It’s gone. Wanted to ask over here before I went to check on Reddit.
lemmy.world deleted their copy of it (due to site rules, and prompted by a concerned Internet citizen)
It’s probably the biggest Community in all of Lemmy, so the ramifications will be interesting.
lemmy.world has been acting very weird lately. Almost like they are the one and the only authority of Lemmy.
Almost like LW admins don’t want to end up in jail.
Nobody wants to end up in jail, but that’s not a reason to become reddit.
Good job this is Lemmy then and each instance can set their own rules.
Nobody wants to end up in jail, but that’s not a reason to become reddit.
Says the guy who is at 0 risk of going to jail for it lol.
By all means create your own instance with a rules-free piracy community, then when you start getting into legal trouble, you can bit the bullet and go to jail lol
Every instance has their own rules and where your server is located can factor into those rules. Being a EU server and not a Russian server likely plays a role in that.
I moved to lemm.ee from lemmy.world after that whole hack thing a few weeks ago and it seems like lemmy.world has been going through some weird shit ever sense.
We knew it was you!
Yea… it’s time to boogie off this instance for a while before they turn into Reddit Jr.
It’s their instance, they are free to do as they wish to comply with their local regulations
But when it’s a centralized social media who do what they want in there playform you guys complains about it
I personally never complained about piracy being removed from Reddit, it makes sense from a legal perspective.
The advantage of Lemmy is that all of the other instances still have that community.
Piracy subreddits still exist on Reddit. Lemmy.world admins are apparently blocking communities that even Reddit allows.
Reddit has lawyers that the Lemmy admins cannot afford.
Sounds like you’re assuming there was some legal issue that triggered this community blocking? Lemmy.world admins did not receive any legal notices prior to this action, it was just their kneejerk response to a troll from another instance. You can view it yourself, browse to the post via !support@lemmy.world or see it directly https://lemmy.world/post/3175920
More like PEOPLE are acting like they’re the only authority of Lemmy.
The whole point of Lemmy is that unlike Reddit, you can give middle fingers akimbo to the server and still participate.
It’s not that difficult to jump ship.
“middle fingers akimbo” has been appreciated
Hexbear drove them mad.
I am starting to get frustrated with lemmy.world. The downtime and stability was one thing but now they cloudf****ed it, the stability has not significantly improved and cloud flare can now see everything we do here. Once there is account migration I plan on self hosting an instance.
It depends on what you want from migration. Lemmy-migrate can migrate your subs but not posts or comments.
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I’d mind less if their own instance wasn’t so broken.
Ye I think I need to start my own instance, That’s the only way I can get away from bullshit like this
Quick and easy, self hosting for a while now.
thank
Nice. Thanks for this.
I’ve been on my own instance since I started using Lemmy a few months ago and it’s amazing to just… do whatever I want.
You know, I agree that this is definitely the beauty of Lemmy’s federated nature but I’m somewhat perplexed by statements like “I can do whatever I want”. I mean for sure, in theory you definitely can, but were really being held back before? I just personally have never actually run up against the limits of my freedoms online and being unable to do something I want to do. I’m probably just super vanilla and boring I suppose. I guess the recent shit with Reddit is an example where I really was constricted, by virtue of no longer having the choice of mobile app to access the website through, but then, I just jumped ship to Lemmy. I can imagine I might run in to a situation where the admins of the instance I signed up to block a community I liked, but it’s very rare that this is a community that I care about and when it is, there’s almost always another server around I can make an account for and sign up to all the same communities as before. I guess in typing this I’m seeing that the answer is that, with your own instance you won’t have to keep hopping, but I guess I just so rarely get inconvenienced by admin decisions that it’s never seemed worth the trouble.
If it’s not too prying, can I ask what is it you want to, and in practice really would do, that running your own instance has now allowed you? Not just theoretical but, like a real existing capability that you’ve gained and make use of regularly? It’s appealing to me from a theoretical basis and sometimes the theory and principle alone is enough, but the effort barrier hasn’t seemed worth it for the theoretical gains alone.
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That “concerned internet citizen” was a 10 hour old account whose only post was complaining about piracy. It was a troll out for some good ol manipulation.
Hey, that’s not true. They also had posts complaining about trans people existing and Star Trek fans being nerds. Still, it’s admirable - in a way - the effect they had: I ask the lemmy.world admins for updates on fixing their technical issues, and get no reply. This guy makes one post, and they all leap into action.
Its very sus. Even if he had a legal point. It was so out of the blue AND fucked up my feed. I enjoy piracy stuff
oh well better late than never to migrate i spose
EDIT: nvm looks like dbzer0 has like 0 moderation (users just uploading gore to random subs and other shit) so can’t blame lemmy world admin from having to defed. Shame.EDIT EDIT: oh its just anti piracy, i thought it was a defed !
lemmy.world hasn’t defedered from lemmy.dbzer0.com entirely, they’ve just blocked the piracy community.
Such is the beauty of lemmy
Deleted how? I can see it here while logged in (though there are only a few posts):
That’s not a copy of the main piracy community, that’s another piracy community that’s hosted on lemmy.world
The community people are talking about is !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, which is no longer accessible via lemmy.world
It appears !piracy@lemmy.ml is also blocked.
Lemmy.ml as a whole got defederated I believe, which I can at least understand
Nah lemmy.ml is still federated. You can see it listed here https://lemmy.world/instances
Ah I thought somebody mentioned they got defederated. Probably my bad
hexbear (a leftist instance) was defederated recently. lemmygrad.ml is “under discussion”.
lemmy.ml has too many general users thesedays imo, it would be very major to block it.
Not that one, their copy of the massive one at dbzer0
Official statement
Making official statements on Discord, and not Lemmy is WILD
Yeah, it sucks but it makes sense, there is no one to defend those volunteer individuals if anyone wants to go after them.
How does it make sense? Did Comcast have to/did they block my access to RARBG while it still existed? No. I get removing piracy content on their own instance, but blocking other instances is not necessary.
The problem is that the admins are all just volunteers and the instance doesn’t exist to make money. If a big company decides to sue them, even if they are in the right, they will be drowned in legal fees.
Not to mention, legality doesn’t need to be a question if the admins of Lemmy.world get drowned in legal fees before even having to appear in a court. The rich don’t exist by our laws and idk why anybody expects differently at this point.
Welp, hopefully more people simply move instances.
Is allowing access to piracy resources the same as hosting piracy resources? Is Comcast at risk of being shut down because they didn’t block everyone’s access to RARBG? This is largely rhetorical; the answer is “no”. lemmy.world’s admins are not being honest.
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There is no content in these communities, they are for discussion. Linking to content is against the rules in fact.
Are you sure that’s true? All content from all other federated servers are hosted on all other servers? That certainly doesn’t sound right; I thought that the fediverse protocol just allowed us access to other servers running the protocol, not that our instance actually runs content from their instance.
Yes, this is how federation works and it’s the main point all those users that are bitching about the move do not understand. LW does not care about piracy, they are afraid of legal consequences, because with the federation protocol you are hosting all content of other instances. It’s not embedded, it’s mirrored, so there is no legal difference between the origin instance and the federated instance.
Comcast has money to defend itself. That’s a huge difference.
Lemmy.world’s admins are well within their rights to exclude evil people who take what doesn’t belong to them from being a part of the lemmy.world instance.
Facilitating Piracy no matter how you put it is wrong and illegal, it is wrong and illegal to support people who do it.
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Can someone transcribe this for those of us using screen readers? As a server in Canada, We’re also worried about the hosting risk of the piracy community and considering blocking it. I’d love to read the LW statement.
They made a announcement here on Lemmy https://lemmy.world/post/3234363
The original was posted on discord. It was:
Removal of Piracy Communities
Earlier today, 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, !piracy@lemmy.ml, !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 assitance in obtaining it.
Thanks! Perfect. Wish I could award…Lemmy Gold? LOL
Lemmy Lemon 🍋
Here’s the original announcement in text: https://lemmy.world/post/3234363
Thanks for the reminder that screenshots aren’t accessible for everyone.
Thanks! I didn’t realize there was an announcement on Lemmy, or I would have searched. Unfortunately screenshots are kind of the only way to share posts on Discord, because you can’t link someone to a Discord message on a server they’re not a member of, so I can’t blame you for a screenshot there. However, it is possible to add alt-text on images you post to Lemmy. :-)
Glad to see Lemmy.world doing their part to keep the Fediverse safe and legal for all users here.
The contents are still hosted by respective instances.
World achieves nothing, they dont even host the contents. This is pure power trip or irrational fear, or both.
Lots of folks here with strong opinions that have never dealt with legal proceedings, or an itemized bill calculated in 6-minute increments.
Would it have to be hosted in a matter similar to VPNs/some mail clients and others?
LMK if anyone knows more, thank you!
Likely a jurisdiction issue moreso anything else.
It’s also hard to keep a hosting location wholly confidential.
Thanks for the reply!
They did what? How are they suppose to tell me which communities I can check and which I am not allowed to see?
Time to move to a new instance, good riddance
Behold, federation in motion
Federation does not by definition require giving admins the ability to censor content. The Fediverse implementation unfortunately does, but it sure didn’t need to.
That has nothing to do with the point. The admins are entitled to block whatever they like. If you dislike it, federation lets you chance instances so you can follow different rules you agree with. There’s a ton of instances that are just as good and allow this stuff, so stop being centralized!
I’m gonna start my own personal instance actually.
With blackjack and hookers lmfao
In fact … just forget the personal instance
and the blackjack
Awesome!
try blahaj.zone, its a super lgbt+ friendly instance that hasn’t blocked any communities to my knowledge
Aren’t they really struggling with server costs?
Not anymore. Right from the first post the admins made about it, they tried to make it clear that they had come up with a plan to lower costs and should have realised before it was too late that AWS was gonna charge them through the nose once traffic increased. The migration’s complete now from what I understand, and it would take a huge influx of users to even come close to those figures now.
are they? if they were i wasn’t aware, I’ll look into it.
How are they suppose to tell me which communities I can check and which I am not allowed to see?
Time to move to a new instance, good riddance
My instance is waiting for you
Huh? The Piracy community on dbzer0 is still up, just checked.
People on LW can’t see it anymore apparently
Another reason to create an account on a smaller instance rather than .world
And this one is going to actually have an impact
Good thing I moved to a different instance.
Which one did you choose?
You can actually see my instance by looking at my username.
There are many instances out there, you could use something like fedidb to decide on which one you want to join.
lol
Do you happen to know why?
Admins decision, probably illegal in their jusridiction
Please link me to it because its no longer in my subscriptions and I can’t find it in a search at all.
It’s blocked from lemmy.world. I’d recommend using LASIM and migrating to another instance like https://lemm.ee/ (note: you will need to manually resubscribe to !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com on your new account, since LASIM won’t be able to see it).
Btw, that user has also requested deletion of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com on lemm.ee and it is in consideration. If this is the reason for your switch, I’d wait for their action.
That user has actually not been in contact with any of our admins, I’m not sure why they are claiming otherwise.
In any case, I shared my position on piracy on lemm.ee a few months ago, and it has not changed. TL;DR discussions about piracy are fine, but explicitly facilitating piracy on lemm.ee is not allowed, and if any such content is reported on lemm.ee then I will most likely err on the side of removing it. Having said that, I am not planning to defederate lemmy.dbzer0.com at this point, as they have not been causing any issues for lemm.ee (but, of course, I do reserve the right to re-evaluate federation with any instance if at any point they start causing problems for lemm.ee).
Quoting my original comment about piracy on lemm.ee, just for full context:
There’s nothing inherently illegal about VPNs, P2P, seedboxes, torrents, software for torrents, etc - as a software engineer, I have no trouble understanding that these things all have legal purposes. There can be no realistic case made against someone just because they use (or discuss the use of) any of these things. You can post and comment about stuff like this all day long.
Also: discussing piracy topics in general (like commenting on the legality of it, just saying you do it, whatever) without actually using lemm.ee servers to host anything sketchy is fine as well.
On the other hand, telling people “go to coolpiracywebsite.com to download the latest avengers movie” is very sketchy - you’re not directly distributing anything, but I think a case can be made that this comment is directly facilitating piracy, and if someone sends me a legal letter to remove such a comment, then TBH I will most likely just comply rather than deal with the hassle of trying to figure out how legal it is. Just being frank here - I don’t want to create false expectations of lemm.ee servers being a safe haven for content with sketchy legal status.
Thanks for the reply and stating your position. I’d understand deletion if you were served a legal notice for a post/comments.
Honestly, just make an account on lemmy.dbzer0.com. Can’t lose access to it then.
Fair. Personally I’m just sh.itjust.works as my alt instance.
I love shit just works but the Dude has to cover his ass legally and he may be forced to do something similar if Canadian law is also bootlicking the record companies.
Where can we learn more about that user or their request?
You can browse to it via !support@lemmy.world or see the post directly https://lemmy.world/post/3175920
EDIT: Lemmy.world seems to be down right this second so you may not be able to load it, LOL.
He claimed he DMed the admins. I can’t see any public post about it.
I forgot the link but it’s in one of my old comments in this very thread.
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Didn’t know boomers pirated stuff
Then you clearly haven’t been paying attention
Legit. Piracy related to home PC software has been around since the advent of home PCs. Before the concept of LANfests or LAN parties even existed, there were copy parties. I still have vivid memories of 8+ 1541 drives daisy-chained to a single C64. University servers hosting warez… Usenet… there’s likely earlier examples I’m not aware of.
Before that, people were hacking phone systems in order to call long distance for free. This ain’t nothin new.
Not something I’ve indulged in for 30+ years, though. I pay for everything, now. Guilty conscience, I suppose. 😁
Lemmy.world blocks problematic communities all the time. The bigger your platform grows, the more important moderation becomes. If you want to browse it, you’ll have to register an account with another server, or host your own instance.
Exactly. I don’t get why people are freaking out so much when it’s easy to create a new account and clients support multiple accounts anyways. Big instances are a big target so they need to protect themselves. On Reddit the piracy subs are neutered because they can’t link to anything. What’s good about the fediverse is you can have sub verses within it. It’s dumb to have your piracy account linked to your main account anyways.
Having multiple accounts is an inconvenience that shouldn’t be required
I don’t really get it though, it’s not like they’re trying to court advertisers.
Or are they?
They’re trying to avoid law enforcement and lawyers at their doors.
Even if you prevail, either can be a very expensive and/or destructive process.
Make no mistake, Reddit’s recent refusal to provide details surrounding users that were discussing piracy is highly unlikely to happen in the fediverse. Admins are going to get hit with a subpoena and comply because they can’t afford not to.
They don’t want to be arrested lmao. I am pro-piracy, but I would never want to host pirated content from my own servers. You can absolutely be jailed for that.
I don’t think they’ve even customised their Lemmy codebase at all, let alone have an ad programme set up.
Moderation sucks, especially in communities where it’s hard to decide what is and isn’t over the line. No moderation isn’t an option, and there are as many opinions about what should or shouldn’t be removed as there are people on this earth. The easiest way to avoid problems and toxic drama is to removing you and your moderators from areas of discussion that you know are going to cause headaches down the line.
It’s a matter of time before Lemmy servers across the world are going to get hit with DMCA claims for piracy related communities. Maybe they’ve received one already. I’m not going to fight it on my private instance, and honestly, I don’t think all but the most daredevil (or foolhardy) servers are going to bother with gathering the necessary legal aid and fees when that day comes.
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Not sure why nobody in the comments is distinguishing between blocking a community on an instance (removing /c/piracy) and defederating instances (saying your users can’t subscribe to otherinstance.com/c/piracy). They are very different things. We should be very skeptical of defederation.
Removing a community because it violates the rules of your instance is A-OK and every instance should do this. Anybody can run an instance, and anybody can set their own rules, that’s the whole idea of federation.
De-federating other instances because you find their content objectionable is less ok. Lemmy is like e-mail. Everybody registers at gmail or office365 or myfavoriteemail.com. Every email host runs their own servers, but they all talk to each other through an open protocol. You would be pissed to find out that gmail just suddenly decided to stop accepting mail from someothermailprovider.com because a bunch of their users are pirates or tankies. Or blocked your favourite email newsletter from reaching your inbox because it had inflammatory political content.
Allowing your users to receive e-mail, or content from subcommunities on other lemmy instances is not a legal risk like hosting the content yourself is (IANAL etc). Same way Gmail is not liable if somebody on some other e-mail server does something illegal by emailing a gmail user. That’s why you can register at torrentwebsite.com and get a user confirmation email successfully delivered to your inbox. Gmail is federated with all other e-mail services without needing to endorse them or accept legal liability for them.
Lemmy’s strength, value, and future comes from being the largest federated space for link-sharing and other forms of communication.
Defederation is bad.
It’s not really apt to compare email to Lemmy. Email is a one-to-one communication method, it’s like sending a letter in the mail. In the same way a mail carrier isn’t culpable if they deliver a package of drugs, Google isn’t responsible for delivering illegal emails. On Lemmy though, you’re hosting a copy of the post locally on your instance. It’s accessible to users as well as people who aren’t signed in.
More like Usenet than email.
Hmm, that’s a good point, it might make a legal difference in some places. I think it should be treated like email.
Great, time to change instance. At least it will have > 10% uptime
lemmy.world blocked it. I guess it is their right to do so, if you want to keep access to it move to another instance (it is not healthy that so many people are on LW).
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This is exactly what I’m about to do.
Let’s see what happens when we get everyone to defederate your ass for supporting illegal content, or are you going to evade their defederation attempts with a new domain? Are you going to violate their right to censor and ban you on their server with their own rules.
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Instances aren’t banning other instances for federation with communities they dislike. Instances ban other instances for hosting content they dislike. The benefit of starting an instance is you choose who to federate with.
If anyone’s looking for a new instance, feel free to join mine! https://lemmings.world
Its not gone. Its just blocked by lemmy.world…
Its hosted on dbzer0
Lmao these idiots are on a power trip already. Running the biggest instance in the ground is a great way to start it all off. Fucking idiots.
Not sure that their monthly running budget would even cover a consultation with a lawyer. There’s no reason that they should accept this risk. Just move to a different instance or host your own instead of causing drama.
It one guy financing it with donations and some volunteer admins. Seems very unlikely that federating with a piracy community could cause any legal problems, but if I personally owned the servers running Lemmy.world like ruud does I might be a little careful. My wife would kill me if I got arrested for hosting a Lemmy instance, man. Is it worth the risk?
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I don’t think they are idiots more centralization means more regulation weather one likes it or not, regulators somewhere will notice you more popular you become. Piracy is illegal and media publishers will use law whenever they can to target whatever they notice. It’s now LW’s fault. Problem is it grew too big too fast. All these FOSS apps they were showing LW as default option to sign up instead of randomised one. So a big mass gathered at LW and bada-boom-bada-bam piracy banned. Register on smaller instances or run your own.
That would be true if piracy was hosted on their instance, which isn’t the case. They just defederated the main hub because they’re a bunch of white knight cry babies. Also piracy isn’t illegal in the majority of the world. I don’t live in the US and don’t give a shit about the bottom line of some giant media corporation that would destroy literal lives in the pursuit of greed. Just the fact that so many people jump to the defense of these corporations is very telling about the current state of the fediverse.
LW blocked three communities on db0, but they didn’t defederate with db0. This means LW users can still talk to db0 users, and db0 users can still access LW. At the same time, content from db0 will not be mirrored on LW servers. Basically, they’ve covered their arses from legal issues, while not cutting ties entirely.
As I understand, LW servers are hosted by a German company, and Germany is rather strict on piracy. So I understand why they had to do this.
Yeah there is nuance to everything. I totally understand LW’s decision and I don’t blame them, main reason I don’t have an account in LW becauze I saw this day coming long ago. And if lemmy keeps getting popular even lemmus.org might do the same and I would understand that too
Way to misunderstand federation + legal issues… Go cry foul on reddit, they share your “outrage” mindset
Just make an account on another server that is federated with them.
LMAO you think an Instance enfocing their rules is a power trip? You sound like the dumbasses I banned from r/PS2 and r/3dshacks who would ask how to pirate games against our rules and then whine and complain that we were power tripping because we banned them using our own authority as mods in our own subreddit.
Of course you’re a reddit mod…
Lol, ejoy your ban dumbass
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hey snowflake. maybe you should go back to your little safe space at exploding heads where you can hate on trans people without seeing such scary, abhorrent things as digital piracy. instead of hiding behind your 4th alt of the day.
go back to exploding heads transphobic fucker
Sigh, proof that untreated mental health issues do be tho.
