this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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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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[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world 553 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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 289 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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 145 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] brad@toad.work 85 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 48 points 1 year ago

They only do it because it works. Had they been given the level of attentionβ€”and interactionβ€”that trolls deserve, they would quickly move on to doing other things with their life. But as long as one single well-placed comment can result in so many people getting annoyed from so many different perspectives, it's easy to see the appeal that these trolls see...

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

What is it about Destiny that attracts pieces of shit?

[–] stown@sedd.it 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you post to a community that isn't local, the content of the post is stored on your local server and the remote server just makes a copy. The posters home server is where the illegal content is hosted.

[–] silentdon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes, so illegal content will end up being stored on both servers. The thing is that the piracy communities don't allow illegal content to be stored or linked to for the same liability reasons.

[–] obosob@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Any specific infringement material (by which I mean media) would only be on the user's home server. Links to content aren't what is actionable for a DMCA notice as far as I'm aware. And the DMCA does not require platforms to actively monitor or remove potentially infringing content, only to follow the takedown procedure when sent an appropriate notification. If they follow that then they are protected from liability. That's US law but IIRC the implementations in most of the rest of the world are similar if not the same. And here's the rub: even without those communities, LW will still need to have a DMCA agent and take action against content when notified because people can and will upload infringing media here on other communities.

They're not exposing themselves to additional risk by having the piracy communities unblocked. People can and will discuss piracy, in abstract terms at the very least, all over the place. And discussion of copyright infringement is not copyright infringement anyway. Any liability and risk they do hold they will still have to worry about now regardless.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Which has me wondering why these moves make sense at all. So many people are jumping to the defense of a knee-jerk reaction to a 10h old troll account. Why was that the admins' solution to a random post from a new account? Plus, pirate communities shared vast amounts of information and a lot of it is not directly related to piracy itself.

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[–] majere@lemmy.world 78 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 40 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] benjihm@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year 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.

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I can openly admit I am breaking the law for example by using torrents for piracy - and I seed as much as I can, though it in theory makes me liable. So yes, I am the change I want to see - piracy should be free to discuss everywhere

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[–] echo64@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

it really isn't, the whole point is to streamline the capability for copyright holders to remove content they think they have rights to, without a lengthy court cases. it's still a lot of overhead for any service to manage and also still opens you up to legal action.

[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From DMCA.com:

The document stipulates the content that has been stolen and republished without permission with a request for removal. It must be created and submitted in a specific manner so as to comply with the law. Failure to do so means the "notice" to remove the content will not be followed by any party involved in the infringement.

In exchange for the immediate removal of the content the publisher receives safe harbor from litigation regarding the illegal publication of copyrighted content.

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[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with the point, but US-wise, especially if you aren't even the site actually as the source of truth for the community, you almost definitely don't go to court unless you counterclaim. If you get a claim and nuke the offending communities in response (assuming you don't have tools to block specific posts in the communities, but that would also work), you have protections built in.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmyworld is hosted in Germany, they have agressive anti-piracy laws

[–] hydra@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn't it hosted in Finland? Or have things changed?

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[–] lwadmin@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago (16 children)

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.

"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.

[–] nickhammes@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Highly doubt there's anything db0 can do. lemmy.world is in Europe, piracy has hefty legal ramifications.

Like you could argue that it isn't piracy all you want, but if faced with the possibility of your hobby landing you decades in prison and millions in debt, would you do it?

Just create an account at db0, this really isn't the big deal people make it out to be.

[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not all of Europe. In most parts (especially Eastern Europe) the most you will get is a slap on the wrist if you are really really unlucky. And decades in prison aren't a thing anywhere for simply sharing links to pirated content.

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[–] tcj@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year 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.

[–] CaptainEffort@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] hydra@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year 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.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

What signs of legal trouble are you referring to?

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).

[–] kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year 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.

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