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Removal of piracy communities - Lemmy.world
alexandrite.appEarlier, 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: - !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
[/c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com] - !piracy@lemmy.ml [/c/piracy@lemmy.ml] -
!steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com] 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.
To everyone ready with their pitchforks, here is a scenario: lemmy.world may receive a court order (subpoena?) mandating they disclose data on people actively accessing pirate communities. As it happened with Reddit, they may ask for logs and IP addresses of people commenting, posting or perhaps even up/down voting content.
Even though none of the content is being posted/hosted with this instance, admins may be asked to betray user trust - or to go battle claimants in court. It’s a lose-lose for them, so maybe let’s cut them some slack, eh?
Yup, they’re a big target and being a big target means more liability. Spreading the fediverse is good for us all. It means taking down piracy is like whack a mole.
This needs to be said more. They did their best.