Humans who run instances are real people who have jobs and mortgages and kids. I also like having piracy communities around to balance the greedy ass corporations trying to control media and copyright…I’m glad to know they are there if I need them or feel like screwing around with it. I just wonder if the people ranting all indignantly acting like instances are competing for their usership would feel the same if the most active instance was on a server physically sitting in their basement, or paid for by money tied to them in the real world. Yes it seems pretty unlikely that you’re ever going to run into issues with law enforcement, copyright claims, lawsuits…but how much would you risk for a fucking hobby you do for free? Would you risk your house? Your job? I would not. Grow up. No one cares what instance you use.
I think this is the right take. Americans have Section 230 (for now) that quite broadly protects communications platforms from liability over what 3rd parties (users) post to their platform about Piracy. We also have the 1st Amendment which more or less protects anything you say short of direct, specific calls to commit crimes and some types of slander/libel. It’s why we can say goofy shit like “now I’m not saying you should do this or encouraging anyone to do this, but if you were going to anyway here’s how:…” and then talk about how to commit crimes, and get away with it. Because we’re just talking about it right? No one is saying “now go do these things at my direction” we’re just sharing information, innocently, not telling anyone to act a certain way…
In the EU, not so much. They have “methods and means” rules that can get platform owners in trouble for 3rd parties just posting about BitTorrent clients or providing advice like “Google X if you want to find Y” on their platform if it’s smells of possible piracy. We’re so used in the US to just being able to disclaim everything we say that this is a bit shocking. But talking about tools and techniques, even if you preamble with “now don’t ever use these for piracy bros, ok, I don’t advocate for using this advice in that way” is not going to save the user or even the platform owners from trouble. It is not just about posting direct links to pirated content or hosting/torrent sites. Maybe a point that is little-understood in the threads I’ve been reading on here about this.