Warez
 

As you may or may not know, Zelaron has been around for almost a year now, and here is one of the rules that has been here since january:

"By clicking the Agree button, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws."

Warez are illegal, and a big change is that we have actually started to enforce the rule. For the past few weeks, we have had a non-tolerance for all kinds of warez, and this has resulted in a lot of members saying that "Zelaron is going downhill".

Here is an example of what a small portion of the members thought about one of the latest incidents in the area:
http://www.zelaron.com/forums/showth...threadid=10342

The reason why we enforce warez is because they are a violation to the server policy. If we have ANYTHING to do with them, there is a chance that we will get kicked off the server. On the other hand, members have demanded that this non-tolerance rule should be removed instantly, or they would leave. I have also heard that the "freedom of speech" was one of the things that made Zelaron so popular, enjoyable and unique.

Please share your thoughts about all of this, and don't forget to vote either.

I'm leaning toward the second choice. I understand that it sux to have your work given away for free. Its stealing and ripping off the programmers.

But the thing is we should be able to discuss it vaguely if it comes up in a question. Not someone
Promoting K**** or anything else for one. Also they have just as many trojans and viri than any other software. Basicly my opinion is that benign warez discussions should not be answered with ban threats. Just my two cents...

*****? Oh wait we cant even talk about ***** now?! LOL Yeah its gone to far, My take on this is this, If we wanted to be a professional gaming forum, FIRSTLY we wouldent talk about hacking at all, SECONDLY wed have 1000x more vistiors, Wed also be making money somehow, As for a regular Forum like this? If you wanna turn this forum into like gamespot forums or ign or the offical forums for alot of popular games, where they have alot of people, then do it, but i guarentee ill quit within a couple days. I came to this forum because i could talk about stuff i found intresting or funny, I dont see zelaron as a COMPANY that has to worry about shit like this, I like how Cheatlist and UGN and Gods, and all them are, we started fairly like that and out of greed for a new server (Which we did not really need) we got rid of what made this forum great. My opinon on this take it how you want.

And I try and avoid that, but posted serial numbers or cracks is a direct support of it and can hurt Zelaron. I don't care if people talk about warez, as long as they don't provide links/directions for attaining warez. Serials and cracks also fall into the warez category.

ok yes i think it is wrong to post a serial and tell everyone to use it i guess... but i still think we should have the right to say to someone, like hey if u need this, just use K****

I have no problem with that unless the person is specifically asking where to download a game/program. Those kind of threads violate the server rules unfortunately.

Well, let's face it, 90% of us are using some kind of illegal software (according to most computer magazines at least). Hiding/ignoring the truth isn't exactly freedom of speech, so why should we really ignore it when everyone KNOWS things are like this anyway? Of course, (almost) all professional software developers are allergic to warez for reasons, but there's really nothing that can be done about it.

People download warez fairly easily these days, and while we should not distribute/link to warez, I could accept that they could get talked about. For example, if someone asks for help with the 3D Studio MAX renderer because his "illegal" version always crashes when he wants to render an animation, I think we should help him out. If we just tell him that we don't accept warez, he will most certainly leave the board and look for another one. And remember that this person is most likely not exactly a bad guy, no more evil than any of us, so what we did was to send a perfectly fine member somewhere else.

I agree with that, but he shouldn't brag about it being pirated. In fact, he shouldn't even say that he downloaded it.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Just think about it for a moment; What are the chances that "The User" will actually cease and desist to use warez just because we tell him that we don't allow it? I'm sure it's not the first time he has heard it, and as I already mentioned, he will just leave and look somewhere else.

Warez are not going to stop unless the developers physically find a way to make software a lot more secure in general. DVD's used to be very secure until someone cracked their encryption, and it might only be a matter of time before CD Keys/Credit cards are no longer a threat to those who want to play MMO games free of charge.

Actually, Chruser, there are ways to get free MMO accounts now.

lol , rurouni ur favorite quote is

"Don't live by someone else's rule. Do what you want, the way that you want to. "

i find that rather humerous

Laugh it up if you want, but that's how I believe your own life should be. Unfortunately, things aren't always as you'd like. :(

Does it really matter how he got the product? If the user is obligated to keep it a secret, all of the legit users are going to start bragging about their software, while the warez users won't say a word about the origin of the product. All of a sudden, there will be an unspoken rule in all support posts that can let any experienced Zelaroner find out if the user has a legal version or not. Thus no longer a freedom of speech.

WHY WHY WHY are we trying to ENFORCE something like this, ALL IT WILL DO IS, Cause the USER TO GOTO A DIFFRENT BOARD. it will NOT at ALL AT *A)(SF&* ALL make him think its wrong, he will not stop doing waht hes doing, no matter what we do, we are just a forum , So we are enforcing this and the ONLY THING ITS DOING, THE ONLY THING is causing members to QUIT, and for what? A server? A more expensive, not needed server? is bs

Penguin, if we don't, there won't be a forum. :(

I'd be willing to allow it if Zel wasn't at risk.

And Chruser, another valid point. Just as long as they don't publicly say where they got it from.

Wrong, We just switch hosts to the host we were using last time for the server. We were doing fine.

Most hosts have that rules, though. The old host might have had it, too. Even if the host allows it, eventually someone from a software company will find this site and the lawyers will descend like vultures upon poor Chruser and WetWired.

That's not my area, though.

"I beleive I already covered this in chapter 72 of my book" -Someone from Chatterbox in GTA3.

No, but seriously, I've already mentioned the pros and cons of both sides in the original post, and no matter what we do, either both sides must sacrifice something, or one side must surrender entirely. If either side will surrender, either the board will be taken down of most of the active members will leave, so those aren't really options.

My suggestion would be that these few sacrifices should be made:

* Free speech (If you downloaded a program and need support for it, you can say that it's an illegal version if it will speed up the helping process).

* No links to warez sites (That will bring a lot of bad 100%-warez hogs here, plus that it's a big danger for the site).

* Light violations are allowed (Posting a serial for an antivirus program, or one for windows who has lost his (trust me, it does happen) should be allowed).

* No major hints (For instance, telling an user that downloading the file from a site of a certain kind is wrong, while a certain file sharing program will work fine is a violation).

* Functionality discussions allowed (If someone wants to know why Grokster is so good, go ahead and tell them. They will find out anyway, so why keep information hidden from them? If we do, we're going to end up being as confidential as NASA. And we all know what that means, don't we? Lots of resources, great benefits, 100 years ahead of everyone else... Actually, maybe we should keep it a secret after all? :D).

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Of course, feel free to comment this list. It was just something I wrote randomly in a few minutes at 2 am, so I'm not sure whether I can think properly or not right now.

How about keeping the serials/keys limited to PMs? That way browsing people won't be able to read them and people won't be tempted to warez something they can buy.

Well, I don't even want to imagine having piles of serial requests all over the board (they look bad, and it will attract the wrong people), but generally, it's not something I want to decide on my own.