Rear Admiral Stew wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

jeep wrote:

Chet wrote:

BOTH ADMINS: WE EXPLICITLY TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THIS. YOUR POST IS NOT WORTH THE SITE. THIS IS STRIKE ONE.

I get what you're doing, I'd be the same with a BBS of my own, in the sense you wouldn't want people who crashed on your couch growing weed on your front lawn, but you do realize it's not illegal to post links to other web pages, right? No matter what they contain? Unless she has some new magic I'm not aware of, that site isn't hers, and the anime in question isn't hers.

It MIGHT be a different story if I posted here and linked stuff to my own page. I do not put anime up there, since I pay for my throughput, but if I did, I could see where you'd feel like an accomplice or that you might be liable or something, but you're not, there's courts that said so, the end. They can only get you for this IF you are hawking illegal copies of said anime on the side, which is kind of like using a box of baggies for under the kitchen sink as evidence that someone's a drug dealer: it may be bullshit, but it's admissable.

Unless Ryvar's gotten a job I don't know about in the crime-ridden markets of...what town was that? you're not looking at hard time for people linking shit in your BBS, and it's sort of panicky for you to represent the rule as anything but one you chose.

/jeep/
...I understand the no embedded pr0n rule was ISP-dictated (POEhost is the same way), but you should at least, in this case, cop to owning the rule.

2600 got in huge trouble just for hyperlinking the DeCSS code. This is close enough that I don't feel comfortable.

Our exact ISP policy is this:

ISP Policy wrote:

The Policies set forth herein are not meant to be exhaustive. It is intended that these Policies be used as a guideline for general use of our Services. Generally, conduct that violates any form of law, or the accepted standards of the Internet community, whether or not expressly mentioned in these Policies, is prohibited. Blarg reserves the right at all times to prohibit activities that damage its commercial reputation and goodwill.

Generally speaking, the Blarg guys come as close to professional, aloof UNIX adminny-types who see themselves more as resellers of bandwidth than any other DSL ISP I have known. I value the amount of freedom I have under them.

Now, how I choose, yes, choose in interpret all this, and it's not really up for debate:

1. Unless otherwise specified, you have the complete freedom of speech on this messageboard. Go nuts. Nothing here is serious at all, this is all a gigantic joke (satire, etc.).

2. Do not inline pornography on this messageboard until the CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) is overturned by the Supreme Court. I don't fear Johnny's mom making a fuss because 99.99999% of the time it's a faked legal threat. I do, however, fear the United States Government as I used to fear Hell. No pornography means no nipples, no fur, and no dicks/balls. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue stuff is A-OK.

3. Saying you got an MP3 or a warezed game off of a widely available public service (Kazaa, IRC) is frowned upon but acceptable. It's upon because the MOMENT a legitimate copyright holder or representative thereof asks for the IP responsible for your post I will sing it out like a Viking woman in an Opera.

4. Actually linking or providing a specific address to a site, server, etc. where illegal materials are available - be they ROM dumps from arcade games, MP3s, pirated software, cracks for legitimate key-based software, etc. etc. is not at all acceptable. Such links or addresses will be deleted as soon as one of the admins sees them. Note that responses to the post containing the link will be wiped as well if they quote the link - so be careful when responding to such posts. Extremely popular sites that everybody already knows about are excepted from this rule - deeplinks to them are not (ie you can say 'I got this from Home of the Underdogs', but not provide a link to it on HotU).

6. Using this messageboard as a means of exchanging copyrighted materials between each other is strictly forbidden. If people want to setup a BitTorrent network outside of the messageboard, that's none of our business.

5. We don't have the time or resources to do anything LIKE checking if all inlined images are copyrighted or not. That's like trying to staunch the flow of blood from a severed torso. We trust that copyright holders will probably be used to that image being tossed all around the Internet and will give us a warning first. We'll take it down as soon as asked. This falls under 'standards of the Internet community.' Go find a site not put out by a huge faceless corporation that does not make use of an image, somewhere, that the author does not legally have the right to use. You can't. Again: we will gladly delete such images upon notification by the copyright holder or a representative thereof. Generally we're inclined to think that 'fair use' covers our asses, but we'll bow to the lawyers here.

6. Minors (anyone under the age of 18 or whatever is considered the age at which one ceases to be a minor in your locality - whichever is greater) are not permitted to view this site at all under any circumstances. We will shortly have a warning page up stating explicitly this.

7. We will enforce the rules of Gamer's Angst (do not bring the chat outside of the chatroom) upon all participants from #gamersangst regarding material specific to that chatroom.

It actually boils down to four rules in reality, but I felt like tossing in some explication. Those are the seven bullet points of Caltrops policy. If any of those need to be changed to secure our legal position in the future, they will be.

In reality this is all under the 'use common sense' rule Chet had going with OMM, but it seems some people needed this clarified for them. There's your clarification.

--SB
I like the "don't grow weed in our front lawn while crashing on our couch" metaphor, jeep. Thanks.

Don't reveal identity/location info about somebody if they don't want it revealed. This does not apply to publically available info (ie I wouldn't freak out since my name is on the dns registration for this site). Creex accidentally did that and BDR asked me to remove it, so I did. I believe this was a rule at OMM as well, and I think its appropriate here since things said may hurt somebody IRL if tracked back here.

Thoughts?

-/ES/-