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. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com, 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.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    0·
    3 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·
      3 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 !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

      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.

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

        Hmmmm… I get your point. That might become a bigger problem in the future because it implies .world admins and mods are not following a logical ruleset. But its not my place to demand it from them. Their users have to do that. I dont even have an account on world.

    • Rooki@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yes there could be that “workaround” for legal posts but like said if there is one direct to a torrent, download or a mega thread website where you can download any illegal stuff the post will be removed. This includes stuff like instructions to put word by word into google search.

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

        i get that. Why would this change anything? The legal threat is real and .world is a prime target for everyone who wants to see lemmy fail.

        Its obviously the best choice and we have fediseer or selfhosting as alternatives. I dont see how there is any other choice or even consideration to be had at this point.

        Feel free to help me see it if I missed something.

        • Rooki@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          Because of such legal threats we chose to ban illegal stuff and have the “first” tos and privacy policy of a lemmy instance

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

            The problem with „illegal“ is that it evolves with the political climate. It is illegal to be gay in some countries. Should we ban gay people as well then?

            My opinion is that we should break any law if it is unjust in terms of freedom. If art gets destroyed or withheld for greed or spite then we absolutely should break this law. The current IP model is anti consumer and doesnt help small creators either (I‘m one of them).

            Thats why talking about piracy and discussing it must be okay and allowed (because a, it is legal and b, we need to discuss the extent of legally or morally justified). Imo, that is.

            • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Lemmy.World is legally primarily bound by the countries listed here.

              if being gay became illegal in NL for example, and there would be laws to prevent talking about gay people, then we’d have to either no longer tolerate such content on our platform or ensure we’re no longer bound by dutch laws.

              • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                0·
                3 months ago

                if being gay became illegal in NL for example, and there would be laws to prevent talking about gay people, then we’d have to either no longer tolerate such content on our platform

                Yes, you are repeating exactly why this is concerning to users, and why I’m personally no longer on lemmy.world. It can’t be trusted.

                • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  What would be the alternative?

                  Moving the instance behind Tor and hoping to never get identified?

                  As long as you’re operating a service on the internet you’ll be bound by laws in one place or another. The only thing you can do against this is trying to avoid being identified and therefore trying to evade prosecution. This is not a legal defense.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    0·
    3 months ago

    I knew this announcement was coming and I’d figured this action would have come from an admin who wasn’t aware of the previous context.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      0·
      3 months ago

      I just love the idea that an admin would take action without communicating with literally anyone else on the team, and that be a totally normal and okay thing.

      • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        The execution should have been better, but the decision itself was a team decision, not an individual admin decision without talking to the rest of the team.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 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.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 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.

  • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Whilst I completely understand why you, as private individuals with limited income and not a huge org that has high priced legal teams on call, have made this decision (I think people forget that it costs money just to defend yourself in court, irrespective of how accurate or legal the charges might be), this is about the 3rd or 4th time that the Admin team have communicated and taken action very, very poorly.

    It’s really not a difficult thing to do. A post such as this either before or immediately after taking such important actions. I realise you’re all busy people with real life stuff to do too but surely you tell new Admin’s when they’re onboarded that momentous decisions that affect a lot of people must be communicated to the members immediately?

    • Jelloeater@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, we’re sorry for the lag. We did post post a few hours later, as we’re all in different timezones.

      • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I understand that, but surely the Admin who took the action isn’t in a different timezone form themselves? What was stopping them immediately posting just before or just after taking the action?

  • hollyberries@programming.dev
    0·
    3 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·
      3 months ago

      That includes your private messages

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

    • Jelloeater@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      We try to be as transparent as possible. There was a lag between action and announcement, it happens sometimes.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 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.

      • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 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.

        • Blaze@dormi.zoneEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Hopefully unhappy users will change instances and thé population will ne more spread as a result

        • maniajack@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Ok I can see that secondary impact. This is the reality is unless someone else is willing to run a big instance and accept the legal risk. To everyone complaining: first are you even donating to your instance, and second, willing to give a lot more $$$ to support them if there was a legal problem. I doubt they would.

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

      Yup, and this time it seems like they’re getting more support from the community than downvotes (or they’re upvoting their own post).

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

          Just early upvotes.

          I was a bit worried because those early votes had a very large positive ratio and that could mean a very drastic culture shift since the last one of these posts, which obviously wouldn’t bode well, not just for Lemmy.world but for interactions from it as well on other instances.

  • Bungiefan_ak@lemmy.today
    0·
    3 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.