this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024

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Lemmy.world seems to have banned the largest piracy community on Lemmy. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This has happened once before and they reversed it. But they said this last time too:

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.

https://lemmy.world/post/3234363

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Well this comment section was an interesting read. Interesting how many comments still bend the discussion towards bashing lemmy.ml and defederating from it. People, it's not even the topic of this post?

Also it seems like very few actually read the post beyond the title? The problem is not lemmy.world banning the piracy community, they have the right to do so, that's how federation works. The problem is them making a promise to make announcements about such bans in advance, but they instead did it quietly in the background again.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

IIRC they banned [email protected] months ago. Not sure why it pops up again in the modlog. It was the reason I left lemmy.world.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I believe they reversed course on that ban. It's just recently that they reverse reversed that course.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Linking to or posting content that's illegal or in violation of copyright should not be allowed, but you don't have to ban an entire community to do that, you just have to enforce the same rules that are in place for every other community on here. Maybe someone can explain this to me, but this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity. Ditto for cryptocurrency, ditto for secure operating systems, ditto for drugs, guns, and any number of other things where community discussion is allowed but illegal activity is not. I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not as easy as moderating individual posts. Remember, Lemmy is decentralized. If you start your own Lemmy server and I federated with it, I'll get all the stuff you post on my instance too (intentionally oversimplified).

Its up to you to moderate communities on your instance the way you see fit, and up to me to moderate mine. Even though our instances are federated, I can't moderate on your behalf. It just isn't feasible both in terms of the technology and in terms of the sheer volume of content you would have to try to moderate.

If you have a community that posts a mix of things I agree with and things I don't, I really only have a couple options on my end. Basically I can block that community on my instance or block your instance altogether.

The reason why someone might block a community may be more about the legal risk than any moral justification. Depending on where you are, it might be illegal to even host that information. And since Lemmy instances cache posts from other instances, it could be argued that because that community is federated with your instance, you're responsible for the content posted there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That's all well and good, I agree with virtually all you said. It's certainly the admins' right to block or de-federate any community they want, based on risk or just because they feel like it, I have no issue with that. It's simply my personal belief that discussion of crime is not a crime. Direct links to illegal content should not be allowed, but discussion about piracy in general should carry no more risk that learning about murder in a criminology class, which does not need to be banned just because it's teaching people things they could in theory use to get away with murder.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned

using your analogy; it's like banning access to a piracy community because sometimes pirates use it..

pirates sometimes use meme communities too, but those aren't banned, and .world isn't completely defederated from db0, so that's not it.

so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity.

staying anonymous online is not a crime though. copyright infringement is a crime. that's why the analogy doesn't make sense.

scenario is: people are linking to law-breaking content in x-community. therefore, .world is choosing to ban said x-community that facilitates it, to prevent legal liability.

I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.

you're right, while lock picking can be illegal, it's not always illegal. however, copyright law violations are always illegal.

this law-breaking content happens to be copyright infringement/piracy material. another example a host might ban would be a community that is linking to CP, or a community that is linking to Identity theft sources, etc. even if it's just users posting links to this sort of content, I can understand a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I think we're close to saying the same thing, I'm in total agreement that linking to illegal content should be banned, it's the uneven enforcement of that principle across communities that I think is an issue. I know .world isn't hosted in the US, so you don't enjoy broad 1st Amendment protections for free speech, but does anyone really think that discussing crime is itself a crime? If I say "here's a scenario for how a group of people could rob a bank" what crime is that? If I say "hey I think there's people dealing drugs on this street corner" what crime is that? And I can of course appreciate a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability, that's their free choice, they own the server. I'm talking about, on principle, what's wrong with allowing a community to exist so long as that community does not post or link to illegal content? That principle seems to work just fine for virtually every other topic but when it comes to discussion of filesharing, torrents, and the like, then suddenly the "don't link to illegal content" principle isn't good enough and it becomes "we must ban this entire concept for our own safety." That's the admins' right and I have no issue if they want to do that, I just want to point out the glaring double standard between moderating communities so they don't break the rules and banning communities so they don't break the rules.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Spin up a piracy instance on a server in China or Russia and be done with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Russia or EU

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A good way to get roskompozor on your back thought 👀.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Roskompozor?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

A Russian word play around Roskomnadzor, i.e. The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, an agency responsible, among other things, for censoring media and blocking access to Internet resources, as well as proceeding with criminal allegations on illegal content.

Pozor (Позор) means "shame".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

They are busy blocking localhost

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The communities that were blocked were not on the Lemmy.world instance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Ah i missread then. My bad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They should defederate from Lemmy.ml for having admins complicit in violating Strafgesetzbuch section 86a instead of this crap.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The pirates will simply move to another Lemmy Instance and re-create the group there. This is the advantage of having a decentralized platform: so one person or small group of people can't ruin things for the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

These communities not on .world.

They are: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Pirates will not move the communities. The communities are fine where they are. People will need to create accounts on the host instances or instances that haven’t blocked those communities.

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