@qubit
If you were to build a server and host various things on it (chat, storage, etc.) You wouldn't bother watching what people put on your server? Would you comply with any cease and desist orders, laws etc?
Ok, I've been trying to stay out of this as I know how it tends to go such as getting the thread shut down and infractions all round, but as it's you it should be safe.
Also, to be honest, I misjudged how many people would be pro Valve on this one. I thought it would be the other way round, silly me, lol.
Yes, of course I would watch what's happening on my server and would never treat my members with a blase, lack of respect attitude since it's them who keep me in business, as it is for any site, regardless of whether membership is free or not. However, I would keep censorship to an absolute minimum and reserve it for extreme things such as terrorism, threats of violence against other members, snuff videos, videos of extreme cruelty to people or animals, posts explaining how to commit crime eg credit card fraud and get away with it etc.
Also, depending on the purpose of the forum, I would enforce members treating each other with respect to varying degrees. If running a tech forum like this or perhaps a self-help forum for people with personal issues eating disorders for example, then my rules wouldn't be all that different to TPU - a bit more relaxed for the tech forum, but no gratuitious trolling or personal attacks and about the same or even tighter for the self-help forum.
However, if it was a forum about conspiracy theories / idiotic ideas (my favourite one of the moment is the flat earth idea that some really stupid people believe) and religion then I'd get the popcorn out and they can have at it, short of the extreme stuff above. In fact, I've been wanting to set up just such a forum for some time now and even have the URL registered, but that's one for another discussion.
I would have a very clear forum policy / rules too and if someone made such a flagrant abuse of them with the extreme stuff twice they would get suspended or permabanned straight off, depending on the exact circumstances, especially their attitude.
What gets me even more than the actual censorship with Valve is the fact that no warning is given to the poster. Telling them it's going to be censored when they hit Send, or having the link removed in the same way at their end is the respectful way for Valve to treat their customers. As it is, I don't use Steam much for social interaction anyway and I've never had a private conversation with someone on there so in practical terms this doesn't affect me. I just don't think what they're doing is right, for the reasons I've explained in my OP and on here.
As Ford was saying, TPB is just a search engine for torrents, nothing more and there are perfectly legal uses of TPB too. It's not a cesspit like Jetster thinks, any more than google, which will also find every torrent going (short of those many pulled ones courtesy of DMCA takedowns) and will even find horrible videos on torture, killings etc yet it's not branded in the same way by big media and governments as a torrent search site. Now there's a double standard if ever I saw one.
The difference between TPB and other similar sites is their amazing, incredible resiliance against the massive political and financial powers of big media and the governments who team up with them to try and destroy it. Yeah, they have a "stick it to the man" attitude which gets right up their adversary's noses - good. This whole piracy causes widespread financial losses claim is garbage as can be seen when looked at objectively and crucially, it has never been proved in any court. In particular, various
independent university studies have been carried out over the years which all show that so-called "piracy" either has a negligible effect on sales, no effect, or actually increases sales in some cases due to greater exposure of the product.
Before anyone demands that I "prove it", no I don't have these studies to hand as I've not saved any of them, having seen them or read articles about them casually. However, I have seen articles about them on the internet and in respected print publications like MicroMart, so I'm not making it up. A bit of googling should reveal them, too.
As far as complying with cease and desist orders, that would depend in the first instance on how I felt about their merit in the first place. If I agree, then I would action them immediately. If I didn't agree with them, then it would depend on how the law stood over the issue and how large and powerful the other side was. As an ordinary Joe with a regular job, I couldn't fight some big media corporation regardless of the merit of their cease and desist order, so would most likely have to comply even if I could technically win in court, much to my annoyance.
I've just seen this related article on TF which is relevant to this thread and I'm gonna add it to my OP after I finish writing this post, too.
https://torrentfreak.com/linking-to-pirated-content-is-not-copyright-infringement-160407
Ok, I've gone on a bit and hope this answers your question!
@FordGT90Concept I think you've done a great job debating this from a similar point of view to mine.
@TheMailMan78 As usual I don't agree with you on this sort of thing, but it's good seeing you on here. If you want to discuss it further, please pm me.
