This has happened once before and they reversed it. But they said this last time too:
The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.
Yeah, until LW addresses it, all we can really do is guess. I’ve just jumped to the most logical conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it’s even close.
For what it’s worth, as an instance admin myself: I don’t get paid to run it, I have other things to worry about, and most definitely don’t have time or energy to deal with copyright BS. That said, I can completely understand their position and reaction.
Depending on how my day was going, I’d have also probably “shot first and asked questions later” with regard to removing the community and waiting until I had time to compose a post about it and be present to deal with the inevitable drama that would cause.
Hopefully they make an announcement soon.