Removal of piracy communities - Lemmy.world
lemmy.world
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: - !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com] - !piracy@lemmy.ml [/c/piracy@lemmy.ml] - !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com] 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.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3249941

Highlights:

Chadmins are also banning everyone for saying they’re leaving

What surprises me is that people think making a community specifically for illegal activity isn’t a problem, and that they should only be called on their behaviour when a copyright holder notices them. There are plenty of places to go for piracy online, so what’s the need to add a community for it here? Or are you people claiming a piracy community wasn’t primarily intended for piracy?

https://lemmy.world/comment/2426956

Time to host my own instance. I disagree with this move.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2429393

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.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2426973

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

I guess it’s time to leave.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2425186

I don’t think this was the right call. Don’t have it hosted on here, fine. But defederated? I don’t see how being federated would be an issue at all. Oh well guess i got to actively go seek them out now.

At this rate, you might as well as defederate from all instances. Cant be too careful.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2427348

Bootlicker [-8]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2427940

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.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421890

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. [chadmins]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421890

What the absolute hell? What makes this place so good is that there’s not people making idiot decisions at the top. This is an idiot decision. Plus side of the fediverse is vanishing.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2424687

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

The mod note was “Let us help you”.

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

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

https://lemmy.world/comment/2422473

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

This was a misunderstanding from one of the team members. It has since been discussed and will not happen again. Lemmy.World and this announcement community is our primary platform, [chadmin]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421280

And once again we have people thinking that the instance owners would have to discuss everything they want to do with them and get the approval of everyone. It’s already great that they’re making announcements instead of doing it silently until people notice on their own. Plus, it’s not hard to make an account elsewhere if you don’t like it here. I doubt you’re restricted to this single instance.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2424187

Ight, I’m out

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421940

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.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2420730

fucking hell, its time to leave lemmy.world, you are no better than reddit :marseysnoo:

Says the redditor

https://lemmy.world/comment/2422227

What is the legal theory being used here?

People chatting about piracy is now a crime in US? I thought the crime was uploading or downloading copyrighted content…

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421667

Lovely this happened because someone complained after being banned from the piracy instance for being a transphobic asshole. :marseytransplushie3:

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421151

Yea, I’m leaving. Not as a protest, I just want access to something without caring if devs like it or not.

All hail Piracy!

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421558

Well said! I think the entire LW community would prefer a heads up for major actions. It’s understandable that piracy could lead to liability issues which none of us want. Thanks for giving us a run down.

https://lemmy.world/comment/2420912

Is it a liability when the discussion happened outside of lemmy.world?

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421575

Deleting lemmy now I guess as well [-3]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2424715

Wtf? I’m leaving.

Is there a way to migrate a community? [-3]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2428100

I’m sure this comment will receive plenty of hate, but I’m really struggling to understand why piracy seems to get so staunchly defended by seemingly everyone here. Piracy is stealing. It is morally wrong. We can argue all day about how it’s a ‘victimless crime’ or how media conglomerates are greedy and deserve it, but at the end of the day there’s nothing that makes it ‘right’. With maybe a few exceptions, no one needs the things they’re pirating and it’s just childish to refuse to pay for content and go on pretending it’s a necessity. What needs to happen is more money going to the creators whose content we all enjoy so much.

There’s plenty of places to go where you can still interact with these communities, and we shouldn’t be surprised that a large and general instance wants to be distant from them. Personally I applaud the decision. [-6]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2426834

Literally 1984 [-14]

https://lemmy.world/comment/2421877

  • martinbasic@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Afaik, an admin mentioned that they will moving to the server that have US dmca law, which they required to follow, see https://lemmy.world/comment/2429393

    However, some users said that these priacy communities had rules to restrict direct illegal links, etc., like this list of rule from c/priacy

    Correct me if I’m wrong.

    Edit: That first comment link is going to show handshake failure error, so I’m quoting part of them here:

    […]We are moving to Digital Ocean soon, a US based hosting company. This means that we have to follow US based dmca law even if the servers are hosted in Europe. And we know for a fact that this could become problematic.[…]

  • theAndrewJeff@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    I totally understand being spooked at the possibility of litigation, but this really seems like a poor exercise of judgement all around. Like several people have noted, LW isn’t hosting the pirates materials, and the pirate communities aren’t even on their instance.

    Like, Reddit has r/piracy, you really think they’re going to come after LW when r/piracy has been around for years and is magnitudes bigger?