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.
Thanks for the distinction, I enjoyed reading your message. I would still say that in a colloquial manner it’s not reaching that far to call piracy stealing, but I take your point.
I wouldn’t try to make the point you said about not paying $10 being theft itself, I agree that that isn’t a valid argument. What I do feel is that to say “your work is worth nothing to me” while simultaneously consuming and enjoying it, is hypocritical and similar to other less favoured actions like trying to pay someone in ‘exposure’. It does largely have damaging effects on wider communities.
I agree with you that there’s nuance and that I probably came on a little strong in my original comment. When it comes to TV, films, games, and music though, which is what I’m guessing is the vast majority of piracy discussed here, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to pay or to otherwise just not consume whatever content. Again I understand there’s more than just those 4 things, and even within those listed categories there may be things like games and films that are not even purchasable. I’m not trying to suggest we should all be perfect and piracy should never happen or whatever, it’s just odd to me that it seems to get so much defense that it almost feels like the consensus is that it’s something to be proud of.
That’s because IP holders have done their job of muddying the distinction well.