The illegal sharing of copyright material will no

[Deleted]

So, I always understood this rule in a way that "illegal sharing of copyright material will not be tolerated within this forum." Apparently it's not like that. I personally think that trying to force something like that is beyond futile.

I could easily post a long post about this, but psi said pretty much everything in his first post on the Tomb Raider thread. youji did not share anything illegal in here, did not ask for support, and he did not encourage everyone follow suit. He was merely providing info (albeit perhaps in the wrong forum area). In all honesty a community where a small slip of tongue like that will get admin after you is not a very welcoming community.

Basically, if this is the line we are to expect, the rules should be rewritten to reflect that mentioning illegal activities is not tolerated.

But no more compatibility reports from youji.

[patrickp]

The actual wording in the rules is

Illegal sharing of copyright material will not be tolerated!

youji said that he downloaded the image. That's sharing. The rule says nothing about 'within this forum' and for good reason - that's not what it means.

The rules could possibly make this even clearer, Mika, but the wording is already clear, I think.

Mentioning illegal activities is not against the rules - we've both just done it in this thread. Mentioning that you have performed an illegal activity - specifically, illegally downloading games - is.

[Sune]

Come on, clearly "downloading" something is not the same as sharing it.

The word 'sharing' as it is used in the rules means you're not allowed to share copyrighted material HERE, in this forum. Again, meaning that there can be no links pointing to illegal downloads or any sites that host them.

What I will say is that people should be careful with their wording - there's no reason to say where you got your game from or how you got it.

But if you're going to keep this up you might as well ban everyone here. You can start with me. And then you can ban pSX Author later.

[Gamesoul Master]

Let's look away from this argument that will never end and look at the picture *I* always looked at for just a moment here...

Compatibility testing should be done on original game discs or good rips. Now if the rip is done by somebody who may not know how to properly do one, how will we know that any compatibility issues that occur aren't from the bad rip? Or going the other way, how do we know the game image hasn't been patched or something to make it work better, where the original might fail? An image not created under proper (or unknown) guidelines cannot be trusted for compatibility testing.

More on this topic... nothing illegal occurred in that thread. Not even close. If "illegal sharing" has in any way occurred, then what's being said is that it was illegal for him to say something he did personally. Now in the US (where this forum is apparently based), if you say to somebody that you robbed 30 banks in the last week, that is *not* illegal. Just the same as anything else. Saying something is not illegal, unless it's blackmail, slander, etc. And by the rules of this forum... none of them mention *saying* anything about illegal activities. He wasn't encouraging anything illegal, because he didn't give any links, mention any names, or say anything about the greatness of downloading a PS1 Rip. And because we don't know where he got it from (and he later mentioned being in a group of friends that does rips), how do we know that the rip isn't from his copy? He could've very well borrowed the copy to one of his friends, and they did the rip that he then downloaded. The act of downloading a rip from his very own copy of a game would not be illegal. He also didn't ask for any support or anything like that, so he didn't breach the rules there either. We don't know, and to continue on the fact that this forum is based in the US... you are innocent until proven guilty. And I don't see enough proof to say he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The whole point is... this arguing is pointless. The simple fact is that nothing illegal occurred. It's also simple fact that he should've either not said anything about it, or (the better option) should've done the compatibility test from the original disc or a full, good rip of his original disc. We can run around in circles about this all day. I just don't wanna see everybody at each others' throats over something that could've been prevented if he had been a little smarter and not said "downloaded".

[Deleted]

patrickp said:

The rule says nothing about 'within this forum' and for good reason - that's not what it means.

This is only your interpretion of it, you didn't write it, did you? And downloading doesn't equal sharing.

sune said:

And then you can ban pSX Author later.

Heh. Indeed, he did say something about testing all the rips of tomb raider (in another thread) floating around the internet on the real PlayStation.

[Ultima]

I think patrickp maintained his position because some might take his silence as condonation of piracy, and IMHO, it's perfectly understandable from an administrator's standpoint; he was acting only in the interest of the forum and project to keep it unassociated with the darker side of the emulation "scene."

The Tomb Raider thread was a bit ridiculous; I'm really not sure what to say about it. patrickp kindly suggested that the "downloading" not be repeated (notice the "please"?) -- which is an implicit way of saying "we don't care to know that you downloaded it." Even if youji didn't take the suggestion, the point was that we don't care to know how you obtained the game, so don't tell us. Pretty the description up if you have to; tell us you ripped the game and removed the audio or whatever; it's not as if we'll doubt users, as we almost never have much reason to. If everyone had just dropped the subject (at least in that thread), it wouldn't have gone out of control, but the participants wanted to pursue the subject in that thread. If you wanted to continue discussing it, the PM system would've been a better place to hash it out (or at least a separate thread like this).

---

Now, for the flip side... My stance on the matter has always been "don't ask, don't tell." If you tell us you've obtained a game in an illegal manner, then you shouldn't expect support -- those were the limits I personally had in mind; nothing more. My point of view is that since the rules and global announcements show pretty clearly that we don't want/have anything to do with illegal activity, and that we don't condone piracy/whatever, then what people choose to do on their own is their own problem (whether the IP/copyright owners decide to go after them or not), and not our problem. We aren't responsible for the users' actions, so policing/babying them shouldn't be our job.

Here's how I'd (probably) approach threads on the subject if I notice it:

- If someone requests support for a game (s)he's explicitly said (s)he's obtained illegally, I just won't bother (or lock the thread or something), and will distance myself from the topic.

- If someone explicitly tells other members to commit some illegal act via the forums, I'll warn/tempban him and condemn the suggestion (or maybe even edit it out) unless it's not the user's first infraction of the rules.

- If someone mentions downloading a game, I might just remind him that we don't condone it, and that any problems that arise will be their own problem. If anyone else decides to follow in that user's footsteps even after that, (again) it's not our problem.

- If someone makes a compatibility report and mentions that (s)he downloaded the game, then I'd take the report with a grain of salt -- at least until someone with a confirmed, working, real copy gets around to testing it and posting his/her results.

Informing the user even once about possible copyright infringement and any associated problems should be ample warning. "Take it or leave it" type of suggestion, I guess. There doesn't need to be a whole lot of discussion over it.

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

I always thought it should be "no discussions of illegal activities or discussions of downloading of copyrighted materials and illegal sharing of copyrighted materials" should have been appropriate. I stick by patp on this one on what he said in that thread, because we get very cautious about this type of stuff because we are responsible in maintaining the forum and policing everything. But if you all want to be able to talk about illegal stuff and put the emulator at risk, fine by me. It's up to pSX Author on what he thinks is acceptable on his forum. I know that a "large" percentage of people illegally use copyrighted stuff but we try to refrain from actually talking about it here just for the sake of the legality of the emulator, even if it questionable, in the grey area or possibly legal like the original situation from which this thread is based on. We just don't want to touch that type of area here. I hope that this is understandable to some of you. I understand what patrickp was getting at in that thread but the rules are not entirely clear and need some revisions in the topic of legality issues.

Oh, and if anyone wants to know, the other guy who got banned, usljoo or whatever his name was, was banned because he sent patp PMs aksing him where to download illegal stuff, he was annoying him and insulting him in the PMs that he sent also. I said that the guy should have known better to not to send PMs like that to patp and I suggested that he ban him. I usually don't suggest to ban anyone unless they get very insulting like that and start to become really rude.

patrickp said:

Mentioning that you have performed an illegal activity - specifically, illegally downloading games - is.

This quote is pretty much what the admins go by and we thought that it was pretty much common sense on the member's part to not mention that they downloaded games even if the global announcement only mentions "illegal sharing of copyright material". Like I said, I think the rules and the global announcement really needs some amendments to better clarify what is acceptable here.

ultima said:

Here's how I'd (probably) approach threads on the subject if I notice it:

- If someone requests support for a game (s)he's explicitly said (s)he's obtained illegally, I just won't bother (or lock the thread or something), and will distance myself from the topic.
- If someone explicitly tells other members to commit some illegal act via the forums, I'll warn/tempban him and condemn the suggestion (or maybe even edit it out) unless it's not the user's first infraction of the rules.
- If someone mentions downloading a game, I might just remind him that we don't condone it, and that any problems that arise will be their own problem. If anyone else decides to follow in that user's footsteps even after that, it's not our problem.

That actually sounds like a good way to approach those problems when they arrise.

[Gamesoul Master]

Pretty much... I agree with everything said since my last post. I just wanted to make the point that nothing actually illegal had happened. Mainly just to address the main argument that formed, though it seemed unnecessary to argue about. And I figured I'd offer my side on what the rules here say, since none were really broken (at least to the word).

As I said before, it should be pretty obvious by the rules and announcements that admitting piracy in any way is quite stupid. For the record, I'm not against patrickp in his words/actions at all. He started out trying to be nice and polite about it, but youji wouldn't relent and seemed to feel he needed to get a point across. He should've been smarter about it and simply apologized and closed his mouth. Or, as I mentioned before, he shouldn't have bothered with a compatibility report on a game not only using a rip, but a rip that has been repacked (which is *quite* likely to cause problems in gameplay).

With that, I also think that the rules and announcements should be reworded and clarified a bit. If someone like youji is gonna fight to the end over wording despite the fact that nearly every forum I've seen discourages (one way or another) talk of any forms of piracy, then the wording should be changed to avoid any future incidents like this. It would make the admins' jobs a lot easier, since they can point to the rules and announcements safely, whereas right now they can't because they're not worded anywhere near correctly enough to advocate any action taken against a person who merely mentions the word "download".

BTW... I also agree that Ultima's approach to the problem is quite good. It's a good firm stance that gives breathing room to new people who didn't think to read the rules, while still taking proper action against people who should know better by now.