was the logical one, however, it was only rendered logical because of the awful state of copyright law.
I'm no fan of piracy - just seems like a pretty name for petty theft to me - but this decision seems problematic. I went and read some of the threads about this decision on some of the other communities, including dbzer0, and I looked around the blocked communities on an alt account.
I'm not seeing evidence of actual copyrighted material posted, just discussions about how to steal content, which itself isn't illegal. And there's a pretty fair amount of content - the communities are active - so if there was a violation I feel like it should be handled as the exception it appears to be. Those communities themselves don't allow posting of copyrighted content, so it shouldn't be a problem to get a violation removed. If someone posted an image that contained child pornography to one of the NSFW communities, would we block the whole community, or just get that post removed (and alert the authorities)? The latter, I hope.
They also make a good case that the action was taken in response to a troll on a newly-created account who didn't provide any evidence of there being copyrighted material. That in itself seems like a problem, though maybe someone looked into it? I'm pretty supportive of the .World admins, I think you're doing a good job in a difficult situation, but I believe these communities should be unblocked unless there is an actual problem.
Yarr harr, tis incorrect sez me
Theft be taking somefing, I has it and you don't
You savu?
Copying be making another thing from a thing
What are your thoughts on communities about drugs? Pretty big topic for me, although the drug subs mostly haven't moved here yet, is that because you ban them? If so, I'm wasting my time waiting for them here.
They already kicked the shrooms community out and it's not part of this "transparent" post because not enough people noticed it or cared.
Food for thought..
That’s fucked up, that’s something that actually can help with several important mental disabilities and disorders. The admins here are seriously becoming even worse than Reddit, and it hasn’t been that long.
They did ban the shrooms community earlier, there was a post about it on !support@lemmy.world but it seems like it wasn't as impactful as the latest decision so they didn't bother to make an announcement about it. The community did move over to sh.itjust.works but so far that version still seems accessible from lemmy.world (for now anyway).
How does Reddit get away with hosting these communities without the mentioned issues?
Because Reddit has a legal team on retainer, and a budget for litigation.
And they recently had to use them: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/reddit-beats-film-industry-wont-have-to-identify-users-who-admitted-torrenting/
Imagine how that same thing would have gone but with lemmy.world instead of Reddit. Being permissive about discussions on how to commit blatantly illegal activity can be expensive.
They aren't, just a recent example: https://torrentfreak.com/filmmakers-take-reddit-to-court-again-to-unmask-piracy-commenters-230621/
But they have good lawyers. LW admins don't have the same means. It doesn't even matter whether you're "right" or "wrong" here and that's what the pro-piracy advocates here miss.
Reddit has a legal team on retainer, and a budget for litigation.
Any suggestions on instances to move over to?
I don't understand how lemmy world has removed them, aren't those all communities on different servers? How is this our problem?
Because of the way Lemmy works, all content from federated instances is mirrored (minus images). So technically, all the piracy content also lives on lemmy.world, which makes them liable for it.
Not with me. Pirating for personal use is perfectly legal in my country.
Do we have an account migration tool yet and can somebody recommend a nice instance?
Yes, there is a tool: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/releases. I recommend lemm.ee for general use, or dbzer0 if you are really into piracy.
is this the new most downvoted post on lemmy?
This is why Lemmy won't grow, a lot of instances are forcing their users to create another account on other instances, this was my third account due to the blocking of some instances like this...
You can always host your own instance. Then you can choose what is blocked and what isn't.
While I wish there was more transparency about this decision before action was taken, in this case it's kind of understandable due to the servers being hosted in Germany and them having really draconian piracy laws. Just hoping that this won't lead to a chain reaction of other communities being removed due to legal complaints.
In the meantime, happy to get my piracy content over at db0.
Time to get serious about running my own instance. I now have to wonder what kind of political opinion I might voice which could make the instance operators liable. This is not tolerable long-term.
That's the joys of being on Lemmy, if you don't like what the admin are doing on the instance you're using then you can switch.
I like how you added political opinions in here and it didn't even seem too forced either.
Ahhhh right, we are now one step closer to become the new reddit…
I kinda do understand their stance, it sucks but its better than having to deal with legal shit.
Just to put my two cents: Thanks for the good work. Continue keeping up to make sure lemmy.world won’t be liable in any way for possible issues.
I did not know you can defederate from specific communities. I thought it can be done only to instances.
From what I can see it is informational only. There is no direct content linking, this does not sound illegal.
Goodbye y’all I’m out
I‘m absolutely pro pirated software, as in many cases DRM violates many personal rights, so this decision will lead to the deletion of my account. I never support censorship. Gbye.
I can't believe you've done this.
are platforms liable for user behavior?
It depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, we have the DMCA which has been weaponized by content creators and publishers, but we also have a "safe harbors" provision to the DMCA that is supposed to protect online service providers from being liable for copyright infringement based on the actions of their users - as long as they meet certain provisions and restrictions and perform certain duties and dilligence. And yet even with that in place, it does not stop content providers from suing service providers and forcing those service providers to incur the pain and expense of mounting a legal defense.
I am pretty sure that Lemmy.world admin team are European and that the instance is hosted somewhere in Europe, so they would have their own jurisdictional laws to follow.
TL/DR: even if a service provider is technically protected from the actions of their users it is still subject to provisions and conditions, and that still doesn't stop them from being sued and having to mount a defense. Some people just don't feel the hassle of all that justifies the whatever benefits they'd gain from fighting that fight.
Certainly you've heard of 'The Pirate Bay', who's 'users' famously used their platform to share copyrighted materials...the founders of The Pirate Bay were arrested, tried, and convicted, and were forced to serve jail time. Turns out the "but it was our user's doing it" defense wasn't as reliable as everyone here seems to be suggesting.
There is a local piracy-focused community at !piracy@lemmy.world. It's pretty dead, of course, only 4 posts ever, but still. How does this square with those others being blocked?
You have won my goodwill with your track record of decisions so far. I don't agree with this one, but it is not a dealbreaker for me. Thank you for getting around to announcing this in a public space, but as you say, please make sure to do this first next time something of this caliber is put through.
Not even Reddit banned their r/piracy
Didn't even know an instance could block a specific community of another instance. I thought the only option was defederation. Is there any way to see/list the communities blocked by an instance?
Genuinly good question. I get why they did what they did but i personally would like to be able to see all of the lemmyverse. Being on one the largest instances probably isnt the answer.
So, in order to subscribe to those communities I should create another account in a different instance that either has them or is federated with them, right….? Any workaround for that? This sounds like it’s going to be a real chore to follow and will push a lot of people out of lemmy in general
So that many people pirate? I think LW will be okay, don't kid yourself
With https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim, it's 3 clicks
Is there any way to migrate accounts to other instances yet?
Unpinned hoping this goes away?
I wish people would be more mature about their reaction to this, as well as other people's reactions, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with the choice.
I'm not opposed to piracy, though I understand the risks that come with a platform allowing potentially pirated content. While I respect the decision and see the reasoning behind it, I don't agree with it, and will likely change my home instance to one that allows me to continue communicating with those communities, as I was subscribed to one of them.
I'll still be participating in communities hosted here, and I hope that with this decision, the admins' concern about being potentially sued is substantially alleviated.
I sure hope the Lemmy devs are able to get moving on account migration soon...
Pathetic. Defeats the entire point if federated networks.
This is how lemmy is going to fail with the entire thing being fragmented mess. Which is sad as I was hoping it would be the proper exit plan for Reddit.
👎
And once again we have people thinking that the instance owners would have to discuss everything they want to do with them and get the approval of everyone. It's already great that they're making announcements instead of doing it silently until people notice on their own. Plus, it's not hard to make an account elsewhere if you don't like it here. I doubt you're restricted to this single instance.
Yeah. In this thread there are a lot of folks who don't understand how federation works.
Anyone can go make an account on the piracy servers, or a piracy friendly server.
There's no need to hassle the mods of the "front page of Lemmy", for taking precautions to keep this instance open.
Thank you for the update!
Boooo
I don't begrudge your decision. To me this comes down to a question of if you're willing to be on the hook for a multi million dollar lawsuit, even if you'd definitely win in the end. It's still an expensive process.
I sure as hell am not willing to do that, so I'm not going judge other people who aren't willing either. I wish more people would look at it from this perspective.
By design, this isn't Reddit. We didn't want to be at the whims of their bullshit CEO and corporation. Unfortunately, that's also exactly who can afford to have legal squabbles and not go bankrupt. This is just a natural consequence of having a community run space vs a corporate one.
This is a prime example of why I suspect we'll see a lot more lemmy instances with a more narrow focus over time instead of just a few super lemmys. Its only keeping them indexed that will be a problem so that they can be found.
WTF this instance is becoming as bad as Reddit itself. Go fuck youall my new home will be lemm.ee and/or lemmy.dbzer0.com.
WTF. Time to go. See ya.
What. The. Fuck.
The fuck is the whole point of the Fediverse. If an instance operator doesn't want to host something, you are free to sign up with someone who does or host your own instance and take those risks yourself.
Yeah fuck off im out of here.
Is it a liability when the discussion happened outside of lemmy.world?
The way federation works, discussions on other instances are cached locally.
Well that was a stupid thing to do.
Oh well, there goes the removal of my monthly donation.
Reddit 2.0...already migrating off this censorship.
You can use LASIM app (Windows/Mac/Linux) to migrate your profile and settings to another instance. Highly recommend.
If you're looking to avoid all "problematic" content, you better shut down the service right now.
removed again wtf
Besides the downvoting, there is not much blind disagreement comments here, nor agreement ones. Definitely a comment section worth reading. Fair points of views on both sides.
time to migrate change instance shit.
I don’t think this was the right call. Don’t have it hosted on here, fine. But defederated? I don’t see how being federated would be an issue at all. Oh well guess i got to actively go seek them out now.
At this rate, you might as well as defederate from all instances. Cant be too careful.
lemmy.world has become reddit.
Pre-emptively hitting my last resort button
It's arguable, but that's what federation is about. No default instance, you pick those you want to participate in and agree with, and their admins have their choices too. It's neat.
You either die a hero...
What surprises me is that people think making a community specifically for illegal activity isn't a problem, and that they should only be called on their behaviour when a copyright holder notices them. There are plenty of places to go for piracy online, so what's the need to add a community for it here? Or are you people claiming a piracy community wasn't primarily intended for piracy?
Do you think discussing piracy is illegal?
The piracy communities don't allow linking to pirated content and have broken no rules. This was tyrannical.
Wonder if this has to do with Piracy instance being listed as the largest lemmy community a few days back. Guess it might attract the wrong kind of attention.
I suspect this won't be a popular opinion, but it seems strange to me that a lot of people are making a fuss about lemmy.world blocking communities that literally advocate for illegal practices. If you disagree with lemmy.world blocking piracy communities, where should they draw the line? Allow literally any community to be created irrespective of the legality of what its advocating for? I would presume (and hope) that you wouldn't have a problem with lemmy.world blocking CP communities for example?
The Fediverse can't function as a free-for-all. It has to have rules, and instances have to be able to police those rules for the betterment of the whole.
Thank you for the update, and thank you for working hard to keep the gates to the Fediverse open.
Sorry you're getting so much flack from folks who don't understand how federation works.
I believe most will understand in time, and go on to become valuable additions to the Fediverse.
Hang in there, and know that the many of understand and appreciate what you're doing.
I think you need to make rule 1 more specific or create a rule for this specific issue. When I read rule 1 it seems vague but I might have a bias.
Speaking of having a bias, I don't think the liability is that big of an issue but I also understand that it is your instance to do what you want.
Thank you for being transparent and understanding that you made a mistake in not engaging the community first.
Stop blocking things. Piracy is ethical
I'm very conflicted about this. On one hand, it's kind of bullshit to take this level of action on something that can be handled on a case-by-case basis, when the need arises.
On the other hand, I'd prefer to see Lemmy avoid the reputation that Mastodon has garnered with the activities that are vastly under moderated there. With the size that some instances are reaching obviously there needs to be a level of discretion towards the content you will allow.
It's, however, a slippery slope from protecting the community to accepting bribes for exclusive access to your user base.
"Due to moral objections, we've decided to block this meme community. However here's an alternative that will show you advertisements disguised as funny memes! They even have most of the same content as the old one! Enjoy!"
Don't let that become reality.
Personally, I believe copyright should last five years max, but I understand this is merely a hypothesis and not everyone has to agree, but that's the beauty of mankind. Additionally, the beauty of the Fediverse is anyone is capable of finding their own safe haven which shares their views =)