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Reply 80 of 97, by Snover

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Plasma: It is your choice whether to follow the guidance you’ve received from moderators or to make up your own rules “based on the existing content here”. Since you haven’t said what you are afraid might happen and have indicated you are done with this thread, I guess I can’t help alleviate that underlying fear. I can only reiterate that announcing your intent to ignore our guidance invites additional scrutiny that you don’t seem to want, and following through with your DIY plan is likely to lead to account restrictions until you agree to do what we’ve asked.

Just because you’ve seen others violating the rules from time to time doesn’t mean you get to do that too. Someone insulting you here does not entitle you to insult them back. Finding some spam here doesn’t mean you can spam. Seeing people help others to violate copyright law doesn’t mean you can too. Breaking the law is against the terms you agreed to follow when posting here, no matter how dumb the law may be, so please don’t do it.

All: US copyright law is a hot mess of international treaties, statues, and case law, and while I am not a lawyer so cannot speak definitively, I don’t think everything that has been suggested here about liability is accurate. In particular, the law includes secondary liability, which means that—depending upon a judge’s interpretation of “material contribution”—VOGONS could be liable if we have knowledge of something that increases infringement (like a post answering someone’s question about where to find some software with directions to a warez site) and then don’t do anything about it. The person who created the post could also be liable because they are knowingly and materially contributing to the infringement. Judges are also not (as a general rule) idiots; if you say ‘you can [illegally] download that by going to X’, I don’t think you will have much success arguing that there is a material distinction between X being a web site name instead of a URL.

While I agree with the assessment that practical chance of anything happening is extremely low, responding to any legal action requires time, energy, and money, and I don’t feel like accepting any unnecessary risk in that regard. I was once a cocksure child playing IP law expert and nearly got myself/VOGONS sued into oblivion, so I know first hand how things can go sideways when you think you know more than you do. I suppose if you have a couple million dollars burning a hole in your pocket that you’d be willing to put into escrow for legal defence, you can send me a PM and we can talk about adjusting risk tolerance. Otherwise, please just don’t direct others on how to download software illegally here.

Thanks,

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 81 of 97, by digger

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I'd just like to say that it's good to see a long thread with a thoughtful debate going on, instead of a shouting match. Some might not consider that to be a high bar, but I appreciate it nonetheless. 🙂

Here is a suggestion: what if we agree that with any link to archive.org or winworldpc, a second link must be provided that directly points to a credible source that confirms that the software can freely be shared? That way, the moderators don't have to curate the contents of any download that these links point to. For instance a press release on the official site of the copyright owner, announcing the software to be open-sourced, made freeware and/or released to the public domain. Or the official GitHub page with the sources, under an official account of the copyright owner, etc. Just something immediately apparent, that doesn't require the moderators to spend time and effort verifying the legitimacy of each download.

Basically, require the person sharing the link to perform the due diligence, instead expecting the moderators to either risk blindly trusting it, or having to verify it themselves, or just (understandably) having them remove it, because that's both the safest option and the one with the least effort.

Does that make sense?

Reply 83 of 97, by Hoping

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First, I want to express that this is my opinion and I don't want to offend anyone.
I think that the moderators or the owners can not be blamed for what the users do, it is enough that someone invests money and a lot of time to keep the forum running.
If there is not, there could be a rule that dictates a disclaimer on the part of the moderators and the owners of the forum that they are not and will not be responsible for the use made by the users of the forum, either for actions legal or illegal.
Users are responsible for their own actions, not moderators or owners.
I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, but I find it ridiculous that moderators have the task of prosecuting illegal actions by users, even more so when their work is voluntary and free, as I believe, at least they have never asked me for money for reading this forum or ask for help here, which has been a lot.
As moderators, I understand that their function is to ensure a correct and cordial interaction between users, and give gidelines of the correct use, not necessarily to ensure that the use of the forum is responsible, they are not policemen here, although some may be in their daily lives;)
In the end, each person should be responsible for his actions.
The only thing that the moderators and owners can do is to provide the tools to report improper use of the forum, everything else seems to me to be a work of good will, since if a user carries out an illegal action through the forum, the moderators or the owner would have to give all the available information of that user and not be responsible for his/her actions since the damage could be done before a moderator for example could prevent it.
Again, sorry if I offend anyone.

Reply 84 of 97, by ratfink

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I think the point is that the mods (and maybe more importantly the site owner) need to avoid being liable in any jurisdiction this site may be viewable from. Disclaimers do not always provide legal protection.

And really, if you want to find sites where it is ok to shares links to warez etc, then I'm sure it won't take much effort to find them. Do it there, not here.

Reply 85 of 97, by TrashPanda

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Hoping wrote on 2022-07-17, 11:00:
First, I want to express that this is my opinion and I don't want to offend anyone. I think that the moderators or the owners ca […]
Show full quote

First, I want to express that this is my opinion and I don't want to offend anyone.
I think that the moderators or the owners can not be blamed for what the users do, it is enough that someone invests money and a lot of time to keep the forum running.
If there is not, there could be a rule that dictates a disclaimer on the part of the moderators and the owners of the forum that they are not and will not be responsible for the use made by the users of the forum, either for actions legal or illegal.
Users are responsible for their own actions, not moderators or owners.
I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, but I find it ridiculous that moderators have the task of prosecuting illegal actions by users, even more so when their work is voluntary and free, as I believe, at least they have never asked me for money for reading this forum or ask for help here, which has been a lot.
As moderators, I understand that their function is to ensure a correct and cordial interaction between users, and give gidelines of the correct use, not necessarily to ensure that the use of the forum is responsible, they are not policemen here, although some may be in their daily lives;)
In the end, each person should be responsible for his actions.
The only thing that the moderators and owners can do is to provide the tools to report improper use of the forum, everything else seems to me to be a work of good will, since if a user carries out an illegal action through the forum, the moderators or the owner would have to give all the available information of that user and not be responsible for his/her actions since the damage could be done before a moderator for example could prevent it.
Again, sorry if I offend anyone.

INAL but US copywrite law doesnt work that way, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law and the owners of a public/private forum must been seen to be active in making sure copywrite laws are not violated by the users or the owners can be held liable for damages.

Such is the way of copywrite stupidity and US law that has not caught up with modern times.

So better to err on the side of caution and simply remove any and all chances of being sued for breech of copywrite.

Reply 86 of 97, by Dominus

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You are not protected crom being liable if you do something ilkegal without knowing it is illegal. You might expect a bit of leniency but that‘s not guaranteed

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 87 of 97, by Hoping

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In my country it is said like this "ignorance of a norm does not exempt you from complying with it".
That is, breaking a law without knowing it does not free you from legal consequences.
It seems that in all parts of the world where freedom and laws exist, it is like this or very similar. and the truth seems logical.
I strongly agree that it is better to try to prevent the facts than to act later.
Although I still think that it is not fair if someone can be blamed for the bad actions of another, when that other is the one who does them.
Another thing that is said around here is "prevention is better than cure".
Maybe some of what I've said doesn't make sense because English is not my mother tongue.

Reply 88 of 97, by liqmat

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 11:17:

INAL but US copywrite law doesnt work that way, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law and the owners of a public/private forum must been seen to be active in making sure copywrite laws are not violated by the users or the owners can be held liable for damages.

Such is the way of copywrite stupidity and US law that has not caught up with modern times.

So better to err on the side of caution and simply remove any and all chances of being sued for breech of copywrite.

Copyright. Not copywrite.

Reply 89 of 97, by Plasma

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Snover wrote on 2022-07-17, 07:41:
Plasma: It is your choice whether to follow the guidance you’ve received from moderators or to make up your own rules “based on […]
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Plasma: It is your choice whether to follow the guidance you’ve received from moderators or to make up your own rules “based on the existing content here”. Since you haven’t said what you are afraid might happen and have indicated you are done with this thread, I guess I can’t help alleviate that underlying fear. I can only reiterate that announcing your intent to ignore our guidance invites additional scrutiny that you don’t seem to want, and following through with your DIY plan is likely to lead to account restrictions until you agree to do what we’ve asked.

Just because you’ve seen others violating the rules from time to time doesn’t mean you get to do that too. Someone insulting you here does not entitle you to insult them back. Finding some spam here doesn’t mean you can spam. Seeing people help others to violate copyright law doesn’t mean you can too. Breaking the law is against the terms you agreed to follow when posting here, no matter how dumb the law may be, so please don’t do it.

All: US copyright law is a hot mess of international treaties, statues, and case law, and while I am not a lawyer so cannot speak definitively, I don’t think everything that has been suggested here about liability is accurate. In particular, the law includes secondary liability, which means that—depending upon a judge’s interpretation of “material contribution”—VOGONS could be liable if we have knowledge of something that increases infringement (like a post answering someone’s question about where to find some software with directions to a warez site) and then don’t do anything about it. The person who created the post could also be liable because they are knowingly and materially contributing to the infringement. Judges are also not (as a general rule) idiots; if you say ‘you can [illegally] download that by going to X’, I don’t think you will have much success arguing that there is a material distinction between X being a web site name instead of a URL.

While I agree with the assessment that practical chance of anything happening is extremely low, responding to any legal action requires time, energy, and money, and I don’t feel like accepting any unnecessary risk in that regard. I was once a cocksure child playing IP law expert and nearly got myself/VOGONS sued into oblivion, so I know first hand how things can go sideways when you think you know more than you do. I suppose if you have a couple million dollars burning a hole in your pocket that you’d be willing to put into escrow for legal defence, you can send me a PM and we can talk about adjusting risk tolerance. Otherwise, please just don’t direct others on how to download software illegally here.

Thanks,

I have not broken the law in any of my posts here, nor do I intend to. I'm not afraid of anything, just greatly annoyed at the indirection.

The entire point of this thread was to ascertain what the actual rules are. The mods responses have ranged from "it's typically not allowed" to "it's never allowed" to "we're going to single you out for asking" to "we don't care about the thousands of existing occurrences."

Therefore I will continue to use the status quo as a guideline for what is acceptable, since you cannot even agree amongst yourselves.

Reply 90 of 97, by ratfink

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Some things aren't black and white, that's been explained plenty.

In a way, that's why a lot of the law is case law. Not so much is based on legislation and even where it is, huge amounts of money are spent paying lawyers to argue about what it means. Even having written, explicit laws leaves things woolly very often. So in that respect the vogons approach is very similar to the way real legal systems work, with the mods as judges.

Life for grown-ups is often like that.

Reply 91 of 97, by ZellSF

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ratfink wrote on 2022-07-17, 14:28:

Some things aren't black and white, that's been explained plenty.

In a way, that's why a lot of the law is case law. Not so much is based on legislation and even where it is, huge amounts of money are spent paying lawyers to argue about what it means. Even having written, explicit laws leaves things woolly very often. So in that respect vogos approach is very similar to the way real legal systems work.

Life for grown-ups is often like that.

Vogons approach isn't only similar to the way real legal systems works. It's similar to how practically all systems, especially communities work. Nothing is ever black and white.

Reply 92 of 97, by TrashPanda

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liqmat wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:09:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 11:17:

INAL but US copywrite law doesnt work that way, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law and the owners of a public/private forum must been seen to be active in making sure copywrite laws are not violated by the users or the owners can be held liable for damages.

Such is the way of copywrite stupidity and US law that has not caught up with modern times.

So better to err on the side of caution and simply remove any and all chances of being sued for breech of copywrite.

Copyright. Not copywrite.

Thanks for the correction Ill file it under excellent need to know information due for recycling.

Reply 93 of 97, by ratfink

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 14:35:
liqmat wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:09:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 11:17:

INAL but US copywrite law doesnt work that way, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law and the owners of a public/private forum must been seen to be active in making sure copywrite laws are not violated by the users or the owners can be held liable for damages.

Such is the way of copywrite stupidity and US law that has not caught up with modern times.

So better to err on the side of caution and simply remove any and all chances of being sued for breech of copywrite.

Copyright. Not copywrite.

Thanks for the correction Ill file it under excellent need to know information due for recycling.

No need to be so prickly, nothing wrong with having spelling standards, keeps things easy to understand for most of us.

And the mental anguish of reading mispelt text is probably no different from the mental anguish of being pulled up for mispelling. And no, I can't remember how to spell mispelt/mispelling 🤣 but I'm not going to get arsey if anyone corrects me. File that where you like.

Reply 95 of 97, by TrashPanda

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ratfink wrote on 2022-07-17, 15:21:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 14:35:
liqmat wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:09:

Copyright. Not copywrite.

Thanks for the correction Ill file it under excellent need to know information due for recycling.

No need to be so prickly, nothing wrong with having spelling standards, keeps things easy to understand for most of us.

And the mental anguish of reading mispelt text is probably no different from the mental anguish of being pulled up for mispelling. And no, I can't remember how to spell mispelt/mispelling 🤣 but I'm not going to get arsey if anyone corrects me. File that where you like.

To the left to the left, everything in the box to the left.

😜

Reply 96 of 97, by digger

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-17, 18:51:

To the left to the left, everything in the box to the left.

😜

Lyrics are also protected by copyright, unfortunately.

They could have a lawyer here in a minute, in fact he'll be here in a minute! 🙈

Reply 97 of 97, by DosFreak

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These types of threads typically go stupid after a certain point and looks like that's where it's gone.

When at Vogons everyone needs to abide by the Terms of use, if that isn't acceptable then go elsewhere it's only your loss.
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