Removal of piracy communities

Hello world!

Some of you will already have noticed that we have removed some piracy related communities from Lemmy.World during the last day.

Lack of communication

First off, we want to address the lack of communication.

Not everyone in our current admin team has been with us long enough to be aware of the previous issues and discussions related to these communities and the impact this has on our community.

We should absolutely have published this announcement when or before we removed the communities, not hours later. After realizing this mistake, we would have liked to write this a lot earlier already, but we were all busy with irl things, that we just didn’t have time for it.

Lemmy.World is run by volunteers on their personal time, nobody here gets paid for what we do.

Removed communities

Next, we want to explain how we got to the decision to remove these communities.

!crackwatch@lemmy.dbzer0.com

A lot of the recent content posted to this community included images instructing users to visit a specific website to obtain a copy of the release that the post is about. These instructions were in the form of Type in Google: visit-this.domain. The domain referenced in these posts is entirely focused on video game piracy and providing people with access to copyright infringing material.

While there may be legal differences between whether one is linking to specific content on a domain or just linking to the domain itself, such as linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_piracy compared to linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/, we do not consider this to be clear enough in laws and previous lawsuits that linking to just the domain is acceptable, if that domain is primarily about distributing copyright infringing material. We therefore do not allow linking to such domains. Additionally, we do not see a significant difference between posting a link directly to a website and embedding said link in an image, so we treat them equally.

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

This community is, for the most part, just about discussing various topics related to piracy. We do not at all mind discussion about this topic, and if it had been limited to that, this community would be fine.

This community, however, contains a pinned Megathread post by a community moderator, which, through a few levels of a pastebin-like site, provides an aggregated overview of various sources of content. Some of these sources are entirely legal content, but it intentionally includes various other references, such as the website referred to from the CrackWatch community, which are primarily intended for copyright infringement.

lemmy.dbzer0.com is willing to accept this content on their instance, as well as the potential legal risk coming from this, which they’re free to do.

We do not plan to defederate from lemmy.dbzer0.com, but we will continue to remove communities that are directly facilitating copyright infringement. @[email protected], the admin of lemmy.dbzer0.com, is a great person, and we have no problems with him as a person. This is just a matter of different risk tolerance.

!piracy@lemmy.ml

Same as !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com.

Why have the piracy communities been restored previously? What changed?

Currently, based on the memories of team members involved in the decision back then, it appears that there was a misunderstanding between the community moderators and Lemmy.World admins in how the community will be moderated going forward, as well as which types of content are allowed.

Lemmy.World expected/assumed that links to websites primarily focused on facilitating distribution of pirated content would be disallowed in these communities.

The community moderators however do tolerate references to such websites, as long as people are not linking to individual content directly.

We suspect that this may have been missed during our original review when restoring the communities, which lead us to previously restoring these communities.

Why now?

We have recently received a takedown request for content not directly related to these communities, but it prompted us to review other piracy related content and communities.

Terms of Service clarification

Last, as we’ve reviewed our Terms of Service, we have updated our wording here to make it more clear what is and what isn’t allowed when it comes to piracy. This was already covered by “Do not post illegal content of any type. Do not engage in any activity that may […] facilitate or provide access to illegal transactions” in section 4, but we have now added section 4.1 to better explain this.

We apologize for the delays in communication.

      • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        Well you see, since Lemmy.world is a large instance, the vast majority of the Lemmy network actually. Such decisions ultimately affect everyone else because they slash your engagement severely in all affected communities.

        So even on other instances the decisions of a behemoth like lemmy.world can still affect users there, in way more indirect and annoying ways.

  • sunbrothersco@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    When it comes to linking to content, it’s essential to understand that simply providing a link does not equate to sharing the actual content. Each URL on the Megathread serves the specific purpose of leading users in a particular direction.

    If this practice is deemed negative, then one could argue that every search engine operates erroneously. Search engines display results and guide users to specific destinations, mirroring the functionality of our approach to linking.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    This shit again? Last time I jumped from world the instance I went to shut down. I guess its time to start looking at spinning up my own.

    I get it. But I want to see that stuff. So I can’t stay where I can’t see it.

  • hollyberries@programming.dev
    0·
    4 months ago

    We have recently received a takedown request for content not directly related to these communities, but it prompted us to review other piracy related content and communities.

    What a pathetic response. I am interpreting this as:

    We will fold whenever we get a legal request, real or not.

    To users on .world, I strongly recommend scrubbing your posts, deleting your account, and then going to a different instance. These admins have proven that they WILL buckle to legal pressure no matter what - that means also giving up user data upon request. Your data is completely accessible by admins. That includes your private messages and unpublished pictures.

    Off the top of my head I can think of a few scenarios:

    • Being LGBTQIA+ in a country where its illegal to be
    • Consuming content from websites not approved by the Chinese government while being a Chinese citizen
    • Disparaging the Chinese government while being a Chinese citizen
    • Activism discussion (eg. extinction rebellion, antifa, the auntie network)
    • Right to repair in countries where its illegal to circumvent device DRM to perform repairs

    I’ve deleted my account there because that TOS and so-called privacy policy are complete and utter trash.

    • Blaze@dormi.zoneEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      That includes your private messages

      Those messages are not private, there is a disclaimer about it every time you write one

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    0·
    4 months ago

    So to make it clear: people are allowed to make new piracy centric communities with the express rule to not post direct links to primarily providing copyright infringing material?

    I‘m not a lawyer but I read legal texts at times.

    This would most likely save .world from the repercussions (btw its how reddit mostly handles it afaik) and maybe some posts could be crossposted on a per case basis.

    I‘m trying to be constructive here so please be gentle.

    Disclaimer: it is fairly easy to host a lemmy instance, please consider helping thw fediverse by hosting if youre a tech savvy person. Otherwise, join a stable instance at https://fediseer.com

    • Brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      4 months ago

      So to make it clear: people are allowed to make new piracy centric communities with the express rule to not post direct links to primarily providing copyright infringing material?

      Nope, it’s more than that. Lemmy.world admins don’t want you to link to any websites that link to anything that might contain direct links or references to direct links. Strangely that means that linking to Google or Reddit would fail that test so links to those sites should be removed by lemmy.world admins too.

      Per admin’s own post they removed [email protected]

      This community, however, contains a pinned Megathread post by a community moderator, which, through a few levels of a pastebin-like site, provides an aggregated overview of various sources of content. Some of these sources are entirely legal content, but it intentionally includes various other references, such as the website referred to from the CrackWatch community, which are primarily intended for copyright infringement.

      The megathread post that admins are referring to contains links to a different website that contains links - that website is not on Lemmy at all. Lemmy.world admins took this removal action because the community contains a link to another site that may contain links lemmy.world admins don’t like.

  • Bungiefan_ak@lemmy.today
    0·
    4 months ago

    Awesome I’m glad you’re one of a few instances here who take a stand against piracy.

    You might want to also address these other ones you seem to have missed:

    Thank you for all the hard work you do.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    This is where the benefit of having more than one account on different instances comes in. When admins make a move users don’t like, users can just log into a different instance to access the content they want to see.

    Honestly though, not very good optics on doing this without any prior communication. You are going to do whatever you want on your instance, but as IIRC the biggest Lemmy instance, its a really bad look to be making changes without saying anything. It makes me (and likely others) wonder if you hadn’t been called out on it by some users posting about it if there would even have been an announcement like this at all. Granted, there is no legal obligation for transparency, but many users here greatly appreciate the transparency in the past that was done prior to taking action for the most part.

    Side note: Going to go out on a limb here and assume the content takedown request was Nintendo related, and the takedown request was probably filed by someone who does not actually represent Nintendo. This happens so often that it is basically my default assumption. This may or may not be the case here, but its hard to imagine that there would be anyone else with their eyes on such a tiny community as Lemmy, especially in comparison to Reddit.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      Trying to avoid people seeing it because they’ll get more backlash and probably lose donators and rightfully so. These types of knee-jerk reactions combined with the refusal to address feedback are very concerning.

  • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    And this is why lemmy will never get close to what reddit was. On top of the cumbersome registration process and difficulty of navigating the fediverse for the non-tech people, there is also the issue of de-federation and censorship. This is no better then reddit unfortunately. It makes me sad, this really seemed like a good idea, but the implementation is so poor.

    People were saying it won’t matter what instance you choose, everything is federated and you choose what you want to see, but clearly the instance admins make that choice for you and it absolutely does matter the instance you choose.

  • Koof_on_the_Roof@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    Thank you for your hard work. I feel that a delay of a few hours is acceptable for a voluntary service. I am sure there are many commercial services which have much worse communication.

    I personally feel that being able to discuss piracy but banning communities that have links that actively promote piracy seems like a sensible safe legal position. This is probably what I would do if there was even a possibility I might be legally liable for an instance.

    I can understand users frustration but I don’t think it’s fair to take it out on the admins. It is a thankless task which people do to benefit their community. The great thing with the fediverse is that you have other low cost options to turn to if an instance no longer works for you.