this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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!piracy@lemmy.ml has also been blocked from lemmy.world.

edit:

Lemmy.world has released an official response.

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[–] victron@programming.dev 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

federation works as intended

Dumb mfs: FUcK lEmMy.wOrld pOwEr tRipers rreEEeE

Guess which is the reddit clone.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Good to know just so I know to go to an instance that doesn't block this community. I don't blame .world for being careful. This is indeed the Fediverse working as intended.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that people are more upset that it was done only after a troll complained about it on the support or admin community.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, that was a dumb reason, I agree. But I also think it was inevitable with .world being the biggest instance. They're the first place in Lemmy any corporation will go to if they wanna sue.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also just thought that, given how thoroughly downvoted that post and all its OP's comments were, it makes the Admins of Lemmy.world look like they've actively gone against popular opinion. Psychologically, mobs tend to dislike that appearance.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's true. The reasons given were unsatisfyingly vague.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like, I think people are upset about blocking the piracy communities, sure, but I think that the real issue is that it feels like everyone is just vibing, doing their thing on their lemmy instances, then this troll comes in all fake concerned about breaking rules, gets utterly piled on naturally, only for the admins in question to come in and "side" with the "loser" in people's eyes.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I agree with that. It's not the blocking that's such an issue, it's how they came to decide to do it. Definitely wasn't handled well. I wonder if the (even more) downtime they've been having recently is a result of more people being pissed about this move piling on to the DDOS attacks?

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they had decided to do this a week earlier I doubt it would be this controversial.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mentioned earlier or elsewhere on this thread that right now, the narrative that I'm aware of is as follows:

Lemmy.world users: just vibing, doing their thing

Concern troll: comes in with a freshly created account to pearl-clutch about scary illegal things

Lemmy.world users: hahaha look at this loser downvotes them to oblivion, resumes vibing

Lemmy.world Admins: Piracy?! OMG that's ILLEGAL, thank goodness someone pointed this out to us

If they had an existing stance on piracy, they should have been already enforcing it. Then it wouldn't look like they were successfully spurred into action by a bad-faith actor.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That narrative appears to be correct, although at the end I think it may have been more like "You know, now that this asshole mentions it, maybe we shouldn't host stuff from these piracy communities as Lemmy's largest instance. That might create problems for us down the road."

They definitely should have been more transparent about why they chose to do it at this particular time.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

“You know, now that this asshole mentions it, maybe we shouldn’t host stuff from these piracy communities as Lemmy’s largest instance. That might create problems for us down the road.”

I'm almost certain that's what actually went down, but I'm explicitly referring to the issue of people's perception.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's nothing to sue? They could go after an instance owner, sure, but I'm reasonably sure that there's still Section 230 safe harbor protections for "service providers", which to my knowledge could easily be the owner/admin of a fediverse instance. Perhaps it'll need to be litigated in the courts, which is unfortunate for whoever gets stuck being the trailblazer.

[–] thedrizzle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Each instance owner is running these instances themselves, presumably out of the home, for free.

They could go after an instance owner, sure, but

There's no "but". They could fight a lawsuit, sure, but that's time consuming and expensive, and why bother? The piracy isn't coming from their instance, why should they have to fight a lawsuit for it? Piracy has its own instance, nothing has been defederated, they're just not hosting the content on their server to save themselves the hassle down the road. I can't imagine they'll be the only one.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They won't really have to fight a lawsuit because it would just be thrown out if a company tried to file one.

At worst they'd just get DMCA take down requests.

[–] planish@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lawsuits don't generally just throw themselves out. You have to pay a lawyer to show up and ask the judge to throw out the lawsuit on account of the fact that you don't host the thing, or whatever the reason is.

Judges don't go out and do research; if one side's lawyer says Whirlybird runs The Pirate Bay out of their kitchen and the other side's lawyer isn't there, then the court is going to proceed as though that is at least plausible.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

So many laws work like this too, it makes them worthless if personal wealth is required to get them enforced. If Section 230 only exists for the wealthy and corporations, the fediverse isn't gonna get very far

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have to pay a lawyer to show up and ask the judge to throw out the lawsuit on account of the fact that you don’t host the thing, or whatever the reason is.

You don't have to pay a lawyer, you can do it yourself.

[–] planish@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

True. But then you have to physically show up wherever, and know how to do it right.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Sure, but doesn't it suck that it doesn't matter what the law says? Do you think it'll ever change if everyone rolls over and isolates undesirable communities (think beyond piracy to other things like adult content, or content from marginalised groups)

[–] victron@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Many of us have at least one secondary account, for whatever reason. Lemmy instances are run by people, but some entitled assholes are acting like admins are musk or something.

[–] GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I sympathise with instance admins without the ability to risk a court fight, but that doesn't mean there aren't those out there who would welcome such a challenge, and I don't think they should be pressured to cave if they're inclined not to.

[–] Gsus4@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Instance management styles reflect the variety of human personalities and tastes. There will always be a few power trippers, but at least now we can escape. Fuck u/spez@lemmy.world

[–] victron@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If some people love piracy that much, they can use an account in the respective instance. Everyone happy, no harm done.

[–] Gsus4@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

True, I agree, it's not a big deal, just another account, but I can live with it, yes.

PS: but there is still a case to be made for eclectic instances that host a variety of content. Otherwise, if you pile all piracy with porn, weed and whatever legal gray areas it will be easier to pick them off. Same with politics, debatable science, etc. If you concentrate them too much, federation is moot.

[–] victron@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Completely agree.