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Removal of piracy communities (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

989 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would you let some 1000 people stash their stolen goods in your house? Do you think the police would give you a break? Think about it. If lemmy.world is forced to shut down because it hosted illegal materials where will the plus side be?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Analogies are generally terrible at convincing people, and even more so when it's about legal situations.

The process would be that they get sent some notice that something they're hosting violates copyright law, and that it needs to be taken down or a lawsuit will happen. Unless they ignore it, and they should definitely not do that, then nothing else happens. If they get a lot of them from a certain community or instance, then they discuss why those mods/admin can't keep their community in order, and if it becomes enough of a hassle, defederation or blocking is prudent.

Copyright law can be pretty ridiculous, no argument there, but this is well trodden stuff here. lemmy.world is not the first social media website that has had this concern.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it is alone in its unique capabilities as an all-volunteer free site. That's not to say other free+volunteer sites don't exist, but, rather, that we can't lump it with others since they'll have their own goals for providing their free instances. And it obviously can't be compared to "social media sites", as that carries implicit connotation of for-profit sites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What specifically would you say makes copyright law apply differently to lemmy.world?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That it doesn't matter if they're right or wrong, they can't afford the lawyers to fight it? Seriously pirates, there's an easy solution, just host your own instance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like I said, this isn't new ground being traversed. There is a pretty straightforward method for dealing with this that doesn't involve lawsuits unless the LW admins intentionally ignore the process.

People here are acting as if LW is some unique thing and that copyright law is an unknown entity. We know how this works. The person I responded to seems to think that LW is somehow unique, and I would like to understand their thought process.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Or spend that time creating your instance maybe?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The process would be that they get sent some notice that something they’re hosting violates copyright law, and that it needs to be taken down or a lawsuit will happen. Unless they ignore it, and they should definitely not do that, then nothing else happens. I

Lemmy.world does not have the ability to moderate posts on other instances. If lemmy.world gets a notice about something federating from another instance, how would they be able to do anything about it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is this true? I understood the lemmy moderation capabilities that any post, even non-local ones, could be removed from an instance, and any user, even non-local ones, could be banned from a community or the entire instance.

Is this not the case?