OK mateys, let's talk about direct links.

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.commod to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 24 points –

The original /r/piracy was purposefully gimped because Reddit received DMCAs for any random thing and didn't even bother to follow up. Since we're in new waters, I want things to be a bit more relaxed, but there's a limit on how relaxed we can be, without starting to get lawsuits, which I will not be able to fight off. I also host other communities and interests which might cause me headaches.

Remember, this is a hobby project (and none of you scurvy dogs are donating) :D

So here are some piracy-related ground rules for he whole of lemmy.dbzer0.com as of today

  1. No direct links. This means anything which would make Nintendo or Disney light my ass on fire. I am not going to ban you for it (unless you start doing this on purpose), but I will ask admins and mods to remove them.
  2. You can link to websites pages related to piracy. Linking to websites linking to your content (not with a 301 redirect, before you ask) is OK. In general try to keep one degree of separation between our collective groins and your links.
  3. Magnet Links and links to Torrent files are OK, unless we start getting into trouble for it.
  4. /c/piracy has its own, more restrictive rules. Follow them first when they differ from what I post here! /c/piracy is for generic discussion, I don't want it to turn into a link repository full of beggars, got it?
  5. These rules apply to all pirate communities in lemmy.dbzer0.com. Unless that community has more restrictive rules from its own mods. I can easily get a lawsuit because you start making a nintendo ROM link repository.
  6. You can still post direct links elsewhere: If you want a place to post direct links, I suggest you use a community on a server setup to handle this. This requires some significant investment in anonymity and hosting provider (these providers are 3x as expensive, yo!). You can still subscribe and share from those communities with your account in lemmy.dbzer0.com, which can serve as your "port of safety" as those lemmies could be taken down due to those links. If that happens, this safer community will still be up.

All in all, this lemmy is supposed to be Pirate-allied, but not a direct link repository. I literally cannot handle that legal risk at the moment. I hope you all understand the realities of our situation. As much as we can argue that a link to a file is not infringing, the Cartel's legal fund is bottomless, and all I have is a tinsy-tiny treasure chest under my birdbath.

If any pirate communites need to migrate after this, I understand. I would still suggest you keep them around as the "safe" community, and post your link aggregation on a lemmy instance which can handle the eye of sauron. This way you get both a stable community and account, and your links via fediverse. Win-win.

26

Wait this is the new home for /r/piracy? Based af.

And thus the new home for me.

Goodbye reddit I guess 🫡

I suggest to post any links here encoded in base64 (see 64decode.org/) It’s easy encryption/decryption.

That way the DMCA crawlers can’t get to it. That is how some forums operate, and I love the idea.

Yes but it might be only a batter of time until they catch up. Keep to the main rule about no direct links even under b64. I am too poor for lawyers yo

Arrrr matey, I code all my pirate maps in base64. I suggest ye do the same, matey. Arrrrrrrggggh 🦜

Rules that make sense. And I just donated a few days of server use. Ain't much but it's honest piracy.

This requires some significant investment in anonymity and hosting provider (these providers are 3x as expensive, yo!).

What is meant by these? Any links, I mean, pointers?

https://njal.la/

https://njal.la/

There are a lot of cases of people losing their domain without reason.
njal.la uses https://www.tucows.com/ as a source

I heard njal.la experienced a social engineering attack on tucows to steal some of their domains at some point. But other than that, is there really any DNS registration that cannot be lost if enough powerful people demand it?

I heard njal.la experienced a social engineering attack on tucows to steal some of their domains at some point.

Oh, I did not know that was the reason. IMHO it is better to know it was not because of malice.

is there really any DNS registration that cannot be lost if enough powerful people demand it?

The answer is no. I was just trying to give a heads up, because a friend of mine just warned me of it, and I remembered I learned about njal.la here.

I remember not too long ago (before the discord server went kaput, for other reasons) Sin Eater's Cove discord server posted all links encrypted, and they had a cool bot that could message you the decoded link privately.

Maybe a future bot here could do the same.

But for now posting the encrypted links would be good, just as an extra layer of protection.

I think it's a healthy standard practice to implement when sailing high seas.

Something I've seen is encoding links and sending people to https://www.base64decode.org/. Whether that alleviates legal risk is questionable (unlikely?), but it does prevent scraping for keywords.

Yeah the megalinks community’s new forum does that extensively, seems to keep links alive and untroubled for a long time.

just gave a donation!

How much does it cost to host this instance btw? Hopefully not too much D:

Thank you! Currently the costs would be close to 40 Eur per month, but I'm using some shared resources so the split is not exact. More than 30 Eur for sure.

Fully agree. Tbh I'd have no problem even if you said no magnet or torrent links. It's good to have places for discussion, there are other places to actually go and find those things. Thanks for all the work setting this up hoping it takes off!

This gives me an idea. Make a federated torrent site. It would be practically impossible to take down and one instance going offline because they don't have money wouldn't destroy everything like in RARBG's case.

not going to work due to trust/validation issues.