cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/2881638
The largest piracy community is hosted over at [email protected]
lemmy.world has blocked it. It appears to have also blocked [email protected].
If this is a problem for you, I’d suggest migrating accounts using LASIM to an instance that doesn’t block it (such as lemm.ee).
edit:
An official announcement has been made:
Might be worth remembering here that Lemmy instances, including .world are hosted by regular people. Not massive multinational companies worth billions who can engage the best legal talent around.
If Hollywood comes after a Lemmy instance, Holywood have a huge legal team and endless money. The Lemmy instance has some guy. They could quite literally destroy a persons life. With that in mind, I don’t blame any instance owners for erring on the side of taking a stance that won’t put them in the legal firing line.
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It’s be nice if there’d been some discussion first, and perhaps a solution other than an admin vanishing a community without notice. Even just some text informing the user “You can’t see this content on lemmy.world. Please go to the instance directly”.
Regardless if the decision is understandable, the method used here is not going to sit well with people. After how many years of spez, these kinds of behind the scenes snap decisions that change the site overnight with no apparent regard for the community is going to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. It wouldn’t have hurt to bring it to the community rather than just shadow banning without a word.
Not even because there needed to be a discussion, but just as a basic courtesy.
It doesn’t inspire confidence or endear the instance to its users.
Even just some text informing the user “You can’t see this content on lemmy.world. Please go to the instance directly"
That would have to be supported by Lemmy, which I believe is currently not the case.
You’re welcome to go to a different instance. That’s the entire point of lemmy. If you don’t like how an instance is ran you can go somewhere else.
This is a well reasoned answer. If this were my instance I would also ban communities linking to pirated software. A single lawsuit and lawyer bill for a regular guy, and that can fuck your life up all because you tried to run a decent community. I have a username I use for browsing lemmynsfw, I’ll make one for browsing piracy related things too.
Best bet I think is to set up a non-profit limited liability type of company. Then at least there is a good chance the individual doesn’t get fucked. (Ymmv depending on legal jurisdiction of course)
You still need expensive lawyers to defend yourself. Registering a LLC isn’t a get out of jail free card and corporations don’t shield you from personal criminal liability (unless you’re rich, see comment about expensive lawyers).
Exactly, he’s protecting himself.
Protecting himself from what? The community hosts literally zero pirated content.
But it links to it, which is equally as bad. In your logic thepiratebay would never have any problems with law enforcement because they technically don’t host any of the pirated content, just link to it.
Pirate Bay shouldn’t, but linking to torrents can at least give megacorps some kind of backwards excuse to come after them.
The pirating communities here don’t link to anything. It’s literally against their rules to do so. It’s solely for discussion.
I’m confused, Are they actually hosting anything illegal?
No. .world is just afraid of everything. Better they shut down their instance.
Not sa far as I know.
No, but that hasn’t stopped IP holders from bad faith litigations in the past.
Why would Hollywood come after them? It is not like people are sharing movies there. Posts there are etremely mild.
Sony Music is currently coming after DNS provider Quad9 for resolving a piracy related domain, and they’ve succeeded in two courts so far. At this point I don’t think any copyright lawsuit is too stupid to happen.
Oh man I had forgotten about that thing, it’d be so awful if they end up never winning the case, I really like what Quad9 does and stands for
I’m not saying they are or aren’t. I’m simply saying that we all know the big media companies go after people at the drop of a hat. They recently tried to get reddit to expose the identities of people discussing piracy over there. To their credit reddit told them no and defended themselves legally. And that’s the issue. The media companies can accuse anyone of anything if it even slightly smells like piracy and the target has to legally defend themselves. This is fine if you’re a multibillion valued company. Not so fine if you’re just some guy who just wanted to run a Lemmy instance out of his own pocket.
lemmy.world is hosted in Finland hence they don’t probably live in us
For me, it looks like people are mad at the US defaultism of the decision.
I understand why. It makes for part of the users no sense as they are protected by the law. It looks like a US “shitshow”. Countries are protecting the IP of the person, making it nearly impossible to pursue someone. Others have law allowing the use and the copy of copyrighted material for educational purposes. Some allow the download of copyrighted material.
It’s the same with GDPR. Meta must comply. There is no exception because US defaultism.
And we can understand this point of view too. It’s not binary as the US people think it is. It’s more mixed depending of the country.
Generally, outside of this drama, on the internet, people are reclaiming they right and don’t want the US “example” anymore. They want the internet following their local laws like the GDPR for Europeans. They have the right to claim it. Thanks to GDPR, mandatory usb-c, battery replacement and others laws in Europe and outside, the consciences of are awakened that the US is not the model to follow in terms of law on the internet and technologies.
Some of the comments in here are a fucking disgrace and a disappointment.
I just shut down my own self-hosted instance the other week because of legal concerns. Caching anything and everything that gets pushed to my server and basically having to put all my faith in other admins taking care of illegal stuff in a timely manner was stressful and not worth the risk. And that was a solo instance!
It’s only a matter of time until lawyers backed by millions of dollar come knocking on the door of lemmy admins and I can’t fault lw for being pro-active. Whether or not it’s legal in your jurisdiction to host communities like this doesn’t matter at all if you’re not the one with a name attached to the server. Even wrongful legal claims by copyright holders are costly and time intensive to fight back against.
Why should a private person who hosts an instance for thousands of users for free subject themselves to such a risk?
It’s unfortunate, but it’s kinda understandable why they chose to do so. The admins are just a bunch of regular people, they may not have the financial security to risk the legal issues that could come from having any sort of piracy related content.
I guess I’ll just be using my alt acc for piracy stuff.
Situations like these are the strength of the fediverse. Move your account to an instance that shares your values or doesn’t care about stuff like this.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Edit: Didn’t mean to ridicule any of you all. I based my comment on my experience when I signed up. At that time there were plenty of instances to pick from and getting approved at my instance of choice was very quick. My bad.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Maybe I didn’t have my crystal ball nearby when I was creating my Lemmy account.
Maybe many users will have an account on the largest server, because by definition it’s the largest server, with the most users. 🙄
I highly recommend opening a lurking account in one of the NSFW instances. They are probably some of the fastest, most progressive and best funded instances on Lemmy. You do not have to browse the NSFW content.
I don’t think that makes sense if you’re worried about defederation. Porn instances are particularly at risk of being defederated from (and thus you potentially can’t interact with large communities).
No I swear I just have an account there for all the SFW stuff!!!
Also, they don’t ask for your email! A friend told me that.
Shhh don’t tell people my secrets!
What’s their email? ;-D
It’s so easy to change instances, and there are extensions and things to export/import your subscriptions, etc. Just head over to one ones that’s hosting the content, or check out others to see if they will keep federated with the pirate communities. Make the same username, and most won’t even know that you’re posting from a different instance. You can still see everything you did before, just also possibly some other stuff. You might also get beehaw and hexbear (for better or for worse is up to you)! I feel like I might hop instances a few more times before I settle.
It’s so easy to change instances, and there are extensions and things to export/import your subscriptions, etc.
Hmmm
Okay, you’re not on Reddit anymore where things are just easy because they spent time to figure it out. Fediverse is just a fledging group of sites that are getting an influx of users, while still trying to figure out both their instance, and cooperative rules that fit both their values and the wants/needs of their users. You want a well oiled machine, jump back into the mainstream where they use your data to personalize the adds they place between all the things you want to see. Or, you can go with the flow as this new ecosystem forms, sans ads, and free of data collection.
It’s fine if you’re not ready.
Hey. It’s me, the other instance. How about we meet up?
Can you make a recommendation for a tool to migrate “subscriptions etc.”? I’m using Connect if that makes a difference.
Also, Lemmy.world has been very unreliable lately anyway. Does Lemmy.ee have a good reliability record?
https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim is the general recommendation
Since I’m not a programmer - how do I get it running?
Just download the zip for your operating system, unzip and click on the executable: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/releases/tag/v0.2.2
Damn, I didn’t figure out you’re supposed to click on the releases. Thank you.
because by definition it’s the largest server, with the most users. 🙄
Which generally means it’ll be the slowest and most overloaded. With federated systems, it’s best to avoid large instances.
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
Some of us made our accounts on lemmy.world within a week(?) of its creation when it was tiny (June 5 for me). Doesn’t stop it from belonging on mildly infuriating
It wasn’t the largest when some of us joined…
There was 1000 people about when I signed up.
I don’t remember where it was for me, but I do remember it being the hop-on point for me into Lemmy because it was already well populated, so I figured it meant “good”. Now that I understand lemmy better, I’ve realized I don’t need to patron it anymore - there are better instances for me. I suspect that this is a good thing that something is causing users to move. I’m sure .world is the face of fediverse, or at least lemmy, for many at this point and will continue to grow in user base. Maybe losing users on the back end will satisfy the DDOS attackers, and also lighten the load while .world’s admin get it figured out.
Maybe this is a natural process of the fediverse?
Maybe this is a natural process of the fediverse?
on the mastodon side at least quite a few people started off on mastodon.social and migrated over to smaller instances (or in some cases migrated to entirely different software families like pleroma or misskey)
i’d go as far as to say (jokingly ofc) that you aren’t a true member of the fediverse if you didn’t migrate at least once
What a snarky thing to say
Maybe you shouldn’t even have had your account on the largest server to begin with?
To give credit where it’s due, when the big Reddit migration happened many instances could not handle the influx of migrating users. Some people might have only had .world as an option.
Situation still sucks tho. Hope upcoming Lemmy updates make moving accounts between instances easier.
https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim is already a pretty easy option
Is there an automated way to move my account and all content to another instance?
I think the answer is not yet, but unless you’re some kind of fediverse celebrity it shouldn’t be that burdensome, right?
One benefit the Fediverse has over a centralized site is that, as long as you set the same display name and avatar, most people will recognize you after a migration. For example, I know a few fellow Lemmygrad guys who have alternate, identical Lemmy.ml accounts for posting on instances that block Lemmygrad, and you can’t even tell which account they’re using unless you visit their page.
You can use lasim.
No but I believe there is something on GitHub to help subscribe to the same communities once you create a new account.
It was the only server that was accepting when I joined. I still have applications at a few, but never got approved. Signed up on startrek.website yesterday. I was motivated by the ddos more than any thing else.
Honestly, I just found this place first, and I don’t remember what I came here for. I didn’t make an account, then I did recently and now get approved. Lets goo. Options are great the advantage of the Fediverse is that you can always create a new server instance every time. Probably always changing your IP every time the server gets taken down and have none of the names associated with it are the same.
A strength and a weakness. The strength, as you say, is being able to move to a different instance. However, the weakness is that Lemmy (the software) requires each instance to keep a copy of every federated post for its users to interact with. This means they have to host (and be legally liable for) data that they can’t police beyond blocking the community / instance.
I made my account here while waiting for the instance I actually wanted to come online
You are completely right, but account migration also needs to become available for situations like this.
I went with lemmy world so i could catch the widest net in content. And up till now i agreed with the reasoning of the other defederating.s But it seems like it won’t take much to provoke more restrictions. Guess i will have to lurk in other shores.
This is basically what I did not that long ago.
Situations like these are the strength of the fediverse. Move your account to an instance that shares your values or doesn’t care about stuff like this.
its not a bug, its a feature! the faceless admins get to tell you watch content you can get now, not a faceless corporations! its so good that all the instances are starting a war with each other over the content they host because it means we have the choice of who gets to decide what content we like to see!.
I can sense the sarcasm of your post, yet the words you’ve written are actually true. This is exactly what decentralisation is all about. on some other websites you might lose access to the content entirely, on the fediverse you can just go there direct and still get all of the content, nobody can ever take that away from you except for the people who manage that content.
That’s literally the main selling point of this kind of setup. Nobody, faceless or otherwise, can stop you accessing any of the content.
decentralize a centralized socialmedia format. amazing strategy.
This is probably the best option for Lemmy.world. It’s not being run by a big company, after all. Normal people often get screwed when their servers have anything related to piracy on them.
I think people forget that decentralized doesn’t mean anonymous, and it also doesn’t mean that server admins and servers aren’t beholden to local laws
They never even got a DMCA takedown notice or any sort of copyright claims. Just because one user asked. Wtf
Not only that, it was a brand new account on a totally different Lemmy instance that demanded lemmy.world admins remove piracy related communities.
Honestly it seems like lemmy.world admins were trolled by some random throwaway account and took the bait.
EDIT: The post in question in case others haven’t seen it https://lemmy.world/post/3175920, a new account from lemm.ee makes their first & only post in lemmy.world demanding that they defederate & remove anything piracy related.
Not even reddit admins were this stupid
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Understandable reason but there is not one illegally shared file in these communities. What’s next, watching a John Wick movie makes me a murderer now?
Lmao. What a shitshow
And now the account that redirected all of lemmy.world has been banned from lemmy.world for ban evasion.
This whole thing is weird
https://lemm.ee/post/4235833 yours got a bad gateway
yours got a bad gateway
That’s just lemmy.world servers having their usual issues loading. Though it is kind of amusing, a lemmy.world user going to lemm.ee to view a lemmy.world post, federation is funny that way :P
They should have asked them to change their rules instead. Sharing DL links can get the admin in trouble. LueLinks had to do away with it at one point too, and they were primo pirate site back in the day. I think reddit had r/piracy and other subs change their rules - the one that had links to mushroom spore sellers (forgot the name) had to stop sharing links to sellers that sold magic mushroom spores (not an illegal thing to do). It’s tough, but admin made guiding rules, and that breaks one of them. Plus, if it’s on their server, it could be admins head on the chopping block.
Are you talking about a different community or instance? [email protected] does not allow direct links to content yet lemmy.world admins blocked it anyway.
True but it hosted in Germany. That country does not take it easy on piracy…
Even the German specific Lemmy instances like https://feddit.de do not block the piracy discussion communities.
The piracy blocking stuff seems like something lemmy.world admins decided to do based on a troll from another instance demanding it.
That user can sue if they don’t obey, in most jurisdictions. If it comes that far, it’s too late.
Why would the user be able to sue? Unless they thought their work was being infringed (in which case why they wouldn’t send a dmca?) I don’t see what possible standing they’d have.
Wtf dbzero was a huge proponent of the fediverse and has been a part of the recent swell in users. I don’t agree with this decision at all
Remember that lemmy.world has to keep a copy of whatever content appears in a federated community on their servers, making them legally liable for the content. At least they just blocked the community instead of defederating.
At least they just blocked the community instead of defederating
Would you mind explaining the difference?
Blocking the community just blocks those specific communities. Defederating would be blocking everything on lemmy.dbzer0.com.
Basically they blocked the communities but not the instances they were hosted on, so people on lemmy.world can still interact with posts and comments made by people like me
Defederating cuts off the whole instance. They just blocked those three piracy communities as far as I understand.
I mean if you support illegally hosted material you can be forced to take down your website. As much as it sucks, piracy is illegal. Anyways, they haven’t defederated, just blocked that community.
In many jurisdictions what they’re doing there isn’t illegal at all. It is well understood that you do not post links out in the open.
Downloading isn’t illegal, sharing is. At least outside of the US (and a few others)
Only here because of my instance.
I’m late to comment, so I may be typing into the void.
I understand the admin’s decision to limit their exposure to legal risk. I had similar experiences as a small business owner and you would be surprised how quickly most people’s idealism is tempered by the risk of potential legal action. It’s totally possible to believe strongly in the legality of something and its benefit to society (in this case piracy) and still choose to limit your own legal exposure. As far as I know, none of us paid to be here, so the polite thing to do is say “thank you for hosting us” and move on if it’s not your thing (or just make a second account).
I believe our current copyright/intellectual property scheme is broken at best, and designed to fuck us out of every bit of culture that has ever existed, at worst. Piracy exists because the system is broken and the industry is entrenched and refuses to adapt to customer demands. It screws music fans, artists, and probably the individual low-level employees of many music industry companies and organizations.
Given lemmy.world’s uptime vs how well pirates keep torrent seeds up, I’d be surprised if anyone in that community actually uses lemmy.world as a primary instance lmao
I love these comments. It shows the federation is working. If reddit did this it was “oh no what now” but with lemmy it’s just “time to move to another instance”
Despite reports I have decided to keep the comments open and the post up. I think removing this will only add fuel to the fire.
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I can’t really comment atm. It’s not my job to do pr for the admins but I am just a mod and I am not on the admin team. I wasn’t involved in the decision. I am trying my best to be transparent though because I don’t want this to evolve in a bigger issue.
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Thank you for your work!
This is not difficult to deal with, setup an account on another server and stop using lemmy.world
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Huh, isn’t this Spez strategy?
5D chess in all its glory!
No need to stop using LW. I’ve got three accounts on different instances plus kbin. Oh, and I fifth on if you count my nsfw login. Partitioning your online life is nbd, really. And the fediverse makes it easy.
Why bother to have 5, an account on a single decent instance should be sufficient.
Sopuli was my original instance from before I knew what the Fediverse was but however they have their server set federated community discovery has been broken from the beginning. World is my reddit migration account and I moderate a couple of communities there. I really like some of the communities on Beehaw, and they defederated pretty quickly from just about anyone with more than a few users, so I got an account there. Kbin didn’t seem to work as well cross-federation so…number 4. And I use a different handle for NSFW. It would be nice to have an app for aggregating usernames across instances, but I much of my browsing from desktop so it’s really nbd.
And here I thought that Fediverse was serious about being an alternative to heavily censored platforms. Now I see it’s just a joke.
Beauty of fediverse, people can just find another spot or move to another instance while most of the community continues no problem.
Just an example that system working as intended
but only if you know enough about the fediverse to be aware; if i had no logged into like i usually don’t do on these days, i would never know and spend the rest of my time on lemmy.world trying to figure out why i can’t find any pirating stuff to share.
I would think it would be the responsibility of lemmy.world to put up a notice of why they’ve done this, if they’ve not then that potentially reflects badly on them (but I don’t know enough about the details and reasons).
True, would have expected something in [email protected] but there’s been nothing announced there.
Makes me a bit suspicious that there is any credibility to the claim. We’re going off a supposed screenshot of what looks like a Discord message?
If you try to access one of the blocked communities from lemmy.world you’ll see it’s blocked, dude
That… would’ve been a good idea to try ha.
True but nothing a little education can’t fix.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Is there an automated way to move my account and all content to another instance?
Check this program: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
NO idea tbh but looks like someone already thought about it lol
If I have an account one instance but wish to move, Is there an easy way to re-subscribe to everything on the new account?
