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.
Surely there is a discussion to be had around what is and isn’t allowed, there are plenty of subreddits discussing piracy without dolirect links that are playing within the rules.
Yeah I’m subbed to few piracy comms just because I like to see how that side of things is going. I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website. It’s all been news and discussions and that’s it.
You ignored the “assistance in obtaining it” part, because members of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com have been doing that. Also:
EDIT: oh boy, shill posts a lie, innocent pirate mob upvotes. I literally post a proof that what he said is completely false, innocent pirate mob downvotes.
Are you trying to say I’m a shill? Lol wat.
I chimed in with my experience. You chimed in with one example expecting it to be the end all of the discussion.
If you really want to talk about who does what, look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps for online services so you don’t have to pay for them. Someone’s been asking for assistance in obtaining things alright.
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Which is very far from reality. I literally just opened the community and randomly found that thread, I didn’t even have to try hard. You tried too hard to make them look good here:
Also, maximum cringe here:
And, so what?
Why are you so butthurt? I wasn’t even going to respond to your comment because I read it and thought fair enough.
https://lemmy.world/post/3206301
This is asking for the same exact thing that your apparently so upset over.
Chill.
It does seem to me that you’re the one who’s butthurt because I called you a shill though? You literally lied, I don’t even see why you still reply. Also, very pathetic of you to compare using an alternative front-end with something that’s clearly illegal.
Yeah dude you totally caught me lying. Everything is falling apart not that you’ve exposed me lol
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The above comment says:
you missed this part, you’re all trying too hard here
I think some of you have no idea how legal issues will occur. Unless you are linking actual content or the (direct) link to the copyright infringing content, you will not be having any legal issues. That’s why big piracy discussion subreddits in reddit ike r/piracy are not taken down yet.
Even YouTube has copyright infringing content. Now will .world get any legal notice for linking that? No. Will .world get a legal notice for having comments or posts having a direct YouTube link to the copyright infringing content? Yes. That’s how things work.
Hope you guys understand that instead of slamming every reasonable comment.
Especially because discussing copies of your own data also happens in such communities. There must be clear guidelines what can and cannot be discussed. Also, it would have been nice to have those communities selfregulate. For example, giving them 30 days to comply, e.g. removing any content that breaks the law.
Because the fediverse i about democracy. If laws stand in the way of democracy since they have been brought up by governments influenced by global corporations (which are by definition autocratic) then they must be ignored.
So, striking a balance to not get anyone in trouble while not working for IP holders is the way.
Isn’t it, like, the opposite? With the main assumption being that you should find an instance that aligns with your interests and values, not find an instance and try to vote for it to become something you like? That is technically “voting with your feet” but instances don’t actually need a large population to stay running.
But we have no tools to migrate users or communities. We can not vote with our feet so much as start over and over and over.
I highly recommend people go to the issue relating to account migration on the lemmy software github and explain why account Migration is as important as it is and should not be considered as a second thought. Not being able to migrate ties you to an instance if you’ve been there long or participated a lot, it makes you dependent on them, this is not a good dynamic to have in the Fediverse, it’s why other platforms like Mastodon have profile migration.
Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.
You’re not wrong. It’s not the same as voting for a desired outcome and if owners/admins push for something, they can usually get it until people leave.
But the system is open source so they can’t just shape their server how they like. They can’t keep others from getting news from outside and they also can’t push their own agenda imo.
So I‘d say you‘re right, it’s not „democracy“ but its either something else entirely or it is „about democracy“. Maybe power equality through federation?
What it’s about, in my opinion, is trust. To tie it back to Reddit yet again - on Reddit, if the admins of the site did something, their word was final and there wasn’t much you could do about it. On Lemmy, if the admins of an instance do something, even here on the biggest one, their reach is limited to their own space; they cannot affect what happens beyond. This means that instead of having to do a big ol exodus to try and prop up a new network, people can just pick another instance and continue where they left off, outside the reach of the admins that did the thing they dislike.
Therefore, the instance admins and the users (and also the mods) need to actually have trust in each other to stick around, as there are viable alternative spaces they can go to if that trust is broken. Additionally, the entire concept of federation is also built on trust - “we will allow an exchange of content between our instances because we trust you”.
I don’t agree with this decision, but I understand it, and I still trust LW admins because they’ve had a good track record so far. For those reasons I’ll stay here. I don’t fault anyone leaving, though, if their personal threshold of trust has been broken. The only thing I’m really wary of is the free-speech absolutists that insist no one should be defederated from; the tool exists for a reason. There’s not many of them, though.
I agree on practically everything you wrote there. Thanks.
I‘d like to add that I was a little upset first by their childish action but then came to the conclusion that they in fact have very little power compared to the whole platform. So yes, it‘s still not ok (and I would be furious if my content just gets deleted) but it is not that big of a deal.
It’s only about democracy if you make your own instance. Otherwise, you have to follow the rules of wherever you’re signed up.
If you make your own instance, as a one-man thing, then it’s not really democracy at all either. The only way it would be democracy is if you made your own instance and specifically said “all decisions will be made via vote” and you actually had users around to participate in those votes.
Your instance is your vote in the fediverse as a whole.
A vote for what, though? What is being decided, and by who?
You are deciding what content you want to see. If you’re on an instance run by someone else, that will never be under your control.
That’s not democracy though. That’s my only point here is that isn’t related to the concept of democracy at all.
Yes. The thing is there is zero content breaking the law, so they would have looked ridiculous
From the other comments here I think these people are not very smart. Probably should make new sailor sub somewhere else soon. Obviously with relatively strict rules. For example: only trackers, no direct links etc. (I‘m not a pro at this. What I know is from reading)
Reddit has the money for legal defense when companies try to go after redditors. The mods and administration for world are volunteers and don’t have th resources to defend themselves. It’s unfortunate but this move makes sense as part of the bigger picture.
Sure. But we’re a group of volunteers and we would not like to find out the hard way what is possible and what not. We would think meta discussions about piracy should be allowed as long as there is no linking to actual illegal content.
But is pointing to locations with illegal content legal or not? And having members/admins worldwide it makes it even harder to be sure.
We don’t want to find out the hard way and this is a better safe than sorry measure. Again we personally have nothing against the people on these communities or against the communities itself.
should go ahead and ban image uploading to lemmy.world, as there is likely a ton of illegal, copyright-violating content that hasn’t been stress-tested for fair use.
The music community could be an issue for the same reason, this logic is problematic
Smart, might as well shut down this whole thread then as we’re discussing piracy here too, right?
I love Piracy!
I support your decision. Want to see the new instances that will pop up now hosted by your critics 😄
Yeah. Talk is cheap. Running a server is hard work.