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.
Good summary.
Shorter version: DMCA is a shitty law, beacuse it’s not practical for individuals to exercise their rights under it.
Until we can get rid of the DMCA, copyright and freedom of the press is threatened.
Folks in this thread would be better served turning their anger on the DMCA and those that keep that unpopular bill in the law books.
Edit: DMCA doesn’t apply to this server, I don’t think. So nevermind. That’s nice, at least.
The DMCA is the US’s implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty. 110 countries have signed the treaty, and therefore have laws like the DMCA.
The EU has copyright directives which has the same effect. Lemmy.world is registered in the Netherlands. So it will be subject to the EU’s implementations of the same laws.