Yeah, they are doing their best to not actually reply to any points that matter. I’ll continue on with the new accounts I’ve made on other instances, because mine on lemmy.world isn’t getting use now. I can’t really trust them to do the right thing (or even smart/logical operational things), so I’ll put my support elsewhere.

You’ll have to excuse me here, but I am currently having a hard time believing anyone from the lemmy.world team at the moment.

What I’m referring to, and was not replied to, was the difference between two requests made on a legal basis. What I did not refer to was content access.

What the .world admin team has shown me is that they don’t understand the legal aspects, made assumptions about them rather than actually seeking counsel, did not actually communicate in a way that has been repeatedly promised by the team, and didn’t even bother to reach out to alert other directly related admins.

I’m a “show, don’t tell” sort of person. And what has been shown is that I do not wish to be on lemmy.world any longer, in part because I’m really going to have a hard time trusting any of you after this.

Not due to the decision necessarily, but the approach and actions. I hope you can understand why that would be the case.

There is definitely no Ill will, just, as mentioned, disappointment and lost trust.

I think it would be great if they actually looked towards things with more practical and informed care. I’m not sure that we will be seeing that any time soon, if at all, but one can hope.

The admins (and all the fediverse really) could more clearly state that everything on this site is basically public.

To an extent - lets not forget that a bunch of identifying information is visible to admins, not to users, not publicly. Which is why a privacy policy (such as the one on lemmy.world) is so important, and why it would seem so frustrating when basic legal practices are functionally ignored. What’s the difference between a random troll sending cease and desists out, and a certain corrupt POS Texas AG requesting all the folks who have ever commented that they were trans? Both can be completely and utterly unfounded, and yet still bring you into a lengthy court battle.

because if their risk is anything greater than downloading a videogame without paying, some guy in another country reaching out to a lawyer for an hour is not likely to provide them relief. I don’t like that, but is the reality. The site should improve on making the users aware of that reality.

I have to disagree there, because competency comes into play. Speaking to a lawyer and being aware of how to say “No” properly is important. Knowing how to document bad requests and bad faith actors. Having someone you can reach out to and follow-up with for an unsubstantiated nonsense request from a hate monger is important.

Rolling over immediately and preemptively making decisions on unrelated communities however… that doesn’t provide me with warm and fuzzies.

It would also be great that people with expertise in legal affairs, like you seem to be, volunteered to carry on that job, like the admins carry the technical job voluntary. But not them nor you or anybody should be forced to do so. Exclusively the users up in arms almost demanding piracy free-for-all content, are showing unjust entitlement and misunderstanding about how the fediverse works.

To be clear here - I am not a lawyer. I have run forums before (and I can guarantee the issues around piracy and illegal materials that are bound to be posted have not changed), I worked with lawyers, I carried general liability insurance, etc. These aren’t specialty things, this is what basic operations looks like.

Exclusively the users up in arms almost demanding piracy free-for-all content, are showing unjust entitlement and misunderstanding about how the fediverse works.

I don’t think I’ve seen any of that personally. I’m one of the people who called out an admin for not actually talking to a lawyer though - and frankly I think they should have done that months and months ago. Even just to have found someone available who could provide services as needed.

To be honest, everything I know about that is what I have read about the number of cases when platforms or other kind of purveyors of piracy are sentenced to or settle paying tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those are real cases where the people involved obviously felt very confident about their legal safety. Surely, most of the situations are not like that and don’t even get to be in the news because of how insignificant the resolutions are.

I’d say not only are most situations not like that, the ones you are referencing are specifically people who were actively sharing content. There are a couple of decades of history on this stuff.

But, is there a way to be sure about what kind of outcome would lemmy.world would get to be completely confident about doing or not doing one thing or another?

Well this is what a lawyer is for. As well as liability insurance (another often misunderstood thing - every group/business/etc is different, but a general liability policy for a million or two USD costs most folks around $1-$2k per year.) But there is quite a bit of established law, yes. If you link directly to materials that would be infringing, but not host, you can be considered as intentionally encouraging direct infringement - note that this is with a direct link only. This goes back about… 20ish years to MGM and Grokster.

Also established - thumbnails are fair use, indexing or linking to a website (but not to content directly) is an intrinsic use/function of websites. If a direct link is made, the site owners need to remove that link when notified either by report or by a claim from the IP holder. There are even safe harbor provisions specifically around sites like Lemmy (and other link aggregators), which a lawyer can provide the guidelines on how to ensure they apply.

Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises?

It depends on what we are talking about. Reviewing a specific claim? One time cost. Getting a good general response to any random bunk claim that comes their way? One-time-ish, it doesn’t hurt to check in with the lawyer every once in a while to see if anything needs updating. No lawyer I know is going to charge to read their own letter, but they may say “There are some extra references that can be brought in here from recent case law, I’d estimate 30 minutes of work” which would be an extra cost obviously.

What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests?

A great reason to have already spoken with a lawyer and have a prepared response. Also a great reason to speak with folks at the EFF should the need ever arise, they like going after copyright trolls.

If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?

Who said there is legal liability being accepted? What liability legally? Specifically.

My position is that the instance admins are not obligated to be a legal shield for the users to have any kind of content that we want on the platform.

No, but this is the part where I think you’re missing something really important. The piracy community (communities) aren’t the issue to me. Lets recap what happened here.

There was a claim that came in on something - unrelated to these communities. There was, as far as has been posted, absolutely only a request, with no response other than lemmy.world simply agreeing to what was demanded. This has not had any actual legal review, and may have been a completely valid or invalid request.

They then decided to apply this request (valid or not) as a concept to other areas, and simply disabled access. There were supposedly hours of discussion here, and then the change was made, with absolutely zero discussion. There were never any comments expressing concerns to any of the effected communities or the admins of the instances which manage those communities. There was no posting here until hours after it was brought up on another instance. This is also only a few months after they admitted to doing a terrible job of communicating and promising to do better.

There was an unsubstantiated claim from an unknown entity, and their decision on how to apply that (not just to the claim, but to unrelated communities) was done unilaterally and without any legal input.

Forget piracy. There is a trust problem. Why would you feel comfortable providing them with any information of yours if you live in a country where you may be concerned for your safety - not even now, but in a few years - for having the unmitigated gall to admit you are (gay/trans/bisexual/a believer in a socialist meritocracy/atheist/muslim) on a place where there are no legal precautions actually being taken? Where the word of someone sending a letter matters more than what the law might actually say?

My issue with the decision here has almost nothing to do with piracy or those communities. It has to do with trust. And they lost mine.

The comments criticizing the instance for ‘folding’ against legal request better have ready 100k USD for retainer of a top copyright legal firm, with even more ready for a lengthy and expensive legal battle.

I hope you’re not going to take this the wrong way, but I want to be clear - this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved. Generally speaking, the review of a claim like this is an hour or two at most. You can also preemptively review these concepts with a lawyer, and get a handy-dandy letter or two to be used as a common first tier response (which also handily dismisses the majority of claims, which tend to be bunk). Several hours at least.

Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.

A $100k retainer, or any retainer really, is unnecessary. The actual costs for some basic legal support are about the low range in costs for a month of operation of their servers ($900-$2200/mo per their own public costing statements through opencollective).

Forget anything else in terms of piracy communities or anything else. Speaking with a lawyer to cover the bases is a smart decision - remember that there have already been issues like CSAM that have cropped up. A bit of up-front smarts and a couple of hours with a lawyer pays dividends. The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern, don’t be dismissive.

Oh that’s pretty neat, haven’t seen it! Thanks for the tip

Its currently in the negative, so I don’t think the support is there. Just early upvotes.

I don’t believe I made any claim that a legal advocate on Lemmy is a substitute for legal council.

I said there are advocates out there. There are law groups which focus on open source software and community run services who pay for that work by either the ability for that group to pay on a sliding scale, or completely pro bono as it’s supported in the back end by corporate clientele or other similar services. But that’s a complete digression.

We do question the validity of claims

Just being candid here - I haven’t seen that. In this post or any other by admins. Obviously this could be entirely behind closed doors, but even then, none of that has been communicated here has it?

We also can’t afford going to court over every case, even if we were to win, because those processes take large amounts of personal time and have a risk of significant penalties.

And on the basis that no real effort to push back here has been visible, why would any other risk category be any different? Why would someone who could be persecuted want to risk themselves with lemmy.world?

I think the position has been clear, and entirely the decision of Lemmy.world. I’m just being clear about why that creates a trust issue.

Actually questioning the validity of a claim before proceeding to give in, for starters. Maybe seeking legal help from one of the many advocates out there.

If the response is an immediate white flag being raised, then anyone who posts on lemmy.world who has any semblance of risk now or in the future is fully at risk with lemmy.world. How is that assertion wrong?

Does ‘not immediately folding under even the slightest request’ require tor?

Does communication publicly before a decision with large implications like this require tor or hiding your identity?

if being gay became illegal in NL for example, and there would be laws to prevent talking about gay people, then we’d have to either no longer tolerate such content on our platform

Yes, you are repeating exactly why this is concerning to users, and why I’m personally no longer on lemmy.world. It can’t be trusted.

They’ve just posted.

It’s not a good explanation. The only thing that changed was their own minds.