Hello folks,

Yeah, I know, I can be both a pest and obnoxious. Even foulmouthed at times.
Usually only happens when democracy is at stake and in question.
Unfortunately that happens quite often on the internet. Mainly as the various community owners and managers doesn't take crap. Any crap. Ie crap == what they don't like => arbitrary judgment. And when they feel they are taking crap from above they get frightened and lash out in any (in)conceivable way.

This happened to me the other fortnight. I happened to tell people where they could get hold of some material. Material I might add was completely legal and legit at the time of publish:

So I discussed this on a forum. I even had dug up a torrent with the material in question. Somehow the community owner took offence. And that I have no problem with. To each his own.
But there's two points I just can't get. First he claims a "piracy free zone", which isn't mentioned anywhere in the rules of the place and then he refuse to talk to me. He bans me for life with a wave of his hand and drops it there. No warning, no ordinary ban, no nothing. Just BANG, you're OUT.

I don't feel this was motivated, neither the ban or the silence.
I want to know what I did to upset him so much, I want to talk with him. But I really need your help.
Could people please ask Bill Armintrout at TMP [editor@theminiaturespage.com] what's the matter? Ask him to answer me, please.

Yours
Erik

_________________
It would be nice to get lightspeed,
so far we can only reach slight speed.- Erik M
092b85658e746a91d343e53509d357744e56f641

Was this torrent sponsored, initially seeded, or okayed by the [company] in question?

If not, then it's a copyright violation, and a third party has every right to refuse you the ability to post such, potentially, illegal information on their sites.

A [company] that offers free downloads of material from their own site usually includes a "terms of use" rider that governs how the files are legitimately to be used, additionally, they, most likely, monitor the number of downloads to gauge interest in the product and whether any future development should take place.  Just because it's "free" doesn't mean the you're authorized to do whatever you want with it.

Linking to a torrent of a scan, or something created or even just hosted by a third party, even if it contains the exact same information, is still copyright infringement.  If you want to desiminate the information, why not link directly to the [company]'s actual files if they available?

And, as a follow-up, if you think the Internet is a democray, you're sadly mistaken; it's a mishmash of petty kingdoms, tyrants, benevolent dictators, anarchists, and dreamers... to expect "democray" as the default setting is, in my mind, simply naive.  Every nation or city-state on the Internet has it's own rules and there's nothing at all that obligates them to be "fair".

Honestly, why not just let this go?  You got banned from TMP, is that really a big deal?  Read the articles, or create a new login, or just stop going there.  Being a squeeky wheel to someone who appears to be deaf to your concerns is just a waste of your own time.  Sorry.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Just because the company is giving something away for free does not mean that it's a doggone free-for-all and you can do anything you want with the material.  They still own it and they get to say what the legitimate use and distribution of the material is.  You've had this explained multiple times.  I don't know why you haven't bothered to learn anything about copyright but the idea you have about how it works expressed in your tirades are just plain wrong.

An unauthorized copy is a copyright violation.  Period.  End. Of. Freakin. Sentence.


So, "what's the matter" is that you posted a pirated toerrent, putting his site and him personally in legal danger.

You deserve to be banned and if I were him, I wouldn't bother talking to you, either.


If you want this to stop happening, the answer is easy:  STOP POSTING PIRATED MATERIAL!

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Neal

And that brings up another point!

Different countries have different laws, so something that might be perfectly legal for one person is a big problem for someone else.

Since it's so complicated, and most people aren't lawyers, let alone international law experts, most site owners respond with extreme sanction, just to err on the "safe side" for themselves and their site.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

All in all, the admin/mod at TMP could've erased the thread with 'wrong' link and give him a warning or a week/2 week probing.

Multiple warnings is banned.

If nothing else happened a straight ban is too much.

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Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

As Chroma says, the internet is not democratic, it's a mixture of autocracy and anarchy.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

And in the next breath they say they are all for democracy...

Neal, no. A once published script is still published and retraction of it goes only so far anyone agree to send it back. And if it's out of the box on the internet, then it's very hard to retract it.
That. Is. Period. And it's VERY clear that this one was published in good faith (see quote above). Only after that was there a try to retract it.

And. A. Torrent. Is. Not. Piracy. ,. It. Is. A. Way. To. Help. Distribute. .. Very. Period.

_________________
It would be nice to get lightspeed,
so far we can only reach slight speed.- Erik M
092b85658e746a91d343e53509d357744e56f641

Many countries legal systems consider linking to Torrents the same thing as hosting the torrents yourself. Thus all the big court cases as Torrent database websites are shut down one by one.

So the site admin is well within his rights (and indeed, is being very sensible) to be asking that Torrent links are not posted on his property (website).

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Wasn't this all discussed before?  I seem to recall reading this in another thread.  At length.  Not too long ago.  Perhaps it is the clever use of [brackets] that is confusing me.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I PM'd Bill at TMP about Erik's situation ... he has yet to reply ... Of course it all sounds a bit draconian to me ...  No warning shot ... just a double tap to the center of the target ...  Odd ?

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I had a similar situation occur at another website- I wasn't banned but they did something almost as annoying.  Instead of whining about it I just didn't participate at that website any longer.  Oh well.  You can tell I'm all heart broken over it.  I would tell you which site it was if I could just remember...  Nope!

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.