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.

  • Squizzy@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
      1·
      11 months ago

      Yeah I’m subbed to few piracy comms just because I like to see how that side of things is going. I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website. It’s all been news and discussions and that’s it.

      Actually, Reddit was far worse with huge ass lists of links to games and sites.

      • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
        02·
        11 months ago

        I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file. I’ve never even seen anyone link to a website.

        You ignored the “assistance in obtaining it” part, because members of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com have been doing that. Also:

        EDIT: oh boy, shill posts a lie, innocent pirate mob upvotes. I literally post a proof that what he said is completely false, innocent pirate mob downvotes.

        • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
          1·
          11 months ago

          Are you trying to say I’m a shill? Lol wat.
          I chimed in with my experience. You chimed in with one example expecting it to be the end all of the discussion.

          If you really want to talk about who does what, look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps for online services so you don’t have to pay for them. Someone’s been asking for assistance in obtaining things alright.

    • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
      11·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • snake@lemmy.world
        21·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
          11·
          11 months ago

          to an entity with greater legal capabilities?

          Someone who has the necessary legal capabilities is going to be a corporation. And that’s exactly why we left Reddit.

          • void_wanderer@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 months ago

            No. In Germany we have something called gGmbH. It’s basically a non-profit Limited. But IANAL, no idea if and how this would be able to protect the admins.

            • sfantu@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 months ago

              Lololo

              That’s a corporation imbecile

              EVERYONE HAS THEM !

              LOLOLOLOLO

              Let me tell you a secret … THE GOVERNMENT is a corporation … the church… IS A corporation …

              Lolololololo

      • ladicius@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        I support your decision. Want to see the new instances that will pop up now hosted by your critics 😄

      • xXxBigJeffreyxXx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          The music community could be an issue for the same reason, this logic is problematic

    • Holyginz@lemmy.world
      01·
      11 months ago

      Reddit has the money for legal defense when companies try to go after redditors. The mods and administration for world are volunteers and don’t have th resources to defend themselves. It’s unfortunate but this move makes sense as part of the bigger picture.