[Driftwood]

geez, what's the big deal?

I am afraid that you guys must have come by at a bad time, the people who hang out on IRC are really a great bunch of guys, you just have to take some that is said with a grain of salt.

Driftwood

 

[kelly]

Mac
As I alluded to, IRC isn't necessarily for the thin skinned. Chances are if we hadn't offended you about one thing, it would most certainly be another. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure you got the invitation.

Mark
I never imagined you a technophobe.

There are complete dumbasses on IRC so obviously the technological barrier is not a great one to cross. Chatting is a very different vehicle from forums, though so if you're happier with the forum format, this is where to find it.

As to whatever policies on HeadFi... I'm obligated to abide by them but I'm not obligated to agree with them or appreciate them and when I think they're silly and over the top, I'm farily likely to make fun of them somewhere. Doing so in the forum was probably crossing a line and I'll restrain from that in the future. Let me assure you guys that while HeadFi policy may occasionally be on the list of things to poke fun at on IRC, it's a long list and that one isn't anywhere near the top. Everyone's a target for ridicule where free speech is a commodity.

 

[ai0tron]

Closing the thread about the music swapping software was idiotic. It's not illegal in anyway shape or form to download kazaa and start downloading MP3's. Keeping them more than 24 hours is illegal though... Even so, coming here and saying, I DOWNLOAD MUSIC USING KAZAA AND BURN COPIES FOR ALL MY FRIENDS (not true) doesn't implicate head-fi.

The fact of the matter is, this site cannot be held responsible for the actions of it's members. Do you think Yahoo is held responsible for all the insane ***** that gets said in its chatrooms!!?!? Trust me, yahoo is at far greater risk than this website will ever be if accountability is ever directed at the medium rather than the person using the medium.

By the way, Yahoo, has been IMPLICATED as the medium through witch some young kids were taken advantage of. Yet yahoo is still here. Yahoo is not at fault.

Just the facts man. Just the facts.

 

[Jeff Guidry]

Quote:

Originally posted by ai0tron Closing the thread about the music swapping software was idiotic. It's not illegal in anyway shape or form to download kazaa and start downloading MP3's. Keeping them more than 24 hours is illegal though... Even so, coming here and saying, I DOWNLOAD MUSIC USING KAZAA AND BURN COPIES FOR ALL MY FRIENDS (not true) doesn't implicate head-fi. The fact of the matter is, this site cannot be held responsible for the actions of it's members. Do you think Yahoo is held responsible for all the insane ***** that gets said in its chatrooms!!?!? Trust me, yahoo is at far greater risk than this website will ever be if accountability is ever directed at the medium rather than the person using the medium. By the way, Yahoo, has been IMPLICATED as the medium through witch some young kids were taken advantage of. Yet yahoo is still here. Yahoo is not at fault. Just the facts man. Just the facts.

Well, far be it from me to support 'The Man' (i.e. Jude) but the heavy handed thread closing, no matter how annoying, is done for practical reasons. A single lawsuit, whether or not Jude is ultimately cleared of wrong-doing, would cost him many thousands of dollars AT A MINIMUM to defend himself against.

Corporations don't necessarily sue because they think they will ultimately win the case, they do it to shut down small sites that can't afford to defend themselves. Witness the periodic cease and desist letters that Simpsons fan sites are forced to deal with when Fox gets a burr up its corporate butt and decides their franchisce is earning only extraordinary amounts of money, rather than the preferred ungodly amounts.

IRC takes better advantage of the point-to-point anonymity of the net, so you can afford to be wild and wooly there. Head-fi has a clearly defined server and address, and presents a clear target for any prosectution (i.e. Jude).

No matter what your opinion of on-line music trading, the fact is that Jude opens himself up for lawsuits if he allows the posting of information about how to swap music files on line. Legal precedent so far has ruled in favor of music companies, and other, better funded sites (remember Napster?) have faced multi-million dollar suits for facilitating file swapping, and Morpheus is currently facing legal hurdles to keep distributing its software.

Head-fi may be a small fish, but there's no fish small enough not to catch the attention of the corporate sharks.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by ai0tron Even so, coming here and saying, I DOWNLOAD MUSIC USING KAZAA AND BURN COPIES FOR ALL MY FRIENDS (not true) doesn't implicate head-fi.

No, but saying "here's where to get free music" (if it's copyrighted) or "does anyone want to trade files?" does.

Quote:

The fact of the matter is, this site cannot be held responsible for the actions of it's members.

You obviously don't know the law, but in addition it appears that you don't even read the news much if you think a web site cannot be held responsible for the content contained therein. The fact that Head-Fi is moderated actually increases that potential liability.

As I've tried to explain over and over, but you guys either can't understand, or for some strange reason refuse to understand, it doesn't even matter what the law says. What matters is if someone decides that they don't like what is going on on Head-Fi and decides to take Head-Fi to court. Doesn't matter if Head-Fi is completely innocent -- one court case and Head-Fi goes under.

What really pisses me off about this -- and few thing actually piss me off LOL -- is that you guys don't seem to give a damn about Jude, or about Head-Fi itself. You want to whine about "free speech" and "censorship" and the like, as if this is all happening in a vacuum. Threads get edited and/or closed at Head-Fi for two reasons, and two reasons alone:

1) The content is clearly destructive to the community atmosphere here on Head-Fi. One of the great things about Head-Fi is its community. We have relatively few flame wars, people are generally civil, and the discussion is usually quite intelligent and constructive. We want to keep Head-Fi this way, so if a thread is clearing heading down the road to useless flaming, we'll cut it off. However, take a look at how many threads the moderators have actually closed -- the number is VERY small. As someone who has LOTS of experience moderating web forums and mailing lists, I can assure you that if there were no moderation, the "community" feel of Head-Fi, and the high level of discussion here, would cease to exist.

2) The content poses a legal risk to Head-Fi -- including the risk of some overzealous idiot trying to shut the site down whether it is liable for anything or not. As I mentioned above, the fact that Head-Fi is moderated actually increases the potential liability. One of the key factors in these types of legal matters is whether or not the people who run the web site have any control over its content, including any "review" of that content. By virtue of being a moderated forum, Head-Fi has a much higher level of responsibility for content than a web site that is unmoderated.

Running a useful, civil, and engaging forum involves a balance between "free speech" and "questionable content" -- all things considered, I think the moderation team is doing a pretty damned good job. There is only really one issue where there is any "controversy" over moderation, and that is this one. This "controversy" is caused by a handful of people who could just as easily go to one of the hundreds of other places where such discussion is "allowed" -- including the much-vaunted IRC channel.


Quote:

Do you think Yahoo is held responsible for all the insane ***** that gets said in its chatrooms!!?!?

Yahoo chatrooms are completely different than a private forum, especially a moderated one. The fact that you use Yahoo as an example equivalent to Head-Fi shows that you really don't understand the legal issues being discussed.


This whole discussion is getting really old. This is one TINY issue that deals with a MINISCULE number of posts on Head-Fi, yet you guys are making such a big deal about it (including the "almost clever, but not quite" "free ****" thread). Grow up guys. It's as simple as this: Head-Fi is not a place to discuss trading of music (unless it's clearly and completely legal). If you don't like that, tough. Our responsibilities are not to keep the IRC clique happy -- they are to keep Head-Fi healthy and existing.

 

[ai0tron]

This isnt Napster.

Second of all, what happened to concepts of FREE SPEECH... Are the mere mention of these links to, and or the concepts of, file trading ILLEGAL!!?!?

As much as it would prove my point on so many issues to suggest otherwise I really must insist that even under the corporate rule of capitalism we still have rights to free speech... don't we?

Is it such that the interests of the RIAA have gone beyond just preventing file sharing, but also preventing the very mention of file sharing???

I don't think so, although it would not surprise me if it did.

I think those of you who wan't to bend over and take it up the ass for every corporate monstrosity that comes by are living in a vaccum.

I think the fact that you don't see something INATELY WRONG with this situation proves that you live in a vaccum.

I think that if head-fi has something to fear than we all have something to fear, apparently my rights are no longer guaranteed as the financial interests of corporations have superceded the very basic rights to life that I as a HUMAN deserve. Whether I care to express that right here, or abuse it here really shouldn't matter to them. IF someone says, "Where can I get this illegal info." And I know the answer, it is my right, to say the answer as I know it. I have not broken the law by sharing the information.

 

[ai0tron]

I also find it very interesting how you say "Whining about free speech."

K, I, me, myself, ai0tron, ai_god, poor_american_boy, whatever I am at the moment, *I*... will NEVER for ONE instant, accept that one of my rights can be trampled, for whatever reason. I WILL attempt to prevent it whether it's seen as right or wrong. Even if it is on an online forum. According to the US constitution I have a right to FREE SPEECH, and while I TRULLY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS TO YOU OR THE GOVERNMENT, I know what it means to ME. And I am sure that what it means to me is just totally ludicrous to you, but thats because you are a TOOL, and you will go on being a TOOL because for some reason thats what YOU LIKE. BUT NOT ME.

I hate the way it feels to not say something because im afraid of what will happen if I say it. If I chose not to say something because I feel thats the right thing to do, that is also free speech... sometimes even then I question my OWN motive and wonder if perhaps I have been influenced to want something that isnt necessarily totally right... But being required to avoid certain topics makes me ITCH ALL OVER to shove those topics down someones throat... metaphorically speaking.

 

[Jeff Guidry]

OK...did EITHER of you read my post? I addressed all of the above mentioned issues, and I don't think I did so in an unclear manner. We seem to be repeating ourselves by not actually reading other people's posts (namely, mine).

You've both got perfectly understandable viewpoints. I understand ai0tron's vision of a truly free and open forum for the exhange of ideas, and I understand MacDEF's practical standpoint about the need to restrict speech to avoid legal problems.

ai0tron, it is one thing to take responsiblity for your own speech and deal with any legal consequences stemming from it. But this forum is owned and run by Jude, and HE will be the target of any potential litigation, not you. I feel you are looking at this issue too abstractly, and you aren't perceiving the finer practical details that MacDEF is trying to impress on us.

I would suggest you start your own BBS, paid for with your own money, to discuss whatever you like. It is entirely possible that you can run it for years and fly under the radar of any attorneys poking around the internet to find a place to sharpen their talons.

But woe betide you if the hawk spots you scurrying on the ground.

 

[Duncan]

I think I must be missing a point here...

So, someone finds / wants to find somewhere where you can download music... buy drugs... confess to a weird fetish... whatever / whenever / whoever.

Isn't that the whole point of #headphones anyway?

on IRC you CAN have free speech... you can say what the hell you like, and people can respond to that exactly how they please, there is no set moderation... anything goes. Nothing is saved to screen, or printed out for future reference, once you close the window, its gone... forever

Here, there IS moderation ~ heck, aren't all the posts a hard copy pointing the finger at the poster and/or the bulletin board itself? This is a board that, man woman or child can join, no age constraint, no anything... Free ****, If you had a child who went to a bulletin board much the same as this, who clicked one of those links, and went to a **** site... who would you be pissed at? the kid for clicking the link, or the site for showing it?

You may say you require free speech, but we are ALL outspoken, Do you drive at 150mph on the freeway because your car can do that? no... why? because it is unacceptable... Talking about ****, and potentially illegal things (IIRC there was no disclaimer in the music threads initial post that this was a LEGAL search for music?) on a family orientated site is also unacceptable isn't it?

 

[pigmode]

Quote:

I hate the way it feels to not say something because im afraid of what will happen if I say it.

The drama, the drama... (said like Marlon Brando)

Why be afraid? You do have the option to say anything you want, just as they have the option to delete it. Fairs fair.

 

[ai0tron]

I percieve all the details MAC provided. Its all a lot of BS imo.

Joe BLoggs posts on EQ'ing are gonna get Jude sued by every high end transducer designer in the world...

[macdefmode] Apparently high end performance is just an EQ away. What if hordes of people started to believe this??? The lawyers are gonna find out this forum fostered the idea and burn it to the ground. [/macdefmode]

The same can be said of every other opinion. What about Bose sux statements??

What about dana carvey making fun of George bush and Ross Perot???

SUE him too.

You people are ****ing looney IMO if you think this site is gonna get sued because someone posted a link to a file trading service.




The whole idea of free music being a sin is such a load of **** anyways. I'm going to download a gig of music right now and burn it onto special 120 year archival cd's. ANd I'm going to listen to it all over and over and over.

What if I had a perfect memory and ultra vivid imagination and I could relive the song in my mind without needing to hear it???? Would I need a lobotomy?? Is it my right to be able to remember music I didnt pay for? Someday humanity is gonna realize what a crock the COPYRIGHT is.


Pigmode- I think that a forum, particularly the members lounge, advertises itself as being an open place for the expression of ideas. IMO.



PS, jeff, if the HAWK spots me it better spot the shotgun im packing also.

 

[Jeff Guidry]

All right tough guy, what about starting your own BBS and putting your money where your mouth is?

It's easy to be a badass on somebody else's dime.

 

[jude]

ai0tron,

True story follows:

There we were (my company), minding our own business, when a lawyer letter arrives in the mail telling us we are using a piece of software (a backend piece) in violation of the user agreement in one of our applications. The letter demanded we stop using this software immediately.

What? Huh? Mad flipping through the user agreement. No violation.

The intellectual property law firm representing us agreed, and couldn't believe the other company would try to interpret the user license this way. A couple of other attorney friends who were intimately familiar with our operations also read the license agreement and agreed.

Further investigation revealed that the other company wanted us to stop using their software product because we used it to create an application that was turning out to be more successful than another product (an entirely separate product, and so unrelated to the license agreement in question) that the other company had created using that same backend software (again, not in violation of the user agreement, as we weren't using it to create an application that competed with the software we were licensing).

Relevant to this story is that, at the time, the other company was a lot bigger than my company, and generated a lot more revenue (at what level of profitability I did not know as they were privately held).

Long story short, lawyers were brought into it full-tilt. And even though we felt nearly 100% confident that we'd win this case, we started developing our own software to serve the same backend purpose just in case. Development was relatively fast (it had to be), a lot of resources were dedicated to it (including some outside development work), and it ended costing my company a lot of money to do. Understand also, that this whole process (the legal process and our own software development process) was happening over several months.

Okay, so it eventually goes to binding arbitration in the home state of the other company -- yes, a couple of people from our company (and our lawyers) had to travel there (also very expensive). Amazingly enough, at the end of the arbitration, we end up pretty much exactly where we started before the first lawyer letter was sent to us -- with the right to use the software we had licensed (which we had paid tens of thousands of dollars to license in the first place). But the software we had paid to develop ourselves just in case ended up becoming what we'd use going forward because we never wanted to deal with this crap again (and, no, we didn't get back a single penny of the money we paid to license the other company's software in the first place -- so, in essence, they also sort of won).

We were right. We knew it. We just had to pay many, many thousands of dollars to be told that in binding arbitration after several months, and a lot of time-consuming and expensive preparation. We also felt forced to spend an enormous amount of money and time to develop our own software solution so that we would never have to deal with this situation again, especially as our company scaled up; yet this in-house development is what we were trying to avoid by licensing the other company's software in the first place.

And this is only one of the examples of lawyers and disputes costing me a bundle -- there are a few other completely unrelated examples I could share with you, too.

So yeah, ai0tron, you and I look at it from completely different perspectives (you're still a student, still likely far removed from the reality of such things happening to you). And I try to stay away from laywers whenever I can.

In a way, it doesn't surprise me that Team IRC sees moderation as heavy-handed here, given that most of the six to ten of them are still students who are still a little ways away from having to deal with the crap I described above; not to mention that lately this little group seems to find most of what occurs here at the site as "silly and over the top".

11,295 threads, and I'd guess (because I haven't counted) that a tiny tiny percentage of the threads ever gets locked (and mostly for boring reasons, like the threads going way off topic).

Tell you what, ai0tron, if you agree to fund 100% (and only after financial due diligence proves that you have the resources to do so) any legal and other costs incurred by any related disputes/lawsuits (however unlikely), maybe I'll consider letting the site run without moderation in this specific regard.

As Jeff Guidry expressed, it's easy to say how things should be done here when you're not at the butt end of any of the possible legal consequences/costs, however likely or unlikely.

And if you still don't understand, then start another forum and let'er rip.

 

[Snufkin]

As a former moderater of a large online forum that represented a company all I can say is that free speech is not always incredibly valuable when it comes to online communites - it just means that every a-hole and his dog thinks it's time to exercise their right to be a dick and piss everyone else off, then yell and scream when they're "censored". Freedom of opinion is one thing, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to abuse people providing you with a FREE service.

This is the internet people, NOT America, the laws are grey, there is no constitution.

Perhaps people need to exercise freedom of intelligence a little more and use some of that common sense that everyone in the entire world is entitled to, why not make a big fuss about that instead of ranting about how you're being "opressed" or some crap.

If I bash out some random message, I'm always aware that I may be edited, my post may be deleted, I may be banned - it's called consequence. I don't control these forums, but I control what I have to say, perhaps some people need to calm down and understand that what you have to say may not actually be that interesting, useful or amusing to EVERYONE here. I don't even expect most people to read my posts, but I try to keep the community in mind when I do post just in case there is someone out there who does give a toss.

Think of this place as Judes house, would you think it perfectly reasonable to go around to Judes place and talk about the best way to get his SO into bed? Or perhaps the best way to plan a bombing of a landmark building? Perhaps you'd like to discuss how best to rob him or your local bank?

And when the police come after you, tell them that you're entitled to freedom of speech.

You might also want to explain to Jude why you think so little of him that you did these things in HIS house.

 

[Hirsch]

Having attempted to engage some of the IRC members in discussion on some of these topics, it's pretty clear that some just don't want to hear it, or are too young to understand the issues involved. Too bad, because they're screwing up what was starting to be a decent IRC channel.

Rather than rehashing the arguments, I'll simply go on record as fully supporting Jude, MacDEF, Jeff and those others who have tried to inject some sense into the discussion.