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.
Then why the hell would you host anything instance in Germany?
Because you might be - and I know this can surprise some - a German?
Among other things it makes a lot of things easier. For example, assume you get sued for something with your server that you’re hosting in, say, Sweden. Now you need a lawyer both in Germany and in Sweden (most likely, though one in Sweden might be enough depending on what is happening) to handle the case, as usually the swedish lawyer defending you will want to talk to legal representation of yours over where you live. Not exactly making it any better, is it?
Of course, you could host your server on some utterly remote place no one can viably take you to court, but then they could still sue you (personally, as the person running the place) in your home country anyways, so it’s not like you get around anything this way.
Naive. First off there are many places with very good technical service where you won’t have issue. And secondly there are ways to do it well. Do it through a firm, do it through a friend from there. There are options. I’m certain there are countries and firms where they are absolutely not obliged to tell some German lawyer who owns the domain.
I don’t know if these people are Germans or not. But this site isn’t hosted in Germany.