Official Statement from Lemmy.world admin about community removal

alexandrite.app Removal of piracy communities - Lemmy.world

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: - !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com [/c/pira...

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Plz can someone ELi5, how the hell being member of one of those communities "supposed" to provide assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, can be harmful to lemmy.world if al what I'm doing is to be subscribed to their communites via my current account to be able to interact to posts there while i'm of course respecting their rules. It's like, hey you tolerate illegal immigration, so i'm banning you from visiting my city.
- Federation more or less means the info is copied, so from a dcma standpoint the instance is still liable. If content is deleted from the main instance, it doesn't always delet from a federated one.
  This would de different if you could proxy instead of copy the data on federation.
  
  Text is copied. Media is simply linked back to the original location I believe.
  Also dmca just means that the admin has to make a reasonable effort to remove things reported as no compliant. Aka they ban or remove offending posts and they are in the clear.
  I’m gonna be honest. And I run my own instance, albeit solo, this content isn’t my concern. It’s the CP/CSAM shit that folks like burggit.moe we’re spreading that got my liability concerns up. The feds go hard on that shit (as they should) and will hold a hosting admin accountable as if they were the ones viewing and reading it.
  Dmca is pretty clear cut and toothless. I’ve dealt with it plenty as a network admin. As long as you remove it when notified, you are in the clear. This strikes me as the admins having a political opposition to it and using their made up code of conduct as a reason and when pressed just saying “well liability”.
  That said I don’t know where they live and the laws for me may not be the same as someone hosting in Germany, who may go hard on that stuff. So who am I to judge? Just saying dmca isn’t really a concern.
  Also they’re hosting provider could just cut them for “abuse” especially if they are already using a lot of resources and if that’s a concern I get it. .
  
  Not exactly 100% versed in the matter but I did some fair digging before starting my own instance: In Germany as long as you remove illegal content in a timely manner after being made aware of its existence you should be perfectly fine. That does include making sure the content does not pop up again but imo the entire thing is set up in a way where if you have adequate moderation (which you should anyway) there shouldn't be anything to worry about legally speaking.
  Case in point: feddit.de has not blocked the piracy community (yet)
  
  Yeah. Like I said, i have no idea what the conditions are. Maybe its Cloudflare threatening/applying pressure and LW has been getting smacked with DDOS etc.
  But maybe not too. I strikes me as a excuse but honestly i dont know all the details or variable and frankly i dont care all that much.
  
  But the supposed discussion which can lay to be illegal isn't hosted on their instance, how this can affect them !? In my opinion, all this is a bullshit, and what they want is more direct subscribers to lemmy.world...
  
  Technically it is, as someone else mentioned, text is copied on federation, this means is you as an admin need to actively moderate instances you federate with that may cause you issues in a legal standpoint whether correct or not. Facebook etc have rights that means you're not liable for user content, you as an individual instance admin however would need to fight for those rights.
  Sure it's a rubbish thing they did but I also understand it completely.
  
  A copy of that discussion is hosted on lemmy.world. In fact, all content from other instances on lemmy.world is in fact just a copy hosted on lemmy.world. That is how federation works. If a post that breaks the laws lemmy.world is subjected to, is federated to lemmy.world, lemmy.world will automatically create a copy of that post and make it available to all its visitors. By law, lemmy.world is hosting illegal content. This is a fubxamental design flaw with Lemmy and Mastoson, or the ActivityPub peotocol, that needs to be adressed by the developers, if instance admins are to be sure that they are not breaking laws by federating.

115 comments