[Hippo]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,44586.0.html

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,44590.0.html

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,44593.0.html


Please, do ban everyone who's ever mentioned various words such as piracy, warez, torrents, p2p etc. Hell, have a crack at 80% of the people who post here for having some sort of pirated software who probably uses it to contribute to projects hosted here. I'm sure you'll enjoy the member base that remains. All 7 of them. 

[Snail]

You mean not registering for WinRAR?

[Stealth]

*sigh* it's been like this since day one though man :-/

first and only time i ever got banned was for telling someone how to download a file illegally

[Mr. Vega]

Arrrrrrrr!

[kode]

double standards, I'd say. e.g., the "fs2 is ok to download" argument is quite the long shot, and thusly should linking/talking about it neither be encouraged nor allowed

[Ford Prefect]

Okay I think we all know the drill now:

[spartan_0214]

I agree with Hippo. Ban the commies!!!

jk


like the Apple Macinosh featured though....

[Whitelight]

And I must be one of the seven.   

[Harbinger of DOOM]

[WeatherOp]

Woot

<---posted for no apparent reason.

[Mefustae]

I for one welcome our new fascist overlords.

[Rictor]

Ah people, just quit your *****ing. Such is life, and believe me: compared to many forums, we have it good. They're only going to keep enforcing it as long as you keep bringing up the topic, leave it alone a while and everything will go back to the tolerant, free-speaking norm.

Or, we could always bribe Thunder into staging a coup and overthrowing the despotic and corrupt leadership which for countless aeons has crushed the common people under its merciless heel. Either way.

[Fineus]

Actually I'll be horribly, brutally honest with you.

I'm bored with the amount of *****ing that gets thrown up if we go ahead and enforce things as we wanted, even explaining why. Since this whole thing came up I've seen 3 topics locked, recieved 2 PMs from different people, seen one topic started in the staff forum and here I am reading yet another thread about it.

Now here I am again - despite me saying in the topic Hippo linked to that we could be contacted via PMs if you wanted to continue to discuss the decision - staring at yet another topic which ignored that and went ahead to shout off anyway.

This is beginning to strike me as being less about whether or not you wanted to discuss the original topic, and more about a few shouting and screaming because they have nothing else to do and want a good show.

So I'll do this your way. Mr. Vega and Blackwolf, I apologise but I won't be replying to your PMs because we're going to do this the way you guys seem to want it. I will be to the point as I'm currently in the middle of my coursework for this semester and don't have time to babysit here, despite that apparently being needed. Sandwich and Ed are away with real life duties right now and a lot of the other admins are as busy as I am but nevermind - you'll have your answer.

Now here's your answer, you'll find it familiar because frankly it hasn't changed much. We have never tolerated warez here and you all know this already. While none of you were posting topics it's a fact that the articles that have been linked to directly link to TPB and that's as good as linking straight to TPB when you think about it. If I were to find a forum that didn't allow linking to car sites, then posted a link to my own site about planes which had a story about cars and a link saying "car website" - well that's as good as linking to the car website. You may all know the place exists and that's great, but we can't have obvious links like that around.

That's my reasoning, if you don't like it fair enough but it is my final say and unless the rest of the admins get together and decide they feel differently - you may well have to suck it up and move on. End of the matter.

Now kindly stop *****ing and move on. If anyone else feels the need to start a topic about this they'll find themselves being excluded from the forums for a spell untill they learn to read.

[Goober5000]

If I may say so, the fact that four topics have been started on the subject of the original thread's lockage (as opposed to the two topics started on the issue of piracy itself) should indicate that this is something that needs to be addressed to the satisfaction of the forumites (if not here, then in the feedback forum), not swept under the rug.

Since my appeal in the staff forum appears to have been ignored, I wish to state for the record that I disagree with Fury's and Kalfireth's interpretation of the rules.  In my opinion they have construed a meaning which the rules neither specify nor intend.

[Fineus]

I stand by what I said, but I will apologise to you for not mentioning you're not on board with what I think. It's fair to say that you feel differently.

That said, three locked topics along with my specific point that starting a new topic about the old locked one is not the way to do things should be plenty of indication that I'm happy to discuss this but that posting topic after topic is not the way to go about it. If something was locked, it was locked for a reason. Why people are suprised when they find that their topic about a locked topic then gets locked is quite beyond me.

[Fury]

You want a reason why Rictor's topic was closed?

Reason 1. It was named as "Help PirateBay become a country.".
Reason 2. The post contained following sentence; "And wouldn't it be great if the PirateBay could purchase it? They could fly the pirate, make their own copyright laws and everything."

Conclusion: Rictor's topic was nothing more than an attempt to gather support for TPB, which simply put cannot be allowed. It is entirely another matter whether this was Rictor's intention. I very much believe the outcome would have been different if Rictor wouldn't have posted his topic in such pro-TPB manner. This is what aldo did, but even his and the following posts seemed to have been overshadowed by earlier lockage, which then resulted in another lock. Note that Rictor did not post a link to a news article from a legitimate news site, he posted a direct link to the campaign site of TPB.

Next time, keep these things in mind, especially you Black Wolf.

Please, do ban everyone who's ever mentioned various words such as piracy, warez, torrents, p2p etc. Hell, have a crack at 80% of the people who post here for having some sort of pirated software who probably uses it to contribute to projects hosted here. I'm sure you'll enjoy the member base that remains. All 7 of them. 

It seems lot of you still don't understand where the line goes, so let me explain it to you.

Person 1 asks what he needs to watch HDTV content from TV. Person 2 says he needs a HDTV capable TV and suggests to steal one from a shop or someone else's house.

The example above also works for computer software. Provoking another person to commit a crime is considered an offense, or at the very least a minor offense in many countries laws. You just don't go saying these things publicly.

Also, have you seen any download links to FS1 anywhere? If yes, these should be reported so that we can edit them out. FS2 download links are treading a fine, gray line and will be allowed because of the current situation with FS2 EULA, source-code, Volition and Interplay.