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Removal of piracy communities (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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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.

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[+] RealFknNito@lemmy.world -6 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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@mylemmy.win 6 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

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@mylemmy.win 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] AngryMob@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

What liability?

[-] muddybulldog@mylemmy.win 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[-] Odusei@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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

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

[-] muddybulldog@mylemmy.win 7 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.