The risk is significantly reduced if the instance its running on and the domain host is in a country that isnt legally obligated to honor DMCA takedowns. Wothout doing research, this instance likely is in a major country, and therefor not its permanent location because of this. but whats different than reddit is we have the capability to host the servers ourself where we want.
Once(if) its taken down, another instance can be run from a more friendly country and DMCA notices wont have any weight legally.
The only problem then would be popular home instances going excommunicado with the pirate instance like that bee one did recently
Im not here to hunger strike from reddit until i get hungry. Im willing to hunger strike till i die. Fortunatly lemmy seems to be a source of nourishment but ive made my decision.