this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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These communities are not even hosted on lemmy.world, this is an absurdly overreacted response. There were no signs of any legal trouble and I can't understand how lemmy.world specifically would be the target of such legal action. If you want to host an instance, you should do everything in your power to allow discussions on any topic, while in necessary cases disallowing direct posting/linking of illegal content. Instead, you chose to block a community that has long been known to avoid having any trouble with the moderators.
And on top of this, the removals were done following the request from a troll account, by a user involved in far more questionable discussions than the legal discussions currently going on in the now-removed communities. Should no attempt be made to differentiate between a legit legal concern and trolling?
Federated content gets copied between servers. So even if a community is owned by another instance, all of that community’s content gets copped to Lemmy.world’s database. Try searching the same post on two different instances and notice how in the URL they have different /post/id, because each instance copies the post over with its own unique ID. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m guessing “this content originated in X server” is not a valid legal excuse.
Keep in mind the World team is pretty small. They probably don’t have the funds to fight legal battles. As they weigh these decisions, they are likely trying to avoid the risk of lawsuit that could easily mean the end of Lemmy.world.
Doesn't matter if they are hosted here or not. The way federation works is that threads on different instances are cached locally.
We have NO issues with the people at db0 - we are just looking out for ourselves in a 'better safe than sorry' fashion while we find out more. As mentioned in the OP we would like to unblock as soon as we know we can not get in any legal trouble.
"we are just looking out for ourselves in a 'better safe than sorry' fashion while we find out more."
This is an unfortunate aspect of individuals/small groups housing the fediverse vs big companies. Big companies have lawyers and the capital to back them, individuals do not.
If I was in your shoes, I'd do the same thing. I appreciate your wish for thus to be temporary. I hope you will share your findings once you come to a final decision; information like this is relevant to all those managing servers.
What needs to happen for you to be confident you won't get in legal trouble, and thus unblock them? Change on the db0 side? Lemmy.world admins getting legal representation/advice? Something else? I'm curious how you all see this playing it out in the future.
Highly doubt there's anything db0 can do. lemmy.world is in Europe, piracy has hefty legal ramifications.
Like you could argue that it isn't piracy all you want, but if faced with the possibility of your hobby landing you decades in prison and millions in debt, would you do it?
Just create an account at db0, this really isn't the big deal people make it out to be.
Not all of Europe. In most parts (especially Eastern Europe) the most you will get is a slap on the wrist if you are really really unlucky. And decades in prison aren't a thing anywhere for simply sharing links to pirated content.
No one thinks of Eastern Europe as European beyond geography, excepting perhaps Eastern Europeans themselves.
Prison notwithstanding, financial ruin is a definite possibility.
People are making a mountain out of a molehill over this. The instance owner doesn’t want to risk any legal issues over hosting this instance, and I get that. Just create an account on db0 and use that. It’s not a big deal.
Instance admin isn’t some big corporation trying to silence your free speech. He’s just a dude that doesn’t want his hobby to bite him in the arse.
The great thing is, now you're 100% empowered to move forward and host the responsibility yourself. Demanding volunteers shoulder potential liability (when you yourself admit you can't understand how there's any in the first place) is juvenile.
The moment a volunteer is hit with a DMCA notice or any threat of legal action, you think they have any interest in going through the court system? You can do it first.
I think you don't understand what a DMCA notice actually is. The whole point of it is to give you a chance to remove offending content. The "threat" of legal action won't actually result in anything, provided you comply, and that is exactly why I do not understand the preemptive actions, when there is basically no such thing as immediate legal threat in case of DMCA notices. The copyright holders often do not want to go through the court system either and will gladly accept pre-legal-action compliance.
You seem to know your way around the law then, so please be the change you want to see in this world. Host a piracy instance and show everyone here that we were wrong and that the admins were just overreacting.
I can openly admit I am breaking the law for example by using torrents for piracy - and I seed as much as I can, though it in theory makes me liable. So yes, I am the change I want to see - piracy should be free to discuss everywhere
You can go further: host a piracy instance since you seem confident enough and prove us wrong. Why are you avoiding this part? I'm not the only one having suggested this to you.