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.
Well, the whole point of a DMCA notice is to let you remove content BEFORE the legal action. And I don’t know if you looked at it, but the Piracy sub is only discussion, with a rule that disallows any links. If anything, they’d go for the actual instance that hosts it, not this totally unrelated one. I don’t think they even know Lemmy exists. And yet, the Piracy Reddit is completely fine.
Apparently, none of this was even hosted on lemmy.world. And didn’t have anything to do with it. The decision is a pretty knee jerk.
First sensible response I’ve seen on this thread. Why would Lemmy.world want to incur legal costs that they probably could not recoup? Which angry users on this post will donate $500/hr that the top law firms charge?
Look at what happened to Gary Bowser. Dude basically ran PR on a website, but because he was the guy who they were actually able to find and get a hold of easily, he’s now on the hook for millions of dollars of damages that he didn’t cause to Nintendo.
I am disappointed in this because I think that there is such a thing as ethical piracy and protest piracy and that they’re important. But I also know that those things aren’t going to be stopped or even significantly hindered by one instance deciding not to host their content. And I understand the fear that comes with stories about how rights holders have gone after whoever the fuck they can when they’ve got a burr up their ass about something.
Should the admins of Lemmy.World be held liable for a community simply discussing piracy and not actively practicing it on the site? No. Would they be? We don’t know. It’s possible. And that’s what makes it scary. People who commit digital crimes often get hit with disproportionately harsh punishments. They’re sometimes treated like terrorists. It’s insane. And yes, it’s frightening.
I pirate like a son-of-a-bitch.1 The stuff I pirate is not available where I live. There is literally zero avenues for me to purchase it.
In what meaningful (←this word is important and doing a lot of heavy lifting, so pay close attention to it!) way are the people I’m pirating from getting harmed? As such, in what meaningful (←c.f. above for the importance of this word) way, then, is it unethical?
And if it isn’t unethical it is … ?
The Internet truly does never cease to amaze. Just not in the way that some of its louder, brasher, more uninformed, thoughtless portions think it does.
1 I still support lemmy.world’s decision to block those communities. Yes, you can be pro-piracy, an active pirate, and still support an action that is contrary to piracy. Welcome to “nuance”. It’s not a native of the Internet so you don’t see it very often.
Abandonware is ethical piracy since there’s no feasible way to purchase it from the rights holders directly.
I mean, it is a thing. I’m not saying that you’ll agree that it’s a right thing or that it’s justifiable. I understand arguments against it. But it’s more along the lines of Peter Sunde’s stuff. Piracy which fights for freedom of information, against things like corporate secrets and abuses, things like that. One of the examples of ethical piracy has been using piracy to share news and media with blackout countries, nations that are banned from getting any media that isn’t state approved. I would call that kind of piracy ethical piracy.
Protest piracy is where you pirate something in protest of the people who would otherwise be making a profit off of it. There’s a reason why that’s not under the same umbrella. People can call pirating Adobe products what they want, but it’s not at the same level of trying to effect social change as ethical piracy reaches for.
If you think Lemmy is even on their radar when reddit still hosts much bigger communities having all the same conversations, you’re crazy. I would bet they don’t even know we exist yet.
An ancient legal strategy in systems with Common Law is to build up precedence. The way this works is thus:
- You decide you want something stopped that’s legally in grey areas.
- You go after small fry without a lot of money to hire good lawyers so they get judgements against them.
- Those judgements form “precedence” cases that can then be milked for larger targets, until…
- It’s law, for all intents and purposes.
Small fry like Lemmy instance owners are perfect fodder for this strategy.
Justice for money
What can you say?
We all know
It’s the American Way!
— Styx
I haven’t found eatablished-Lemmy to be high-EQ.
I have found it to be very attached to free stuff, however.
