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Removal of piracy communities

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.

[email protected]

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.

[email protected]

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.

[email protected]

Same as [email protected].

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.

113 comments

  • 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.

    Well, it's more that we believe a domain root url embedded in an image, or a link to a rentry doesn't really have any risks. At least, nothing likely to get us sued. Note that all these domain links existed (and still exist) in the reddit /r/piracy wiki for years without problems.

    The reason being that almost all of these takedowns are coming from automated crawlers, who won't bother OCR every image they come across, or b64-decoding every string.

    • yeah, as long as you don't specifically point to a copyright infringing content things will be fine. that's why all piracy related subreddits are still not taken down.

    • Must be exhausting having this problem with LW twice now. Can't make this shit up at this point. Lol

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • That's totally understandable and we wouldn't blame you for moving to a instance that doesn't block piracy I'd you would like access to that. We just cannot take the risk.

  • People are always welcome to join the ship , the seas are all open for everyone to adventure.

  • The decisions you make are one thing. The way you keep handling them so incredibly poorly is quite another.

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

  • 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?

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

      • 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?

  • I don't like the decision, like most people here.

    But it's unbelievable to see the reaction of many users. Providing a free uncompensated server and bandwidth and monitoring and all the related stuff is apparently not enough. There's is people basically demanding free legal representation, protection, and challenges to many country laws. That's completely insane. The comments criticizing the instance for 'folding' against legal request better have ready 100k USD for retainer of a top copyright legal firm, with even more ready for a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Otherwise it is just nuts to me the responses we are seeing.

    Again, of course I don't like it and will consider my options like moving instance, but I understand that I am responsible for the content I seek and the legality of it. I will not feel entitled to offload the burden of that responsibility on someone else demanding that it be carried for free.

    To the instance admins I only have to say thank you for the service you provide, thank you for putting in actions the spirit of sharing and community. And please do exercise your right to protect yourself legally.

    For us users is seems so simple as just export our stuff and go somewhere else, but for the instance admins there have been so much time and other resources invested that certainly must be sad and frustrating to risk it all, so it's better to follow the way that leads to the continuation of the project, and we should understand that if we want the project to continue, like I do.

    I wish there were better options, like better laws or the independent tech for better protection and anonymity, but this is the reality of what we have and we all have to engage with things as they are. We can keep demanding changes to the people really in charge of the system instead of fighting among each other.

    • The comments criticizing the instance for ‘folding’ against legal request better have ready 100k USD for retainer of a top copyright legal firm, with even more ready for a lengthy and expensive legal battle.

      I hope you're not going to take this the wrong way, but I want to be clear - this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved. Generally speaking, the review of a claim like this is an hour or two at most. You can also preemptively review these concepts with a lawyer, and get a handy-dandy letter or two to be used as a common first tier response (which also handily dismisses the majority of claims, which tend to be bunk). Several hours at least.

      Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.

      A $100k retainer, or any retainer really, is unnecessary. The actual costs for some basic legal support are about the low range in costs for a month of operation of their servers ($900-$2200/mo per their own public costing statements through opencollective).

      Forget anything else in terms of piracy communities or anything else. Speaking with a lawyer to cover the bases is a smart decision - remember that there have already been issues like CSAM that have cropped up. A bit of up-front smarts and a couple of hours with a lawyer pays dividends. The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern, don't be dismissive.

      • I hope you're not going to take this the wrong way

        Absolutely not, I also agree, as some others have pointed out, that there have been mishappens with communication, so I'm glad that there's discussion about the issue. Thanks for clarifying with your knowledge and doing so nicely.

        this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved

        To be honest, everything I know about that is what I have read about the number of cases when platforms or other kind of purveyors of piracy are sentenced to or settle paying tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those are real cases where the people involved obviously felt very confident about their legal safety. Surely, most of the situations are not like that and don't even get to be in the news because of how insignificant the resolutions are.

        But, is there a way to be sure about what kind of outcome would lemmy.world would get to be completely confident about doing or not doing one thing or another?

        Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.

        Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises? What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests? What about copyright trolls? If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?

        The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern

        I guess we go back to the point I tried to make. My position is that the instance admins are not obligated to be a legal shield for the users to have any kind of content that we want on the platform. This is not a privacy-focused nor a free speech-focused service, never has been, data is not encrypted, users have identifiable information, there are commercial services being used to run it, used under another set of TOS and hired with real world legally responsible identities. To say 'Well the legal cost of keeping piracy on the site is not that high I think' seems like an unfair position to me.

        I do pirate stuff myself, sometimes because it is more convenient, sometimes because it is moral, sometimes is the only option. But I take the responsibility of doing so myself. If whatever site I use decides to shut down tomorrow, I won't make a fuss about it. Demanding to someone else to face the possibility of legal trouble because it will only take them a few hours and max a couple of thousand dollars and is comfortable to me, is what seems concerning to me.

  • where’s the integrity? quite frankly i don’t get the “we didn’t know” rhetoric. the previous removal is literally the most controversial post of all time. understood that they can be subject to legal action. no blame for being risk adverse but this post is kind of a nothingburger.

  • Running my own instance really starts to pay off

  • What a shame, well the last piracy ban was what motivated me to join lemm.ee, no regrets at all, better uptimes, quicker updates and no censorship.

  • Shame that you folks couldn't even allow educational discourse on Piracy.

    • Meta conversation is allowed. We added that exception.

  • 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

    • 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.

      • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

  • Take lessons from my previous unremoval announcement and undo this. This is really stupid

  • the piracy community in lemmy.ml i can agree with the removal of, all of the others don't make any sense.

113 comments