Removal of piracy communities

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.

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

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.

Reading all these comments it's clear that a lot of people have unrealistic ideas regarding what Lemmy and the Fediverse are supposed to be (or maybe it's me with weird ideas).

The Fediverse is just a bunch of apps that can all communicate with each other through a shared protocol. There is no requirement for them to be free speech platforms or host everything. The whole purpose of defederation supports the idea that instances are free to associate or disassociate with whichever instances they want. Furthermore, nearly every guide I read on joining Lemmy state that you should choose instances to join based on shared ideals/beliefs.

For everyone saying "I'm leaving lemmy.world" I say "Good. That's what you're supposed to do." When the instance you join no longer aligns with what you want, you go to another instance and then you'll be back to viewing all the communities you want to see. That is what the Fediverse is all about and how it's designed.

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.

What part is illegal? Are they sharing files on that instance and your instance re-hosts it?

From my understanding, discussions are legal, guides are legal, tips are legal, but actual files (aka "copyrighted content") is illegal. There are no files shared there, links at maximum, but institutions should be after those content-sharing websites, not forums.

I am against this decision and I am happy that I am not part of admins team.

And still people are crying about this.

You can literally change to another instance. That's the entire point of the Fediverse. If you don't like a decision the admin has taken, you can move elsewhere.

The entitlement of some people these days is ridiculous.

The fact that there was no announcement before the banning of the communities is not great, but good on you for acknowledging that mistake.

It's unfortunate that this action had to be done, but it's also understandable. It's not about what's right or wrong, and it's not even about whether there actually is any illegal content in these communities. It's about the fact that the Big Entertainment Companies don't care about the difference and see it ALL as bad, irregardless of whether it actually is illegal or not. If the admin team had a legal team and the financial security to fight back, then it wouldn't be as much of an issue. But they're not, they're just a bunch of regular folks, so they're being cautious and trying to pre-emptively prevent these problems from coming up, especially as Lemmy continues to grow every day.

The beauty of the Fediverse is that you can always switch instances or make an alt account.

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

I guess it's time to leave.

While I'm not ethically opposed pirating, I understand and would probably do the same for a server I was hosting. Anybody remember Kim Dotcom's mansion raid?

What I do not understand is blocking a community surrounding magic mushrooms.. No one is going to prosecute the L.W admins for people discussing shrooms/their use...

Substances are legal/illegal depending on where one lives, just like weed which is apparently perfectly fine to post here, even tho possession is a death sentence in some countries.

It simply doesn't logically follow that weed, or even alcohol communities are permissible while a shroom community is not.

Banning any content deemed illegal in any country in the world establishes a very dangerous precedence (if that's the justification here). Free speech/dissenting from the government is illegal in many places in the world.

One thing the community must remember tho, is that you have to operate your server in accordance with the law in which country you're hosting it (in this case Germany).

I'll gladly admit I'm not too familiar with German law, but it seems unreasonable to expect government persecution for hosting servers which hosts a shroom discussion community.

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

Thanks for only banning the communities and not the entire instance as a whole. That is a much healthier approach to deferation.

I don't understand why people are upset even a little about this. This is a prefect advert for the fediverse. If you are not completely happy with an instance(which can never realistically happen) then you just host your own or have multiple accounts. Apps have this built in and easily accessible. Why do people want to concentrate everything they want into one instance? What if that instance goes down? This should not be hated or applauded.... just ignored as the way the fediverse should work. Don't get too attached to any single instance.

Ight, I'm out

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

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.

Even if we look past the issue that all of this was in response to a 10h troll account, there was no cease and desist, no threat of a lawsuit, nothing credible AT ALL.

Let's ignore all of that and say there was, it still means this instance is completely ill equipped to provide any sort of resistance, to something trivial.

It's like it's hosted in the middle of Illinois, by John Frank, at 3125 maple lane... Zero layers of protection.

That is awful and means no meaningful discussion can ever happen here. Nevermind piracy, what if people want to criticize the government? Or public figures?

If this instance can't fight a fake troll it can't fight and protect anything.

Which means we need to pool resources and fund instances that can and will fight back.

And yes that means fundraising to build up a defense fund and hosting outside the US etc.

I think a this is a bigger issue then just .worlds stance on piracy. Lemmy.world has put it self forward as the "front page of lemmy" but has now also removed one of the largest community using lemmy. And did so with no input on a discord server (not on any instance). This front page status was already shakey with all the down time and clunk. This seems like maybe not the best side to show new users.

Unfortunate, but I understand the necessity of avoiding legal troubles as a volunteer group.

You're not allowed to discuss piracy. You wouldn't talk about stealing a car would you?

Delete this.

It's a tough decision.

There's a target on the collective back of Lemmy, its developers and this instance. Rooting out these issues early is part of it. One of my first recommendations to @ruud@lemmy.world was to start putting aside contribution dollars from donors for a legal fund to manage liabilities like this. This decision is just solid management and avoiding issues well ahead of time.

I wish the admins well. And for those who have had their communities 'snipped' from being connected to Lemmy.world, I hear you. It's hard when you have built a connection and a sense of self on a platform, and then it becomes severed. That's hard.

Time to switch instances

"Alright let's all be adults about th--"

reads comments

¯(ツ)_/¯

Y'all realize that saying things like "You've just lost a user!" or "Deleting my account!" or "This is now the worst instance on Lemmy!"... you sound like a Karen telling the kid at the register in CVS that she's leaving a bad Yelp review... right? Y'all seeing this? Am I going crazy here?

Oh no! Users are complaining and downvoting. They just need to get inline and do what they're told. Okay for real, you people are worst type of people. Lemmy users are just showing their disapproval of the action. They have the right to do.

Do those communities house copyright content? The answer is no. Having discussions, giving guides & tips are are legal. So I don't see the problem. If someone going to get sued for it. It will be dbzer0.com and lemmy.ml due to said communities being part of the instances not LW.

QQ: Have there been other communities removed and was it communicated?

I have just realized that c/Shrooms has been banned too, but I cannot find a statement regarding this particular ban.

Are or will there be more bans? I am not asking to complain about it or make remarks about which the decision is correct to me or not, but rather point out the lack of communication or unfortunate communication.

I can understand this. This is a server hosted by an individual who doesn't want the potential legal headaches that may arise. Everyone is free to make another account on another instance, or create their own instance.

Aight peace ✌️ you do you. Gonna go sail my ship over to another instance.

I do understand that you would remove them if they were also hosted here... But they are hosted on other instances so I don't understand the issue? Is linking to that specific instance via comment the same issue as if they were visible for everyone on this instance? Or even mentioning it now in the OP like it is?

Seems overly cautious, or lemmy.world is trying to find excuses to cut off content they don't like. Legal trouble for allowing access to those communities, which aren't even based on lemmy.world, would be so much of an overstep, they'd probably be able to get free legal counsel from the EFF or a similar organization.

Anyways, this will be my last post on this server. Even though I don't use any of those communities, I don't want to have to constantly monitor what has been banned to see what I may miss out on.

Apparently, lemmy.world also removed c/shrooms, which I didn't even know about. And again, risk of legal trouble for that would be extremely low.

The copyblight strikes again.

This decision was the logical one, however, it was only rendered logical because of the awful state of copyright law.

I can still access r piracy on Reddit, i thought lemmy.world had more freedom of speech than corporate sellouts. 💀

This is a bit concerning… why is Lemmy censoring things that not even Reddit is censoring? This seems like a bleak warning for the future of the platform. I understand censoring illegal content, but if nothing is hosted on Lemmy, then what’s the problem?

This is problematic. I have no issue with the instance defederating from toxic communities such as hexbear. And i understand that in the fediverse, admins are free to block what they want, just like i am free to join another instance. The problem here is blocking the communities because of a perceived risk of legal trouble for the instance owners. I don’t blame the instance owner/admins for not wanting to take the risk, but if the risk is real, every instance (unless based in a country that does not care about copyright laws) would have to block not only piracy related material, but also anything that may be copyright infringement or otherwise legally questionable. That would lead to a very fragmented fediverse, where you need separate accounts on different instances. That may be a minor inconvenience at most for techies, but a serious roadblock for the general public.

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.

Honestly fuck off. I came to Lemmy because I'm sick of people telling me what I can view and how I can view it. Guess I'll go find another instance again.

I am strongly opposed to the way this is handled. Discussing piracy may not be censored in any way and being afraid of shady lawsuits is not good, this is one of the main responsibilities of a server admin of such a grand operation. Especially so for what is effectively an image board which is grey zoning on copyright all the time. It is fine to ban communities who direct link to well known piracy sites, both because of the legal and perhaps ethical complications this brings.

We need now more than ever platforms where we defend basic freedoms as discussion of hot topics. I view the negative impact of this as banning discussion on drugs. Disclaimers about dangers and help lines for addiction should be forced, as the banning of purchase options, however please stay out of experiences, discussions and warnings on them.

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!

What are your thoughts on communities about drugs? Pretty big topic for me, although the drug subs mostly haven't moved here yet, is that because you ban them? If so, I'm wasting my time waiting for them here.

Any suggestions on instances to move over to?

I'm no fan of piracy - just seems like a pretty name for petty theft to me - but this decision seems problematic. I went and read some of the threads about this decision on some of the other communities, including dbzer0, and I looked around the blocked communities on an alt account.

I'm not seeing evidence of actual copyrighted material posted, just discussions about how to steal content, which itself isn't illegal. And there's a pretty fair amount of content - the communities are active - so if there was a violation I feel like it should be handled as the exception it appears to be. Those communities themselves don't allow posting of copyrighted content, so it shouldn't be a problem to get a violation removed. If someone posted an image that contained child pornography to one of the NSFW communities, would we block the whole community, or just get that post removed (and alert the authorities)? The latter, I hope.

They also make a good case that the action was taken in response to a troll on a newly-created account who didn't provide any evidence of there being copyrighted material. That in itself seems like a problem, though maybe someone looked into it? I'm pretty supportive of the .World admins, I think you're doing a good job in a difficult situation, but I believe these communities should be unblocked unless there is an actual problem.

How does Reddit get away with hosting these communities without the mentioned issues?

are platforms liable for user behavior?

Not with me. Pirating for personal use is perfectly legal in my country.

Do we have an account migration tool yet and can somebody recommend a nice instance?

I don't understand how lemmy world has removed them, aren't those all communities on different servers? How is this our problem?

is this the new most downvoted post on lemmy?

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.

I get that people won't like the decision, and it sucks that the world is in a place where this kind of thing has to happen, but the decision really makes sense. Real people have to host this stuff, admin this stuff, out of their own (or donated) money. Asking them to be legally and financially responsible for someone else's decision to pirate copyrighted material, regardless of what you think of the morality or ethics of piracy, is a really fucking big ask.

While I wish there was more transparency about this decision before action was taken, in this case it's kind of understandable due to the servers being hosted in Germany and them having really draconian piracy laws. Just hoping that this won't lead to a chain reaction of other communities being removed due to legal complaints.

In the meantime, happy to get my piracy content over at db0.

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...

👎