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Removal of piracy communities (self.lemmyworld)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by lwadmin to c/lemmyworld

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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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[–] joe 16 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Was there some example of these communities violating the rules and the respective moderation teams turning a blind eye to it, or even just being abnormally slow to deal with it? Or were these communities singled out for the potential for posting links that infringed on copyright law? And which country's laws are we talking about? Were the respective mod teams and administrators contacted to work on addressing any concerns, or was this a "block first, ask questions later" scenario? If the latter-- why, and have those questions now been asked of the respective teams?

I'm just trying to understand the thought process that went into this, because from an outside observer, it seems like a knee jerk reaction. I know I'm just some average joe (har har), but I think blocking/defederating should be a tool used after dialog has failed, and not before; that doesn't seem to be what happened here, from what I see.

[–] leraje 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I think this is the situation. The instance owner is not a US citizen, but the server it seems is located in the US. Based on what this Admin has posted, it seems very likely that this is a precautionary block whilst the instance owner gets some kind of US legal opinion (not from some randoms on the internet, an actual legal opinion) on his personal liability and what preemptive steps he should take should any instance his instance is federated with be perceived as breaking US law.

This seems nothing but sensible to me. We're talking about ordinary people here with families, jobs, bills to pay. No instance owner has a million dollar legal team at their instant disposal. If Sony or Disney come after them due to ignorance of what they should've done, their life is ruined.

Once the instance owner has that legal knowledge they may choose to remove these bans.

In the meantime, accessing those communities, should people want to, is as easy as clicking a link. They're not gone. They're not removed. They're simply not accessible from this instance whilst you're logged in to this instance.

[–] joe 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I have just as much info as you do (very little haha) but I am under the impression the server is in Germany. I don't think lemmy.world has any direct connection to the US.Please note that "think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

The issue is that if (more heavy lifting) these communities were banned without actual evidence of rulebreaking (and it seems that way) then the same argument could be used to ban a lot of communities. Any community based around copyrighted material has the plausible potential to contain links to copyright infringing media. Should they all be banned for that risk?

[–] leraje 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know for sure the server is in the US, but the company providing the server certainly have servers in the US (as well as Germany and I think Finland). The server's behind cloudflare so it's difficult to know for sure the exact geographical location.

I'm not suggesting that any rule breaking occurred on any of the blocked communities, I'm simply saying that I think it's very wise for someone without recourse to a high priced legal team and the backing of a mutibillion dollar company to err on the side of caution first. I'm not an Admin of a Lemmy instance so I can't say what's right. All I know is, if I was in a similar position I'd do the same thing until I knew for a fact no huge multinational media org could turn me into toast.

[–] joe 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

but like I said, the risk isn't gone. Any community linked to media (tv shows, movies, games, books, etc) has a plausible risk of copyright infringing links. Should they preemptively ban them all? If not, why not?

[–] leraje 2 points 10 months ago

I can't answer for them so I can't really answer that. All I can do is say that if it were me and I was unsure of the legal situation I would do the same as they've done until I was sure of the legal situation.

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