Disqus is Deleting Pirate Site Communities on Short Notice

When peer-to-peer file-sharing was in its heyday, communities were the glue that held everything together, but not in the global sense evident today.

File-sharing communities typically gathered on various forums. Operating in isolation, most embraced a central theme – file-sharing – everything else was a footnote.

Embracing anyone and welcoming any topic of conversation, fancy high-tech social media platforms made short work of file-sharing communities. Had Disqus been around a little earlier, things may have been different, at least for a while.

Feel Free to Discuss

Up and running in no time at all, Disqus embeds offer a full-featured and externally hosted comment platform, making life a lot easier for site operators. Of course, that single place is actually someone else’s servers, and the commenters were now someone else’s users.

For evolving file-sharers, who consume most of their content on streaming sites while sharing very little, Disqus made conversations convenient. Same username, same password, and in time, the appearance of large specialist communities centered on the theme of the site. Or, as commonly seen today, specific content available for download on many specialist sites.

Since wherever Disqus users go, their communities go with them, the conversation never had to stop. At least until Disqus decided that those communities needed to be to shut down, quickly.

You Have 24 Hours to Comply

Shared with TorrentFreak by the operators of pirate site KickassAnime, the notice below strongly suggests that Disqus didn’t have negotiation in mind.

There are no specific allegations or even a mention of a repeat infringer issue. Instead, based on a general assessment that KickassAnime violates Disqus terms and conditions (which it clearly does), the site was given roughly 24 hours to leave town.

At first blush, the opportunity to export comment histories seems like a welcome consolation prize.

On closer inspection, the offer is actually for the recipient to download their own comment history, unless they’re the author of all comments on the site, which seems highly unlikely. At best, the wording seems ambiguous.

More Notices Sent to Other Sites With the Same Message

The operator of KissManga received a similar notice on February 22.

“It’s come to our attention that your site kissmanga-5 is sharing copyright-violating content. As this is a violation of the Disqus Terms of Service, we will no longer be able to provide commenting services to your site, and your site will be removed from the Disqus network,” it begins.

There’s no mention of decisions against kissmanga-4, kissmanga-3, or the others, but for now the locals seem glad to have their chat back after the operator of the site installed wpDiscuz.

Other Targets

While some sites were happy to post their Disqus notices in public, others handled things in their own way.

Bato.to simply advised where the Disqus window used to be, that “Disqus has stopped providing services to us.” MangaPark, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have taken any specific action just yet.

Anime Kai, a domain active for just a few weeks and already pulling in 20 million visits per month, had a bit more to say. The same goes for the site’s users who, in their brand-new comment section, had a debate over which previously existing site Anime Kai had just replaced.

At the bottom, evidence that Disqus isn’t limiting itself to banning sites offering content only from Japan. The screenshot from FitGirl-Repacks also seems to answer whether Disqus will hand over a database of comments made by an unknown number of site users, to the person in control of a site. In this case, that does seem to be the case.

Why Take Action Now?

Why Disqus has decided to act now isn’t clear. The company says that it took action based on terms of service violations and in that respect, the decision finds solid ground.

It’s also possible that owner Zeta Global felt under some pressure or obligation to act, even if that pressure was self-imposed.

The company is heavily involved in AI and in its article titled ‘Responsible Use and Legislation of Generative AI’ the company notes various risks and the importance of transparency.

Using generative AI for marketing isn’t without its risks — including accuracy, bias, privacy, and copyright infringement, for example. As adoption of the technology increases, responsible AI practices, like transparency, trust, and human oversight, are also gaining importance.

Moving forward, it will be important that AI vendors are transparent with:

How their models are trained
Any known model vulnerabilities
How the model performance is measured

And regulators will be taking note.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.