It’s not like it’s hard to make an account on another instance to look at piracy related content.

That’s right, but lemmy.world claims to be an instance for anyone, which it isn’t anymore. It’s not neutral anymore.

I can’t blame him for wanting to avoid legal issues before it gets to the point he is receiving notices, C&Ds and law suits. That can get very expensive, very fast.

It’s not like you immediately get sued, you first get a DMCA takedown notice. At that point, he could just defederate and everything would be fine.