youronlyone

I saw your reply but it is yet to federate in other instances.

I know magnet links are just links, but post sharing them are still copyright infringement right?

No. Again, you just posted a link. What determines a link as a potential Copyright infringement is the content it is linking to.

Let’s use an example: https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/7.5.4/deb/x86_64/LibreOffice_7.5.4_Linux_x86-64_deb_helppack_en-US.tar.gz.torrent

It’s not a magnett link, but just the same, I linked to a torrent file. It is not a Copyright Infringement.

But if the link is a link to a content that violates the Copyright Law, then there is potential issue.

Linking by itself is vague. There are countries that don’t consider links as Copyright infringement, because again, these are just links. Only the host is causing piracy / infringement. However, there are countries that considers linking as an act of distribution of an infringement material, so it is illegal for these countries.

So there’s no way to scrape an instance to back it up as a third party?

If you have a script, then you can. You can submit links to web archive services and they’ll scrape the site to archive a copy of it.

I understand someone not wanting to have pirated content on their instance, but do you think mods will go out of their way to un-federate?

Oh yes, definitely. You can count on instances defederating/blocking instances tolerating Copyright infringement activities. There are various blocklists available for instances to use, and there are groups where admins share and discuss these things.

So, sooner or later, an instance tolerating Copyright infringement will find itself isolated and potentially an island.

It can remain online as a regular site. It just won’t be federated with anyone.

One more thing. There are blocklists and admins who will defederate instances just because they are not blocking certain instances. Thus, if I am running my own instance, I might be forced to defederate from an offending instance to avoid being defederated by everyone else.

Not really. Most fediverse software create a cache of content on their own servers to make it easier to display content for their local users.

So… this brings the issue of “hosting”.

For example, if I link to this Torrent file: https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/7.5.4/deb/x86_64/LibreOffice_7.5.4_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz.torrent (LibreOffice 7.5.4), this link (not the file), and this entire comment, will have a copy in every instance that creates a local copy of content they receive.

(Some fediverse instance even locally host images to avoid fetching images again and again.)

Now, if we assume that a simple link is “illegal”, even if it is not piracy (like in the case of LibreOffice above), then all the instances which created a local copy of this reply might be put in trouble.

The fediverse is fast in fediblocking users and instances which tolerate activities that may place most instances into legal issues.

Quick question, just Lemmy?

Re: fragmentation

Also, this negative “fragmentation” view is biased. Before the subreddit migration, there were already existing and well-established communities in the fediverse. Suddenly, after the subreddit migration, it’s being called “fragmentation”.

For example, topics like Star Trek and Books. There are already large communities in the Fediverse before the related subreddits migrated. Yet, you will see people calling it “fragmented”, some even have the guts to call other communities to “merge” with the migrators.

This is wrong and very rude.

Having multiple communities is good. There is no one-size-fits-all. Also, we’ve been doing that in the entire history of the human race. That said, even if everyone merged into one mega church, it will still split up like it or not.

In other words, we need to stop viewing “fragmentation” as negative. In fact, don’t use that word. Don’t even think about it. Just setup your community and build it up. Create your own culture. Your own rules. System, team, and invite people who wants to join your type of community.

Multiple communities is healthy for everyone. It is a win for everyone.

And… haven’t we learned what happens when we rely on one service? One central platform?

A lot can happen.

1. It suddenly goes offline. We’ve already experienced this in 2023. A lot of large communities disappeared for almost a week because the instance encountered issues.

2. The instance owner might no longer have the resources to continue. Not necessarily on the financial side, remember, there is the technical side which will take an owner’s time.

Sure, they can get other admins to join. But, as an instance admin, would you easily trust access? Consider also the trust your users has given you in protecting their data and privacy.

There were instances who went offline because of that, and instead of transfering management to a new team, or selling their platform to someone, they chose to shut it down permanently because they value the data and privacy of their users.

So… if that instance that happens to be hosting a one-size-fits-all community goes offline…

Well…

1. Or, it can very well be something uncontrollable. Server farm fire, raid, who knows.

But if we let people build their own communities spread across different instances, then we are building redundancy, continuation, and resiliency. If one goes down, for whatever reason, we have existing communities we can move into and continue our discussions, with minimal interference.

^_