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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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[-] SnowMeowXP@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Just to put my two cents: Thanks for the good work. Continue keeping up to make sure lemmy.world won’t be liable in any way for possible issues.

I did not know you can defederate from specific communities. I thought it can be done only to instances.

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[-] Donger@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I can't believe you've done this.

[-] dog_@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

👎

[-] abstractastronaut@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Didn't even know an instance could block a specific community of another instance. I thought the only option was defederation. Is there any way to see/list the communities blocked by an instance?

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[-] TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

There is a local piracy-focused community at !piracy@lemmy.world. It's pretty dead, of course, only 4 posts ever, but still. How does this square with those others being blocked?

You have won my goodwill with your track record of decisions so far. I don't agree with this one, but it is not a dealbreaker for me. Thank you for getting around to announcing this in a public space, but as you say, please make sure to do this first next time something of this caliber is put through.

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[-] iquanyin@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

are platforms liable for user behavior?

[-] krayj@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, we have the DMCA which has been weaponized by content creators and publishers, but we also have a "safe harbors" provision to the DMCA that is supposed to protect online service providers from being liable for copyright infringement based on the actions of their users - as long as they meet certain provisions and restrictions and perform certain duties and dilligence. And yet even with that in place, it does not stop content providers from suing service providers and forcing those service providers to incur the pain and expense of mounting a legal defense.

I am pretty sure that Lemmy.world admin team are European and that the instance is hosted somewhere in Europe, so they would have their own jurisdictional laws to follow.

TL/DR: even if a service provider is technically protected from the actions of their users it is still subject to provisions and conditions, and that still doesn't stop them from being sued and having to mount a defense. Some people just don't feel the hassle of all that justifies the whatever benefits they'd gain from fighting that fight.

Certainly you've heard of 'The Pirate Bay', who's 'users' famously used their platform to share copyrighted materials...the founders of The Pirate Bay were arrested, tried, and convicted, and were forced to serve jail time. Turns out the "but it was our user's doing it" defense wasn't as reliable as everyone here seems to be suggesting.

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[-] Shotgun_Alice@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Unpinned hoping this goes away?

[-] DavyJones@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 year ago

Not even Reddit banned their r/piracy

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[-] GameEnder@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pathetic. Defeats the entire point if federated networks.

This is how lemmy is going to fail with the entire thing being fragmented mess. Which is sad as I was hoping it would be the proper exit plan for Reddit.

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[-] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

So, in order to subscribe to those communities I should create another account in a different instance that either has them or is federated with them, right….? Any workaround for that? This sounds like it’s going to be a real chore to follow and will push a lot of people out of lemmy in general

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[-] Annoyed_Crabby 17 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] Lummy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Goodbye y’all I’m out

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[-] Ivyy_LemmyW@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

This is why Lemmy won't grow, a lot of instances are forcing their users to create another account on other instances, this was my third account due to the blocking of some instances like this...

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[-] systemglitch@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

What. The. Fuck.

[-] rich8n@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

The fuck is the whole point of the Fediverse. If an instance operator doesn't want to host something, you are free to sign up with someone who does or host your own instance and take those risks yourself.

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[-] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

This is a prime example of why I suspect we'll see a lot more lemmy instances with a more narrow focus over time instead of just a few super lemmys. Its only keeping them indexed that will be a problem so that they can be found.

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