While we can be pretty confident that Reddit has its own motivations (i.e. self-interest) for fighting these lawsuits, this is still a good news story for pirates.
Food for thought: Lemmy instance admins probably can’t afford $800 an hour corporate attorneys to fight off subpoenas.
Food for though: In the US judges have ruled on multiple occasions that an IP address doesn’t actually prove what individual engaged in the act.
Might I direct you to the huge flaming catastrophe of bullshit known as “the police don’t give a fuck lol”. All they need to do is make it difficult, costly and time consuming to win and fuck you once you get hit with charges. And would you look at that, the US legal system specializes in all 3 of those! How convenient.
Police can arrest you, but they don’t run the courts.
Ie you get brought in on bogus charges and if the only evidence is a number that isn’t admissable as evidence you would likely see a mistrial.
The average person getting sued also can’t afford an attorney
They sure as hell will find money for an attorney if they are being sued for 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars.
They’ll need one but that doesn’t mean they will be able to afford one. The point of these lawsuits is to intimidate, even if they don’t win, if people see lives ruined because of the cost to defend, they’ll be scared into not pirating. This is a fear campaign.
Doesn’t matter, these are unpaid volunteers standing up instances. Most, if not all, have no desire to fight that battle on their own dime.
That’s why it does matter.
Even if they get the IP addrsss from an instance, they can’t use it for anything.
It doesn’t just stop there.
It kinda does if a judge has decided that an IP address does not identify who the offender was and thus is not enough evidence to bring a case against someone.
I feel like I don’t need to explain to folks around here that companies will lawyer up and basically use the legal system to harass and intimidate regardless if they have standing or not if they think you are small enough to be bullied into stopping a behavior. Which I assure you your average instance admin is.
Sure, but that’s assuming the logs contain your ip in the first place.
Assume they do until proven otherwise
You can just look at the source code… no need to assume anything. You can’t prove a negative lol
Would be a real shame if my instance’s logrotate was set to, say, only keep a few days of webserver logs. Real shame.
Good luck establishing precedent with that!
Oops, I accidentally fired the sd card containing my instance running on my raspberry pie.
If that is really how you do it, you won’t need to fry it, it will happen soon enough by itself.
Seriously. Lemmy is a house made of patchwork quilt, with a bit of pine sap here and there to steady the few boards.
“Held together with bubble gum and duct tape” is the phrase I usually use
And this is why you VPN.
MFW I went to upvote but couldn’t because “error: VPN blocked” 😑
Huh, I exclusively browse Lemmy through a VPN and I’ve never seen that one.
He’s probably talking about reddit They no longer allow vpn’s or any user obfuscators to browse the site
instagram definitely does this, reddit seems fine for me so far
Oh. They sued an instance? 😱
Anyway… here’s another 5 hosted in Russia, or a country where piracy is legal, or just don’t give a fuck.
I am so conflicted on which side should I be on :/
A rough translation of a brazilian quote for you: “In a fight between these guys, I cheer for the fight”.
That’s poetry
I’m gonna say this all the time now
How is it hard to root for the anonymity of people? This is pretty cut-and-dry.
You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) side with any for profit company
If the film industry wins that could be a really awful precedent. Just sayin’
I was going to download their movies to spite them, but looking it up they’ve only produced complete trash.
Sorry, you’re going to have to be just a little more specific here, I’m wading in a sea of garbage over here
Removed by mod
Fuck Reddit.
What is reddit?
An instance with poor interoperability and boot licker admins.
it’s where everyone in Lemmy came from
What is lemmy? 🫣
It was insane to think they would comply with this to begin with. Downloading pirated media isn’t illegal, neither is discussing piracy. What is illegal is redistribution, and good luck proving that on a large scale community like this.
EDIT: These are 2 USA based companies, US Laws apply to this context.
Careful with this. Downloading pirated content can definitely be illegal depending on where you live.
It’s just not usually enforced as heavily as redistributing.
More specifically there is no US Federal Law about obtaining pirated works, only the Redistribution
17 U.S. Code § 506 - Criminal offenses (a)Criminal Infringement.— (1)In general.—Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed— (A)for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B)by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C)by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution. (2)Evidence.— For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright. (3)Definition.—In this subsection, the term “work being prepared for commercial distribution” means— (A)a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution— (i)the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and (ii)the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed; or (B)a motion picture, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution, the motion picture— (i)has been made available for viewing in a motion picture exhibition facility; and (ii)has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility.So, basically, downloading cracked adobe products is always right. It’s always morally acceptable. But your provider is risking their ass.
The big industry names want to make you believe that you’ll be punished for downloading a car. It’s all fearmongering.
Yes but you commented on a global website, so your previous generalist statement definetly doesn’t apply to everyone reading it :)
Thats why I stated at the top that more specifically there is no “US Federal law…”
And that’s why they specifically referred to “your previous generalist statement” where you didn’t do that.
Then share your local law. Don’t be pissy that Americans are clarifying for other Americans.
America is such a small country though, no one would assume anything said online is directed at it’s miniscule population without an explicit reference.
Whoops, your bias is showing.
Le reddit wins legain, m’fellows!
You’ll never narwhal my bacon, see!
