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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]

980 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] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I suspect this won't be a popular opinion, but it seems strange to me that a lot of people are making a fuss about lemmy.world blocking communities that literally advocate for illegal practices. If you disagree with lemmy.world blocking piracy communities, where should they draw the line? Allow literally any community to be created irrespective of the legality of what its advocating for? I would presume (and hope) that you wouldn't have a problem with lemmy.world blocking CP communities for example?

The Fediverse can't function as a free-for-all. It has to have rules, and instances have to be able to police those rules for the betterment of the whole.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Problem here is that the communities they blocked aren't actually on lemmy.world.

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

So why is that a problem? The hosts of Lemmy.world aren't beholden to provide you with every resource available and at the same time potentially expose themselves to legal issues.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Problem is that saying Lemmy.world is responsible for these communities is not a valid argument. They do not run these communities nor are they affiliated with them. As a lemmy instance, they didn't have to do anything technically speaking. And even then, Reddit - which is centralized - was able to get away with these communities for years.

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

While it is true they are not directly responsible for these communities, they are linking to them through federation. As others have mentioned, lemmy.world is hosted in Germany where laws are stricter around linking to potentially illegal activities. They don't have the legal team available to them that Reddit do so obviously they want to protect themselves. If it's a problem to you, sign up with an instance that doesn't block that type of content.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Well I am already talking to you from lemm.ee lol

Anyways, I'm not sure if "linking to illegal content" in this manner is really a fair way to do it, kind of reminds me of the Quad9 and Sony Story :/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I agree with you... Except.. where is the line drawn? CP aside, seriously burn those fucks slowly. We can all agree on that I hope. The problem is how it was handled.

Illegal in which country? Where the server is hosted would make the most sense. If it's hosted in the US then what state? Can we discuss marijuana and which dispensary to buy meds or is it hosted where it's recreational. It's still federally illegal. Host this server in Oregon and the drug discussions open up further, not just marijuana. Host the server in Sweden(?) where the piratebay was kept for years... There is no explanation other than we don't think this should be seen so we block it.

To just say we, as mods, don't agree with this subject matter so nobody here is allowed to view it isn't what most people think is how this should be done.

As someone that's never looked into how hosting Lemmy works... Is it hosted/stored on this instance's server?