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.
Host your own instance and take your own risks. These are just volunteers that don’t want the liability.
I’d understand more if these communities were outright file sharing. I understand why that’s a liability. But discussion of the topic should be permitted, which said communities are exactly that. !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com explicitally forbids file sharing in their rules.
Let’s be real though, the admins handling of this wasn’t great. A more public discussion could have prevented backlash or allow these communities to address LW admin’s concerns.
They’ve already said that they are looking into it more and will reverse the decision once they have clarity on their personal liability.
FYI, there were screenshots with links direct to pirated materials shared.
Where were these screenshots posted?