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.
No, this sets a precedent for banning things that could get you sued, because even if you’re in the right, legal fees will tear you a new asshole. If that is a grievous affront to your ideals, you are more than welcome to create an instance for piracy that you take full liability for.
Frankly, there’s a whole lot of people here who are screeching that the admins should take on the personal risk, but are too cowardly to do it themselves. I’m not saying you’re one of them, and if you legitimately would take the full liability for hosting a piracy thing, you have my genuine respect. I just don’t think the vast majority here fall into that category.