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Old 7th September 2010, 16:02   #7  |  Link
Kuukunen
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 61
Weell... since the rule 6 was brought up, I thought I'd give my take on it.
As you said: "So, please don't make your copyright infringement our problem."
Thing is, of course you know some of the advices will go to people who are doing illegal things. Same if you were hosting, say, a big gun forum. Sooner or later some idiot will end up shoot something with the gun you helped maintain. It's just the nature of the beast.
What I don't agree with is that some people tend to see every "Ok, I have this file..." as a red flag. The "Where did you get that mkv from?" query before any advice/discussion has pretty much three end results:
1) It's legal (in some jurisdiction), which I hope, in which case the advice/discussion will just get delayed and people get annoyed.
2) It's illegal (in some jurisdiction), but the guy lies. See end of 1)
3) It's illegal (in some jurisdiction) and the guy admits it. This ends up turning a gray case into a black one and now there's some more actual semi-proof of illegal stuff is being discussed here.
The only two good things I can think of in the case 3 is: Firstly, if something is illegal in (your?) jurisdiction x, you get the moral points for not helping a criminal. Secondly, you might try to upkeep some kind of image of being very strict on illegal activities. Frankly, though, I doubt that will have any kind of effect in the slightly suspicious cases, even if you start/continue requiring proof of their legality. Most cases will still end up looking just as gray in the eyes of the copyright holders/lawyers, it will just weed out people who don't know how to ask.

All in all, I'm not even talking about legality here. It's just that I get frustrated every time I see someone harass a poster on the matter in a way that doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with any laws for reasons I can only interpret as either trolling or trying to taste the sweet nectar of Opress-The-Noob.
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