cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/2881638
The largest piracy community is hosted over at !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
lemmy.world has blocked it. It appears to have also blocked !piracy@lemmy.ml.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Why would Hollywood come after them? It is not like people are sharing movies there. Posts there are etremely mild.
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?
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
Maybe literally any other instance at all could have not completely glitched out when I tried to sign up back in June.
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.
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?
No but I believe there is something on GitHub to help subscribe to the same communities once you create a new account.
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.
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.
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.
You are completely right, but account migration also needs to become available for situations like this.
I made my account here while waiting for the instance I actually wanted to come online
This is basically what I did not that long ago.
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.
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.
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
deleted by creator
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? !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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.
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
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.
And here I thought that Fediverse was serious about being an alternative to heavily censored platforms. Now I see it’s just a joke.
This is fucking lame and will have a HUGE impact on Lemmy as a whole.
Sorry to be blunt, but this is an ignorant and dumb move. Nobody likes over-moderation.
👎
deleted by creator
Unless the users themselves are directly posting links to the content and hosting it (the pirated content) on lemmy, no instance would be held liable. Anyone defending this has no idea what the fuck they are talking about.
That’s a bit naive, knowing what we know about the sharks that run the large media corporations. For your average instance owner, it’s not a question of being found not liable, it’s the fact that you as an ordinary guy with an ordinary life and an ordinary income suddenly have to defend yourself legally with all the exposure and expense that entails, from day one.
You mean the cases that are almost always thrown out in court? You mean the cases where said sharks have to pay the defendant?
deleted by creator
I don’t know about you but engaging a lawyer and going to court to defend myself would be a massive financial drain. And to risk that on simply the hope that a court might find in my favour is far too big of a risk. Then add on all the unwanted public exposure, the internet notoriety etc. Fuck that.
No, it won’t. Only those little bits.
Because that’s how the fediverse works.
You should like… not be so quick to call people ignorant. Especially when you’re displaying a lot of ignorance as to how this entire setup works.
What’s the fucking point. The community isn’t even hosted on lemmy.world. I don’t want to have to create a new a account on a new instance every time a dumbass admin decices to block a community I follow. Lemmy is doomed to fail.
Well at least lemmy.world is starting to look more and more like shit. Can’t keep the servers up, keep defeding, absolute nonsense.
The instance wasn’t defederated. Just the community blocked.
Why tho. I can block a community myself if i dont want to see it. This does not make sense.
They want to avoid lawsuit. Which are probably going to happen to dbzer0, I don’t know where they are hosted, but they might get in trouble once they reach a large userbase
No pirated content is hosted on the instance. It’s just refugees from communities that already existed on reddit for years with no issues.
I went over to my other account and got this https://lemm.ee/post/4235833
Ive seen this account or at least the same kinda text with communities some dick wants to be defederated on all sort of instances. Looks like a troll
Then why doesn’t Reddit have that problem with r/piracy?
They have lawyers to defend themselves.
They do, they just have the manpower to deal with it.
They are afraid of liabilities, maybe…
There is no “maybe”, that’s exactly what it is (it’s in the OP’s link).
Lemmy.world may be one of the largest instances but it never promised to be a straight Reddit clone. While it’s still figuring out scaling up and still attracting large DDOS attacks, the last thing they need to be dealing with is DMCA claims and letters from copyright lawyers.
This is the beauty of federated social media. Don’t like the rules? Go somewhere else.
Me? I currently don’t care… I am not interested in that community, I know that people who are interested can still visit it from other instances.
Oh come on. Its not like world has pirated files on their server which they share with everyone or something. Its just info.
If they are that scared might as well stop with setting up lemmy servers. Or block all that fucking kiddie hentai communities
And yet linking to legally finable content on servers run by other parties can incur fines on the order of 50k-250k over here in Germany. I’ll be honest, if I ran any we site I’d be removing anything can be constructed as such a link, too.
Chances of me getting fined would be about 0, but it’s really not a risk I’d be willing to take. And this is the largest lemmy instance so if anyone where to go after lemmy, they’d go after world.
Are they linking files? If so then yeah i get it. Thought its just talk about piracy not xtual sharing
I remember they once tried to sue someone for linking to a torrenting site, so I’m not sure how linking to a piracy community works. AINAL. Just saying, in a way I can see admins rather wanting to stay as far away from such topics as they can, especially given how lemmy.world is the biggest lemmy target right now, hence the constant DDOS outages, too.
Because community content is cached on other instances, so you can find all the content from these piracy communities under the lemmy.world domain as well and this is likely to be interpreted by law enforcement / a judge as hosting this content, which can get the server admins into legal trouble depending on the jurisdiction.
IIRC, lemmy.world is hosted in the US, making them liable under US laws.
edit: IR incorrectly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They are actually hosted in Finland, but some of the admins are US based and can thus also get into legal trouble. Not sure about the legal situation in Finland.
oops!
The server and owner are in Europe. Though the anti piracy laws here are tough. Honestly can’t blame them.
There are other instances that don’t have this issue though.
Which doesn’t makes it less shitty.
It does. Defederating basically blocks all their communities and users for everyone on your instance. It’s a far bigger deal than blocking a community
I still don’t agree with the decision, but it’s a matter of scale
Reddit 2.0
Edit: I saw I got lot of downvotes and I realize my mistake: This is not Reddit 2.0 because not even reddit was stupid enough to block their r/piracy.
Feels like home doesn’t it!?
ಠᴗಠ
they are volunteers paying from their own wallets to keep this going. You aren’t entitled to anything on the fediverse. grow up.
And the end product isn’t very good, regardless of effort.
deleted by creator
Your parents would agree
I don’t think you understand what “defeding” means.
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.
This is not difficult to deal with, setup an account on another server and stop using lemmy.world
deleted by creator
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.
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
