Might I direct you to the huge flaming catastrophe of bullshit known as "the police don't give a fuck lol". All they need to do is make it difficult, costly and time consuming to win and fuck you once you get hit with charges. And would you look at that, the US legal system specializes in all 3 of those! How convenient.

Doesn’t matter, these are unpaid volunteers standing up instances. Most, if not all, have no desire to fight that battle on their own dime.

Assume they do until proven otherwise

If that is really how you do it, you won't need to fry it, it will happen soon enough by itself.

MFW I went to upvote but couldn't because "error: VPN blocked" 😑

That doesn't help instance admins at all, though.

ok but what if in losing the suit, they must give up the logs and IPs?

Before they go under?

like the instance and the people that discussed piracy will be hurt

and it will put fear in others

I'm gonna say this all the time now

I'm glad Reddit won here because it sets a precedent that will protect less well-funded Lemmy instances.

Ever?

More specifically there is no US Federal Law about obtaining pirated works, only the Redistribution

17 U.S. Code § 506 - Criminal offenses

(a)Criminal Infringement.—
(1)In general.—Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed—
(A)for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B)by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C)by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
(2)Evidence.—
For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright.
(3)Definition.—In this subsection, the term “work being prepared for commercial distribution” means—
(A)a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution—
(i)the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and
(ii)the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed; or
(B)a motion picture, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution, the motion picture—
(i)has been made available for viewing in a motion picture exhibition facility; and
(ii)has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility.

So, basically, downloading cracked adobe products is always right. It's always morally acceptable. But your provider is risking their ass.

The big industry names want to make you believe that you'll be punished for downloading a car. It's all fearmongering.