Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
Supposing I'm Fred The Fed and I want to shut down Hexbear.net
What if I try to make a case that admins tolerate sharing copyrighted material in violation of Statute XYZ, so the site is illegal and should be seized.
You might say, "Copyright laws are dumb, man! Who cares!" but that doesn't matter. Tell that to the law.
Should we get a lawyer's advice on this? What steps does the site need to take to avoid heat?
Should we get a lawyer's advice on this? What steps does the site need to take to avoid heat?
No, and nothing. Nobody is hosting copyrighted content here, ergo no piracy is happening here. We're not a big social media site trying to do an IPO, so we don't even need to worry about bad optics for investors. There's nothing at all worth being concerned about on this subject - it's a complete non-issue.
good point on not being a big site with investors, i only thought about the hosting files part.
grown-up conversation
guess we should let the adults in the room adopt lemmy.world policies, remove db0 from allow list, and have mods delete piracy links.
should probably shut the whole thing down due to laws against communism and LGBTQ+ support, illegal in many countries
was good while it lasted
Awful lot of people wishing death upon genociders and fascists, probably best to make rules against that too. Also it's not fair to make fun of famous people, rich people, or politicians in a venue where they can't respond - it's simply not polite.
I mean there's nothing stopping them from making an account in Hexbear/a federated instance and commenting. In fact please do that, famous/rich/political people, make an account and comment in our threads, that would be a very good idea for you and would definitely not be extremely funny for us.
The closest we've gotten is dunking on Haz when he had an account here. We absolutely need more of that.
be gay, ~~do crime~~ but only within the most restrictive international laws
It's not worth thinking about. If the feds or anyone else wants to shut Hexbear down, they will find an excuse. Or they won't and they'll do it anyway. The feds don't need a reason to shut down something like Hexbear and no amount of hand wringing will stop it.
I'm not talking about wringing hands (why would ya expect that to work?); I'm talking about getting advice on legal compliance
And I'm telling you that would be meaningless. You don't have to break the law for the feds to shut you down. Even if you're legally in the right you'd still have to go to court over it, you'd still have legal fees, and you'd still lose even assuming you could afford it. "The Law" only applies to folks who can afford the law and even then only if the government decides to let it.
Absolute defeatism doesn't seem like a great strategy
Defeatism is when you acknowledge that The Law serves the interest of capital rather than the interest of the people, apparently?
It's joever (on mobile so imagine a giving up emoji of your choice)
I asked a lawyer. They said "who the fuck are you? How did you get into my office? What the fuck is a Hexbear? I'm calling the police."
Concerning
Looking into it
Better find another lawyer for advice about asking lawyers for advice.
exactly what conversations about piracy does this site have? and why would you try to make the case? copyright laws are dumb. but exactly what laws are being broken here? ‘hell yeah pirate all the things’ isnt exactly illegal, nor is it sharing copyrighted materials.
people sharing links to copyrighted material (mega links to patreon content, links to video game repacks, etc.) and instructions. Probably not illegal for the site to host since its just links, and ancillary to the primary purpose of the site, and it probably helps that we aren't hosted in the US, but still a bit questionable, enough to cause some headaches at a minimum if someone really wanted to come after us.
If we actually attract serious attention from feds I doubt copyright would be the worst of our concerns though. More likely is just DMCA complaints and the like. Not sure how those work when you're hosted in EU, I'm sure there's some amount of reciprocity but idk the details
YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A HEXBEAR
Fuck you, I just did, and I will do it again 
Yeah but it gets to a point where that's like saying "Fuck you I'm not gonna pay my taxes what r u gonna do about it arrest me huh"
idk dog, we didn't censor ourselves on reddit despite threat of community deletion, i fail to see why we ought to do so on "our" platform
there are also bigger fish to fry piracy-wise, even just on lemmy
This is my point. It's fine to say that, but that sort of point isn't gonna count for anything if they decide to come after you.
Could host the site in a country that hates america?
Sharing links isn't illegal, it's hosting files that is illegal. Subreddits having rules against links is a personal choice they make.
This is my point: we can't rely on dodgy internet lawyers saying sus things like "sharing links isn't illegal".... admins need to get actual advice
piracy isn't even close to a priority on here, ive seldom seen a link to pirated content. HexBear has no advertising and no revenue outside of donations. links get shared on reddit in some places because it's a big website and things go unnoticed. The /r/roms reddit has a megathread telling you where to get roms for every system. I think you're worried about nothing. I even tried looking up some cases where someone got nailed for this and main issue is the people/sites that got in trouble were in some way profiting from the sharing of links, whether through ad revenue or charging people for access.
We did have a Hextube site for watching movies with others, that would probably be the worst thing that has happened here but i think that might be inactive now.
Files aren't hosted.
No login credentials are being circulated that would allow us unauthorized users to access places where files are hosted.
No problems.
Just include “only download this if you own the original copy” when posting a link then put a winky face like this 😉 next to it.
Problem solved.
sharing magnet links is kinda within laws already, as you are not doing anything one way or the other. piracy websites get got over receiving money from advertising as i understand it, sharing links to existing website is not illegal as well.
General axiom: take legal advice from lawyers.
Corollary: do not take legal advice from not-lawyers.
Non-lawyer axiom: if you think you're doing conspiracy, don't discuss said conspiracy, as it shows intent and awareness 
Then why the fuck are you asking non-lawyers?
is hexbear even hosted in america? if so, the first and only step to protecting it from the feds should be to host it somewhere else.
I looked it up on Who-is, couldn't find the host/server but there were references to Chicago Illinois
Hexbear is not hosted in America.
Make the case how, Fred The Fucking Cuck Bitch? It’s against the TOS. Prove the admins “tolerate” piracy. What does this shit even mean?
Is what I would say.
(I’m not calling you a fucking cuck bitch, only this hypothetical character.)