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.
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.
you do have a point, but piracy could be seen as a response to restrictive pricing models and accessibility issues set by media conglomerates. those high prices and regional restrictions can limit people's ability to access content, especially in economically disadvantaged regions, which doesn't really sound fair to me.
you're right it's not a necessity but if someone downloads a movie they wouldn't have purchased otherwise, it doesn't necessarily equate to a lost sale for the creator.
i pirate games because the repacks of some of the AAA games consume less bandwidth when installing and doesn't have DRM that eats my resources in the background. and if it works well, i end up buying it with no regrets. i feel like everybody should have that freedom to do whatever they want.
I absolutely agree with you that piracy is largely a response to real issues that businesses should address. Of course it's not fair that a subscription fee will feel different to people of different economic status. I guess it's tough to feel the individual side of that.
I enjoyed the first few seasons of Star Trek Discovery (another reason for me to get downvotes lol). It was on Netflix in my country and then shortly before a new season was due to start CBS pulled it for their own platform. It wasn't even available for months. I was disappointed but I've never seen the newer episodes. I really appreciate your reasoning and don't judge you for it, I just personally feel that I won't buy a product if I don't like the box it comes in etc.