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. @db0, 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.

clueless_stoner , (edited )
@clueless_stoner@feddit.nl avatar

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

kratoz29 ,

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.

Canyon201 ,
@Canyon201@lemmy.world avatar

Why isn't this pinned to the site? I had to go searching for the reason

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Trying to avoid people seeing it because they'll get more backlash and probably lose donators and rightfully so. These types of knee-jerk reactions combined with the refusal to address feedback are very concerning.

clueless_stoner ,
@clueless_stoner@feddit.nl avatar

It was a nosedive.

psychothumbs ,

Not cool, reverse this

0xb ,
@0xb@lemmy.world avatar

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.

curbstickle ,

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.

0xb ,
@0xb@lemmy.world avatar

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.

curbstickle ,

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.

I'd say not only are most situations not like that, the ones you are referencing are specifically people who were actively sharing content. There are a couple of decades of history on this stuff.

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?

Well this is what a lawyer is for. As well as liability insurance (another often misunderstood thing - every group/business/etc is different, but a general liability policy for a million or two USD costs most folks around $1-$2k per year.) But there is quite a bit of established law, yes. If you link directly to materials that would be infringing, but not host, you can be considered as intentionally encouraging direct infringement - note that this is with a direct link only. This goes back about... 20ish years to MGM and Grokster.

Also established - thumbnails are fair use, indexing or linking to a website (but not to content directly) is an intrinsic use/function of websites. If a direct link is made, the site owners need to remove that link when notified either by report or by a claim from the IP holder. There are even safe harbor provisions specifically around sites like Lemmy (and other link aggregators), which a lawyer can provide the guidelines on how to ensure they apply.

Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises?

It depends on what we are talking about. Reviewing a specific claim? One time cost. Getting a good general response to any random bunk claim that comes their way? One-time-ish, it doesn't hurt to check in with the lawyer every once in a while to see if anything needs updating. No lawyer I know is going to charge to read their own letter, but they may say "There are some extra references that can be brought in here from recent case law, I'd estimate 30 minutes of work" which would be an extra cost obviously.

What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests?

A great reason to have already spoken with a lawyer and have a prepared response. Also a great reason to speak with folks at the EFF should the need ever arise, they like going after copyright trolls.

If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?

Who said there is legal liability being accepted? What liability legally? Specifically.

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.

No, but this is the part where I think you're missing something really important. The piracy community (communities) aren't the issue to me. Lets recap what happened here.

There was a claim that came in on something - unrelated to these communities. There was, as far as has been posted, absolutely only a request, with no response other than lemmy.world simply agreeing to what was demanded. This has not had any actual legal review, and may have been a completely valid or invalid request.

They then decided to apply this request (valid or not) as a concept to other areas, and simply disabled access. There were supposedly hours of discussion here, and then the change was made, with absolutely zero discussion. There were never any comments expressing concerns to any of the effected communities or the admins of the instances which manage those communities. There was no posting here until hours after it was brought up on another instance. This is also only a few months after they admitted to doing a terrible job of communicating and promising to do better.

There was an unsubstantiated claim from an unknown entity, and their decision on how to apply that (not just to the claim, but to unrelated communities) was done unilaterally and without any legal input.

Forget piracy. There is a trust problem. Why would you feel comfortable providing them with any information of yours if you live in a country where you may be concerned for your safety - not even now, but in a few years - for having the unmitigated gall to admit you are (gay/trans/bisexual/a believer in a socialist meritocracy/atheist/muslim) on a place where there are no legal precautions actually being taken? Where the word of someone sending a letter matters more than what the law might actually say?

My issue with the decision here has almost nothing to do with piracy or those communities. It has to do with trust. And they lost mine.

ArmokGoB ,

Might as well ban Lemmy.ml under rules 1, 2, 4, and 5.1 if you're going to start enforcing your rules.

despotic_machine ,
@despotic_machine@lemmy.world avatar

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

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

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

leraje ,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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?

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

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

leraje ,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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?

kylian0087 ,

looks like I be spinning up my own private instance to not have to deal with de-federations or anything like that.

hollyberries ,

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.

What a pathetic response. I am interpreting this as:

We will fold whenever we get a legal request, real or not.

To users on .world, I strongly recommend scrubbing your posts, deleting your account, and then going to a different instance. These admins have proven that they WILL buckle to legal pressure no matter what - that means also giving up user data upon request. Your data is completely accessible by admins. That includes your private messages and unpublished pictures.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few scenarios:

  • Being LGBTQIA+ in a country where its illegal to be
  • Consuming content from websites not approved by the Chinese government while being a Chinese citizen
  • Disparaging the Chinese government while being a Chinese citizen
  • Activism discussion (eg. extinction rebellion, antifa, the auntie network)
  • Right to repair in countries where its illegal to circumvent device DRM to perform repairs

I've deleted my account there because that TOS and so-called privacy policy are complete and utter trash.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@dormi.zone avatar

That includes your private messages

Those messages are not private, there is a disclaimer about it every time you write one

AtmaJnana ,

Which is why we should refer to them as "DMs" or "direct messages".

MrKaplan ,
@MrKaplan@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy.World is legally primarily bound by the countries listed here.

If we get a request, of course we will evaluate that request.

When it comes to taking down content, such as copyright infringing content, we may err on the side of caution to reduce the legal risk we're exposing ourselves to.

When it comes to handing over data that is not already publicly accessible, such as (not-really-)private messages or IP addresses of users, we will not "err on the side of caution" and hand out data to everyone, but we must follow the laws that we're operating under. See also https://legal.lemmy.world/privacy-policy/#4-when-and-with-whom-do-we-share-your-personal-information.

cookedslug ,

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.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

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

Rooki ,
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

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.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

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.

Rooki ,
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

Because of such legal threats we chose to ban illegal stuff and have the "first" tos and privacy policy of a lemmy instance

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

The problem with „illegal“ is that it evolves with the political climate. It is illegal to be gay in some countries. Should we ban gay people as well then?

My opinion is that we should break any law if it is unjust in terms of freedom. If art gets destroyed or withheld for greed or spite then we absolutely should break this law. The current IP model is anti consumer and doesnt help small creators either (I‘m one of them).

Thats why talking about piracy and discussing it must be okay and allowed (because a, it is legal and b, we need to discuss the extent of legally or morally justified). Imo, that is.

MrKaplan ,
@MrKaplan@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy.World is legally primarily bound by the countries listed here.

if being gay became illegal in NL for example, and there would be laws to prevent talking about gay people, then we'd have to either no longer tolerate such content on our platform or ensure we're no longer bound by dutch laws.

curbstickle ,

if being gay became illegal in NL for example, and there would be laws to prevent talking about gay people, then we'd have to either no longer tolerate such content on our platform

Yes, you are repeating exactly why this is concerning to users, and why I'm personally no longer on lemmy.world. It can't be trusted.

MrKaplan ,
@MrKaplan@lemmy.world avatar

What would be the alternative?

Moving the instance behind Tor and hoping to never get identified?

As long as you're operating a service on the internet you'll be bound by laws in one place or another. The only thing you can do against this is trying to avoid being identified and therefore trying to evade prosecution. This is not a legal defense.

curbstickle ,

Actually questioning the validity of a claim before proceeding to give in, for starters. Maybe seeking legal help from one of the many advocates out there.

If the response is an immediate white flag being raised, then anyone who posts on lemmy.world who has any semblance of risk now or in the future is fully at risk with lemmy.world. How is that assertion wrong?

Does 'not immediately folding under even the slightest request' require tor?

Does communication publicly before a decision with large implications like this require tor or hiding your identity?

MrKaplan ,
@MrKaplan@lemmy.world avatar

We do question the validity of claims, but when it comes to takedowns of copyright related content, we simply do not have the resources to throw money at lawyers to evaluate this in detail. We can apply common sense to determine if something appears to be a reasonable request, but we can't pay a lawyer to evaluate every single request. We also can't afford going to court over every case, even if we were to win, because those processes take large amounts of personal time and have a risk of significant penalties.

Legal advocates on Lemmy or any other platform for that matter are not a substitution for legal council.

curbstickle ,

I don't believe I made any claim that a legal advocate on Lemmy is a substitute for legal council.

I said there are advocates out there. There are law groups which focus on open source software and community run services who pay for that work by either the ability for that group to pay on a sliding scale, or completely pro bono as it's supported in the back end by corporate clientele or other similar services. But that's a complete digression.

We do question the validity of claims

Just being candid here - I haven't seen that. In this post or any other by admins. Obviously this could be entirely behind closed doors, but even then, none of that has been communicated here has it?

We also can't afford going to court over every case, even if we were to win, because those processes take large amounts of personal time and have a risk of significant penalties.

And on the basis that no real effort to push back here has been visible, why would any other risk category be any different? Why would someone who could be persecuted want to risk themselves with lemmy.world?

I think the position has been clear, and entirely the decision of Lemmy.world. I'm just being clear about why that creates a trust issue.

brickfrog ,

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 !piracy

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.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

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.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

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.

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Damn, thats crazy

Tramort ,

I'm unhappy with this decision and don't support it.

L0wded_ ,
@L0wded_@sh.itjust.works avatar

same

maniajack ,

You aren't on the lemmy.world server so why does it matter to you?

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Well you see, since Lemmy.world is a large instance, the vast majority of the Lemmy network actually. Such decisions ultimately affect everyone else because they slash your engagement severely in all affected communities.

So even on other instances the decisions of a behemoth like lemmy.world can still affect users there, in way more indirect and annoying ways.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@dormi.zone avatar

Hopefully unhappy users will change instances and thé population will ne more spread as a result

maniajack ,

Ok I can see that secondary impact. This is the reality is unless someone else is willing to run a big instance and accept the legal risk. To everyone complaining: first are you even donating to your instance, and second, willing to give a lot more $$$ to support them if there was a legal problem. I doubt they would.

hal_5700X ,
@hal_5700X@lemmy.world avatar

Again. Really? 🤦‍♂️

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Yup, and this time it seems like they're getting more support from the community than downvotes (or they're upvoting their own post).

curbstickle ,

Its currently in the negative, so I don't think the support is there. Just early upvotes.

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Just early upvotes.

I was a bit worried because those early votes had a very large positive ratio and that could mean a very drastic culture shift since the last one of these posts, which obviously wouldn't bode well, not just for Lemmy.world but for interactions from it as well on other instances.

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