The instance owners do not wish to host potentially problematic content.
I will try to locate a more suitable instance.
Some jurisdictions are relatively more permissive than others, so the legal risk is not uniform. There will be some user flows until the instance landscape has settled.
Which jurisdiction, mine or yours? Or what about the other person who will comment under this?
Is that the 123.52.33.19 jurisdiction or the 95.32.122.99 jurisdiction?
In other words, on the internet, how are you going to reliably change the content to fit the viewer’s jurisdiction?
Just so people know, when you send a request to the internet, you’re not sending a request from your home address, you’re sending it from an IP address. Those IP addresses are not linked to City, State and Country, at least not reliably. MaxMind has a “GeoIP” database of “best guess” countries for IP addresses, but even if lemmy software were to implement geoIP gating like this, you’d have to taylor individual communities to individual jurisdictions and…
NO ONE IS DOING THAT. Nor will they anytime soon, most likely.
On the internet, it’s far easier to just shut the topic down, as was done with piracy. Sure, folks can share pirated content inside the “spiders” community if they wanted to, but that’s at least a little harder for rights holders to find than the “piracy” community. And by rights holders I mean companies that scan the web for keywords and link and send out automated DCMA takedown requests.
Your point may stand in court but we’re on the internet and those instance owners are likely trying to avoid going to court.
Again, instance owners aren’t instance owners because they want to be your political advocates in court, at their own expence, at the threat of the site being shut down.
The relevant part is the legislation of the instance hosting location and the degree of anonymity of the instance owner and his attitude.
Hetzner is the very opposite of bulletproof hosting, the owner of lemmy.world is fully public and his attitude to potentially problematic content is on public record.
legislation of the instance hosting location
Unless the hosting location is in the principality of SEALAND, and even if it is in SEALAND I think you’re going to be surprised about jurisdiction. Edward Snowden revealed a while back that all traffic crossing us borders is monitored. If the site is in the US, the server is within their jurisdiction and can easily be seized. If the site is outside of the US, traffic to that site is monitored from traffic originating from inside the US.
What if the content is hosted overseas? Doesn’t matter, still sued
The internet is global. Local jurisdiction for copyright infringement isn’t something I would hang my hat on. With greatly paid lawyers comes lots of power.
the degree of anonymity
read: the ability of the instance owner to shield themselves from legal trouble by trying to outrun it. (not a sustainable practice).
his attitude
read: the preferences of the instance owner to sheild themselves from legal trouble.
bulletproof hosting
read: the ability for users to post content that might get the instance owner in trouble with the expectation that it will not get the instance owner in trouble because it is legally-sound or otherwise outside of any jurisdiction of US law.
the owner of lemmy.world is fully public
read: the instance owner complies with the law.
his attitude to potentially problematic content is on public record
read: the instance owner’s preference for the instance owner to sheild themselves from legal trouble have been mentioned online. uh huh…