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
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    861
    arrow-down
    102
    ·
    1 year 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      385
      arrow-down
      25
      ·
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        193
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year 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.

          • TurboLag@lemmings.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            73
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            They only do it because it works. Had they been given the level of attention—and interaction—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…

      • stown@sedd.it
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        29
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          57
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Sanctus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            36
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

          • obosob@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            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.

          • Can you even upload things other than images to a Lemmy instance? I don’t see the point in worrying about illegal files being shared on the system if the system doesn’t support that kind of file sharing in the first place.

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          First of all so far as I know lemmy doesn’t actually host anything. A post which links to the actual host probably isn’t illegal most places.

      • mcherm@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year 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.

    • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      169
      arrow-down
      91
      ·
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        87
        arrow-down
        14
        ·
        1 year 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.

      • nfh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        37
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year 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.

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          27
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Dojan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              16
              ·
              1 year ago

              No one thinks of Eastern Europe as European beyond geography, excepting perhaps Eastern Europeans themselves.

              Prison notwithstanding, financial ruin is a definite possibility.

              People are making a mountain out of a molehill over this. The instance owner doesn’t want to risk any legal issues over hosting this instance, and I get that. Just create an account on db0 and use that. It’s not a big deal.

              Instance admin isn’t some big corporation trying to silence your free speech. He’s just a dude that doesn’t want his hobby to bite him in the arse.

              • nitefox@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                I don’t think I ever heard of a case where somebody has been condemned for piracy in Italy; I also know plenty of people who torrents/stream, yet none who uses a VPN to do so.

                In Germany though, afaik, they are quite insane with their anti-piracy laws.

          • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            8 months ago

            It would be preferable if you would lie less. Evil pirate uploads potentially_infringing.mp3 to to filehost. Filehost actually serves potentially_infringing.mp3, a community on db0 hosts a link to potentially_infringing.mp3, lemmy.world caches locally a copy of data from db0. Of those the one guy directly uploading the information is at risk of an extremely unlikely single digit thousands of dollars.

            Nobody not even evil pirate himself is at risk of decades in prison or millions in debt. Companies responsibility basically ends at taking stuff down when specifically notified of infringing content.

      • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        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.

      • 💡dim@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        as far as i have seen (as a subscriber to c/piracy) there is no links to pirated content and they are very clear that that is not allowed

        the vast majority of the discussion is on morals of piracy, anti piracy measures, etc etc

      • tcj@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        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.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        1 year 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.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          10 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            10 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
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              10 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?

              • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 months ago

                They CAN do all of those things but people would be right to critique them for it. Freedom isn’t freedom from criticism or complaint. Furthermore they want this to be a functional community as much as their users do which is why this discussion even exists.

                • GBU_28@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  8 months ago

                  That doesn’t refute anything I said. Their house, their rules.

                  You can criticize mom for setting a bedtime, but you must go to bed.

                  • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    The discussion is not whether they can set those rules its should they and should we keep participating

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            There won’t be any legal fees since the communities being talked about are allowed in the EU. Other people have made the same point already, but if you are scared of litigation, then you can’t host a forum at all. There is always a place where your forum breaks rules. I.e. no disparaging Putin in Russia. Making fun of the twitter CEO is more likely to get you a lawsuit than any of the communities mentioned, yet it is allowed. Also, it never is a straight up instantenous lawsuit. It always starts with communication saying “don’t do that anymore please”. Once you reject, then a lawsuit is viable and not frivolous. So you can wait till that happens and then block those communities, once a company actually complains. Not when you think that maybe somewhere in the future something might happen or maybe not.

            Truth is, lemmy is small fries. It will be that for a long time with the issues it has. Nobody cares about a tiny community hidden way deep inside.

            • mysoulishome@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              It’s so nice to see so many lawyers in this thread offering their legal counsel…it makes me feel very safe when I start hosting piracychat.doodad next week. I’m assuming they will all be willing to defend me if I do get sued since they are so sure I won’t. 😃

        • MothBookkeeper@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year 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.

              • GodzillaFanboy129@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Well by your logic maybe you should go kiss Reddit’s ass then if you feel that way, they’re hosting a free service and people criticize their decisions and reactivity.

                The fact that we fund this place with donations gives us all the more right to criticize them for it. Are you also going to attack people for ceasing their donations because after this I’ll never donate another cent to them ever again, and I encourage anyone else reading this to do the same.

      • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 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”?

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Your argument is that user hosts infringing_song.mp3 on file_host, a community on lemmy.ml has a link to filehost and lemmy.world has a cached copy of the text containing the link to lemmy.ml which has a link to filehost and you think lemmy.world has legal exposure?

      • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        36
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well, caching content is not the same as copying it. The major difference in the court would be that caching is automatic - and as such you are not in complete responsibility of what it is you copied. If you do everything in your power to comply with any DMCA notices, then I couldn’t realistically see lemmy.world being targeted. This is an analogous situation to eg. accidentally opening a website containing illegal content. Sure, your computer did download the contents to the RAM, but what matters is that you acted in good faith and did not attempt to get the contents, it just happened in the process of browsing the web and as such you could not reasonably expect to receive such content.

        • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          27
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          In a world where Quad9 is in the middle of a giant lawsuit over simply serving DNS records, I can’t blame anybody for being extra cautious.

        • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Well, caching content is not the same as copying it.

          A cache is literally a local copy.

          Fighting legal challenges requires lawyers, even if you are in the right. Lawyers are crazy expensive.

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Unless I’m missing something, you don’t need a lawyer to take down a post that you’ve received a DMCA removal request on.

            • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              You do if you get sued because you missed something. It’s not like lemmy world can moderate every post from every server. Any single user can get any federated community’s content pulled locally just by subscribing.

              • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 months ago

                The law in the US is that you aren’t responsible for what your users post unless you are specifically legally notified and furthermore the communities at issue don’t host links to infringing content they host discussions on the topic

        • Shazbot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Something that’s getting lost in this conversation is the nature of the infringement and what that means to the copyright holder. Memes could be considered a form of infringement, however in practice they often serve as free publicity. The intent is not to deprive the copyright holder of revenue, but use the medium to express themselves. Exposure increases, and so does the likelihood of revenue from the conversion of new fans.

          This changes with public conversations of piracy, because the nature of those conversations drift into how to deprive and evade the copyright holder by providing users just enough information to find pirated content. From a legal standpoint this can be used to prove aiding and abetting, a crime that be considered equal or an accessory to depending on the jurisdiction.

          The admins are aware of how Lemmy’s content caching works, and now publicly acknowledge the existence of their federation with dbzer0; whose piracy communities are its strongest asset. Any defense of ignorance is out the door. Without banning the communities LW becomes an accessory if dbzer0 becomes liable, as would any other instance who caches dbzer0’s c/piracy.

          To those who still disagree, that’s fine. Open your password manager, make some new accounts on other instances, enjoy the lemmyverse. But you have to agree that it is unreasonable to demand you hold the evidence of my crimes because it would inconvenience me otherwise.

            • Shazbot@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I am aware. My point is more to do with how the copyright holder perceives the actions of the individual(s). If the copyright holder feels the work brings more attention to their IP in a way can be converted into sales then they are less inclined to take legal action; even if some in the community may be openly pirating. Some however miss these opportunities thinking its just another instance of unlicensed usage.

            • Dialectic Cake@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Better to create your own instance then.

              It’s about reducing risk not eradicating it and there’s a huge difference in risk in being targeted for legal action due to hosting c/piracy (via caching/mirroring) than from a single piracy post in c/hellokitty.

        • Shadesto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Complacency isn’t a legitimate defense against criminal activity and corporations are extremely litigious over piracy. Would you rather lemmy.world spend all their money on fighting lawsuits, or building a better instance?

          Any community that is creating questionable content should create their own instance and not seek open federation with the entire fediverse. That kind of behavior is reckless and counterproductive to what we’re trying to do here.

    • majere@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      132
      arrow-down
      57
      ·
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        89
        arrow-down
        27
        ·
        1 year 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          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.

        • echo64@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          17
          ·
          1 year 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.

          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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            32
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • echo64@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yes those are the words defining the initial safe harbor agreement well done.

              I’m talking about in practice and how the dmca has actually been used. Why do you think companies like youtube entirely sidestep the dmca? They do it because the dmca is a huge drain on resources and still opens you up to litigation if you make any mistakes (like not working on the weekends for your volunteered lemmy instance that suddenly got 10,000 dmca requests from Sony pictures)

              • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                You’re fighting a famous “intent warrior” you can’t win. They exist only in their own head where they can’t lose and don’t have an idea how things really work…

        • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year 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.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            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

        • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year 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.

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      60
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        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.

        • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It’s actually a “mirror” moreso than a cache. There’s a complete, distinct, URL for each piece of mirrored content, that points a specific server and is indexable by search engines independent of the original. Instances ARE hosting the data directly.

        • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          They could unsuccessfully prosecute lemmy.world. Of course it won’t really be unsuccessful if the instance folds from legal fees long before any verdict is reached.

        • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          That’s not true unfortunately. Any user posting on any instance to that community is cached locally and served from .world and the admins can’t do anything about it when the community is hosted on another instance.

      • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        What content? You mean the comments generally discussing piracy? Because there’s no actual pirated content being hosted, or even linked to, in that community.

        • Spedwell@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I have seen you comment in several comment chains. Please just understand that there is risk even if by the letter of the law everything is legal. There are plenty of cases with copyright / fair use where very expensive and long lawsuits were made against parties who did nothing illegal.

          LW mods are clearly not comfortable with the risk with their current situation. Respect that, and don’t expect them to take risks beyond their comfort on your behalf. If you want someone who is willing to serve you content at that level of risk, you can create an account with one of the other communities.

          • CaptainEffort@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Believe it or not, I do respect their decision. After all, this is their instance and it’s their right to decide what to do with it.

            This is also a complete overreaction started by a transphobic troll account, that doesn’t actually protect anyone from anything. Both can be true.

    • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      39
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        27
        ·
        1 year ago

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

        • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          20
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          Anyone can sue anyone for anything. All it takes to have a lawsuit is to submit a filing fee to a court, and someone to serve the papers.

          There are many lawsuits that are baseless. There are many lawsuits that are frivolous. If your instance is on the receiving end of one of these lawsuits you will have pay for a lawyer to defend yourself regardless of the merits of the case.

          Courts don’t proactively decide whether someone can or cannot be sued.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          To encourage and aid in crimes is not covered by free speech in most countries like all of EU. And Lemmy.world is in Finland AFAIK.

    • hydra@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      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.

      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m not sure anyone cares if people leave this instance, no one is making money off of you. This isn’t reddit or any of the other big places, this is volunteers.

        • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          They probably won’t if it’s individual people, though they are donation funded so if they show their supporters that they don’t care those supporters might stop financially supporting lemmy.world. So telling them they should just leave because you don’t care or handing out petty bans like “let me help you” isn’t going to inspire these people to continue contributing donations.

          This website doesn’t make a profit, but that’s all the more reason there should be an effort to not make people hate them, because I don’t know anyone who would enthusiastically donate to support people or an organization they hate.

          • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Nah, it probably be best if you go to another instance, we’ll all be happier.

            • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Aww you didn’t seem to like what I said did you, darling. I’m not planning on not saying things just because it bothers you, Stay mad, trolls 😎 🏳️‍⚧️

              • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                Interesting, you’re not horrible at it but you’re not one of the good ones. Anyone who uses emojis like that is hilarious.

        • M0oP0o@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          Did they get any? I mean I have got some and I don’t even host anything at all. I am wondering what they did or did not get in relation to legal action.

        • tabular@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          I can’t speak for other’s hosting peoples comments but I would rather avoid getting DMCAs or C&Ds in the first place.

          • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            I understand that receiving DMCA’s may cause fear, but keep in mind that online communities are very exposed to such action, and handling DMCA notices should be a part of normal operation. Someone always isn’t going to like what you are hosting and will try to shut you down legally.

            • tabular@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              You can’t stop any random person sending you DMCA, even if they don’t actually own the copyright. If you can avoid the sincere and likely to win DMCAs then you mitigate some of the work. In a big company that’s no work at all, by myself that’s my limited time alive wasted on outdated foreign law.

    • AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year 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).

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I can’t understand how lemmy.world specifically would be the target of such legal action.

      Because they’re the largest instance and therefore the biggest target.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It sure is, because that’s how the fediverse works - every community is copied to every other federated instance.

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        10 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.