On Reddit anytime I saw direct linked pirated media it was always just Base64 encoded. I’ve found direct links to entire Switch games just sitting in a random Reddit comment for weeks or months because it was in Base64, so that might be safe to use. I’m still a bit unfamiliar with Lemmy but to my knowledge the instances are hosted by regular people not corporations, so it would probably depend on the people running the instance, or the legality of piracy where they live / host the server. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong like I said I’m still new

Server is hosted in Europe. They don't have to answer to DMCA request but I believe there is a similar framework under EU laws. I think it would avoid a lot of headaches for the owner of the instance to avoid direct link to pirated content.

I also believe it's more interesting to have a community discuss piracy as a topic rather than just becoming a repository of pirated content. There's plenty of website who do that better and they can be linked in the sidebar

That's more of a question for the instance than the community. I haven't dug into the lemmy.ml policies, but would wager that content would be served better by an instance explicitly approving of it, as this instance is rather general in scope

Even if everyone could freely post links with no risk, I dont really see many cases where clicking that random person's link is better than using a megathread that is already been approved.

I think thats just gonna lead into trouble and would rather just point people to the megathread or mention a name that they can search and go find themselves.

I would say that's still a bad move. There is not "no risk", as it could still put the owners of the Lemmy instance in danger. So be respectful to those who are hosting this instance and don't link copyright infringement.

I like how some subreddits use base64 encoding to share linkz. I even use the chrome extension