Linking to sites that use copyrighted/illegal content without permission
Please do not try to circumvent our rules and gain attention for your work by uploading content deemed unacceptable by our rules to other sites and then linking to said content on a Nexus site either by linking the content through a forum post or file comment, by uploading a mirror file in the file database or by posting a picture in the Image Share section with a link to the content.
Similarly do not link to sites that are known to contain illegal content irrespective of whether you direct users to the site's homepage or a specific page on the site.
If you do you face an instant ban when a moderator or admin catches you.
It is not my role or desire to dictate policy for the entire gaming community within which the Nexus sites reside and I would like nothing to do with sites that contain illegal content. If you are searching for such content I have no wish for you to find it via this site. I wish the owners of such sites all the best and their content and policies are none of my business. I stand firm on dictating policy on what content I want advertised on my own sites.
46 comments
A textbook 18-24 year old Caucasian male has purchased Steam versions of both Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. While talking with some of his friends (who all own and enjoy creating modified content for both games), they decide to use some of Oblivion's models and textures to create a multiplayer game that runs on HL2: DM's engine.
As this is a hypothetical situation, let us assume that the site the modders chose to upload this game onto, abides by the same rules and regulations as the Nexus, when it comes to copyrighted content. If they include in the credits, the intro to the game, and pretty much everywhere else in the game and it's release packages, all of the required copyright info showing that they neither made the Source engine, the original games, or the meshes and textures from Oblivion, would they be in violation of the given rules of the Nexus?
Now, understand that no content was used that Bethesda didn't create, and as the Source engine uses different mesh and texture files, they are not distributing the 100% Bethesda resources anyway. What would your ruling be if they submitted a link to their file on FPSBanana? I ask because I'm not completely sure, and would rather not start a project that I wouldn't be allowed to share with everyone who enjoys either (or both) game(s). Thank you in advance.
We have a low-traffic site, so it's much easier for us to keep on top of things than it for you guys, here. In the last six years I think I've only been contacted personally three times to deal with a situation that arose on the site because there were no administrators or moderators actively policing it at the time (we have lives, too, which is something some users seem to find incomprehensible, for some reason). Our members aren't primarily gamers, as they are here, and we see people from all walks of Internet Life. Fortunately, most of them are law abiding citizens of our community, so we've been able to keep our rules short, to the point, and in small numbers. Mostly it's a matter of common sense and courtesy, but we're finding out that some of the most obvious things need to be spelled out in black and white (or occasionally big red letters).
My basic concern in my last post boils down to the assumption of intent as a criterion for banning a user. We recently had a user bring up a question regarding the torrenting of a game ... assuredly orphanware by the company that made it, but still likely in copyright. While we don't in any way condone piracy and definitely don't tolerate descriptions of how to do it, I didn't ban this user. Instead, I explained why his question, even though he wasn't asking for how to do it, was in bad taste, and he agreed to not bring it up, again. This user is not a bad person. He doesn't hang out on the pirate boards snatching up illegal copies of every single game he has the bandwidth to download. He just wanted one game that's no longer commercially available. We're still not going to help him get it, but, on the other hand, we also still want him in our community. What he does off-site is his business. What he does on-site is ours, although we take the term moderation in all its various meanings when we're moderating our users.
That said, I know there's a reason for your forum dedicated specifically to administrative action against your user base. You have a lot of people here, and if the proportions of good users to bad users is the same here as it is on our site I can well imagine the problem you have policing the Nexus Forums, and it's probably a good idea to make bans and less extreme administrative actions an open thing. There's nothing like a good public flogging to get the attention of law-breakers. We don't do this because there's really no reason to do it. I've outright banned only a few active members in the six years I've been an administrator, and several of those were people who actually asked me to ban them (we don't delete accounts, either -- at least any which have posts in our discussion or RP forums). I have banned a lot of users who joined up without posting to the site and with questionable credentials (like throw-away email addresses), or who, after a little digging around the Internet because they used a suspicious name or email addy, I discovered they're trouble-makers, elsewhere. There have been a lot of other more minor issues which I've had to deal with, of course, but I've found that a good heart-to-heart talk always convinces the user to walk the straight and narrow, whether it's back into our community or over the bridge to never step foot inside it again. I sure the situation is different, here, although I'm really not seeing the flood of bans such as you might expect if you were drawing your user base from the shadier parts of the Internet.
I don't mind spending a little extra time with a user with whom we might have an issue, but, then, I'm retired from my 8-5 job and enjoying my life as a house-mate, so I have a little extra time to do that. Actually, I have a lot of extra time to do that, so I can afford to be a nanny for the users. I hardly expect you guys to do that, though. You have a rather large user:staff ratio, here. We'll never be this large, since we cater to a much smaller segment of the Internet, and my job is actually fun -- most of the time. Our users are friendly folks and some of us are on a first name basis with a few of them -- there have even been real-life meetings between some of our users who happen to live in the same part of the world, so it almost feels like a little town or village. This place feels like a large metropolis to me, by comparison, but that's fun, too. I might have been raised in the country, but I still love the Big City.
Anyway, thanks for your reply. You guys are doing a super job. Things could be better, perhaps, if more people took advantage of the report feature, since I know you don't have time to read every single post word-for-word. On the other hand, you apparently did read my wall-of-text.
You haven't provided specifics on what site you are dictating policy on so I can't relate to your situation. Are you in a similar high-traffic/high amount of users from less law abiding forums situation?
To wit, specifically related to this thread ...
Admin/Owner
Moderator
Now, to someone like me who looks at legalities of running a website with the purpose of avoiding conflicts down the line, as well as protecting the website against both bad PR and possible legal action, these two statements, taken together, raise a serious danger flag. While I agree in principle, in practice this will open up the possibility of victimizing users who are innocent of any knowing wrongdoing. It's simply impossible, in many cases, to be able to examine a user's post and determine what that user's intent was. We cannot assume that the user has the same agenda that we, ourselves, would have had we made the same post.
What if I link to a site that Robin knows contains illegal material, and maybe most of the regulars, here, know it as well? I'm a rank noob, though. I found this cool mod on www.such-and-such-random-site.com and I'd like to share it. I have no idea, myself, that this site is a den of piracy. After all, I just found that specific mod, thanks to Google (which, itself, links to just about every illegal site in Creation -- more on that, later), I downloaded my mod, and never looked at anything else on that site.
What's the next thing that happens? Instant ban. As an administrator, myself, one of my jobs is to protect my users from situations just like this, where knee-jerk reactions from our administrative staff, even if those knee-jerk reactions are dictated by policies we voted upon and passed. That's why we have a process of formal proposal, debate, and voting on policies -- it makes things flow a little more slowly, but we can find and fix issues like this before they ever become issues to the users. My personal policy for dealing with suspect, but not clearly and intentionally illegal activity, is to privately PM the user in question and to determine what his actual intent was before making a decision that just automatically assumes the worst-case scenario.
Now, to close, I'll deal with the Google issue. Basically, if it's illegal you can find it on Google -- whether you're talking about drugs, kiddie-porn, warez, or even assassins-for-hire. You just have to know how to search. Should this make it illegal to link to, or even mention, Google (or any other search engine), on the Nexus Forums? I could certainly make a good argument that the present policy regarding linking should lead to that. Let's say I set up my own private, little website. There's nothing illegal on it. It does, however, exist for one reason and that's to link to a bunch of other sites that I think would be of interest to users of my site. Those other sites are all warez sites, of course, just to avoid any ambiguity in this example. Now, I put a link to that site in my sig, or direct people to it in posts since some of my links go directly to sites that have Oblivion mods that use copyrighted content. Am I in violation of the linking policy of the Nexus Forums? If so, then Google should be off-limits as a resource to be recommended, and any link to it should lead to an instant ban. If not, then this is a loophole in the official policy and really needs to be addressed.
Is my example, which I admit is very nearly a reductio ad absurdum argument, all that contrived? No. I've actually seen this used on a number of occasions to circumvent linking policies on other sites.
....
...What?
4chan is a completely open imageboard with almost no rules to speak of. How is the Nexus anything like 4chan?
Actually, don't bother answering that. The last thing we need is a thread derailing.
I am very glad to hear this. I'd go into further detail, but your statement alone shows you guys are already considering thoughts similar to my own.
I was replying to predatorfett. :/
apparently uploading a picture which contains ripped content is already enough, ask laffindude