Lemmy.world seems to have banned the largest piracy community on Lemmy.

Lemmy world:

Runs the largest Lemmy instance, for free, for your enjoyment.
Accepts all liability for content, local and federated (there's little/no legal distinction when you're essentially running a copy of a remote community)
Posts a transparent TOS
Lists which countries' governing laws apply to it
Gave a valid reason for the removal of those communities in the modlog

Users, not even on Lemmy World or directly affected by this:

I'm not in the loop or even involved with LW's admin affairs, but I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically. Going out on a limb, I would guess the community removal was a timely response to something like that, and based on LW's history, an announcement will probably be coming soon-ish.

Before you grab your torches and pitchforks, remember: Pretty much every Lemmy instance is run by volunteers that don't have legal departments.

"The cloud is just other people's computers" - It's inconvenient, but those computers are real, physical objects subject to oversight from real, physical law enforcement.
- "but it's not my computer, so you should be willing to host any of it"
- Never understood people who don't get this.
  As a person who is part of open source communities, on various chairs and donates, the money is extremely slim, and the people involved just want to build cool things.
  We are busy trying to keep the lights on for hundreds of thousands of people can enjoy this service. And if a small group of troublemakers force us to get a strong legal threat, we aren't risking the the project's survival for them.
  Especially when we don't know the troublemakers, don't have any connection with them, they don't contribute to the platform, etc.
Evidence No. 3783 that "social media" and "privacy" do not mix well together.
Let me repeat one more time:
anything you write online should be considered public.
There is no "consent-based" fediverse.
There is no "GDPR protects me from that".
There is no "security through obscurity".
There is no "dark corner of the internet".
No matter your morals and ethical values, If you need to have any type of conversation that you think might get you in legal trouble, do not have this conversation in a public forum. Use #matrix if you have to, and even then you'd still need to worry large group chats which may have some undercover agent.
And if you are really concerned about "censorship", then ActivityPub is not for you. Go join forces with the bitcoiners and use #nostr.
- Oh oops, you haven't pasted some cool copyleft licence below your words on this niche thread on a niche social media network so looks like I might remix and reuse your content without attribution... Unlucky
- And anything you write or upload to Lemmy should be considered permanent, as it immediately spreads throughout all the instances and they actually don't have to respect edits or removals. And if instances defederate from each other then they simply can't, as they don't sync those requests any more - if Lemmy.World decided to defederate from Sopuli, this message would become permanent and I could not do anything about it.
  Also, this who saga about the uploaded ID picture.
- Is it bad that I hope Nostr takes off?
Yeah like.
This isn't reddit dot com opaquely purging your favourite subreddit for some unspecific corporate reason.
The admins stated quite clearly why they are blocking it ("we don't want trouble, and our TOS lay out that we'll defed from illegal shit for our own safety"), and it is their instance. And unlike Reddit -- The community is still THERE in its home server. It has not been burninated. -- You can just. Make an account elsewhere. It's free. It takes less than 5 minutes. You can even KEEP your LW account for other communities.
- Did the admins state anything? I thought the issue here is that LW previously did something without an announcement, undid it and promised to communicate before doing something like that again, and now people are saying they haven't communicated this time.
  That's the real issue, not the fact that it was defederated.
This is precisely it.
One other point is, some instance want to focus on certain things, and take the risks, where others don't.
Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.
The guy running lemmynsfw on the other hand, is enthusiastically embracing the challenges involved, and more power to him!
And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.
- Our community feddit.uk doesn't do nsfw, because it's not worth the headache for what our main focus is.
  Same for my instance and for the same reasons. We have nothing against that, just, like you said, not our focus nor worth the headache.
  And in the end, it works. We handle Mr. Brains Pork Balls, they can handle...other balls.
  🤣
I would imagine there was a letter or email to them or their service provider that prompted that and likely named those communities specifically
What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?
Also curious why lemmy.world has still not made a statement about this or even acknowledged it (at least I haven't seen any acknowledgement so far). Removing the communities from their instance is of course totally within their power and right, but this isn't exactly the most transparent way to do it.
- What I'm curious about is, why haven't lemmy.dbzer0.com received those takedown messages? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source instead of just another instance hosting the content but not actually "responsible" for the content, so to speak? Or maybe they have?
  So many unknowns. Until LW makes an announcement, it's all speculation. I haven't seen any mention from db0 about takedowns, etc, but those may just be background noise for him. lol
- regarding your first question - they usually go after the big fish first. dbzer0 might still be flying under the radar, and also might be ina different jurisdiction where the specific plaintiff can't go after them, or where it's harder for them to do so
The thing that gets me is the quote in the OP from last time this happened. It has been +12 hours of silence when you said last time they'd have this discussion BEFORE. Maybe it's for legal reasons but you'd think they'd have said well, something.
The point was transparency, don’t try to distract from the issue.
People speaking out and getting mad is natural and helpful. It's how discourse works at this scale. Maybe the mods change their actions or maybe they don't, but saying nothing about bad things happening won't help anyone and getting mad that others are saying things is stupid.
Are you telling me Reddit is free to have a Piracy sub, but Lemmy isn't?
What's the point of Lemmy if Reddit is more free?
- Reddit is an American company, subject to American laws, that has a legal department (i.e. has lawyers on retainer). Lemmy World, like most other instances, is run by volunteers and donations and is subject to the laws where it's hosted and/or where its operators reside.
  When you receive a takedown / DMCA / whatever legal mumbo-jumbo applies to your jurisdiction, you have two choices:
  Comply immediately
  Fight it in court
  The first option is free. The second option costs a lot of money if you don't already have lawyers on retainer and can cost even more money if the court rules against you.
  Sucks, but that's the way it is.
  Again, I'm only speculating that was the case here. However, given Germany is one of the jurisdictions LW is accountable to, it's not that wild of a guess.
  In most EU nations, piracy is usually not even a blip on the radar for security forces and internet providers. Things seem to work completely differently in Germany, where breaking copyright law can carry a sentence of up to three years in jail, alongside a large fine and trial costs. - Source
  What's the point of Lemmy if Reddit is more free?
  That's such a broad question that I'm not even going to bother. Instead, I'll answer with the same question as when "states' rights" are brought up:
  "~~States' rights~~ Free to do what, exactly?"
  You're also free to run your own instance and accept all the legal liabilities that come with that.
- You seem to be confusing Lemmy.world with Lemmy as a whole. Lemmy is free to be used for anything by anyone.
  Lemmy.world is the largest and most mainstream Lemmy server, so they need to be especially careful about legal issues. If lemmy.world gets taken down due to mirroring content hosted on lemmy.dbzer0.com, the whole network would partially collapse because of how many users and communities are hosted on lemmy.world.
  It's not even close to worth the risk. This is how federation is supposed to work.
- the dbzer0 piracy community has been around much longer than most of the users here. they spun up when they saw the writing on the wall, and they permit things that would not be permitted on reddit. and, it seems, they permit things that are not permitted on .world.
  but the instance is still there. the community is still there.
  and you can leave .world, join an instance that hasn't banned !piracy, and keep right on going.
- Reddit's piracy community doesn't discuss the practical stuff like dbzero's does
- Reddit has corporate lawyers. Lemmy does not.
- You know the meme where Bender goes, "I'll do my own thing, with Blackjack and hookers!"
  Lemme provides that. Servers are managed by different groups and you can absolutely make your own, with blackjacks and hookers.

Great thing about the fediverse is that you have options when admin/moderation actions occur that you don’t agree with. If Reddit were to remove /r/piracy then we’d have no recourse

Very true...as long as the federation of servers remains as it is now, but I'm increasingly worried it won't.
I mean, yes, Dbzer0 still exists, and yes, you can access it from other instances, but Lemmy.world is the biggest one and users here being cut off from it from here will strangle the amount of activity it gets. Visibility is important for the health of other instances and their communities. There's a good reason why alternative subreddits never outgrow the main ones.
There's also a sentiment among some admins and some of the contributors to both Lemmy and the Sublinks project that feels like it runs counter to the premise of Lemmy as whole: an unwillingness commit to a truly shared space or adhere to a standard for what federation is supposed to mean. Instances are not only encouraged to do whatever, they're being given more tools to. And that's good for fighting spam, child porn, and malicious instances, but it doesn't stop there.
I really hope an app or frontend comes along at some point that will seamlessly combine instance accounts and "fill in the blanks" created by instance admins so users can have a clear picture of Lemmy, regardless of the instance they're on.
- I mean, yes, Dbzer0 still exists, and yes, you can access it from other instances, but Lemmy.world is the biggest one and users here being cut off from it from here will strangle the amount of activity it gets. Visibility is important for the health of other instances and their communities. There’s a good reason why alternative subreddits never outgrow the main ones.
  Yes and no. While it's true that piracy might not get "drive-by" traffic from l.w. users, those users who become aware of it, or who want to access it will be forced to create an account elsewhere than l.w. which will also help with redistributing users to smaller instances.

ITT: People who think lemmy.world is equal to Lemmy.

Go join another instance folks.

Yep, this is why I have multiple Lemmy accounts. That's even one of the biggest strengths of Lemmy.
This will be the third time I will have lost all my comment history and have to recreate my large block list. It's not just a flip of the switch.
- Lemmy now has export/import for settings, including blocklist.
- Suscriptions and block liste are transferred in two clicks via the settings. For jour history just mention the other account in jour bio.
It is the most popular lemmy instance though, so them banning a community like this is quite impactful.
For sure! It's just sad seeing corporate cucks win out, again. Lol.
Does anyone have recommendations for instances that aren't so proud about censorship?
- OP has the answer, come to the place that is being banned: Lemmy.dbzer0.com ! I came here last time .world got all banney.
- I'm seeing some balance at lemmy.ca.
  Then again, at times I can be pretty clueless. I'm just happy here.
- Lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works
- The trumpers ruined that c-word for me.
- I feel like all we're doing is speedrunning Reddit.

This is why you don't sign up with the biggest possible instances, eventually they will become the biggest possible bottleneck in a network. Anything dot world admins do will affect all of their users, that shouldn't be surprising 🤷

As for dbzer0, this might affect users in the short term but eventually people will figure out how to access the sub from more friendly instances.

Stop crying about it and just join a new instance, pretty simple.

Yeah that. And I say it as someone who, on a good day, will go on philosophical rambles about how piracy is in fact the moral thing to do.
Do people just not get that this is the entire point of a decentralized system?
Hop accounts, you lil' bitch. Don't sit in one server complaining about the owner of that server when you have a billion options.
And if your priority is the piracy community? Make the server that hosts that your homeserver.
Or just have more than one account and use an app instead of the default webpage.
It's not rocket science. People's brains are poisoned by centralization. Back in my day everything was its own separate forum with its own separate account and to be honest, it was miles better like that.
- The problem with this is that it isn't really decentralized equally. Lemmy.world has most of the users and getting defederated from them is essentially a death sentence in terms of content and engagement.
  I think it's a good idea to make new accounts on other instances, I plan to but without a proper amount of people, lemmy.world is working the same way reddit did.
I did that the last time and moved here ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Better management, no censorship, better uptimes and quicker upgrades, no need to look back (I moved "momentarily").
- quicker upgrades
  That's an important one, especially with how long it took LW to upgrade. I completely get why it's more challenging for them due to their number of users, but that could be an argument for enthusiastic users to move elsewhere.
- Here being where exactly?
- You... Got a refund on a donation? Wow...
- If I may ask, why still use .world then?
Reddit syndrome still affects a lot of users here, who view having multiple accounts on different answers as an inconvenience instead of a feature of the platform design. The irony is that tons of users on Reddit had lots of accounts without batting an eye, but that extra step of having to lick a new instance is just SO complicated.
- It is an inconvenience. Having to track which account can view which communities, with all the drama and defederation happening each week isn't easy.
- It’s a major inconvenience and I’ll stick to one. If it can’t be accessed from Lemmy.world it’s not really my problem tbh and I’ll just act like it doesn’t exist.

This isn't reddit. There's a clear solution here: decentralization. Aka, like the entire point why we're on Lemmy in the first place. Join another instance lol.

"No! I refuse to open more than one site! If it's not on this one site that I have decided amounts to the entire threadiverse then it doesn't exist, how dare people make me think? The absurdity of it all!"
- .world users doing their thing. It's fine for a starter but not someplace to stay
Absolutely! Does anyone have any suggestions for general instances that don't censor as much as lemmy.world?
- This is a great site to find instances:
  https://join-lemmy.org/
cum

That's why I moved!

- It's in their username after the @
  \ Edit: In case you can't see it, it's Lemmy.dbzer0.com

Yeah people are really weird about this. They want a free distributed forum hosted by small admins, but don't want those individuals to take basic legal precautions? Piracy might be moral, but it's a liability which will absolutely impact the viability of servers in many places. Grow up.
The Lemmy instance doesn't actually host pirated content, does it? It's just information about pirated content and where to find it, right? Who the fuck cares about this
- But of they federated they'll be hosting a copy.
Yeah, we should run this shit through Somalia, they don't give a f u c k.

... again.

What a bunch of fucking clowns.

Anyways.... !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

That returns an error.
Is there another instance you'd recommend?
- Try this link: lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
- I can see it just fine. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
  Making a new account isn't difficult; I chose my instance specifically because I wanted access to that particular community.

When "reddit outside of reddit" does reddit things 🫨

To be fair, Rudd is just a hobbyist who runs .world in his spare time. If he’s getting legal pressure, he’s probably going to cover his ass. He’s not a company with a legal dept. He’s a guy with a family and a day job.
- Another problem is .world part of US-centric instance
When the people using a free service you're not obligated to provide try and shame you for not taking on multimillion dollar legal departments.
- The communities they banned are only for the discussion of piracy(whick is legal). There are no copyrighted material hosted in any of them.
The benefit is that it isn't just another reddit but rather network of reddits
Banned on one? Get from another.
- I'm referring specifically to lemmy.world, not to all of lemmy or even the fediverse.

Sad that antipiracy laws are in place.

But understandable that lemmy.world protect themselves against those unfair laws.

The sailing will continue, but, as always, we should be wary of the "navy" and sail with precaution.

I never sail without protection

Does removing mean defederate?

No. Every community is hosted by a server, just as every user account is. Removing a community is similar to banning a user.
- So it just means that lemmy.world users can no longer see that specific community, right?

Can confirm, moved out of lemmy.world by this bullshit.

So start your own instance, with Blackjack and hookers?
As expected that's the power of Lemmy!

Spin up a piracy instance on a server in China or Russia and be done with it.

The communities that were blocked were not on the Lemmy.world instance.
- Ah i missread then. My bad.
A good way to get roskompozor on your back thought 👀.
- Roskompozor?
Russia or EU

The pirates will simply move to another Lemmy Instance and re-create the group there. This is the advantage of having a decentralized platform: so one person or small group of people can't ruin things for the rest of us.

These communities not on .world.
They are: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com !piracy@lemmy.ml !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Pirates will not move the communities. The communities are fine where they are. People will need to create accounts on the host instances or instances that haven’t blocked those communities.

EDIT: dbzer0 had nothing to do with this ban, it was done by a Lemmy.World admin.

I updated my post after another user stated that it wasn't lemmy.world admins that performed the ban but the db0 team that did. I can't say with certainty that's actually the case since the modlog is pretty opaque and I don't have full knowledge of how [federated] actions are propagated & displayed.

I (incorrectly?) assumed since those communities had existed for so long on the dbzer0 instance they had at least tacit approval from the admins there and were in communication with them enough that a full ban wouldn't occur -- when I saw the removal in the modlog I didn't even consider that possibility.

~~Sorry for kicking up drama here if the Lemmy.World team had no part in this :(~~

When you check the mod logs and filter by mod you can see that it came from Mr. Kaplan which is a lemmy.world admin.
So yes it was a lemmy.world decision. The question is whether or not this admin was a lone actor.
Here is the modlog: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModRemoveCommunity
Seems to have been made by a mod from LW indeed
- Sigh... if "indirectly linking" is prohibited then literally the entire web breaks.

IIRC they banned piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com months ago. Not sure why it pops up again in the modlog. It was the reason I left lemmy.world.

I believe they reversed course on that ban. It's just recently that they reverse reversed that course.

A lot of people are saying "just connect to another instance", but it would be nice if the client could connect to multiple instances at once, and merge things internally, maybe even spreading the load a bit.

Probably a bit tricky for the web and linking, but maybe something for the mobile apps to consider?

Ideally the only time I'd need to swap accounts is to post.

How would you deal with votes? That's a pretty common action, and having to choose every time would be tedious
- You could list your accounts in priority, and the highest account that has access to the post you're reading will be responsible for the vote.
- Just choose default in the app
- Just have it default to one of them. A simple priority order, preferring an account on the host instance I guess.
  Same for commenting, and posting. You wouldn't have to select another account unless you really wanted to.
- Considering how well voting has turned out in general, maybe the voting system is the issue.

Gross. Useful idiots are the worst.

I'll be looking for a new instance, pronto!

Come on over to Lemmy.dbzer0.com I moved over the last time from .world to dbzer0.com.

The question we should all be asking is why did the defederate?

They should defederate from Lemmy.ml for having admins complicit in violating Strafgesetzbuch section 86a instead of this crap.

- Should read the ToS of LW (your instance):
  The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed per the laws of the following countries and/or states:
  The Netherlands
  Republic of Finland
  Federal Republic of Germany

Alright what instance do i jump ship to?

Come to Lemmy.dbzer0.com that's where I jumped to last time .world got banney.
- This is basically the very instance most piracy communities are hosted on, so you get extra benefit of ALWAYS having access to it regardless of defederations.
I like lemm.ee
- Same, but if you're used to the more moderated nature of lemmy.world, just be aware that lemm.ee isn't as quick to defederate from other instances. Personally, for me that's a plus, and it's the reason I chose this instance. Bring on hexbear, lemmy grad, and exploding heads. I don't care. I want to hear what everyone has to say, and I can block people or instances if I have to (through Lemmy and the apps I use like Sync and Voyager). But if you don't want to, there are lots of other instances that defederate from those places but still federate to the piracy instance.
- I wish i could, dont have the money to pay for hosting and my own internet is wayyy to slow for that

Well this comment section was an interesting read. Interesting how many comments still bend the discussion towards bashing lemmy.ml and defederating from it. People, it's not even the topic of this post?

Also it seems like very few actually read the post beyond the title? The problem is not lemmy.world banning the piracy community, they have the right to do so, that's how federation works. The problem is them making a promise to make announcements about such bans in advance, but they instead did it quietly in the background again.

Sounds like Lemmy has a tragic flaw. Not decentralized enough.

Did they really do it again, fucking hell. I came here for a better experience then Reddit and I feel like it’s starting to be a worse experience then Reddit. Transparency from admin my ass.

...if your metric is admin transparency, how the hell do you figure that Lemmy is worse than Reddit...?
I feel like Lemmy falls short in a lot of ways but transparency is not one of them
Feel free to join any other instance from that list: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances?tab=readme-ov-file
You can export and import your settings (including subscriptions and block lists) in two clicks from your account settings.
- Yeah looks like I’ll have to.
Transparency is there in the sense that the modlog makes clear that a lemmy.world admin blocked the community. If it were Reddit we'd never know how, just that it is blocked.
...you can just change instances. World did this before and I that's how I ended up on this account/instance.
*than *than
- That's weird, I haven't seen u/spez around here lately.
  Reddit was great for at least 5-10 years, the main issue that caused everyone to leave was that it became corporatized and had to start making a profit. That can literally never happen on Lemmy, because it's free and decentralized. So yes, Lemmy is special and insulated from corporate abuse. If you can't understand the value of that, you may as well go back to reddit.
Try a better instance. Lemm.ee and Lemmy.ml are both run by competent techies and less knee jerk intolerance to anything other than the prevailing opinion there.
- .ml is terrible. They actively ban people who aren't tankies. Reasonable discussion is not allowed there. If there is one instance that should be defederated it is .ml
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The Lemmy experience is quickly beginning to sour. They’ve received an influx of trolls and I’ve run into a few moderators now that seem to be taking harsh actions. Maybe Lemmy isn’t for me after all.
- The thing is, this actually if anything proves the strength of the fediverse. Lemmy.world is not Lemmy and Lemmy is not the fediverse. Just find another instance that has not blocked the community yet and carry on with your day.
  Lemmy.world have every right to curate the experience for their users as they see fit and/or feel comfortable carrying the risk for.
- Feel free to join any other instance from that list: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances?tab=readme-ov-file
  You can export and import your settings (including subscriptions and block lists) in two clicks from your account settings.

PSA: Lemmy.ml has a piracy community and federates with everyone world federates with so you can have the same experience.

and federates with everyone world federates with
Not entirely true, I discovered the other day, while helping someone figure out why they couldn't access .ml communities, that .ml blocks furry instances...
- Edit: https://lemmy.ml/instances includes Pawb.social and pawb.fun, they're also federated with instances that host furry communities.
  Which furry instances are you talking about?
Lemmy.ml is also one of the worst offenders spreading authoritarian propaganda for the CCP and Kremlin. I hate Lemmy.ml
- Examples?
  I occasionally see this argument but not yet seen any evidence to back it up.
- I just searched "china", and didn't notice any authoritarian propaganda in the first 3 pages, but I counted 6 anti-chinese stories.
  The closest to pro-chinese stories that came up were that EU citizens can now travel to China visa-free, the CEO of evergrande getting fined and banned from business, and some news story about economic numbers.
  Would you care to point it out to me?
- do you have any proof of this?
lemmy ml de-federates with communites and instances without even a reason, not to say that their moderations actions weren't questionable in the past and present.

Linking to or posting content that's illegal or in violation of copyright should not be allowed, but you don't have to ban an entire community to do that, you just have to enforce the same rules that are in place for every other community on here. Maybe someone can explain this to me, but this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity. Ditto for cryptocurrency, ditto for secure operating systems, ditto for drugs, guns, and any number of other things where community discussion is allowed but illegal activity is not. I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.

It's not as easy as moderating individual posts. Remember, Lemmy is decentralized. If you start your own Lemmy server and I federated with it, I'll get all the stuff you post on my instance too (intentionally oversimplified).
Its up to you to moderate communities on your instance the way you see fit, and up to me to moderate mine. Even though our instances are federated, I can't moderate on your behalf. It just isn't feasible both in terms of the technology and in terms of the sheer volume of content you would have to try to moderate.
If you have a community that posts a mix of things I agree with and things I don't, I really only have a couple options on my end. Basically I can block that community on my instance or block your instance altogether.
The reason why someone might block a community may be more about the legal risk than any moral justification. Depending on where you are, it might be illegal to even host that information. And since Lemmy instances cache posts from other instances, it could be argued that because that community is federated with your instance, you're responsible for the content posted there.
- That's all well and good, I agree with virtually all you said. It's certainly the admins' right to block or de-federate any community they want, based on risk or just because they feel like it, I have no issue with that. It's simply my personal belief that discussion of crime is not a crime. Direct links to illegal content should not be allowed, but discussion about piracy in general should carry no more risk that learning about murder in a criminology class, which does not need to be banned just because it's teaching people things they could in theory use to get away with murder.
this seems equivalent to banning a cybersecurity community because encryption get used by bad actors sometimes, so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned
using your analogy; it's like banning access to a piracy community because sometimes pirates use it..
pirates sometimes use meme communities too, but those aren't banned, and .world isn't completely defederated from db0, so that's not it.
so discussion of staying anonymous online needs to be banned since information about staying anonymous online is "sharing the tools and techniques" that could be used in assisting criminal activity.
staying anonymous online is not a crime though. copyright infringement is a crime. that's why the analogy doesn't make sense.
scenario is: people are linking to law-breaking content in x-community. therefore, .world is choosing to ban said x-community that facilitates it, to prevent legal liability.
I understand the need to draw the line at actually sharing copyrighted content, but discussion of lockpicks or linking to sites that sell lockpicks is not equivalent to going around illegally picking locks, except it seems that is exactly the case when it comes to piracy but no other topics.
you're right, while lock picking can be illegal, it's not always illegal. however, copyright law violations are always illegal.
this law-breaking content happens to be copyright infringement/piracy material. another example a host might ban would be a community that is linking to CP, or a community that is linking to Identity theft sources, etc. even if it's just users posting links to this sort of content, I can understand a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability.
- I think we're close to saying the same thing, I'm in total agreement that linking to illegal content should be banned, it's the uneven enforcement of that principle across communities that I think is an issue. I know .world isn't hosted in the US, so you don't enjoy broad 1st Amendment protections for free speech, but does anyone really think that discussing crime is itself a crime? If I say "here's a scenario for how a group of people could rob a bank" what crime is that? If I say "hey I think there's people dealing drugs on this street corner" what crime is that? And I can of course appreciate a host not wanting to expose themselves to any sort of legal liability, that's their free choice, they own the server. I'm talking about, on principle, what's wrong with allowing a community to exist so long as that community does not post or link to illegal content? That principle seems to work just fine for virtually every other topic but when it comes to discussion of filesharing, torrents, and the like, then suddenly the "don't link to illegal content" principle isn't good enough and it becomes "we must ban this entire concept for our own safety." That's the admins' right and I have no issue if they want to do that, I just want to point out the glaring double standard between moderating communities so they don't break the rules and banning communities so they don't break the rules.

Lemmy.world is a fucking shithole. It's teenage life crisis tumblr in here.

Luckily, you can always move elsewhere :)

Is lemmy.world trying to appeal to advertisers? Kinda sounds like it. Banning discussion oriented piracy subs, outlawing paywall bypassing in news@lemmy.world, etc.

I think they're trying to appeal to law enforcement
- idt they need to, unless they get a letter. the chances are astronomically low for that.
Do they even have advertisers? Tbh I've had adblockers on for years I wouldn't even know.
- Lemmy is probably the worst place to sell to advertisers seen how many people run adblockers around here
- They don’t. It’s just wild speculation while in reality lemmy.world probably banned it because they got a legal notice and don’t want to get sued.
Or maybe avoiding litigation? Weird that you think of advertising first, it's like you don't have critical thought.
- I don't.

🤣