Removal of piracy communities
Hello world!
Some of you will already have noticed that we have removed some piracy related communities from Lemmy.World during the last day.
Lack of communication
First off, we want to address the lack of communication.
Not everyone in our current admin team has been with us long enough to be aware of the previous issues and discussions related to these communities and the impact this has on our community.
We should absolutely have published this announcement when or before we removed the communities, not hours later. After realizing this mistake, we would have liked to write this a lot earlier already, but we were all busy with irl things, that we just didn’t have time for it.
Lemmy.World is run by volunteers on their personal time, nobody here gets paid for what we do.
Removed communities
Next, we want to explain how we got to the decision to remove these communities.
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
A lot of the recent content posted to this community included images instructing users to visit a specific website to obtain a copy of the release that the post is about. These instructions were in the form of Type in Google: visit-this.domain. The domain referenced in these posts is entirely focused on video game piracy and providing people with access to copyright infringing material.
While there may be legal differences between whether one is linking to specific content on a domain or just linking to the domain itself, such as linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_piracy compared to linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/, we do not consider this to be clear enough in laws and previous lawsuits that linking to just the domain is acceptable, if that domain is primarily about distributing copyright infringing material. We therefore do not allow linking to such domains. Additionally, we do not see a significant difference between posting a link directly to a website and embedding said link in an image, so we treat them equally.
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
This community is, for the most part, just about discussing various topics related to piracy. We do not at all mind discussion about this topic, and if it had been limited to that, this community would be fine.
This community, however, contains a pinned Megathread post by a community moderator, which, through a few levels of a pastebin-like site, provides an aggregated overview of various sources of content. Some of these sources are entirely legal content, but it intentionally includes various other references, such as the website referred to from the CrackWatch community, which are primarily intended for copyright infringement.
lemmy.dbzer0.com is willing to accept this content on their instance, as well as the potential legal risk coming from this, which they’re free to do.
We do not plan to defederate from lemmy.dbzer0.com, but we will continue to remove communities that are directly facilitating copyright infringement. @[email protected], the admin of lemmy.dbzer0.com, is a great person, and we have no problems with him as a person. This is just a matter of different risk tolerance.
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
Same as [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]).
Why have the piracy communities been restored previously? What changed?
Currently, based on the memories of team members involved in the decision back then, it appears that there was a misunderstanding between the community moderators and Lemmy.World admins in how the community will be moderated going forward, as well as which types of content are allowed.
Lemmy.World expected/assumed that links to websites primarily focused on facilitating distribution of pirated content would be disallowed in these communities.
The community moderators however do tolerate references to such websites, as long as people are not linking to individual content directly.
We suspect that this may have been missed during our original review when restoring the communities, which lead us to previously restoring these communities.
Why now?
We have recently received a takedown request for content not directly related to these communities, but it prompted us to review other piracy related content and communities.
Terms of Service clarification
Last, as we’ve reviewed our Terms of Service, we have updated our wording here to make it more clear what is and what isn’t allowed when it comes to piracy. This was already covered by "Do not post illegal content of any type. Do not engage in any activity that may […] facilitate or provide access to illegal transactions" in section 4, but we have now added section 4.1 to better explain this.
We apologize for the delays in communication.
I hope you're not going to take this the wrong way, but I want to be clear - this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved. Generally speaking, the review of a claim like this is an hour or two at most. You can also preemptively review these concepts with a lawyer, and get a handy-dandy letter or two to be used as a common first tier response (which also handily dismisses the majority of claims, which tend to be bunk). Several hours at least.
Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.
A $100k retainer, or any retainer really, is unnecessary. The actual costs for some basic legal support are about the low range in costs for a month of operation of their servers ($900-$2200/mo per their own public costing statements through opencollective).
Forget anything else in terms of piracy communities or anything else. Speaking with a lawyer to cover the bases is a smart decision - remember that there have already been issues like CSAM that have cropped up. A bit of up-front smarts and a couple of hours with a lawyer pays dividends. The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern, don't be dismissive.
Absolutely not, I also agree, as some others have pointed out, that there have been mishappens with communication, so I'm glad that there's discussion about the issue. Thanks for clarifying with your knowledge and doing so nicely.
To be honest, everything I know about that is what I have read about the number of cases when platforms or other kind of purveyors of piracy are sentenced to or settle paying tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those are real cases where the people involved obviously felt very confident about their legal safety. Surely, most of the situations are not like that and don't even get to be in the news because of how insignificant the resolutions are.
But, is there a way to be sure about what kind of outcome would lemmy.world would get to be completely confident about doing or not doing one thing or another?
Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises? What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests? What about copyright trolls? If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?
I guess we go back to the point I tried to make. My position is that the instance admins are not obligated to be a legal shield for the users to have any kind of content that we want on the platform. This is not a privacy-focused nor a free speech-focused service, never has been, data is not encrypted, users have identifiable information, there are commercial services being used to run it, used under another set of TOS and hired with real world legally responsible identities. To say 'Well the legal cost of keeping piracy on the site is not that high I think' seems like an unfair position to me.
I do pirate stuff myself, sometimes because it is more convenient, sometimes because it is moral, sometimes is the only option. But I take the responsibility of doing so myself. If whatever site I use decides to shut down tomorrow, I won't make a fuss about it. Demanding to someone else to face the possibility of legal trouble because it will only take them a few hours and max a couple of thousand dollars and is comfortable to me, is what seems concerning to me.
I'd say not only are most situations not like that, the ones you are referencing are specifically people who were actively sharing content. There are a couple of decades of history on this stuff.
Well this is what a lawyer is for. As well as liability insurance (another often misunderstood thing - every group/business/etc is different, but a general liability policy for a million or two USD costs most folks around $1-$2k per year.) But there is quite a bit of established law, yes. If you link directly to materials that would be infringing, but not host, you can be considered as intentionally encouraging direct infringement - note that this is with a direct link only. This goes back about... 20ish years to MGM and Grokster.
Also established - thumbnails are fair use, indexing or linking to a website (but not to content directly) is an intrinsic use/function of websites. If a direct link is made, the site owners need to remove that link when notified either by report or by a claim from the IP holder. There are even safe harbor provisions specifically around sites like Lemmy (and other link aggregators), which a lawyer can provide the guidelines on how to ensure they apply.
It depends on what we are talking about. Reviewing a specific claim? One time cost. Getting a good general response to any random bunk claim that comes their way? One-time-ish, it doesn't hurt to check in with the lawyer every once in a while to see if anything needs updating. No lawyer I know is going to charge to read their own letter, but they may say "There are some extra references that can be brought in here from recent case law, I'd estimate 30 minutes of work" which would be an extra cost obviously.
A great reason to have already spoken with a lawyer and have a prepared response. Also a great reason to speak with folks at the EFF should the need ever arise, they like going after copyright trolls.
Who said there is legal liability being accepted? What liability legally? Specifically.
No, but this is the part where I think you're missing something really important. The piracy community (communities) aren't the issue to me. Lets recap what happened here.
There was a claim that came in on something - unrelated to these communities. There was, as far as has been posted, absolutely only a request, with no response other than lemmy.world simply agreeing to what was demanded. This has not had any actual legal review, and may have been a completely valid or invalid request.
They then decided to apply this request (valid or not) as a concept to other areas, and simply disabled access. There were supposedly hours of discussion here, and then the change was made, with absolutely zero discussion. There were never any comments expressing concerns to any of the effected communities or the admins of the instances which manage those communities. There was no posting here until hours after it was brought up on another instance. This is also only a few months after they admitted to doing a terrible job of communicating and promising to do better.
There was an unsubstantiated claim from an unknown entity, and their decision on how to apply that (not just to the claim, but to unrelated communities) was done unilaterally and without any legal input.
Forget piracy. There is a trust problem. Why would you feel comfortable providing them with any information of yours if you live in a country where you may be concerned for your safety - not even now, but in a few years - for having the unmitigated gall to admit you are (gay/trans/bisexual/a believer in a socialist meritocracy/atheist/muslim) on a place where there are no legal precautions actually being taken? Where the word of someone sending a letter matters more than what the law might actually say?
My issue with the decision here has almost nothing to do with piracy or those communities. It has to do with trust. And they lost mine.
As I said, I agree that communication has not been great. I can budge on that, even if it is not even my original point. The admins (and all the fediverse really) could more clearly state that everything on this site is basically public. This is not Signal, this is not Telegram, this is not the dark web and this is not a corporation with a legal department. User should be mindful of that when posting. It is precisely people under immoral laws and governments, or concerned about personal safety the ones that need to be careful about their activities, because if their risk is anything greater than downloading a videogame without paying, some guy in another country reaching out to a lawyer for an hour is not likely to provide them relief. I don't like that, but is the reality. The site should improve on making the users aware of that reality.
About my original point, it seems that we agree that the site is not under any obligation to provide legal shield, whatever legal options exist or not, are costly or not. It would be great if they provided them. I think setting up an operation like this at own cost for free is a show of values and the quality of a person, and I think that would show if the stakes were higher, like the examples you provide. It would also be great that people with expertise in legal affairs, like you seem to be, volunteered to carry on that job, like the admins carry the technical job voluntary. But not them nor you or anybody should be forced to do so. Exclusively the users up in arms almost demanding piracy free-for-all content, are showing unjust entitlement and misunderstanding about how the fediverse works.
To an extent - lets not forget that a bunch of identifying information is visible to admins, not to users, not publicly. Which is why a privacy policy (such as the one on lemmy.world) is so important, and why it would seem so frustrating when basic legal practices are functionally ignored. What's the difference between a random troll sending cease and desists out, and a certain corrupt POS Texas AG requesting all the folks who have ever commented that they were trans? Both can be completely and utterly unfounded, and yet still bring you into a lengthy court battle.
I have to disagree there, because competency comes into play. Speaking to a lawyer and being aware of how to say "No" properly is important. Knowing how to document bad requests and bad faith actors. Having someone you can reach out to and follow-up with for an unsubstantiated nonsense request from a hate monger is important.
Rolling over immediately and preemptively making decisions on unrelated communities however... that doesn't provide me with warm and fuzzies.
To be clear here - I am not a lawyer. I have run forums before (and I can guarantee the issues around piracy and illegal materials that are bound to be posted have not changed), I worked with lawyers, I carried general liability insurance, etc. These aren't specialty things, this is what basic operations looks like.
I don't think I've seen any of that personally. I'm one of the people who called out an admin for not actually talking to a lawyer though - and frankly I think they should have done that months and months ago. Even just to have found someone available who could provide services as needed.
It is great to have experienced users around. Certainly I hope together we can learn and improve from one another, particularly the people running things, even if they lost your confidence. I don't know how experienced they are or the particulars of the situation, but I do believe there is no bad will and I hope they will get a better hang of it. It really sucks that there are users that could have their life really impacted for something like this, so I hope they take care of themselves and be cautious, and we all be mindful of each other, especially of those more vulnerable as you mention.
Thanks for your input.
There is definitely no Ill will, just, as mentioned, disappointment and lost trust.
I think it would be great if they actually looked towards things with more practical and informed care. I'm not sure that we will be seeing that any time soon, if at all, but one can hope.
Based on the way they handled this, and their replies here, you won't be seeing it ever. This is TOP DOWN community at it's finest.
Maybe we should all just blame the time zone difference and stick our heads in the sand. It seems to work for those in charge.
Yeah, they are doing their best to not actually reply to any points that matter. I'll continue on with the new accounts I've made on other instances, because mine on lemmy.world isn't getting use now. I can't really trust them to do the right thing (or even smart/logical operational things), so I'll put my support elsewhere.
That's what I have done too. New account, new donation - elsewhere. Just deleting all my old posts and comments here now, aside from the ones pertaining to this topic.
as I'm very tired right now, I only want to comment on one of the arguments/questions you brought up.
you're asking for the difference between taking down content and providing information about users.
its very simple actually. sharing non-public data is a very different story than removing access to otherwise public information, whether it's originally coming from Lemmy.World or elsewhere.
when we take down content, even if it's more than legally strictly necessary, the harm of such a takedown is at most someone no longer being able to consume other content or interact with a community. there is no irreversible harm done to anyone. if we decided to reinstate the community, then everyone would still be able to do the same thing they were able to do in the beginning. the only thing people may be missing out on would be some time and convenience.
if we were asked to provide information, such as your example of a Texas AG, this would neither be reversible nor have low impact on people's lives. in my opinion, these two cases., despite both having a legal context, couldn't be much further from each other.
You'll have to excuse me here, but I am currently having a hard time believing anyone from the lemmy.world team at the moment.
What I'm referring to, and was not replied to, was the difference between two requests made on a legal basis. What I did not refer to was content access.
What the .world admin team has shown me is that they don't understand the legal aspects, made assumptions about them rather than actually seeking counsel, did not actually communicate in a way that has been repeatedly promised by the team, and didn't even bother to reach out to alert other directly related admins.
I'm a "show, don't tell" sort of person. And what has been shown is that I do not wish to be on lemmy.world any longer, in part because I'm really going to have a hard time trusting any of you after this.
Not due to the decision necessarily, but the approach and actions. I hope you can understand why that would be the case.
maybe I misunderstood your comment, I read your Texas AG example as asking for information about users. did you mean Texas AG asking for the removal of comments where people are stating they're trans?
Thanks for being understanding, its appreciated.