remind me again

[TheFoX]

Interesting topic, and interesting answers as well.

To be honest, people who set up servers that are contrary to copyright law, and facilitate the ability to link likeminded people together, get to choice how they run their site.

This is no different from FST and how they run their site. If they don't agree with a particular stance, they will say so in their rules.

FileSharingTalk.com Board Rules The Administrators and Moderators are the ones who decide what is offensive, foul, inflammatory or excessive in nature, as well as what is considered spam, solicitation, advertising, profanity, inappropriate nudity or complaints. Their decision on the matter is final. Administrators and Moderators can and will take action without any prior warning or notice.

The first sentence explicitly states who has the authority to decide what is right or wrong, and the third sentence tells us what actions can be taken.


So, this ruling applies to everyone who signs up to FST, and we are expected to abide by that ruling, and the subsequent list of rules.

With this in mind, can we really complain about rules of sites we wish to join? Not really. We can complain should we not want membership, or get banned etc., but while we are members, we should abide the rules of the sites concerned, or feel their wrath, like so many have here for crossing staff members (like some community reps recently).

Now, on to the fun stuff. In the user agreement, we see...

This End User License Agreement ("User Agreement") grants you, personally and individually, a non-transferable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, limited license, permitting access only for the use of immediately electronically displaying content

which basically means for the use of by the individual creating the account.

Now, what a lot of us do is to share movies and music to which none of us has a legal right to do so. This is called piracy, and we continue to do so until the men in black bang on our doors and subpoena us. At that point, we would probably stop and pay the fine.

Trading accounts is similar to filesharing, in that we don't have the right to do either, but we try and get away with it anyway. The difference is that if we are caught trading our accounts, we simply lose them. I have not heard of one single person being fined or facing a custodial sentence for trading a licensed account.

Sounds like so much mumbo jumbo doesn't it, but each torrent account is technically licensed to the individual who has created it, whether by open signup or by invite only. The laws regarding licensing remain the same as those applied to licenses purchased to listen to music or to watch a movie. If you pirate a movie or music track, you are in breach of the license you purchased, or if you trade an account, you are in breach of the license you agreed to when signing up.

It's a good job that torrent staff run their places as hobbies, with the exception of a few sites, otherwise there could be quite a few embarrassed traders out there. At the end of the day, the choice to trade an account is no different from the choice to pirate a music track or movie, but if you are caught, face the consequences like a man (or woman), and not a crying kid.

[Shadowfire]

Very, very well said.

[Dr_Green_Thumb]

I think the fear that the wrong people (authorities) get in and start taking down IP's.

[upGrayde]

i think they're all racists

[kaffeine]

i think their all racists

lol

maybe you should start your own tracker and make your own non-racist rules.. (i know it sounds like sarcasm, but it's not)

[ceasar]

Antifa Tracker! LOL

[mortalman]

lol

and what's so great about buffers if you, technically speaking, can't hit and run?

thats a good point i would like this answered!

be like having a 1TB buffer overall but in your profile/history/snachlist the torrents you downloaded/uploaded have individual ratio's .5/1.1/ect ect so basically the overall ratio has no advantage/meaning accept for may be ranking i guess.

I think the fear that the wrong people (authorities) get in and start taking down IP's.

i think you nailed it

[StriderZ]

Oh no not another discussion that'll go nowhere... Who cares why, their site their rules.

[TheFoX]

Couple of interesting points...

1.. Buffers!!! So what. The whole concept is to share. FileSharing is the name, and whether it be newsgroups, traditional p2p networks or bittorrent, the idea is to propogate those files as much as possible. In the bittorrent world, it is often down to those with good uploading speeds to carry the burden of sharing, and many do without thought to how much they upload over what they have downloaded. This ensures that a torrent life is as long as reasonably possible. The side effect of this is that these people have a healthy ratio ( > 1.0 ).

So, what is considered a positive seeding habit is now referred to as a buffer. It would appear that trading is bringing out a seedier side to torrenting. It's like the used car market selling second hand cars as pre-owned. The cars are still second hand, but pre-owned sounds so much better, and removes the stigma of buying secondhand. The buffered account makes a secondhand account sound so much better.

Since most torrent sites do not allow repeated hit and running, the advantage of a buffered account is simple. You only need to seed your future torrents to 1.0, since the is no deficit to make up or, put it another way, your new account is not in immediate danger of being disabled for being in poor health.

2.. Racism (as posted by upGrayde). This one is even simpler to answer. I was once accused of being sexist by a woman member. In her words, she was being treated unfarely because she was a woman on a man orientated site. Simple truth was that she was hit and running on every torrent, and she was treated no differently to anyone else.

So, how did I know that she was a woman. She told me, that is how. You cannot determine sex, race, religion, political bias or any other regional variation from the way people press their keyboard buttons. I suppose that some wish we could, but I have seen people who's English is not their first language type as well as someone who's English is their native language (and sometimes even better than).

The only way that I can determine if someone is a woman, or Muslim, or an American, is if they tell me this information. When people scream Racism, it is often brought on by their own limitations in their psychological profile. You tend to find that people who have an optimistic outlook on life don't suffer racism, sexism etc., while pessimistic people do.

In my opinion, forum groups like FST and those attached to trackers are probably far removed from racial hatred as you can get. It doesn't matter what colour you are, or race, or religion, or political bent, or sex. What matters is whether you know your stuff, simple as that. Knowledge, not colour, rules the day.

3.. Knowing your member. As Dr_Green_Thumb pointed out, it's who you want inside your own community. If you run an open signup place, then it doesn't matter, but if you operate an invite only site, then membership is simple for those who have been selected. Allowing accounts to be passed around is simply not acceptable to many, since it is clearly a disregard for the site rules. There is also the issue of people who are not welcome, getting in through a back door (trading). These can range from undesirables to agents of the various organisations committed to stop piracy. If invites are rare, or non existant, then accounts holders shouldn't really be trading accounts for the reason for why invites are rare, or non existant.

Lets put it another way. If you successfully traded your account to Joe Bloggs, only to find out six months down the line that Joe Bloggs, an agent for one of the authorities, had successfully harvested numerous IPs related to filesharing on the account you traded, how would you feel. How would you feel knowing that you may have jeopardized the lives of countless members.

Certainly worth thinking about.

Finally, you have to remember that many site admin are the remnants of the big sites that were taken down by the MPAA or RIAA. The likes of Loki, ET, UK-Torrents, UK-Fileshare, TorrentBits and many smaller sites, were all closed down by pressure from the authorities, and in many cases, individual have been fined, or threatened with a custodial sentence.

With this in mind, no wonder many sites are closed door sites. It would be nice to be like we were 3 years back, when every torrent site was an open door site, but we really cannot afford to be complacent anymore. No wonder Site Ops are so dedicated to weeding out account traders, as each trade can represent a possible breach.

[upGrayde]

i was joking about the racism?