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
    1·
    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
      2·
      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
        03·
        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.

          • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
            01·
            11 months ago

            my experience

            Which is very far from reality. I literally just opened the community and randomly found that thread, I didn’t even have to try hard. You tried too hard to make them look good here:

            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.

            Also, maximum cringe here:

            look at yourself asking for links to alternate apps

            • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
              1·
              11 months ago

              And, so what?
              Why are you so butthurt? I wasn’t even going to respond to your comment because I read it and thought fair enough.

              https://lemmy.world/post/3206301
              This is asking for the same exact thing that your apparently so upset over.

              Chill.

              • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
                01·
                11 months ago

                butthurt

                It does seem to me that you’re the one who’s butthurt because I called you a shill though? You literally lied, I don’t even see why you still reply. Also, very pathetic of you to compare using an alternative front-end with something that’s clearly illegal.

                • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  Yeah dude you totally caught me lying. Everything is falling apart now that you’ve exposed me lol

        • spiderman@ani.socialEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          The above comment says “I’ve never seen anyone post or comment a link to a pirated file.”

          proceeds to post a screenshot where they just name the site and not pointing any the particular pirated/copyright infringing content.

            • spiderman@ani.socialEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              I think some of you have no idea how legal issues will occur. Unless you are linking actual content or the (direct) link to the copyright infringing content, you will not be having any legal issues. That’s why big piracy discussion subreddits in reddit ike r/piracy are not taken down yet.

              Even YouTube has copyright infringing content. Now will .world get any legal notice for linking that? No. Will .world get a legal notice for having comments or posts having a direct YouTube link to the copyright infringing content? Yes. That’s how things work.

              Hope you guys understand that instead of slamming every reasonable comment.

              Linking this comment by @zikk_transport2@lemmy.world for better 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.

    • 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.

    • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
      13·
      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.

      • xXxBigJeffreyxXx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        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
          41·
          11 months ago

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

      • snake@lemmy.world
        11·
        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.

        • sab@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          Yikes. Bit trigger happy with the ban hammer there. It’s at -40, isn’t that filtering enough?

          Edit: it was an instance ban initially, this is more reasonable.

          • Weslee@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 months ago

            Eesh if posting a slightly hurtful comment is enough to get an entire instance ban… I wasn’t going to move home instance just because of those communities but the bans is way more of an eye opener.

        • 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·
              1 month 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
        02·
        11 months ago

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