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.
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.
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?
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.
What is it about Destiny that attracts pieces of shit?
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.
Preemptive strike
aka shoot and ask questions later
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.
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.
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.
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
You can go further: host a piracy instance since you seem confident enough and prove us wrong. Why are you avoiding this part? I’m not the only one having suggested this to you.
And here you are (after fighting with docker for an hour) http://pankuleczka.ydns.eu/
I take back what I said then and I commend you for putting money where your mouth is and I hope you know what you’re doing. That’s something that the others are not willing to do but feel entitled to expect from LW because it’s not their necks on the noose.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”?
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
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.
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.
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.
Feel free to contractually agree to pay all their legal fees, in that case.
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.
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.
Better defederate from all instances then.
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.
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.
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.
Uh, @lwadmin@lemmy.world … what’s up with the banning going on in this thread? I noticed on a.lemmy.org that someone was labeled “banned” and their comment was simply “Ight, I’m out”
The mod note was “Let us help you”.
There are more similarly weak (spiteful?) bans that certainly don’t seem to be at a standard for a ban. “Litterally 1984” was another one. Is that all it takes to be banned here?
Edit: Many (all?) the users I referenced as banned are now unbanned from the site, but now banned from this community.
I hope that this demonstrates to people that the oppressive reddit behaviour is not confined to special individuals (such running major social media sites), but is a systematic occurance in online forums. Simply switching from one toxically moderated space to another is not a solution. But this is where the strength of ActivityPub/fediverse lies: we are able to leave for another server while still using the same fundamental service and being able to interact with the same content as before. I would recommend startrek.website as a new or second home for those who wish to migrate.
I’m probably being overly cynical, but I have a pretty unflattering option of volunteer moderators and the type of people that seek out such seemingly thankless positions-- and their motivations for doing so. I know this might seem-- bizarre-- considering where I am posting this, but I think it nonetheless.
I like lemmy because there’s a modlog to see these things. I do not believe that these users would be unbanned if it hadn’t been noticed in the modlog. And it appears they’re unbanned from the sitewide ban, but still banned in the community. Not sure what sense that makes.
If your instance gets big enough, you’ll also have to deal with petty tyrants seeking out positions of petty power.
The “ight I’m out” ban note was… hm. Not a great look. Comes across as petty and vindictive.
There are worse, imo.
user @snake posted:
Did you ever consider ceding ownership of the instance to an entity with greater legal capabilities?
In the end, it will not make sense to try to keep this instance running if the owners are unable to provide adequate service to its users.
and was banned for:
reason: Go get your service somewhere else
Definitely not a great look.
Lemmy.world admins, I am truly asking you to please reflect on how bad this looks. It honestly makes you seem like you can’t handle criticism and if people get that vibe they will use it to absolutely fuck with you. I know from my own personal experience. I understand that you’re volunteers but this is a step in a very bad direction that will only serve to cause more issues.
Agree.
This decisions seems emotionally driven. That will not work on the internet.
You created rules. Use your rules to make your decisions. Don’t use your emotions.
It won’t only bring the site into disarray, it will bring you moderators and your emotional states into disarray.
Make your rules as black and white as poasible. where grayness raises, create new rules.
FFFUUUUU! I just deleted my reddit account because lemmy doesn’t have a power-tripping hostile mod problem so it’s better to just permanently move here. I’m so naive…
You have full access to the piracy communities as your instance hasn’t blocked them. Here is the link
Ehhhh… the other two comment/bans seem a tad vindictive. This on the other had seems to have a different tone to me. It’s thinly veiled criticism and almost feels like a threat, especially if someone has been DDOSing your server for weeks.
How fuckin childish.
Are you paying anything for this service? No. It has costs to maintain while they’re shouldering that on their own and giving you this service for free.
Get over yourself. The entire point of the fediverse is that anyone can host an instance. You can spin up a little free instance yourself and federate or defederate/block anything you see fit.
Why don’t you? I’m gonna guess because you want a low effort, free service to get your scrolling fix. In which case, they’re right. Go to a different instance that suits your values more. If you want an instance that won’t defederate or block others unless absolutely necessary, go join Lemm.ee. They federate with basically everyone and don’t block hardly anything.
And, Lemmy world is federated with them. So you won’t lose a single thing here if you move there.
Just wondering and looking at the mod log for one admin and maybe I am crazy but are they unbanning and rebaning users? (Keep in mind it goes new on top):
- admin Banned @snake from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: troll
- admin Unbanned @snake
- admin Banned @soviettaters from the community Lemmy.world Announcements reason: Troll
- admin Unbanned @soviettaters
- admin Unbanned @ilfi
- admin Removed Comment Spineless pieces of shit. by @sused reason: toxic
- admin Banned @sused reason: Bye
- admin Banned@ilfi reason: Inactive account comes back to troll. Bye
They’re unbanning them from a sitewide ban and then immediately banning them from the lemmyworld community.
What in the hell?
I think some of this instance’s admins are not onboard with the rest. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Well the radio silence on it sure seems like they’re circling the wagons to protect an admin that clearly isn’t emotionally mature enough to be in such a position.
Please make announcements on lemmy instead of exclusively on discord moving forward. That is the biggest issue here, the lack of public transparency. Such a decision affects all instances, not just lemmy.world and making it publicly known is important
This was a misunderstanding from one of the team members. It has since been discussed and will not happen again. Lemmy.World and this announcement community is our primary platform,
Misunderstanding eh?
Yeah. You misunderstood that they are liars.
Speaking of removed communities, can an admin respond to this please: https://lemmy.world/post/3165787
Thank you. It is appreciated.
Aged like milk.
Just another misunderstanding bro
Are we raising posts from the dead?
Thank you for this
good thing I followed the advice not to use lemmy.world lol
Indeed
Which instance is recommended?
not entirely sure, I’m still new here. I haven’t had any problems with lemm.ee
there’s probably a thread in !asklemmy@lemmy.ml where people discuss the pros and cons of different instances
Thank you. I hope somebody can chime in and give me the instance to use.
I mean this was why I left. Piracy discussion is my canary for the internet coal mine. If it dies I leave. You guys killed it so I left. It’s your server and your business but the canary was dead so I got out.
Pathetic
Bwhahahahaha Reddit is more liberated than Lemmy, what a fucking embarrassment.
What’s the line, self-censorship is the first sign an authoritarian has won.
Just use a better instance than .world…
Reading all these comments it’s clear that a lot of people have unrealistic ideas regarding what Lemmy and the Fediverse are supposed to be (or maybe it’s me with weird ideas).
The Fediverse is just a bunch of apps that can all communicate with each other through a shared protocol. There is no requirement for them to be free speech platforms or host everything. The whole purpose of defederation supports the idea that instances are free to associate or disassociate with whichever instances they want. Furthermore, nearly every guide I read on joining Lemmy state that you should choose instances to join based on shared ideals/beliefs.
For everyone saying “I’m leaving lemmy.world” I say “Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” When the instance you join no longer aligns with what you want, you go to another instance and then you’ll be back to viewing all the communities you want to see. That is what the Fediverse is all about and how it’s designed.
If people leave to run their own piracy lemmy depending on where they host it they will probably get raided and have no lemmy.
The commenter obviously don’t understand that at lemmy.world it hosts copies of content outside its instance which is why you block communities if you don’t defend the whole instance.
If people leave to run their own piracy lemmy depending on where they host it they will probably get raided and have no lemmy.
The “FAFO” approach
I can host an instance. I don’t care about “raiding”. If you get raided, it means you have not properly separated your online and real identities.
Well, for starters if we looked at lemmy.dbzer0.com we can see the domain is held by tucows which is based in Canada which are a copyright protection friendly country. Sure the server is hosted on njalla.net which is based in Sweden. How hard do you think it would be for the FBI to gain the info they needed to:
- Figure out who pays the bills and owns the server?
- Get a copy of the server data for analysis?
The only way to resist this would be to host your instance on the darknet with good sec even then that is not 100%.
Again, if you properly separate your identities, than the answer to both questions is simply impossible, since you are not the one figuring on the bill. The only thing they can achieve is link you to some IP behind 2 VPNs and 5 proxies, good luck to them if they want to dig through all that while avoiding you noticing and simply deleting all data from one of them making you completely separated from any illegal activity.
I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy. The landing page for new users. I agree people should move but also that we do kinda need a superish lemmy, but one that maybe has all the good and bad. Would it make any sense to have an instance that has no communities of its own but also has all the instances?
I think the issue is that .world has put itself forward as some sort of super lemmy.
Citation needed. All the admins of lemmy world ever purported to do was host a well-run general-purpose (aka not topic-oriented) lemmy instance. It was and remains that, and part of being a well-run general purpose instance is managing legal risk when a small subset of the community generates an outsized portion of it.
Being well run meant that they scaled up and remained operational during the first reddit migration wave. People appreciated that, but continuing to function does not amount to a declaration of being a super lemmy.
World also has kept signups open through good times, and more recently bad. Other instances at various times shut down signups or put irritating steps and purity tests along the way. Keeping signups open is a pretty bare-minimum bar for running a service though, it is again not a declaration of being a super-lemmy.
Essentially lemmy world just… kept working (until recently when it has done a pretty poor job of that). I dunno where you found a declaration that lemmy world is a super-lemmy, but it’s not coming from the lemmy world admins, it’s likely randos spouting off.
The advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit and their listing on join-lemmy.org (when they where still listed) made them the biggest instance. And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that. If this was all randos pushing the instance then boo to them, but I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)
… advertisement and push they did on sites like reddit…
The lemmy world admins advertised on Reddit? Can you link an example?
… their listing on join-lemmy.org…
Until recently EVERY lemmy instance was listed on join-lemmy.
And with the name Lemmy.world they did nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that.
They run a family of servers under the world tld, including at least mastodon, lemmy, and calckey. They’re all named similarly.
I also saw nothing from .world not claiming to be the bigger instance(super lemmy)
They ARE the biggest instance, but that happened organically. It’s not based on any marketing claims from the admin team about being a flagship/super/mega/whatever instance. People just joined, and the admins didn’t stop them (nor should they). It’s not a conspiracy to take over lemmy. It’s just an instance that… until recently… happened to work pretty well when some were struggling.
Honestly, I feel like self-hosting a single user instance is the ideal way to use the Fediverse. It gives you full control over what you see. However, that would require self hosting to become so simple anyone can do it.
I don’t think it is so difficult but I also think that would lessen the depth and breadth of lemmy as a whole by limiting full participation behind self hosting.
Sure but currently switching is a huge pain in the ass as you cant really take over your posts not to mention the migration of your communities which is currently impossible. So all the people saying somwthing like “just switch to another instance” tend to forget that this isn’t really possible at the moment.
Do you have to take your posts with you? I’ve seen people mention this before but I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal. I do agree about the communities though and feel that there needs to be an easy way to export your subscriptions so they can be imported on another account.
I like to have a history of my posts linked directly to my account. It’s what I contributed to the community and I’d like it to be a part of my profile.
Oh no. Wtf. Do you know what’s funny? I actually joined this instance from piracy subreddit.
I guess it’s time to leave.
While I’m not ethically opposed pirating, I understand and would probably do the same for a server I was hosting. Anybody remember Kim Dotcom’s mansion raid?
What I do not understand is blocking a community surrounding magic mushrooms… No one is going to prosecute the L.W admins for people discussing shrooms/their use…
Substances are legal/illegal depending on where one lives, just like weed which is apparently perfectly fine to post here, even tho possession is a death sentence in some countries.
It simply doesn’t logically follow that weed, or even alcohol communities are permissible while a shroom community is not.
Banning any content deemed illegal in any country in the world establishes a very dangerous precedence (if that’s the justification here). Free speech/dissenting from the government is illegal in many places in the world.
One thing the community must remember tho, is that you have to operate your server in accordance with the law in which country you’re hosting it (in this case Germany).
I’ll gladly admit I’m not too familiar with German law, but it seems unreasonable to expect government persecution for hosting servers which hosts a shroom discussion community.
What part is illegal? Are they sharing files on that instance and your instance re-hosts it?
From my understanding, discussions are legal, guides are legal, tips are legal, but actual files (aka “copyrighted content”) is illegal. There are no files shared there, links at maximum, but institutions should be after those content-sharing websites, not forums.
I am against this decision and I am happy that I am not part of admins team.
Keep in mind, The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws… how has that been going for them? You don’t have to break laws to get in trouble if you are pissing off rich people. They’ll find something, anything, to nail you on. It’s totally ok for random normal people to not want to be “heroes” to a bunch of other random people they don’t know. Heroes attract villains, and instability. And while it’s just starting to get off the ground, lemmy doesn’t need villains or instability.
Let the smaller, less visible servers do the shady but “totally technically legal” stuff. Big servers with big targets on their forehead need to be stable and drama-free.
The Pirate Bay is “technically” not breaking any laws
It does, it holds torrent files which usually “holds and shares” a copy right infringing content. While mentioning that website isn’t gonna bring any problems, linking the actual torrent file or link to that might bring problems.
It doesn’t hold any torrent files for over a decade now. It’s all magnet links which know nothing about the content.
People are terrified of the possibility of litigation to the point that they won’t even host conversations about piracy on fringe community subs for fear of reprisal.
Its just the state of play for everyone on the Internet. Terrorized by the spectre of a frivolous lawsuit.
You’re not allowed to discuss piracy. You wouldn’t talk about stealing a car would you?
Delete this.
You are allowed to discuss piracy. You aren’t allowed to facilitate piracy (I.e. providing links to pirated content). It is illegal in the country where this instance is hosted.
That community never linked to pirated content, you goose
Except for the times when it did, shown above complete with screenshots.
You mean that screenshot showing the one instance of it ever happening? It broke the rules of the community and was taken down.
Stop blocking things. Piracy is ethical
You gonna pay for their lawyers to fight that fight?
Thanks for only banning the communities and not the entire instance as a whole. That is a much healthier approach to deferation.
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.
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.
Because the fediverse i about democracy.
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.
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.
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.
Smart, might as well shut down this whole thread then as we’re discussing piracy here too, right?
I love Piracy!
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
