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.
Oh no! Users are complaining and downvoting. They just need to get inline and do what they’re told. Okay for real, you people are worst type of people. Lemmy users are just showing their disapproval of the action. They have the right to do.
Do those communities house copyright content? The answer is no. Having discussions, giving guides & tips are are legal. So I don’t see the problem. If someone going to get sued for it. It will be dbzer0.com and lemmy.ml due to said communities being part of the instances not LW.
Don’t instances cache the content from federated instances? I can still view content from vlemmy.net from other instances, even though it’s been permanently shut down.
From the OP:
Reddit has gotten into legal trouble numerous times regarding r/piracy, despite it not hosting any copyrighted material either.
Why is anyone complaining about instances not taking the same legal risks as a massive corporation? Just use another instance that fits your needs.
Would be great if they actually tried to understand the underlying issue instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions.
Encouraging illegal activity is illegal, piracy is illegal. Therefore encouraging piracy is illegal. The end.
The law is: “take down pirated content as soon as your aware of it and proactively prevent it being shared on your platform and you can’t be held liable if it is on your site.”
Lemmy.world’s first rule is no illegal stuff including sharing copyright material without permission. I’m so sick of seeing people acting like the sky is falling because lemmy.world isn’t directly facilitating piracy.