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.

pankuleczkapl,

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.

poopsmith,
@poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    CaptainEffort,

    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.

    tabular,
    @tabular@lemmy.world avatar

    What signs of legal trouble are you referring to?

    pankuleczkapl,

    Pre-legal action such as DMCA requests or cease and desist letters

    tabular,
    @tabular@lemmy.world avatar

    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,

    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,
    @tabular@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    M0oP0o,

    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.

    hydra,
    @hydra@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    mysoulishome,
    @mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

    This is incredibly reasonable and reflects the exactly appropriate amount of urgency and emotional reaction to this happening. 👏🏻

    PeleSpirit,

    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,

    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, (edited )

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

    AllukaTheCutie7725,

    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,

    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,

    So are reddit mods, does not make this less slimy

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    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,

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

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

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

    AllukaTheCutie7725,

    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).

    focusforte,

    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.

    veniasilente,

    I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content.

    And the “content” is discussions about piracy, not piracy.

    Come on. Small instance indie devs don’t have the bandwidth and storage to save all seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 4K.

    focusforte,

    Yeah, but that discussion can still be legally problematic.

    TurboLag,

    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?

    AngrilyEatingMuffins,
    AngrilyEatingMuffins avatar

    A fascist troll account. If only they were a bot! They’d be the admins’ perfect user

    OverfedRaccoon,

    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.

    NOT_RICK,
    @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

    What is it about Destiny that attracts pieces of shit?

    stown,

    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.

    michaelmrose,

    First of all so far as I know lemmy doesn’t actually host anything. A post which links to the actual host probably isn’t illegal most places.

    silentdon,

    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.

    Kolanaki,
    @Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

    Can you even upload things other than images to a Lemmy instance? I don’t see the point in worrying about illegal files being shared on the system if the system doesn’t support that kind of file sharing in the first place.

    Sanctus,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    theyawner,

    It’s an elephant in the room. It’s an unavoidable topic that will eventually need to be addressed at some point.

    Sanctus,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    Its literally not. Piracy topics are all over the web.

    theyawner,

    Others have already pointed it out, but Reddit had to fight a subpoena to reveal users who discussed piracy on their site in 2011 and 2018. And just because everyone else is doing it is not a good argument to justify why this instance should expose themselves to an unnecessary risk.

    michaelmrose,

    Those communities aren’t even on lemmy.world.

    Sanctus,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    So that tells me there is precedent for privacy?

    theyawner, (edited )

    No. It just means Reddit managed to argue for their specific case. And even then they had to spend resources that a Lemmy instance owner might not have.

    obosob,

    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.

    mcherm,
    @mcherm@lemmy.world avatar

    The ad hominem criticism is irrelevant. The communities should be removed or not removed based on the server’s policies regardless of who first raised the question.

    SheeEttin,

    It’s not ad hominem to say someone is acting in bad faith.

    mp3,
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    Preemptive strike

    aka shoot and ask questions later

    kiwifoxtrot,
    @kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    drmoose,

    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.

    DoomBot5,

    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.

    muddybulldog,

    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.

    lwadmin,
    @lwadmin@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    dimspace,

    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,

    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.

    pankuleczkapl,

    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.

    Shazbot,

    Something that’s getting lost in this conversation is the nature of the infringement and what that means to the copyright holder. Memes could be considered a form of infringement, however in practice they often serve as free publicity. The intent is not to deprive the copyright holder of revenue, but use the medium to express themselves. Exposure increases, and so does the likelihood of revenue from the conversion of new fans.

    This changes with public conversations of piracy, because the nature of those conversations drift into how to deprive and evade the copyright holder by providing users just enough information to find pirated content. From a legal standpoint this can be used to prove aiding and abetting, a crime that be considered equal or an accessory to depending on the jurisdiction.

    The admins are aware of how Lemmy’s content caching works, and now publicly acknowledge the existence of their federation with dbzer0; whose piracy communities are its strongest asset. Any defense of ignorance is out the door. Without banning the communities LW becomes an accessory if dbzer0 becomes liable, as would any other instance who caches dbzer0’s c/piracy.

    To those who still disagree, that’s fine. Open your password manager, make some new accounts on other instances, enjoy the lemmyverse. But you have to agree that it is unreasonable to demand you hold the evidence of my crimes because it would inconvenience me otherwise.

    Crashumbc,

    Memes are protected under fair use doctrine as satire. Most places, IANAL.

    Shazbot,

    I am aware. My point is more to do with how the copyright holder perceives the actions of the individual(s). If the copyright holder feels the work brings more attention to their IP in a way can be converted into sales then they are less inclined to take legal action; even if some in the community may be openly pirating. Some however miss these opportunities thinking its just another instance of unlicensed usage.

    michaelmrose,

    So is discussion on the topic of piracy that doesn’t include actual links to content.

    WraithGear,
    @WraithGear@lemmy.world avatar

    Better defederate from all instances then.

    dialecticcake,

    Better to create your own instance then.

    It’s about reducing risk not eradicating it and there’s a huge difference in risk in being targeted for legal action due to hosting c/piracy (via caching/mirroring) than from a single piracy post in c/hellokitty.

    Shadesto,

    Complacency isn’t a legitimate defense against criminal activity and corporations are extremely litigious over piracy. Would you rather lemmy.world spend all their money on fighting lawsuits, or building a better instance?

    Any community that is creating questionable content should create their own instance and not seek open federation with the entire fediverse. That kind of behavior is reckless and counterproductive to what we’re trying to do here.

    pankuleczkapl,

    I am not suggesting lemmy.world should be “complacent” in this activity and keep the content after receiving any type of notice. If you host any website with content coming from users, you are not responsible for what they post, as long as you try to comply with the law and remove any offending content. In this case, complacency would be specifically allowing such content, and not merely not moderating harshly everything in they grey area.

    nan,

    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.

    BradleyUffner,

    Well, caching content is not the same as copying it.

    A cache is literally a local copy.

    Fighting legal challenges requires lawyers, even if you are in the right. Lawyers are crazy expensive.

    NOT_RICK,
    @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

    Unless I’m missing something, you don’t need a lawyer to take down a post that you’ve received a DMCA removal request on.

    BradleyUffner,

    You do if you get sued because you missed something. It’s not like lemmy world can moderate every post from every server. Any single user can get any federated community’s content pulled locally just by subscribing.

    michaelmrose,

    The law in the US is that you aren’t responsible for what your users post unless you are specifically legally notified and furthermore the communities at issue don’t host links to infringing content they host discussions on the topic

    Necromnomicon,

    So by that logic, .world should defederate from all other instances, just to be safe?

    Maalus,

    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.

    MothBookkeeper,

    You fucking donkey, did you read their comment before you replied to it? They aren’t doing it just because they want to; there are legal implications.

    Maalus,

    There really aren’t. Talking about piracy is allowed in Europe. Sharing stuff isn’t. This is a kneejerk reaction. Also, please don’t talk to people that way.

    MothBookkeeper,

    I will talk to rude people that harass the admins of a free service that way.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I see the point, but still no need to be agressive

    GodzillaFanboy129,

    Well by your logic maybe you should go kiss Reddit’s ass then if you feel that way, they’re hosting a free service and people criticize their decisions and reactivity.

    The fact that we fund this place with donations gives us all the more right to criticize them for it. Are you also going to attack people for ceasing their donations because after this I’ll never donate another cent to them ever again, and I encourage anyone else reading this to do the same.

    michaelmrose,

    Feel free to leave if this is how you talk to people

    GBU_28,

    Rude

    assassin_aragorn,

    Feel free to contractually agree to pay all their legal fees, in that case.

    Maalus,

    There won’t be any legal fees since the communities being talked about are allowed in the EU. Other people have made the same point already, but if you are scared of litigation, then you can’t host a forum at all. There is always a place where your forum breaks rules. I.e. no disparaging Putin in Russia. Making fun of the twitter CEO is more likely to get you a lawsuit than any of the communities mentioned, yet it is allowed. Also, it never is a straight up instantenous lawsuit. It always starts with communication saying “don’t do that anymore please”. Once you reject, then a lawsuit is viable and not frivolous. So you can wait till that happens and then block those communities, once a company actually complains. Not when you think that maybe somewhere in the future something might happen or maybe not.

    Truth is, lemmy is small fries. It will be that for a long time with the issues it has. Nobody cares about a tiny community hidden way deep inside.

    mysoulishome,
    @mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s so nice to see so many lawyers in this thread offering their legal counsel…it makes me feel very safe when I start hosting piracychat.doodad next week. I’m assuming they will all be willing to defend me if I do get sued since they are so sure I won’t. 😃

    mysoulishome,
    @mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

    Beehaw doesn’t have downvotes. DOESNT. HAVE. DOWNVOTES!!! HOW CAN THEY GET AWAY WITH TAKING AWAY DOWNVOTES FROM ME… WHAT RIGHT DO THEY HAVE???

    It doesn’t affect me at all because I don’t have an account there. But I’m real mad, see…

    GBU_28,

    It’s their house, you’re just visiting. If they are concerned, there’s no one else to help. If they get in trouble, will you be stepping in to help them? No.

    Maalus,

    Once you start hosting an instance that has open registration, it’s not just “their house” anymore. They are providing a service to people. They do so willingly. Arbitrairly blocking instances because you don’t know how something works and don’t bother to check it isn’t the way to host a free and open instance.

    GBU_28, (edited )

    Nah, their box, their responsibility, their rules. They could shut it off tomorrow, ban people randomly, change what posts are allowed, federate as they choose. We can’t do shit, and that’s fine cause we can each make our own instance or join another

    Edit Any assumption you have durable rights or privileges is just untrue.

    Yes, they offer access willingly, as in “at their will”

    Edit would a downvoter be able to refute me? Are we in some sort of contracted relationship with instance admins?

    michaelmrose,

    They CAN do all of those things but people would be right to critique them for it. Freedom isn’t freedom from criticism or complaint. Furthermore they want this to be a functional community as much as their users do which is why this discussion even exists.

    GBU_28,

    That doesn’t refute anything I said. Their house, their rules.

    You can criticize mom for setting a bedtime, but you must go to bed.

    michaelmrose,

    The discussion is not whether they can set those rules its should they and should we keep participating

    GBU_28,

    Regarding your first point, there is no discussion, they can do whatever they want, they are omnipotent on that.

    Regarding your second, that’s absolutely fair game.

    michaelmrose,

    Once you start hosting an instance that has open registration, it’s not just “their house” anymore. They are providing a service to people. They do so willingly. Arbitrairly blocking instances because you don’t know how something works and don’t bother to check it isn’t the way to host a free and open instance.

    You seem to be uniquely bad at reading so this is comment is the start of this subthread you originally replied to. Nobody ever suggested they COULDN’T implement any rule they please. It was never a point anyone brought up for you to be refuting. It is literally you dishonestly trying to steer the discussion away from the actual point of discussing SHOULD they.

    GBU_28,

    No, I discussed a facet of the larger concept, which requires basic critical thinking to acknowledge.

    I am not obligated to address all features of the topic, and that is not dishonest.

    Edit I specifically refuted the topic of “once you host, it’s not your house”. Bullshit. It’s 100% their house and that’s the end of the line.

    CaptainEffort,

    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.

    nickhammes,

    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,
    @dojan@lemmy.world avatar

    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,
    @pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    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.

    dojan,
    @dojan@lemmy.world avatar

    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,

    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.

    michaelmrose,

    It would be preferable if you would lie less. Evil pirate uploads potentially_infringing.mp3 to to filehost. Filehost actually serves potentially_infringing.mp3, a community on db0 hosts a link to potentially_infringing.mp3, lemmy.world caches locally a copy of data from db0. Of those the one guy directly uploading the information is at risk of an extremely unlikely single digit thousands of dollars.

    Nobody not even evil pirate himself is at risk of decades in prison or millions in debt. Companies responsibility basically ends at taking stuff down when specifically notified of infringing content.

    michaelmrose,

    Your argument is that user hosts infringing_song.mp3 on file_host, a community on lemmy.ml has a link to filehost and lemmy.world has a cached copy of the text containing the link to lemmy.ml which has a link to filehost and you think lemmy.world has legal exposure?

    veniasilente,

    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.

    Words are empty, offers are void in Nebraska. You already took steps against people who simply mostly discuss piracy. What concrete steps can you take now to show that you’d actually unblock “as soon as we know”?

    ComfortablyGlum,

    “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.

    Hildegarde,

    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.

    Mubelotix,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

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

    void_wanderer,

    One link in one discussion that slips through is basically enough.

    Mubelotix,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

    No it shouldn’t. If it does with your law, tell me your country and I’ll come help you throw the government once we are done with ours in my country

    Crashumbc,

    ROFL…

    GBU_28,

    Don’t you have school in the morning? Straight to bed mister

    Buffalox,

    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.

    Hildegarde,

    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.

    majere,

    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.

    conciselyverbose,

    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.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Lemmyworld is hosted in Germany, they have agressive anti-piracy laws

    hydra,
    @hydra@lemmy.world avatar

    Wasn’t it hosted in Finland? Or have things changed?

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    It’s both Finland and Germany iirc

    pankuleczkapl,

    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.

    Deftdrummer,

    Exactly. Those hosting lemmyworld want to bear the burden of fostering Internet discussion and the institutions pertaining to the Internet therein, but don’t dare get close to anything that could threaten the envisioned unencumbered utopia they want it to be.

    Reality: DMCA takedown requests are a part of Internet life and have no legal consequence. - If they are even received in the first place.

    AlmightySnoo,
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    Squander,

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

    PeleSpirit,

    There are so many attacking lemmy world it’s getting ridiculous.

    WraithGear,
    @WraithGear@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    pankuleczkapl,

    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

    AlmightySnoo,
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    You can go further: host a piracy instance since you seem confident enough and prove us wrong. Why are you avoiding this part? I’m not the only one having suggested this to you.

    pankuleczkapl,

    And here you are (after fighting with docker for an hour) pankuleczka.ydns.eu

    HaywardT,

    Server address not found.

    pankuleczkapl,

    Sure, if someone uses it then it’s no problem for me. There are much bigger communities already out there though, so I see no reason to do that. I’ll set it up right now to show you

    Earthwormjim91,

    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,

    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.

    benjihm,

    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.

    echo64,

    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,

    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.

    echo64,

    Yes those are the words defining the initial safe harbor agreement well done.

    I’m talking about in practice and how the dmca has actually been used. Why do you think companies like youtube entirely sidestep the dmca? They do it because the dmca is a huge drain on resources and still opens you up to litigation if you make any mistakes (like not working on the weekends for your volunteered lemmy instance that suddenly got 10,000 dmca requests from Sony pictures)

    Crashumbc,

    You’re fighting a famous “intent warrior” you can’t win. They exist only in their own head where they can’t lose and don’t have an idea how things really work…

    gabe,

    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

    lwadmin,
    @lwadmin@lemmy.world avatar

    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,

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thank you for this

    remotelove,

    Speaking of removed communities, can an admin respond to this please: lemmy.world/post/3165787

    Zuberi,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    M0oP0o,

    Why are the thank you posts getting upthings when they provide no substance? I mean the tone above is not very nice but at least it highlights the need for migration tools.

    Dio,

    Haha, damn.

    gabe,

    Thank you. It is appreciated.

    TrickDacy,

    Misunderstanding eh?

    Kbobabob,

    Yeah. You misunderstood that they are liars.

    Martineski,
    @Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Aged like milk.

    Nobilmantis,
    @Nobilmantis@feddit.it avatar

    Just another misunderstanding bro

    FlihpFlorp,

    Are we raising posts from the dead?

    nobleshift, (edited )
    @nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Cheems,
    @Cheems@lemmy.world avatar

    Apparently, none of this was even hosted on lemmy.world. And didn’t have anything to do with it. The decision is a pretty knee jerk.

    gowan,

    Exactly, everyone complaining isn’t thinking about the person hosting this instance. They have to fight the battle if it comes.

    APassenger,

    I haven’t found eatablished-Lemmy to be high-EQ.

    I have found it to be very attached to free stuff, however.

    jeffw,

    First sensible response I’ve seen on this thread. Why would Lemmy.world want to incur legal costs that they probably could not recoup? Which angry users on this post will donate $500/hr that the top law firms charge?

    ttmrichter,

    None. Precisely none. This is a huge case of “let’s you and him fight!”

    Boiglenoight,

    This is the Way.

    Odusei,

    If you think Lemmy is even on their radar when reddit still hosts much bigger communities having all the same conversations, you’re crazy. I would bet they don’t even know we exist yet.

    ttmrichter,

    An ancient legal strategy in systems with Common Law is to build up precedence. The way this works is thus:

    1. You decide you want something stopped that’s legally in grey areas.
    2. You go after small fry without a lot of money to hire good lawyers so they get judgements against them.
    3. Those judgements form “precedence” cases that can then be milked for larger targets, until…
    4. It’s law, for all intents and purposes.

    Small fry like Lemmy instance owners are perfect fodder for this strategy.

    Justice for money
    What can you say?
    We all know
    It’s the American Way!
    — Styx

    Odusei,

    Except they’ve already attempted this against much bigger fries, and lost. The precedence goes the other way.

    WaltJRimmer,
    @WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

    Look at what happened to Gary Bowser. Dude basically ran PR on a website, but because he was the guy who they were actually able to find and get a hold of easily, he’s now on the hook for millions of dollars of damages that he didn’t cause to Nintendo.

    I am disappointed in this because I think that there is such a thing as ethical piracy and protest piracy and that they’re important. But I also know that those things aren’t going to be stopped or even significantly hindered by one instance deciding not to host their content. And I understand the fear that comes with stories about how rights holders have gone after whoever the fuck they can when they’ve got a burr up their ass about something.

    Should the admins of Lemmy.World be held liable for a community simply discussing piracy and not actively practicing it on the site? No. Would they be? We don’t know. It’s possible. And that’s what makes it scary. People who commit digital crimes often get hit with disproportionately harsh punishments. They’re sometimes treated like terrorists. It’s insane. And yes, it’s frightening.

    SCB,

    Ethical piracy lmao

    The internet never ceases to amaze

    GreenMario,

    Abandonware is ethical piracy since there’s no feasible way to purchase it from the rights holders directly.

    SCB,

    You know what I hadn’t considered abandonware, and I will def gladly concede both that point and supplying to “blacklist” countries that ban media.

    WaltJRimmer,
    @WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean, it is a thing. I’m not saying that you’ll agree that it’s a right thing or that it’s justifiable. I understand arguments against it. But it’s more along the lines of Peter Sunde’s stuff. Piracy which fights for freedom of information, against things like corporate secrets and abuses, things like that. One of the examples of ethical piracy has been using piracy to share news and media with blackout countries, nations that are banned from getting any media that isn’t state approved. I would call that kind of piracy ethical piracy.

    Protest piracy is where you pirate something in protest of the people who would otherwise be making a profit off of it. There’s a reason why that’s not under the same umbrella. People can call pirating Adobe products what they want, but it’s not at the same level of trying to effect social change as ethical piracy reaches for.

    ttmrichter,

    I pirate like a son-of-a-bitch.^1^ The stuff I pirate is not available where I live. There is literally zero avenues for me to purchase it.

    In what meaningful (←this word is important and doing a lot of heavy lifting, so pay close attention to it!) way are the people I’m pirating from getting harmed? As such, in what meaningful (←c.f. above for the importance of this word) way, then, is it unethical?

    And if it isn’t unethical it is … ?

    The Internet truly does never cease to amaze. Just not in the way that some of its louder, brasher, more uninformed, thoughtless portions think it does.

    ^1^ I still support lemmy.world’s decision to block those communities. Yes, you can be pro-piracy, an active pirate, and still support an action that is contrary to piracy. Welcome to “nuance”. It’s not a native of the Internet so you don’t see it very often.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    Piracy bad! Won’t somebody think of the multibillion dollar corporations?? T_T

    SCB,

    I’m pirate shit too, and support this decision. One can pirate shit and still realize most people pirating shit are just people stealing.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    No, they’re violating copyright law.

    JonVonBasslake,
    @JonVonBasslake@lemmy.world avatar

    Piracy creates a copy, it does not remove the original like theft does. Also, people have a variety of reasons to pirate. Content not available in their country, wanting to test something before buying it, already having the thing in some form,but piracy being easier…

    SCB,

    One can steal Intellectual Property, so physicality of something isn’t exactly a real argument.

    randomblock1,

    Well, the whole point of a DMCA notice is to let you remove content BEFORE the legal action. And I don’t know if you looked at it, but the Piracy sub is only discussion, with a rule that disallows any links. If anything, they’d go for the actual instance that hosts it, not this totally unrelated one. I don’t think they even know Lemmy exists. And yet, the Piracy Reddit is completely fine.

    joe, (edited )
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    Uh, @lwadmin … 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.

    Weslee,

    The next Reddit/Lemmy is going to be ran by AI lol, us humans are too easily corrupted by power

    M0oP0o,

    Yeahhhh, please leave reddit (they still run ads there for this instance) for lemmy.

    I guess they wanted people to feel at home?

    M0oP0o,

    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):

    • admin Banned @snake from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: troll
    • admin Unbanned @snake
    • admin Banned @soviettaters from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: Troll
    • admin Unbanned @soviettaters
    • admin Unbanned @ilfi
    • admin Removed Comment Spineless pieces of shit. by @sused reason: toxic
    • admin Banned @sused reason: Bye
    • admin Banned@ilfi reason: Inactive account comes back to troll. Bye
    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    They’re unbanning them from a sitewide ban and then immediately banning them from the lemmyworld community.

    gabe,

    What in the hell?

    gabe,

    The “ight I’m out” ban note was… hm. Not a great look. Comes across as petty and vindictive.

    Mubelotix,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

    Where I live we use guillotines on power abusers

    Agamemnon,
    @Agamemnon@lemmy.world avatar

    Where I moderate, even implied death threats are a zero-warnings bannable offense.

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m not here to defend that guy, but since you offered this stance, what do you think about JFK’s quote

    Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

    Is that an “implied” death threat?

    This isn’t a gotcha; I’m just curious at your personal opinion.

    Agamemnon,
    @Agamemnon@lemmy.world avatar

    Is that an “implied” death threat?

    It’s not. Where are you going with this argument?

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    Precisely nowhere-- I have seen that quote get people banned for advocating violence, and I think that’s pretty crazy; I semi-randomly ask people who moderate this question. I promise there’s no gotcha here.

    What about a “Four Boxes” reference?

    Agamemnon,
    @Agamemnon@lemmy.world avatar

    I had to look up what that even is, because I haven’t encountered that one before. (me not being US-American)

    I cannot make a call on a reference to a quote brought forth on an unspecified subject without context.

    In regards to JFK - yes that would count as advocating violence in a very generalised sense. But without context, again, I am not able to make a call, whether a ban on someone making the quote is justified or not. In general, moderation policy also falls under freedom of expression. Consequently, freedom of speech is not a claimable right against non-governmental agents. It’s a thing that a lot of people seem to selectively overlook when advocating for what would actually be better described as “Anarchy of speech”.

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    Please don’t misunderstand. Even the government (US, in my case) doesn’t have unrestricted free speech, and that’s a good thing. We agree here. I even would say that the line as it is currently set in America is “too broad” and that we need to tweak it down a bit. We fail to acknowledge that stochastic terrorism is a thing, in our speech laws, and it essentially makes it completely legal to do as long as you remain sufficiently coded/vague.

    If you don’t mind humoring me one more time, feel free to weigh in on my questions, again, but assuming the quotes were both made in context; that is to say, JFK quote for a scenario where peaceful revolution was being restricted, and four boxes (which, in my mind, comes a little too close to the line) in a scenario where people were losing their ability to weigh in on their government actions via speech, voting, and juries.

    I can’t seem to articulate, even to myself, why the JFK quote is generally (in my mind) considered non-violent, but the four boxes one (again, in my mind) is more threatening. I’m hoping random internet polling will lead to some insight. haha

    Agamemnon,
    @Agamemnon@lemmy.world avatar

    No problem, it’s nice to have a level-headed exchange amidst an ongoing tornado of sewage :)

    So, I can try to empathize with either side (mods and users) for each of the two quotes, and there might be scenarios where one is completely right and one is wrong. But as an outsider to the kind of debates where these quotes are commonly used, I simply don’t have the cultural understanding to help much with answering your question. Sorry.

    Drawing the arch back to my initial statement: There are several levels of escalation present between utilising famous people quotes to make a general point and trying to dodge around community rules by veiling direct threats to a specified (inferred from context) group. I am of the opinion that the guillotine-comment I replied to is definitely stepping over the line and only remains standing, because right now additional enforcement of rules is (probably) not going to improve the weather situation mentioned above.

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    There are worse, imo.

    user @snake posted:

    Did you ever consider ceding ownership of the instance to an entity with greater legal capabilities?

    In the end, it will not make sense to try to keep this instance running if the owners are unable to provide adequate service to its users.

    and was banned for:

    reason: Go get your service somewhere else

    Definitely not a great look.

    sramder,
    @sramder@lemmy.world avatar

    Ehhhh… the other two comment/bans seem a tad vindictive. This on the other had seems to have a different tone to me. It’s thinly veiled criticism and almost feels like a threat, especially if someone has been DDOSing your server for weeks.

    Earthwormjim91,

    How fuckin childish.

    Are you paying anything for this service? No. It has costs to maintain while they’re shouldering that on their own and giving you this service for free.

    Get over yourself. The entire point of the fediverse is that anyone can host an instance. You can spin up a little free instance yourself and federate or defederate/block anything you see fit.

    Why don’t you? I’m gonna guess because you want a low effort, free service to get your scrolling fix. In which case, they’re right. Go to a different instance that suits your values more. If you want an instance that won’t defederate or block others unless absolutely necessary, go join Lemm.ee. They federate with basically everyone and don’t block hardly anything.

    And, Lemmy world is federated with them. So you won’t lose a single thing here if you move there.

    zabil,

    Is it really childish to quote what someone else said and question it? Seems like quite an overreaction on your behalf to be honest.

    DarkWasp,

    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.

    gabe,

    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.

    foggy,

    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.

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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.

    CrypticVader,

    I think some of this instance’s admins are not onboard with the rest. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    Well the radio silence on it sure seems like they’re circling the wagons to protect an admin that clearly isn’t emotionally mature enough to be in such a position.

    ricdeh,
    @ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    joe,
    @joe@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    Jackthelad,

    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.

    Odusei,

    The troll responsible for this is from another instance, and has been demanding that all other big instances do this. Maybe take it up with them?

    ArmokGoB,

    I moderate/founded six communities hosted on lemmy.world. There isn’t a way for me to transfer those to a different instance.

    redDEAD,
    @redDEAD@lemmy.world avatar

    Maybe you should have read the rules amigo.

    ArmokGoB,

    I did and the db0 community doesn’t directly link to pirated content, so it violates none of the rules on this instance.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    Why would you need to? People from any instance can subscribe to those communities. Use your lemmy.world account to mod the communities and browse with another.

    ArmokGoB,

    It’s a headache to constantly have to switch between accounts to check reports and moderate. I also don’t want to keep the communities on an instance hell-bent on blocking/defederating from other communities/instances all the time.

    Cabrio,

    If you don’t like it host your own instance with all the blackjack, hookers, and liability you want; instead of bitching about what toys someone else has in their sandbox.

    danielton,

    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.

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    The fuck are you talking about? Most sane people go “Damn, this thing I like is now doing a thing I don’t like. I’m going to let them know and hopefully enough people agree to change it back.” but people like you with full fedi brain go “Whelp, this instance has a mod whose name contains two letter U’s in it, better change instances.”

    You’ve watered down what the word entitlement so much I’m starting to doubt you ever knew what it meant. Entitlement is demanding your preference be catered to for the sake of it, community is giving feedback on what makes sense and what doesn’t. A general, all-purpose instance shouldn’t ban content except in extreme cases like they themselves state, which is illegal content. Piracy is not illegal, it’s ambiguous. Communities about piracy are not illegal and are infinitely more legal than the act of piracy.

    This action makes very little sense when looked at sensibly and rather than hopscotch around instances like your mom in an all-male sorority I think we should give feedback to make an instance better before discarding it carelessly like a used condom in that same all-male sorority.

    BobbyBandwidth,

    Bro the fuck YOU talking about?

    What would convince anyone to blindly accept liability for 100k users on a volunteer basis? If you owned the servers and your name was on the line, would you feel comfortable hosting “ambiguous” (your words) material?

    Your tone echos the people that yell at FOSS devs on GitHub. You are the entitled one. It’s hilarious, you think you’re entitled to random people accepting liability on your behalf.

    AngryMob,

    What liability?

    muddybulldog,

    Admins and owners of instances can potentially be held criminally and civilly liable for anything that gets hosted on their instance.

    Odusei,

    There was no illegal content hosted in any of those communities.

    These same communities already existed/exist on reddit with no issues.

    muddybulldog,

    Are you fully versed on all global laws that directly or indirectly target piracy and copyright infringement? Particularly the really murky ones regarding “facilitating infringement”.

    I’m not.

    Reddit has a very large, well paid legal team on retainer and the cost of litigation is factored in to their business model. Reddit prevailed in this case and likely spent at least a year of LW’s operating costs doing so.

    It doesn’t matter whether you’re right, it’s a matter of being able to afford to prove you’re right.

    Odusei, (edited )

    Lawsuits are coming to Lemmy, and there’s literally nothing we can do to stop it. All social media is facing the same crisis of liability, and republicans in America are dead set on killing the rules that currently protect them.

    Lemmy.world is always at risk of dumb lawsuits for defedirating exploding heads (“silencing conservative voices in social media”), god knows how many asshole patent trolls, plus their huge gaping GDPR non-compliance.

    The EU could literally destroy this all tomorrow if they wanted. Driving up the user base, driving up donations, and acquiring their own legal team is the only way any big instance is going to stick around by this time next year.

    M0oP0o,

    .world took those 100k happily and with open arms…

    BobbyBandwidth,

    Lemmy world has always said clearly that it is not a “free speech” zone, they made it clear that they would have rules

    RealFknNito, (edited )
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    Friendly reminder 4chan has an entire board dedicated to posting magnet links to torrents as well as guides on how to use them in rare cases. On the clearnet. For everyone. If you don’t want to be a magnet link directory, fine, that’s an understandable position. Ban communities that allow magnet links. It is sheer paranoia to ban a community that merely engages in the discussion of piracy and related content and banning swaths of content on a general purpose instance defeats the entire point of ‘general purpose’.

    But again, telling on yourself not knowing what the fuck entitled means. You’re seven layers of stupid treating piracy like it’s fucking CP.

    muddybulldog,

    To be fair, Hiro has also been very vocal about his willingness to fight these types of battles and has private investors that support those efforts.

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    Well yes, but I’m not holding any site to the standard of 4chan. A lot of their content is on the edge of morality nevermind legality. I’m just trying to illustrate that this is at least a full layer of legal liability away from what a much larger site does and is still being purged out of paranoia.

    muddybulldog, (edited )

    I 100% agree with your assessment regarding relative level of risk. On the other hand, knowing LW is hosted in Finland by a German provider does multiply their risk solely by virtue of geography.

    Very few instances have proper resources for general moderation never mind sorting out the “hard questions”.

    The troll that started this shitshow knew exactly what they were doing. Once the admins were “alerted” they had to act in order maintain “safe harbor” provisions afforded to communications carriers and platforms. While I’m most familiar with the US DCMA, similar legislation and provisions exist in the EU and other locales. Problem is, remote community moderation is somewhat hit or miss right now due to shortcomings in the platform itself. That’s if you even have the resources to look through everything and make a “reasonable” determination on a post by post or comment by comment basis. While I don’t agree with the decision to block these communities I do see how the admins may have reached the conclusion that to do so was their only viable choice, at the moment.

    BobbyBandwidth,

    Ratio.

    Also lol at using 4chan as your example of how to run a site

    Lemmy world clearly stated that they were not a “free speech” zone, that they would have rules, you joined anyway

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    This kid just said Ratio. Bro go back to your Twitter echo chamber, I’ve never given a shit if my opinions are popular, I care if they’re right.

    By all means, be the most popular idiot you can be. None of what I’m advocating for is ‘free speech’ you lemming, it’s the contradiction of a ‘general purpose’ instance to ban content out of preference and masquerade it as legal liability. It’s not illegal (in the United States) so if it’s based there (which it likely is but I’m open to being wrong), it doesn’t break the rules even though they claim it is and does. So either they’re lying or are misinformed and according to Hanlon’s razor, one should never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently be explained by stupidity.

    So to recap It’s not illegal. It shouldn’t be banned. I hope the admins change their mind. Take your ratio and hang it up on the fridge for your mom.

    MaximilianKohler, (edited )

    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:

    Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

    chic_luke, (edited )

    You get it. This is why Reddit isn’t going anywhere and people are just downloading the official App or patching Infinity or Sync with ReVanced Manager. I’m an advanced user, FOSS advocate, die-hard Linux user and one that gets 90% of their mobile apps through F-Droid. I love the idea of the Fediverse, but I am struggling to use it for my own needs without all the defederation stuff getting in the way and becoming very hard to get around. If someone like me is having problems, then it absolutely isn’t ready for prime time.

    In fact, I still use Reddit through a patched 3P client because my non-techie and non-political communities aren’t moving at all. As an example of something more mainstream: I’m a heavy Stardew Valley player. The Stardew community on Lemmy is dead, but on Reddit it’s very much alive and new posts gets thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments daily. What seems to be alive here is the kind of content tech-savvy people are more likely to consume: tech, politics, news, that’s it.

    It reminds me of the Linux desktop back in 2017. It was promising and it was beginning to get more interest and traction, but still when you tried using it was eh. Almost there. But not quite there. My laptop would boot and run my Firefox and development tools fine, but then the audio codec would die and display “Dummy output” until I rebooted (in the best case, I had to reinstall Ubuntu in 2 cases where audio permanently died), or my Bluetooth earbuds would stop working properly or at all seemingly at random, and when I woke my laptop up from sleep there was a 1/5 chance that GDM would hard lock and force to me to SIGKILL my entire GNOME session if not SysRQ reboot to gain back control - and this was on Ubuntu-certified SKU running a certified ISO in a state that I had left so default desperate to see it working properly that I had not even changed the default wallpaper. There would always be something a touch too inconvenient. For me, it was audio and sleep not working properly. So you would eventually image your laptop back to Windows and go with it, while knowing in the back of your mind you shouldn’t, but you want to actually get stuff done and play your games, which actually launch without Wine crashes or GPU driver errors - this is how I feel using Reddit now. Linux has matured way past this point and it can now act as a main system no problem and be a reliable performer with a scope that covers 90% of use cases well, the dream was achieved. I hope the Fediverse will follow a similar curve with time, but after months of trying the Fediverse out a way or another it still can’t stop reminding me of that older stage of Linux: promising and growing - but not quite there, and unreasonable to use exclusively.

    MaximilianKohler,

    It’s true that I’m also struggling to use the fediverse for my own needs, and opted to move my communities to a forum instead. But for this issue, I found this:

    Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

    DharkStare, (edited )

    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.

    tlit341569,

    please guide me which instances are more open/uncensored?

    GodzillaFanboy129,

    Unilem.org, though it is application registration (for obvious reasons).

    M0oP0o,

    I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy. The landing page for new users. I agree people should move but also that we do kinda need a superish lemmy, but one that maybe has all the good and bad. Would it make any sense to have an instance that has no communities of its own but also has all the instances?

    DharkStare,

    Honestly, I feel like self-hosting a single user instance is the ideal way to use the Fediverse. It gives you full control over what you see. However, that would require self hosting to become so simple anyone can do it.

    muddybulldog,

    The risk, however, is that you’re going to be potentially liable for things that you DON’T see but are hosting due to federation.

    M0oP0o,

    I don’t think it is so difficult but I also think that would lessen the depth and breadth of lemmy as a whole by limiting full participation behind self hosting.

    PriorProject, (edited )

    I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy.

    Citation needed. All the admins of lemmy world ever purported to do was host a well-run general-purpose (aka not topic-oriented) lemmy instance. It was and remains that, and part of being a well-run general purpose instance is managing legal risk when a small subset of the community generates an outsized portion of it.

    Being well run meant that they scaled up and remained operational during the first reddit migration wave. People appreciated that, but continuing to function does not amount to a declaration of being a super lemmy.

    World also has kept signups open through good times, and more recently bad. Other instances at various times shut down signups or put irritating steps and purity tests along the way. Keeping signups open is a pretty bare-minimum bar for running a service though, it is again not a declaration of being a super-lemmy.

    Essentially lemmy world just… kept working (until recently when it has done a pretty poor job of that). I dunno where you found a declaration that lemmy world is a super-lemmy, but it’s not coming from the lemmy world admins, it’s likely randos spouting off.

    M0oP0o,

    The advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit and their listing on join-lemmy.org (when they where still listed) made them the biggest instance. And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that. If this was all randos pushing the instance then boo to them, but I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)

    PriorProject, (edited )

    … advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit…

    The lemmy world admins advertised on Reddit? Can you link an example?

    … their listing on join-lemmy.org…

    Until recently EVERY lemmy instance was listed on join-lemmy.

    And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that.

    They run a family of servers under the world tld, including at least mastodon, lemmy, and calckey. They’re all named similarly.

    I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)

    They ARE the biggest instance, but that happened organically. It’s not based on any marketing claims from the admin team about being a flagship/super/mega/whatever instance. People just joined, and the admins didn’t stop them (nor should they). It’s not a conspiracy to take over lemmy. It’s just an instance that… until recently… happened to work pretty well when some were struggling.

    AustralianSimon,

    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.

    assassin_aragorn,

    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 “FAFO” approach

    pankuleczkapl,
    @pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    I can host an instance. I don’t care about “raiding”. If you get raided, it means you have not properly separated your online and real identities.

    AustralianSimon,

    Well, for starters if we looked at lemmy.dbzer0.com we can see the domain is held by tucows which is based in Canada which are a copyright protection friendly country. Sure the server is hosted on njalla.net which is based in Sweden. How hard do you think it would be for the FBI to gain the info they needed to:

    1. Figure out who pays the bills and owns the server?
    2. Get a copy of the server data for analysis?

    The only way to resist this would be to host your instance on the darknet with good sec even then that is not 100%.

    pankuleczkapl,
    @pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Again, if you properly separate your identities, than the answer to both questions is simply impossible, since you are not the one figuring on the bill. The only thing they can achieve is link you to some IP behind 2 VPNs and 5 proxies, good luck to them if they want to dig through all that while avoiding you noticing and simply deleting all data from one of them making you completely separated from any illegal activity.

    pankuleczkapl,
    @pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    And why do you think so many cyber crimes are left unsolved? The authorities know that sometimes it is not worth going after some even semi-major criminal if they know what they are doing.

    PropaGandalf,

    Sure but currently switching is a huge pain in the ass as you cant really take over your posts not to mention the migration of your communities which is currently impossible. So all the people saying somwthing like “just switch to another instance” tend to forget that this isn’t really possible at the moment.

    DharkStare,

    Do you have to take your posts with you? I’ve seen people mention this before but I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal. I do agree about the communities though and feel that there needs to be an easy way to export your subscriptions so they can be imported on another account.

    PropaGandalf,

    I like to have a history of my posts linked directly to my account. It’s what I contributed to the community and I’d like it to be a part of my profile.

    zikk_transport2,

    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.

    Ignisnex,

    I don’t think they’re worried about the logic of it. Logic doesn’t really matter when you’re getting sued, and the media industry are a litigious bunch. Being in the right doesn’t matter if you go bankrupt defending yourself.

    Zpiritual,

    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.

    CaptainEffort,

    But again, they’re not even linking to any pirated content, torrents or otherwise.

    AllukaTheCutie7725,

    People all over this thread trying to say they linked to content clearly haven’t been there, they absolutely do not link to content directly and it’s even against their rules, so if you make an argument about “lemmy.world can’t host illegal content” or “links are illegal content” these are Moot points because they neither host content on that server, nor directly link to it.

    gowan,

    I can sue you for stealing my material regardless if you have and as a result you need to mount a defense to this claim. That defense is not free of charge.

    Everyone complaining about this seems to have no idea how expensive this could be for the hosts.

    zikk_transport2,

    Okey, so what is conclusion of your point? You can sue any instance for anything, so what should instance owners do? Sounds like “not having an instance” is the only right answer to your logic.

    Seriously, let’s just sue lemmy.world because lemmy.dbzer0.com talks about piracy.

    InternetCitizen2,

    You can sue any instance for anything

    I mean slap suits are a thing. Even if they don’t have merit they can burn your cash.

    gowan,

    You can limit your exposure to liability by aggressively avoiding things like piracy groups that could cause you to face these nuisance suits.

    There’s a reason why world left piracy and why so many want nothing to do with NSFW

    kmkz_ninja,

    Your confusion about the litigous nature of the US is naive, and your gotcha is dumb and immature. Yes, you can sue for anything. No, that doesn’t mean instance owners should quake in their boots, but CSAM, and copyright issues are the quickest way to end up in a legally dubious place where the laws don’t matter morals are made up. People have been on the hook for the retail price of every single viewer of an illegal stream, into millions and millions of dollars.

    The “this is stupid why won’t people take life-ending risks so I can talk about piracy when I could easily make my own instance, take the risk myself, and talk about piracy.”

    Lauchs,

    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.

    zikk_transport2,

    Well, blocklisting certain communities does not make you un-sue-able. 🤷🤦

    APassenger,

    I don’t think this is a boolean Y/N, so much as an odds thing.

    UnderpantsWeevil,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    sirfancy,

    Replace the context of this about art thievery, and guides about how to steal art from museums, then think about how it sounds. You’re right, discussing those things would technically be legal, but c’mon now. I don’t care or judge if you do these things, but discussing how to commit crimes in a public forum, no matter what it is, shouldn’t be much of a debate among administrators to decide to ban or not. It’s safer to just do that even if it’s technically legal. If the cops come knocking, why would they bother lawyering up for these communities when they can just hand them off to another instance that would rather advocate for them?

    If you’re against the decision, the entire point of the fediverse is to have the freedom to hop to a different instance if you disagree with its administration, so why not find one you are better aligned with? Keeping the fediverse happy as a whole with less user conflict is more important than user retention per instance; no one should feel locked in.

    ttmrichter,

    Whose laws?

    “From your understanding” is meaningless if your understanding isn’t based on the same laws as where the server operates.

    Prethoryn,
    @Prethoryn@lemmy.world avatar

    I think there are other things here worth considering about your comment. One of the biggest things I see Lemmy talk about is security and privacy. You can be against the action but in reality imagine the feds are tracking down those institutions. They can supeona Lemmy or request data from Lemmy servers and now regular people are exposed.

    Even if it is just hosting a link the other concern an admin might need to have is how long before those links the problem legally is that Lemmy can be potentially charged.

    kellywarnerlaw.com/linking-to-pirated-content-law

    There are plenty of ways you are legally at fault if not handled correctly. In theory, Lemmy could be charged for allowing the adverisement of pirated content. I understand how Lemmy users feel about fucking over big companies because they don’t want to pay to some big corporation that has fucked them over and doesn’t care about the end user. However, I find those same Lemmy users to be a bit hypocritical. We already have writers and film makers on strike for being paid inadequately. While the idea is to change the viewpoint of big companies and stealing money from them is a win to some people. This also impacts those same writers and producers and this is true throughout any industry. If you steal from it even if you think you are doing damage to the big company you aren’t helping the good folk. Even if you don’t give a shit about those people and think they are a part of the problem.

    Tarquinn2049,

    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.

    zikk_transport2,

    The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws

    As another user mentioned, TPB hosting magnet links and torrent files. Bring down TPB site down = no access to torrent files/magnet links = you can’t download the torrent (teoretically). Sharing link to TPB site does not break any laws and is totally legal.

    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.

    Basically “Lorem ipsum”

    Let the smaller, less visible servers do the shady but “totally technically legal” stuff.

    So you do support piracy? Or not?

    Big servers with big targets on their forehead need to be stable and drama-free.

    “drama-free” lol. This is drama. This is drama that should not have happened in the first place.

    spiderman,

    The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws

    It does, it holds torrent files which usually “holds and shares” a copy right infringing content. While mentioning that website isn’t gonna bring any problems, linking the actual torrent file or link to that might bring problems.

    drmoose,

    It doesn’t hold any torrent files for over a decade now. It’s all magnet links which know nothing about the content.

    crag,

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

    I guess it’s time to leave.

    PeleSpirit,

    Why would anyone care if you leave? No one is making money off of you. Good luck on your journey on another instance?

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    That’s what I don’t get about these “Hmmph, I’m leaving!” posts. Unlike Reddit, .world isn’t getting anything whatsoever from you using their instance for free. If every single person left, that’s just less unpaid work for Ruud to do. Sign up to another instance and move on, the theatrics are pointless.

    theyawner,

    It’s a little funny to imagine them making a scene about leaving and then you see them still active here but with an account from another instance.

    Underwear,

    I can’t speak for OP, but mine wasn’t a tantrum of leaving. It was simply a frustration in having to find another instance that is accepting users and generally matches up with my views, and then rebuilding a new account with new subscriptions and new blocks etc. Maybe I’m missing something? It’s really frustrating to have to rebuild your entire account because an instance admin blocked a community you were active in for semi-arbitrary reasons. If we could easily migrate accounts between instances, it would be very different.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    I can see what you’re saying. I knew from the beginning that I’d probably be making multiple accounts due to how the fediverse works, so didn’t get too attached to any one of them. There’s definitely some culture shock for people used to walled gardens like Reddit.

    Underwear,

    Same here. Guess I’ve got to go to a new instance.

    objectionist,

    that’s the magic of the fediverse ;)

    nexguy,
    @nexguy@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    M0oP0o,

    “A generic Lemmy server for everyone* to use.

    The World’s Internet Frontpage Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world** to use.”

    *everyone we approve **entire world may not include you

    WaltJRimmer,
    @WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean… Yes?

    For most websites to be functional, they need to be moderated. If you let anarchy reign, it’s not some utopia like I’ve seen a shocking number of people online claim that it would be. It ends up with a lot of racism, hate speech, doxxing, threatening violence, illegal content being posted, users being harassed, and other terrible things. Most people won’t want to be part of a site like that because it isn’t accepting or welcoming, it’s a dumpster fire.

    No one should have come into Lemmy.World and thought, “Huh, this is going to be true freedom! I’m going to start advertising selling cocaine!” Maybe they’d want to, but the site isn’t just anything goes. They’re trying to run it on the open web and draw in a stable community. To be clear, I’m understanding but unhappy about the decision to ban communities about piracy. But criticizing a website by saying, “I thought you said anyone could come in, so why do you have rules, HUH?” That’s bullshit!

    Piers,

    Noone’s stopping users from using Lemmy.World here. You just can’t do stuff related to piracy in the process. There’s a difference between “you can’t do X here” and “you aren’t allowed to be here.” If you’re incapable of engaging with a social space without bringing piracy into it that’s a you issue.

    ttmrichter,

    Notably absent from the piece you quoted: “to do anything”. See how that works, Sparky?

    Everybody can use it. From the entire world. They just can’t use it for things that are against the law, against the rules, or against human decency.

    InternetCitizen2,

    I mean it is even common to have several reddit accounts, so not even that novel.

    mo_lave,

    I don’t understand why people are upset even a little about this.

    Change is uncomfortable. Understandable if you frame it in the recent changes in streaming services, for example.

    Demigod787,

    Who do you think uses Lemmy in the first place? Normal users or pirates? This is not a shift of gears that will get the advertisers flocking, and this will not suddenly open the doors to the hidden cache of users that were not around because of “pirates.” Not to mention, instead of this action, what should have been done is to warn the instances and ask them to follow the rules they had on Reddit, where users are not allowed to link to pirate sites.

    nexguy,
    @nexguy@lemmy.world avatar

    This wasn’t done to get more users, it was done because an instance wants to protect itself. But in the end it doesn’t matter why it was done at all. Just access those channels you want another way which is the point of the fediverse. Nothing of value has been lost by this decision. Everyone can still access those channels using their favorite app just as before.

    Squizzy,

    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,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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,
    @TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

    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,

    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,

    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.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    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,
    @TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    Your instance is your vote in the fediverse as a whole.

    TheSpookiestUser,
    @TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

    A vote for what, though? What is being decided, and by who?

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    You are deciding what content you want to see. If you’re on an instance run by someone else, that will never be under your control.

    TheSpookiestUser,
    @TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

    That’s not democracy though. That’s my only point here is that isn’t related to the concept of democracy at all.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    https://media.tenor.com/mSBSUCrYM5EAAAAC/fair-enough-alastor.gif

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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,
    @TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world avatar

    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,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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.

    Mubelotix,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

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

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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)

    WarmSoda,

    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.

    Actually, Reddit was far worse with huge ass lists of links to games and sites.

    AlmightySnoo, (edited )
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file.

    You ignored the “assistance in obtaining it” part, because members of !piracy have been doing that. Also:

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b1645823-ae50-4611-869c-38b0de32bb10.png

    EDIT: oh boy, shill posts a lie, innocent pirate mob upvotes. I literally post a proof that what he said is completely false, innocent pirate mob downvotes.

    WarmSoda,

    Are you trying to say I’m a shill? Lol wat.
    I chimed in with my experience. You chimed in with one example expecting it to be the end all of the discussion.

    If you really want to talk about who does what, look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps for online services so you don’t have to pay for them. Someone’s been asking for assistance in obtaining things alright.

    AlmightySnoo,
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    my experience

    Which is very far from reality. I literally just opened the community and randomly found that thread, I didn’t even have to try hard. You tried too hard to make them look good here:

    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.

    Also, maximum cringe here:

    look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps

    WarmSoda, (edited )

    And, so what?
    Why are you so butthurt? I wasn’t even going to respond to your comment because I read it and thought fair enough.

    lemmy.world/post/3206301
    This is asking for the same exact thing that your apparently so upset over.

    Chill.

    AlmightySnoo,
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    butthurt

    It does seem to me that you’re the one who’s butthurt because I called you a shill though? You literally lied, I don’t even see why you still reply. Also, very pathetic of you to compare using an alternative front-end with something that’s clearly illegal.

    WarmSoda,

    Yeah dude you totally caught me lying. Everything is falling apart not that you’ve exposed me lol

    Dong64,

    It’s almightysnoo, they’re already known to be an asshole. Nice job calling them out though!

    WarmSoda,

    Dudes crying over downvotes lol

    spiderman, (edited )

    The above comment says:

    I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file.

    proceeds to post a screenshot where they just name the site and not the particular content.

    AlmightySnoo,
    @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website

    you missed this part, you’re all trying too hard here

    spiderman, (edited )

    I think some of you have no idea how legal issues will occur. Unless you are linking actual content or the (direct) link to the copyright infringing content, you will not be having any legal issues. That’s why big piracy discussion subreddits in reddit ike r/piracy are not taken down yet.

    Even YouTube has copyright infringing content. Now will .world get any legal notice for linking that? No. Will .world get a legal notice for having comments or posts having a direct YouTube link to the copyright infringing content? Yes. That’s how things work.

    Hope you guys understand that instead of slamming every reasonable comment.

    lwadmin,
    @lwadmin@lemmy.world avatar

    Sure. But we’re a group of volunteers and we would not like to find out the hard way what is possible and what not. We would think meta discussions about piracy should be allowed as long as there is no linking to actual illegal content.
    But is pointing to locations with illegal content legal or not? And having members/admins worldwide it makes it even harder to be sure.

    We don’t want to find out the hard way and this is a better safe than sorry measure. Again we personally have nothing against the people on these communities or against the communities itself.

    CaptainEffort,

    Smart, might as well shut down this whole thread then as we’re discussing piracy here too, right?

    kratoz29,

    I love Piracy!

    xXxBigJeffreyxXx,

    should go ahead and ban image uploading to lemmy.world, as there is likely a ton of illegal, copyright-violating content that hasn’t been stress-tested for fair use.

    NOT_RICK,
    @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

    The music community could be an issue for the same reason, this logic is problematic

    snake,

    Did you ever consider ceding ownership of the instance to an entity with greater legal capabilities?

    In the end, it will not make sense to try to keep this instance running if the owners are unable to provide adequate service to its users.

    assassin_aragorn,

    to an entity with greater legal capabilities?

    Someone who has the necessary legal capabilities is going to be a corporation. And that’s exactly why we left Reddit.

    void_wanderer,

    No. In Germany we have something called gGmbH. It’s basically a non-profit Limited. But IANAL, no idea if and how this would be able to protect the admins.

    Tenthrow,
    @Tenthrow@lemmy.world avatar

    So this nonprofit is going to run the largest Lemmy instance?

    void_wanderer,

    I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t.

    sfantu,

    Lololo

    That’s a corporation imbecile

    EVERYONE HAS THEM !

    LOLOLOLOLO

    Let me tell you a secret … THE GOVERNMENT is a corporation … the church… IS A corporation …

    Lolololololo

    sab,

    Yikes. Bit trigger happy with the ban hammer there. It’s at -40, isn’t that filtering enough?

    Edit: it was an instance ban initially, this is more reasonable.

    Weslee,

    Eesh if posting a slightly hurtful comment is enough to get an entire instance ban… I wasn’t going to move home instance just because of those communities but the bans is way more of an eye opener.

    hal_5700X,
    @hal_5700X@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    OtakuAltair, (edited )

    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:

    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.

    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.

    theyawner,

    Lemmy users are just showing their disapproval of the action. They have the right to do.

    Would be great if they actually tried to understand the underlying issue instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions.

    Solemarc, (edited )

    Encouraging illegal activity is illegal, piracy is illegal. Therefore encouraging piracy is illegal. The end.

    The law is: “take down pirated content as soon as your aware of it and proactively prevent it being shared on your platform and you can’t be held liable if it is on your site.”

    Lemmy.world’s first rule is no illegal stuff including sharing copyright material without permission. I’m so sick of seeing people acting like the sky is falling because lemmy.world isn’t directly facilitating piracy.

    derf82,

    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.

    Photographer,

    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.

    Ab_intra,
    @Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s a similar claim that torrent sites have been using for years and it’s just not working in court.

    Photographer,

    Torrent sites exist solely to serve up torrents. Lemmy is just an aggregate of many, many sites, it can’t possibly vet every single one, and if it tries then we are on the path to censorship.

    Cabrio, (edited )

    It’s perfectly reasonable that those torrents link to perfectly legally accessible content, and digital backups of purchased and owned licence software. Doesn’t mean a host can afford to fight the media companies if they come after them.

    Censorship always happens, you’d be disappointed if they didn’t censor CSAM.

    muddybulldog,

    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.

    All this post. Hosted on three completely different instances, with different admins. “It’s not actually my community” doesn’t work in the Fediverse.

    Photographer,

    If the original post gets hit with DMCA and the original host instance complies, does it get removed from all instances?

    muddybulldog,

    By design, yes, but there’s a number of things that can go wrong that can cause the remote instances to not receive (or comply with) the instruction to do so.

    xaon_rider92,

    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.

    chic_luke,

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

    Exactly. I’m deciding between these two - I am not impressed at all on how this was handled, and I have already decided that I am not going to be loyal to this instance. Half contemplating migrating everything and screwing off honestly, but I am scared of my new smaller home instance disappearing into the void, bringing my entire account with it, which is why I chose lemmy.world. to begin with. Is that a thing that might happen?

    Shush,

    Possibly.

    You should look for middle sized instances. Those are not as big as lemmy.world so they’re less likely to have to do this kind of stuff, but also big and steady enough that they’re not likely to randomly disappear one day.

    Piecemakers3Dprints,
    @Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

    Fun fact: “irregardless” is a nonsense word.

    VanRijn29,

    I like it though.

    Piecemakers3Dprints,
    @Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

    You do you, but from an outside perspective you might want to consider, going forward: it makes you sound like an idiot.

    JonVonBasslake,
    @JonVonBasslake@lemmy.world avatar

    Language evolves

    Piecemakers3Dprints,
    @Piecemakers3Dprints@lemmy.world avatar

    That would be “devolves”, technically. I’m aware of linguistic morphology, and you certainly have the right to choose your own speech patterns. For instance, do you also say “should of” instead of “should’ve”? 🤗

    dx1, (edited )

    It’s a precept of law that you actually have to have standing to pursue a lawsuit. An arbitrary “rights holder” can’t successfully pursue a lawsuit on the grounds that people are speaking about a type of action that could hypothetically affect them, at least not in the US.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)

    Edit - Guess lemmy.world is in Germany, but shouldn’t be too different.

    Iceblade02,

    The unfortunate reality is that the arbitrary “rights holders” have leveraged their held rights to gain a lot of money, unlike the maintainers of lemmy.world, which don’t have a bunch of cash lying around.

    In this day and age, money can create allegations to drown someone in lawyers, and just defending against such allegations, regardless of their validity, can be prohibitively expensive.

    Carighan,
    @Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

    In Germany, linking to legally problematic content can itself see you facing fines, in one of the shittiest legal developments in years other than not banning the AfD.

    So yeah, I can totally see them rather avoid all exposure.

    And in Germany music rights are mostly all centralized in one umbrella organization, so they can trivially declare they’re affected. (fuck the music industry, but that’s besides the point)

    WolfyGamer29,

    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?

    applejacks,
    @applejacks@lemmy.world avatar

    oh no, how dare users voice their opinions

    mirrors,

    I dont think youre going crazy, but this is also what lots of people on reddit felt about the users moving to Lemmy. Different people have different priorities, and there arent really a ton of ways to express displeasure with the admin decisions of your instance to say “I’m leaving and heres why” although some people are obviously being a bit hyperbolic.

    Carighan,
    @Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

    Plus this is the Fediverse. They’re effectively just saying “yo, I’m gonna reduce your server costs!”. Oh no! What a horrible threat!

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Haha I’m not deleting anything I have hosted here, just making a new account on another instance.

    Cabrio,

    Which moves your future server costs to that instance… Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Wow, you’re so nice! I bet you get invited to all the parties 🥳

    Cabrio,

    Did you just necro two 4 day old comments? You should see if bozo is taken for a username. 🤡

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Lol are you going through my comments? I feel so violated 🤷‍♂️

    Yea sometimes when I learn new information I delete my hot takes. I understand why that triggers you.

    Cabrio,

    No, you replied to me dumbass. 🤡

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Stay triggered ;]

    Cabrio,

    Stay stupid. 🤡

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Such a way with words. Oh, to be a poet.

    Cabrio,

    Yeah, it’s a shame that simple things are beyond your ability.

    pozbo,
    @pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

    Yea man, real shame.

    Jase,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    CVS is an established megacorporation. A bunch of Karens saying that they wont get business from them anymore is meaningless to something that brings in billions of profit.

    Lemmy.world is a similar situation for the opposite reason. It’s a free service that does not make money. A bunch of users saying they won’t use it anymore is meaningless because they cost Lemmy.world money every time they use it.

    _wintermute,

    If nobody uses the platform then there is no reason for it to exist. The fewer people who use it, the less functional it is as a social medium. Pretty obvious shit.

    grayhaze,
    @grayhaze@lemmy.world avatar

    If every single user of Lemmy.world, or even a significant majority, leaves because they’re no longer able to discuss piracy, I’ll fight both Zuck and Musk in a cage match. It’s all hot air from a very vocal, overly entitled minority.

    mysoulishome,
    @mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

    If every person left Lemmy.world @rudd and the admins could take on another free hobby that they don’t get paid to do like bowling or birdwatching. He also has a calkey server and guessing he doesn’t cry every night because there aren’t 10,000 users.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    But Lemmy.world isn’t the whole platform, it’s just an instance of it. You’re right if the people are saying “I’m leaving Lemmy forever!”, but most are saying they’re simply moving to other instances.

    soviettaters,

    Ight, I’m out

    Mereo,

    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.

    elia169,

    But why would lemmy.world be the target of those supposed legal battles? These instances aren't even hosted on lemmy.world.

    Silverseren,

    Because of federation, all federated discussions that have participants from an instance save a local copy of that thread to the source instance the user is from.

    So any infringement on one instance will be an infringement on any instances participants came from.

    OverfedRaccoon,

    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. 😂

    Mubelotix,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

    Join smaller instances, they don’t do that there

    void_wanderer,

    Any recommendation? I don’t want to accidentally sign up on some right wing instance etc.

    spiderman,

    my instance is pretty cool, but i think it would be better for you to find an instance that’s tailored to your hobby/past time.

    OverfedRaccoon, (edited )

    I wish I could find the post/comment from a small instance admin that said it quickly became a nightmare trying to moderate without a team, and people were filling their drive storage with white noise files and crap, needing to be purged twice. I believe they even mentioned they were shutting down the instance and it being a cautionary tale of why not to join a smaller instance.

    EDIT: waveform.social

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    waveform.social/post/310138

    OverfedRaccoon, (edited )

    Thank you so much for finding it! This is it. It really sucks that it has to come to that.

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I read the exact comment you just quoted. I‘m not sure either who it was but I could check if I answered to it :)

    But anyway, I‘d be down to help if anyone needs help. I already told the admin of my instance that I‘m game.

    Risk,

    Gotta choose progressively smaller instances until you self-host.

    Limeey,

    You can solve your “problem” by running your own instance and federate with whoever you want

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thats actually what I‘m gonna do at some point. Your instance needs to be exposed, right? No chance it would work behind a firewall without a tunnel?

    Limeey,

    If you want to federate, then yes. Your instance needs to accept the activity pub messages sent by the instances you federate with. You would also need to send out the apub notices whenever you do activity on your instances

    Haui,
    @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    That makes total sense. I guess it was wishful thinking on my side. So I‘ll need to wait until I‘m ready to get a vps then. Thanks for elaborating. :)

    SovietTaters,

    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.

    mp3, (edited )
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    From the modlog

    Banned @soviettaters
    reason: Let us help you

    That is petty and thin-skinned af lmao

    EDIT 1: Account has been unbanned sitewide

    EDIT 2: Banned from !lemmyworld instead, for “trolling” _(ツ)_/¯

    At least there is a public modlog for accountability on Lemmy

    spiderman,

    At least there is a public modlog for accountability on Lemmy

    This is one of the features I like in Lemmy so far. Accountability for actions.

    zabil,

    The modlog is a great feature. Thank you for sharing

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