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.

  • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • TurboLag@lemmings.world
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      11 months ago

      And on top of this, the removals were done following the request from a troll account, by a user involved in far more questionable discussions than the legal discussions currently going on in the now-removed communities. Should no attempt be made to differentiate between a legit legal concern and trolling?

      • OverfedRaccoon 🦝@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Good ol’ Bungiefan_ak, creating troll accounts on any instance that’ll have them to troll all things piracy and post transphobic and hateful shit wherever they go.

      • mcherm@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The ad hominem criticism is irrelevant. The communities should be removed or not removed based on the server’s policies regardless of who first raised the question.

    • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The content is hosted on lemmy.world - that’s how the fediverse works. Each instance pushes updates to other instances and they host it locally for their users. The issue is that the admins here can’t moderate a community not on their instance. So if an instance is located somewhere it is legal, it might not be legal at the location of another instance.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. It’s a cache. Is Cloudflare liable for hosting lib genesis then? Because cliudflare caches much worse stuff than copyrighted pictures and books.

        There’s a lot to talk about but afaik Section 230 that defines every website in US says that host is not responsible for user content and I honestly don’t see how big copyright could prosecute lemmy.world here that’s not even hosting data directly.

    • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Lemmy.world maintains a local copy of every external community. This is how federation works. Any piracy related posts on those subs will be copied in their entirety to lemmy.world servers, so lemmy.world could potentially be sued for hosting that content. Being the largest instance makes it a target.

      It is rare to get advanced notice of legal problems. Usually the first you hear about it is a cease and desist, or a lawsuit. Lawsuits are costly to defend even if you’re doing nothing wrong.

      I don’t like this decision. But it is a sensible one to protect the instance. If you care about piracy discussions you can visit those communities directly or on a different instance that made a different decision.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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        11 months ago

        There is no suing for that, talking about piracy is perfectly legal. That’s called freedom of speech for your information

          • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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            11 months ago

            No it shouldn’t. If it does with your law, tell me your country and I’ll come help you throw the government once we are done with ours in my country

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              Don’t you have school in the morning? Straight to bed mister

    • hydra@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I enjoyed helping this place grow and doing my part to discuss here but I disagree with this decision and I’m going to evaluate looking for a different home instance.

      • mysoulishome@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        This is incredibly reasonable and reflects the exactly appropriate amount of urgency and emotional reaction to this happening. 👏🏻

    • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Let’s also not ignore the fact that these communities literally prohibit Links or content from being posted to them. So even if people make the Federation argument about cross-hosting it’s all moot in the end because the community doesn’t allow it in the first place.

      Here is a link to the rules of the Piracy community you will notice if you have any form of reading comprehension (or if you actually read it and aren’t just trolling, like many people here) that rule 3 specifically prohibits linking to or hosting files, which many people making the federated hosting argument seem to leave out of the equation, likely because it destroys their argument altogether since their argument is about illegal content being hosted, but no illegal content is hosted in the first place (and any that is usually is removed by the mods for breaking the rules, just like it is here on Lemmy.world).

    • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

      Doesn’t matter if they are hosted here or not. The way federation works is that threads on different instances are cached locally.

      We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.

      • comfortablyglum@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        “we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more.”

        This is an unfortunate aspect of individuals/small groups housing the fediverse vs big companies. Big companies have lawyers and the capital to back them, individuals do not.

        If I was in your shoes, I’d do the same thing. I appreciate your wish for thus to be temporary. I hope you will share your findings once you come to a final decision; information like this is relevant to all those managing servers.

      • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Discussing piracy isn’t illegal. It would be one thing if they were hosting pirated content, but they don’t even link to anything.

        If that were to change I’d understand the decision, but this just seems silly to me.

      • nfh@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        What needs to happen for you to be confident you won’t get in legal trouble, and thus unblock them? Change on the db0 side? Lemmy.world admins getting legal representation/advice? Something else? I’m curious how you all see this playing it out in the future.

      • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a ‘better safe than sorry’ fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.

        Words are empty, offers are void in Nebraska. You already took steps against people who simply mostly discuss piracy. What concrete steps can you take now to show that you’d actually unblock “as soon as we know”?

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Soo ultimately you personally will be the only person determining what people can and can’t see, based on your perception alone. You don’t like something, you’ll ban it. You worry about something, you’ll ban it. And there won’t be a trace without you saying “we banned something”. Which means there are no checks at all to you powertripping in the future. How is this supposed to be free, open and general then? This is even worse than reddit was.

        • MothBookkeeper@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You fucking donkey, did you read their comment before you replied to it? They aren’t doing it just because they want to; there are legal implications.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            There really aren’t. Talking about piracy is allowed in Europe. Sharing stuff isn’t. This is a kneejerk reaction. Also, please don’t talk to people that way.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          It’s their house, you’re just visiting. If they are concerned, there’s no one else to help. If they get in trouble, will you be stepping in to help them? No.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Once you start hosting an instance that has open registration, it’s not just “their house” anymore. They are providing a service to people. They do so willingly. Arbitrairly blocking instances because you don’t know how something works and don’t bother to check it isn’t the way to host a free and open instance.

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              Nah, their box, their responsibility, their rules. They could shut it off tomorrow, ban people randomly, change what posts are allowed, federate as they choose. We can’t do shit, and that’s fine cause we can each make our own instance or join another

              Edit Any assumption you have durable rights or privileges is just untrue.

              Yes, they offer access willingly, as in “at their will”

              Edit would a downvoter be able to refute me? Are we in some sort of contracted relationship with instance admins?

      • tcj@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I feel like there should be a major distinction between caching remote content and hosting that content yourself. Does Cloudflare get in trouble every time the FBI seizes a site that used Cloudflare routing, CDN, or caching? Not as far as I’m aware.

    • majere@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The great thing is, now you’re 100% empowered to move forward and host the responsibility yourself. Demanding volunteers shoulder potential liability (when you yourself admit you can’t understand how there’s any in the first place) is juvenile.

      The moment a volunteer is hit with a DMCA notice or any threat of legal action, you think they have any interest in going through the court system? You can do it first.

      • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I think you don’t understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content. The “threat” of legal action won’t actually result in anything, provided you comply, and that is exactly why I do not understand the preemptive actions, when there is basically no such thing as immediate legal threat in case of DMCA notices. The copyright holders often do not want to go through the court system either and will gladly accept pre-legal-action compliance.

        • benji@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          The power of the panopticon lies not in being able to see and punish all deviant activity, but to encourage self-correction in all potential deviants who must always assume they are being watched.

        • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It doesn’t really have anything to do with DMCA (a US law). Lemmy world is hosted in Germany which is even harsher on copyright than the US with much stricter penalties.

          The world doesn’t revolve around the US.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            It does have a lot with DMCA. Maybe not specifically the DMCA, but all the relevant regulations all around the world that are equivalent to DMCA because of copyright treaties. And yes, while you are right about Germany being more dangerous in terms of piracy (mainly because of copyright trolls), the relevant authority handling the case could very well be the USA court system.

        • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You seem to know your way around the law then, so please be the change you want to see in this world. Host a piracy instance and show everyone here that we were wrong and that the admins were just overreacting.

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content. They effectively copy the content from that community onto their server to distribute it to all the users of their lemmy instance. So from a legal perspective they are hosting the content and they would be held liable for a distributing it.

      • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I think the problem is that because of the way that the fediverse, they ARE hosting the content.

        And the “content” is discussions about piracy, not piracy.

        Come on. Small instance indie devs don’t have the bandwidth and storage to save all seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 4K.