Walt J. Rimmer

He didn’t call us idiots. He called us unempathetic. And I’d say that’s been a fair assessment of a lot of the internet. I know that when I was on Reddit, I’d read a lot of comments that were filled with entitlement, people feeling they were owed something especially if that something was free, and very little empathy. For how much Redditors (and now that many of us have fled to Lemmy to build a new social media life, Lemmings) like to criticize the, “They’re just lazy, I’m really struggling,” mindset, they sure do like to ask for free things but complain if people treat them the same way.

I mean, it is a thing. I’m not saying that you’ll agree that it’s a right thing or that it’s justifiable. I understand arguments against it. But it’s more along the lines of Peter Sunde’s stuff. Piracy which fights for freedom of information, against things like corporate secrets and abuses, things like that. One of the examples of ethical piracy has been using piracy to share news and media with blackout countries, nations that are banned from getting any media that isn’t state approved. I would call that kind of piracy ethical piracy.

Protest piracy is where you pirate something in protest of the people who would otherwise be making a profit off of it. There’s a reason why that’s not under the same umbrella. People can call pirating Adobe products what they want, but it’s not at the same level of trying to effect social change as ethical piracy reaches for.

I mean… Yes?

For most websites to be functional, they need to be moderated. If you let anarchy reign, it’s not some utopia like I’ve seen a shocking number of people online claim that it would be. It ends up with a lot of racism, hate speech, doxxing, threatening violence, illegal content being posted, users being harassed, and other terrible things. Most people won’t want to be part of a site like that because it isn’t accepting or welcoming, it’s a dumpster fire.

No one should have come into Lemmy.World and thought, “Huh, this is going to be true freedom! I’m going to start advertising selling cocaine!” Maybe they’d want to, but the site isn’t just anything goes. They’re trying to run it on the open web and draw in a stable community. To be clear, I’m understanding but unhappy about the decision to ban communities about piracy. But criticizing a website by saying, “I thought you said anyone could come in, so why do you have rules, HUH?” That’s bullshit!

Look at what happened to Gary Bowser. Dude basically ran PR on a website, but because he was the guy who they were actually able to find and get a hold of easily, he’s now on the hook for millions of dollars of damages that he didn’t cause to Nintendo.

I am disappointed in this because I think that there is such a thing as ethical piracy and protest piracy and that they’re important. But I also know that those things aren’t going to be stopped or even significantly hindered by one instance deciding not to host their content. And I understand the fear that comes with stories about how rights holders have gone after whoever the fuck they can when they’ve got a burr up their ass about something.

Should the admins of Lemmy.World be held liable for a community simply discussing piracy and not actively practicing it on the site? No. Would they be? We don’t know. It’s possible. And that’s what makes it scary. People who commit digital crimes often get hit with disproportionately harsh punishments. They’re sometimes treated like terrorists. It’s insane. And yes, it’s frightening.

Any de-federated instance doesn’t have the money or resources to start DDOS attacks.

It’s shockingly cheap and easy to DDOS people, especially if you know something that makes them exceptionally vulnerable as is mentioned in the post above. Small-time wanna-be hackers can put their allowance savings into getting a DDOS running just to be spiteful little shits.

Sure, could it be a corporate attack? Of course it could be. But could it also be some spiteful little fanboy who just wants to piss on people who want to do their own thing? Of course it could be that as well. And dismissing that as impossible is simply wrong.