this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023

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Removal of piracy communities (self.lemmyworld)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin to c/lemmyworld

1158 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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[–] majere 93 points 1 year ago (26 children)

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 71 points 1 year ago (21 children)

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.

[–] echo64 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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...

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