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