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.
I wish people would be more mature about their reaction to this, as well as other people’s reactions, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with the choice.
I’m not opposed to piracy, though I understand the risks that come with a platform allowing potentially pirated content. While I respect the decision and see the reasoning behind it, I don’t agree with it, and will likely change my home instance to one that allows me to continue communicating with those communities, as I was subscribed to one of them.
I’ll still be participating in communities hosted here, and I hope that with this decision, the admins’ concern about being potentially sued is substantially alleviated.
I sure hope the Lemmy devs are able to get moving on account migration soon…
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Section 230 does not protect against intellectual property (copyright) claims, which I imagine is the primary concern behind blocking piracy communities. Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation: Section 230
Quote below (emphasis mine): “Section 230’s protections are not absolute. It does not protect companies that violate federal criminal law. It does not protect companies that create illegal or harmful content. Nor does Section 230 protect companies from intellectual property claims.”
What do US laws have to do with a website hosted by a German company in Finland?
You should probably ask the commenter I was replying to? I was merely providing more information about section 230, to correct misinformation in that parent comment.