Can someone take the trash out?

[Number1]

Originally posted by: Alone
I downloaded "Hancock"; it sucked.
I downloaded the 1951 version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; it was ok.
I downloaded the last two Metallica albums; not impressed.
I downloaded Quantum of Solace; I thought the first one was better.
I downloaded the entire Led Zeppelin discography; I'm not really a fan, can't say I see the appeal in most of their music.
Tokyo Drift was a terrible movie, I downloaded that too.

I'm not going to lie about something just because I didn't have to pay for it. It wasn't a gift or an act of generosity, I stole it, all on my own.


You are extremely likely you have a previously clean record, or you'd be on vacation right now. What you do is your business, stating it here is absolutely not allowed.

Another mod might have skipped the warning and sent you straight to jail. You are lucky. Stupid, but lucky.

Theft of any kind, as well as its advocacy or its admission, is not welcome here.

Perknose
Senior AT Mod

You made fun of my comment in a previous post above. Well my turn to laugh now. Idiot.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: Number1
You made fun of my comment in a previous post above. Well my turn to laugh now. Idiot.

his comment still stands. Your comment has not gained significance.

I don't see why you are laughing...

Simply because a mod left a mean remark on one of his posts?

 

[Number1]

Originally posted by: Dumac

Originally posted by: Number1
You made fun of my comment in a previous post above. Well my turn to laugh now. Idiot.

his comment still stands. Your comment has not gained significance.

I don't see why you are laughing...

Simply because a mod left a mean remark on one of his posts?

You are as full of shit as Alone is. This is a private forum and AnandTech will bloody well decide what is acceptable in here or not.


There are PLENTY of other places on the internet to discuss software piracy.

 

[Alone]

Originally posted by: Number1
This is a private forum and AnandTech will bloody well decide what is acceptable in here or not.

If you really believed that, you wouldn't be in here giving your input, because it's them who will decide.

 

[esquared]

OK let me point out how this piracy issue is to be handled. These are from Derek and I have condensed it to make this easier to absorb for you people.



1) Talking about piracy is OK

2) Telling people how to pirate or how to get around copy protection is not OK.

3) One can talk about having pirated and it's impact on their opinions about issues or the affect it had on your life or things in this sort of line of discussion. You can't talk about what you pirated (unless there is a specific reason that it was necessary other than bragging) and you can't talk about ongoing pirating activities.


Alone, you cannot talk about how you just pirated those six movies/CDs. That's bragging, and it will get you bounced. Perk has warned you already and the next time you do this flat out bragging of specific pirating without any reason for discussion, you will get a vacation.

I downloaded "Hancock"; it sucked.
I downloaded the 1951 version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; it was ok.
I downloaded the last two Metallica albums; not impressed.
I downloaded Quantum of Solace; I thought the first one was better.
I downloaded the entire Led Zeppelin discography; I'm not really a fan, can't say I see the appeal in most of their music.
Tokyo Drift was a terrible movie, I downloaded that too.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: Number1
You are as full of shit as Alone is. This is a private forum and AnandTech will bloody well decide what is acceptable in here or not.


There are PLENTY of other places on the internet to discuss software piracy.

Yes AnandTech will. When did I ever disagree with that?

I don't get why you are so angry. My comment, as well as Alone's comment, still stands. Your comments don't even make sense.

I don't see what calling people names and childishly utilizing big bad words accomplishes in personal forum issues...

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: esquared
OK let me point out how this piracy issue is to be handled. These are from Derek and I have condensed it to make this easier to absorb for you people.



1) Talking about piracy is OK

2) Telling people how to pirate or how to get around copy protection is not OK.

3) One can talk about having pirated and it's impact on their opinions about issues or the affect it had on your life or things in this sort of line of discussion. You can't talk about what you pirated (unless there is a specific reason that it was necessary other than bragging) and you can't talk about ongoing pirating activities.


Alone, you cannot talk about how you just pirated those six movies/CDs. That's bragging, and it will get you bounced. Perk has warned you already and the next time you do this flat out bragging of specific pirating without any reason for discussion, you will get a vacation.

I downloaded "Hancock"; it sucked.
I downloaded the 1951 version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; it was ok.
I downloaded the last two Metallica albums; not impressed.
I downloaded Quantum of Solace; I thought the first one was better.
I downloaded the entire Led Zeppelin discography; I'm not really a fan, can't say I see the appeal in most of their music.
Tokyo Drift was a terrible movie, I downloaded that too.

Thank you very much for the clarification. :thumbsup:

The rules are much clearer now (at least to me).

 

[Alone]

Originally posted by: esquared
Alone, you cannot talk about how you just pirated those six movies/CDs. That's bragging, and it will get you bounced. Perk has warned you already and the next time you do this flat out bragging of specific pirating without any reason for discussion, you will get a vacation.

I appreciate the clarification, and it's more than reasonable. But what I wrote was to amplify my opinion; not to brag. How does that warrant a now tarnished record?

 

[esquared]

Originally posted by: Alone

Originally posted by: esquared
Alone, you cannot talk about how you just pirated those six movies/CDs. That's bragging, and it will get you bounced. Perk has warned you already and the next time you do this flat out bragging of specific pirating without any reason for discussion, you will get a vacation.

I appreciate the clarification, and it's more than reasonable. But what I wrote was to amplify my opinion; not to brag. How does that warrant a now tarnished record?

I do not see it that way. I see it as bragging. You flat out made that your post, along with this admission:

I'm not going to lie about something just because I didn't have to pay for it. It wasn't a gift or an act of generosity, I stole it, all on my own.

That's bragging in our definition.

 

[Alone]

Originally posted by: esquared
That's bragging in our definition.

Then my original intent was misleading and badly worded. In that case, I apologize.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Alone and others that are willing to advocate/condone piracy.

You are very very lucky that the "soft" moderatorshave been handling this issue.

There are some here (Moderators and others) that earn their living by creating things that you have no compulsion about stealing.

If you wish to be branded a thief, continue to post about it here.
Also, please tell us when you voluntarily work for a couple weeks/months and refuse your paycheck.


Senior Anandtech Moderator
Common Courtesy

 

[Alone]

Originally posted by: Common Courtesy
If you wish to be branded a thief, continue to post about it here.
Also, please tell us when you voluntarily work for a couple weeks/months and refuse your paycheck.

The difference is, I get paid dick-shit for the work I do. Whereas, if I were to pirate something (this is theoretical for the purpose of discussion, not an admission) it would be because it's overpriced for what it offers.

And for the record, I don't pirate software. Hell, when dealing with Linux there are an extreme amount of equivalents that'll get the job done as good or better than the software in question.

 

[Perknose]

Originally posted by: Alone
Could someone please clarify whose rules I'm supposed to follow?

AnandTech Senior Moderator esquared already has, I see, but just in case you wish to hear it from the very top, we asked our admin and maximum leader Derek Wilson to clarify and he responded thusly:

admitting having pirated something is not vacationable.

previously the guideline i set forth is that admitting general piracy is fine as long as it is not advocated (i.e. i pirate and you should too, or i pirate and it is awesome, etc.)

admitting specific piracy is considered advocating the piracy of that specific item and is vacationable. (i.e. i pirated left 4 dead, i pirated far cry 2, i pirated vista)

Our admin has strong libertarian beliefs but even he has come to realize, in dialogue with the modship, that intellectual property THEFT has a victim whose rights must be balanced with people's desire for easier, cheaper "access" to music and movies.

I hope everyone can see that our policy, under Derek's direction, is a fairly easy going and accommodating one.

But since there was admittedly some confusion as to the specifics of our policy, I apologize for calling you "stupid" and your warning will not count as a mark against you.

Go and sin no more! Or at least don't brag about specific sins here.

 

[Alone]

Clarification is all I wanted and it's exactly what I got.

I appreciate you all taking the time to resolve this, and I think we all got the answer we were asking for.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Alone
Clarification is all I wanted and it's exactly what I got.

I appreciate you all taking the time to resolve this, and I think we all got the answer we were asking for.

Thanks, pirate. At least we know who you are.

 

[Dumac]

Thank you all for making the AnandTech's position on piracy very clear. Your comments were very helpful.

I just wanted to point out that in no way do I condone piracy, nor have I ever pirated. I simply wanted clarification of what is allowed and what isn't, which you have provided in great detail.

 

[DerekWilson]

These are really good cliffs notes for the thread:

Originally posted by: esquared


1) Talking about piracy is OK

2) Telling people how to pirate or how to get around copy protection is not OK.

3) One can talk about having pirated and it's impact on their opinions about issues or the affect it had on your life or things in this sort of line of discussion. You can't talk about what you pirated (unless there is a specific reason that it was necessary other than bragging) and you can't talk about ongoing pirating activities.

That is a very good summary of how AnandTech wants piracy issues handled at this point. Thanks, esquared, for condensing a lot of discussion down to some easy to digest bullet points. I think that helps a lot.

From the time the guidelines went live to now, we have refined a lot of internal policy based on the needs of the forum. While most of this is based on interpretation and clarification of what the guidelines actually mean, I do understand that there are many issues that are still a little unclear to the membership, especially regarding enforcement.

After the move to vB (seriously, it's happening ... we're looking at a few weeks after the holidays are behind us), I will try and spend some time with the guidelines and update and clarify them to help enlighten the membership as to the intent and meaning of some of the guidelines, as well as how we intend to enforce some things. I'd like to include examples, but I'm not sure that I will be able to sort all that out while keeping it readable (it's of no use if it's so convoluted that no one reads it or understands it).

But I would like to add something to this discussion ... As Perk said, I'm a bit libertarian in my philosophy, but I know we can't implement idealism on the forums and have it work. There do need to be some limitations in order to keep things functioning as we have them set up. With the launch of vB, we will have the ability to add and alter some of the way we handle enforcement and punishment (because vB is much better at those kinds of things), and I've already mentioned that I'll be trying to clarify the guidelines a little later as well ... but if people are discussing things that they should be allowed to do with their own property then I have no problem allowing that.

What does that mean?

academic discussions of media and software archival (how to backup) and management (how to store and use backups) are permitted. the discussion of practices that could be considered fair use are permitted. sometimes these discussions include topics that overlap with piracy (which is unfortunate), and thus it is wise to make it clear what the real topic of discussion is.

These are explicitly not allowed no matter the topic: posting cd keys (even fake ones -- if you say it's a cd key we'll believe you without testing it and you'll have to deal with the consequences), cd key / serial number generators (although academic discussion of algorithms is still okay), links to these things, or links to copyrighted software and media for which the owner has not chosen to distribute the works freely.

Things may evolve down the line -- we are always evaluating our policies, but this is where we are right now.