Keep in mind, The Pirate Bay is "technically" not breaking any laws... how has that been going for them? You don't have to break laws to get in trouble if you are pissing off rich people. They'll find something, anything, to nail you on. It's totally ok for random normal people to not want to be "heroes" to a bunch of other random people they don't know. Heroes attract villains, and instability. And while it's just starting to get off the ground, lemmy doesn't need villains or instability.

Let the smaller, less visible servers do the shady but "totally technically legal" stuff. Big servers with big targets on their forehead need to be stable and drama-free.

I can sue you for stealing my material regardless if you have and as a result you need to mount a defense to this claim. That defense is not free of charge.

Everyone complaining about this seems to have no idea how expensive this could be for the hosts.

The right and wrong doesn't matter, what matters is the cost of defending oneself against a multi million/billion dollar organization armed with a boatload of lawyers.

People are terrified of the possibility of litigation to the point that they won't even host conversations about piracy on fringe community subs for fear of reprisal.

Its just the state of play for everyone on the Internet. Terrorized by the spectre of a frivolous lawsuit.

Linking is enough to be illegal in places. A torrent file or magnet link is just a link and contain no pirated content itself yet here we are.

I think there are other things here worth considering about your comment. One of the biggest things I see Lemmy talk about is security and privacy. You can be against the action but in reality imagine the feds are tracking down those institutions. They can supeona Lemmy or request data from Lemmy servers and now regular people are exposed.

Even if it is just hosting a link the other concern an admin might need to have is how long before those links the problem legally is that Lemmy can be potentially charged.

https://kellywarnerlaw.com/linking-to-pirated-content-law

There are plenty of ways you are legally at fault if not handled correctly. In theory, Lemmy could be charged for allowing the adverisement of pirated content. I understand how Lemmy users feel about fucking over big companies because they don't want to pay to some big corporation that has fucked them over and doesn't care about the end user. However, I find those same Lemmy users to be a bit hypocritical. We already have writers and film makers on strike for being paid inadequately. While the idea is to change the viewpoint of big companies and stealing money from them is a win to some people. This also impacts those same writers and producers and this is true throughout any industry. If you steal from it even if you think you are doing damage to the big company you aren't helping the good folk. Even if you don't give a shit about those people and think they are a part of the problem.

I don't think they're worried about the logic of it. Logic doesn't really matter when you're getting sued, and the media industry are a litigious bunch. Being in the right doesn't matter if you go bankrupt defending yourself.

Whose laws?

"From your understanding" is meaningless if your understanding isn't based on the same laws as where the server operates.

Replace the context of this about art thievery, and guides about how to steal art from museums, then think about how it sounds. You're right, discussing those things would technically be legal, but c'mon now. I don't care or judge if you do these things, but discussing how to commit crimes in a public forum, no matter what it is, shouldn't be much of a debate among administrators to decide to ban or not. It's safer to just do that even if it's technically legal. If the cops come knocking, why would they bother lawyering up for these communities when they can just hand them off to another instance that would rather advocate for them?

If you're against the decision, the entire point of the fediverse is to have the freedom to hop to a different instance if you disagree with its administration, so why not find one you are better aligned with? Keeping the fediverse happy as a whole with less user conflict is more important than user retention per instance; no one should feel locked in.