On many occasion there be posts saying something along the lines "You i downloaded blah-blah-blah. I need help...." or "I got blah-blah-blah from Kazaa (the all-time favourite for some reason), what do I do...." To my understanding, this is how the rules stand: 1. If no specific mention of what movie/game/whatever has been made then everything is still OKAY 2. If no links, requests for links or links leading to links are given, everything is OKAY Those instances I find are fairly easy to spot and dont seem to pose a (potential) problem. However it is my understanding that: 3. Posting something along the lines of "I downloaded Matrix Reloaded....what do I do next?" is NOT OKAY 4. Posting something along the lines of "I downloaded Matrix Reloaded from Kazaa....what do I do next?" is NOT OKAY Am I correct in this interpretation? If not, please enlighten me. If not, perhaps a more explicit addition to the rules (such as "If you have downloaded a movie/game/whatever, do not make explicit mention to it."). This poses a minor problem however, those new to computers/burning/downloading will not think that their questions can be answered without them explicitly staing the name of the movie/game/whatever. On the otherhand, allowing them to state the name somewhat (seems to) undermine the importance the general attitude of "no piracy allowed". I understand aD's position towards blatant piracy (i.e., Case #4) as well as the position with regards to making backups of your own copies of movies/games/whatever. It just may be useful to explicitly state whether or not instances of Case #3 are to be allowed or not. Cheers.
This is a very, very thin line. In theory I don't see much problem with "I downloaded Matrix 3 and now I can't watch it, what codecs do I need?" questions if they don't provide information on where to get it, etc. BUT as this is bending the rules a bit, it is safer to take a stance against mentioning anything about specific downloaded movies. But the biggest issue is actually the fact that in Finland -- where AfterDawn Ltd is based -- it perfectly, absolutely legal to download whatever you ever wish to and use it for your personal purposes (and share with your family members, but not further). Same as copying rented movies is totally legal in Finland. And as we try to live by Finnish law, we don't see much problem of mentioning what movie you downloaded, etc. But we get itch to our banning fingers when someone starts telling where they got it from as this can (very) broadly considered as distributing information on how to obtain illegal copyrighted material and this again, is illegal in Finland. So, to summarize, we don't like case #3, but in most cases allow it (well, actually rather edit the post to remove the movie name in some cases, but not always and its not needed -- some of our mods and some of us just think it "creates more legal environment" to forums to do so -- and definitely wont usually ban users for this reason; although sometimes we do -- it's our forum anyway and we can ban anyone we want to without justifying it ;-), but don't allow case #4 (even so, I don't normally -- although sometimes I do -- consider this worth of banning as long as they aren't too stupid to actually "promote" piracy). There isn't black and white, just different shades of gray
So its actually ok if i remove movie names and change some posts a bit to make it more "legal" looking?? lol I have been doin that a bit since i crossed over to the dark side. Seriously though, the forum is full of it, the filesharing forum has to be the worst (hi i got this game from this place). But another question, if someone claims they are downloading a high quality divx/xvid from somewhere as a backup of their DVD because they dont know anything about encoding, what should be done there? still against the rules yes??
D: Still sorta within rules, but as I said, it all "depends".. I normally let them be, but I allow mods to use their own consideration on those most of the time.
Ok cool man, i think what i'll do is make a judgement on what kind of movies, obviously if someone said they were getting a backup of T3 and it was only in theatre, they are lying! lol
