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