9mo ago

Piracy-Related Content on P.D: An Open Dialogue with Our Community

Hello P.D users.

I'm sure the recent news of lemmy.world's removal of piracy communities has not escaped the attention of many of you. For those who have not heard, here is their announcement on the matter.

Now, being as transparent as possible, this is not a subject that the admin team of P.D have discussed in great detail up until this point. We have yet to create an explicit rule stating that piracy related content is forbidden on this instance, and doing so is not something any of us wish to do.

With that being said, this topic requires more deliberation and consideration. There is more complexity to this issue than taking a stance for, against, or tolerant of piracy. There are legal considerations. And the truth is that we are not 100% sure on what the legal implications are for allowing piracy related content to exist on this instance, either directly on our communities or indirectly via federation.

One thing that must be considered when looking into the legalities is jurisdiction. I believe being part of a larger federation complicates this more than a centralised service, but P.D must at a minimum be considerate of the laws of the country its server(s) is hosted in, and the laws of the country the person responsible for the instance resides in.

For those who don't know, this instance is administrated by a reasonably large team of volunteers, but is hosted and ultimately provided by only one: snowe. There is no legal entity behind P.D other than his person, and this means that any ramifications of this subject ultimately fall on his shoulders.

After an initial discussion between us, it is clear that some professional legal advice is required. Snowe is intending to seek formal legal advice. Up until that point, we cannot say what the official P.D stance will be on this topic long term.

What I can say, is that nobody in this administrative team desires to impose any restrictions on users of this instance that overreach and limit discussion unnecessarily. So long as content here is not dangerous, hurtful or offensive, we have no wish to filter it out on an instance level. Communities can impose their own rules, for the most part.

You can expect a further update on this topic in the future, once we have a better understanding ourselves, and we will keep this topic as transparent as we possibly can. Until then, in relation to this matter, we do not currently intend to defederate from any instances or ban any communities that discuss piracy. Linking to websites that provide pirated content will also not be explicitly banned, but linking to or directly hosting pirated content on P.D is prohibited. Should any of these rules change, we will communicate it as quickly as possible and far ahead of any drastic action that would need to take place as a result.

I believe the majority of our users here will understand the pressure that any Lemmy instance faces by hosting content that can make them susceptible to legal action. To those of you who are understanding, we thank you for that, and are grateful for your patience with us while we get a better understanding ourselves.

Feel free to discuss this matter here.

Thanks,
The P.D. Admin Team.

24 comments

Fully understandable.
What could also happen is a server migration to a more friendly jurisdiction, should that help.
But yeah, everybody talks big until it's their ass on the line, so ignore negative people screetching about anything.
You are doing everything correctly, thank you for your work, we appreciate it a lot.
- +1-- I'm so impressed by the "reasonably large admin team"s' thoughtfulness and transparency.

Like some of the others, I prefer we stay federated with everything possible. I see this as my gateway to Lemmy, not my programming account or whatever.
But if it negatively affects the actual life of the great folks running this instance? Fuuuuuck that noise! Nip that shit in the bud!
- I think that is really in the spirit of Lemmy and the Fediverse. Pick an instance that aligns with your interests / identity / geography / etc, and use that as an entry point to the rest. It doesn't work so well if that entry point has overzealous gatekeeping.
  
  I'm not 100% familiar with how federating works between instances - if one instance is hosting illegal content such as piracy, is that content actually federated into the databases of other instances? As in - are the other instances are now actually hosting that illegal content?
  Or are the frontends (like programming.dev) just kinda proxying data without hosting it?
  Just wondering at what level illegal content would exist in federated instances, since that might matter how liable other instances would be for it
  
  Exactly. Very well put!

We all know that hosting or direct-linking to copyrighted material is clearly a bad idea for any cyberspace that want to survive (e.g. avoid legal fees). And that's not happening at "piracy" communities. Just stating facts. That's why I truly believe that defederating would be an extreme measure. More of a political stance. Which is the case for most of the defederation that .world has been doing, clearly they have a political agenda.
Shouldn't we defederate .world?
- Unfortunately, there are some cases of direct linking occurring. Fortunately, it's mostly caught by moderators and admins and removed. Defederating is certainly an extreme case, and it's absolutely not something we're intending to do. It would be an absolutely extreme scenario for that to occur in this case.
  Shouldn’t we defederate .world?
  There is no appetite to defederate from lemmy.world. I know their some of their decisions have been unpopular with some users, but they are by far the largest Lemmy instance, and that puts a target on them. Like us, they are a bunch of volunteers trying their best to run a large community and that will sometimes mean making decisions they probably aren't keen of themselves.

I'm not subscribed to any of those communities, but I occasionally see that content and I'd be against it being blocked entirely. I appreciate that you might get legal advice that overrules my preferences, though.
- Yes, my personal stance would also be against blocking. The general preference is to avoid blocking wherever possible.

I greatly appreciate the effort going into the decision.
It's fantastic to see a community taking decisions like this seriously rather then just auto de-federating / blocking

Honestly, it's a programming focused instance, so I'm not quite sure how piracy even fits into it. Banning it from the instance would be fine by me. Banning servers that talk about piracy though 🤔 My initial thought would be that the piracy community isn't on this instance, so it'd be a surprise if there's any legal basis to charge PD with anything related to it. It's good that legal advice will be sought.
Regardless, even if it were banned to spare snowe the headache, it's no biggie. I'd just create a separate account to talk about piracy on the instance that allows piracy-related talk.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- the piracy community isn’t on this instance, so it’d be a surprise if there’s any legal basis to charge PD with anything related to it.
  This is not so clear-cut. The nature of federation means that any posts you see through via instance are hosted here too. How liable we are for that content is certainly an important question.
  Thanks for your feedback.
  
  I dont imagine many people are here for piracy.
  Other than the creative art of cracking, it seems antitheses to career programmers.
  Anything piracy related that might also be (legitimately) programming related can be reposted.
  The root of the issue is bigger than an one instance.
  It needs political change to make it make sense, until then we are stuck with decades old laws that dont make sense.
- I'd just create a separate account to talk about piracy on the instance that allows piracy-related talk.
  great point here
  power of the fediverse🌻
- Honestly, it's a programming focused instance, so I'm not quite sure how piracy even fits into it.
  I think you and I have different visions of what the fediverse is. I don't view this account as a "programming account on a programming forum, so all things should be programming related" if that's what you are implying. I view instances as a comfortable home for my existence in the fediverse, where local communities may be programming related, but I still have access to the fediverse as a whole.
  Much like I chose the city I live in based on the communities and amenities I prefer most of the time, but I can still travel anywhere else in the world any time I choose.
  I'm against actual pirated content being federated here, but I would still like to see discussion about piracy if it is acceptable within the laws of @snowe's home country.

I'd like us to stay federated, but if a lawyer advised snowe to defederate I'd totally get it and would do the same in their shoes.

Stealing is bad but don’t expect Reddit outcasts to be supportive of this simple concept.
- The legal definition of piracy in regard to digital content isn't stealing. You cannot steal digital media as stealing by definition means the owner of the content is no longer able to sell it. If you steal an apple they can't sell it because you have it. Piracy of digital media is only copyright infringement, which is still illegal but regardless of how you feel about piracy it is fundamentally not theft.

24 comments