!piracy@lemmy.ml, and their local counterparts as follow up actions.
In our removal announcement, we stated that we will continue to look into this more in detail, and re-allow these communities if and when we deem it safe. It was a solid concern at the time, because we were already receiving takedown requests as well as constant attacks, and didn't want to put our volunteer team at risk. We had zero measures in place, and the tools we had were insufficient to deal with anything at scale.
Well, after back and forth with some very cool people, and starting to have proper measures as well as tooling to protect ourselves, we decided it's time to welcome these communities back again. Long live the IT nerds!
We know it's been a rough ride with everything, and we'd like to thank every one of you who were understanding of us, and stayed with us all the way. Please know that as users, you are what makes this platform what it is, and damned we be if we ever forget it.
With love, and as always, stay safe in the high seas!
Assuming they don't want to end up like Aaron Swartz... I'm guessing they are deleted. Unfortunately it's just too expensive to try to fight DMCA notices. Kim Dotcom has been trying that for a full decade now - his legal costs have surely stretched into tens of millions of dollars and he's lost pretty much every step of the way. All the money he's burned on this has delayed a lengthy prison sentence, he's unlikely to win and would have got a lighter sentence with an early guilty plea.
As to the tooling... AFAIK it's not possible to delete some things in Lemmy. I expect they've fixed that now. At least for things that are likely to be on the receiving end of a DMCA notice.