vBulletin Controversy

[Brandon]

So as I understand it as of to now, the site; HongFire; had "morally objective" content on there site, thought by "Howard G Spinks" (The vB Piracy Dude) so he had given them time to remove it and blah-blah-blah, im not a content writer hes the post:

Howard G Spinks
Dec 21st '06 02:18pm

Hello

The matter is not up for debate as you can either remove the morally devoid items as requested, or take your activities to another software.

You have had time to act as requested and I am having your license revoked under the Jelsoft Acceptable Use Policy and continued use of the software will be illegal and will result in your forum being deleted by your network.

I assure you that my 35 years in law enforcement have not been wasted as you appear to be insinuating.


Regards

Howard G Spinks
Jelsoft Licensing & Anti Piracy Agent

www.piratereports.com

So I guess Jelsoft didnt start this

Considering that it is Saturday and tomorrow is Christmas Eve, it is going to take a few days before we can straighten all of this out. Please be assured that we are not going to start policing our customer's forums and revoking licenses because we do not agree with questionable content that is contained within.

So now this dude says

Needless to say, we do not have the power to arbitrarily shut down sites, either on a legal basis or because we can't physically pull the plug on sites to which we or others object on whatever grounds. When a site is found to be in violation of the license agreement the best we can do is approach the owners of the site to request that they alter their site in order to comply with the license agreement, and if that fails we may take it to the next level and ask the hosting ISP to act on our behalf.

Well im gonna stop it and let you read the sources in the article i got found.

http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6115
http://blogs.dirtyworker.com/2006/12/23/vbulletin-license-problems/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1989694
http://www.digg.com/software/PirateReports_revokes_vBulletin_license_of_HongFir e_com_for_moral_reasons
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=213539

Hmmm....so should it have been revoced.

[Chris Z]

vBulletin shouldn't have any control over what is hosted on their forum platform, as long as the user has paid for their software, the content provided should be entirely up to the customer

[noerrorsfound]

vBulletin shouldn't have any control over what is hosted on their forum platform, as long as the user has paid for their software, the content provided should be entirely up to the customer

I completely agree. If you buy a car the car company shouldn't be able to tell you where you can and cannot drive.

[Joker Boy]

vBulletin shouldn't have any control over what is hosted on their forum platform, as long as the user has paid for their software, the content provided should be entirely up to the customer

Perfect.

[Brandon]

Thats what people are saying this isnt right, but well see what vB does with a press release I hope.

[Livewire]

I completely agree. If you buy a car the car company shouldn't be able to tell you where you can and cannot drive.

Better. Probably the best example yet.

See, all I'm majorly confused about? You're going to war over a site that used a COMPLETELY SEPARATE image gallery for hosting the images. Wasn't even on vBulletin. But there are torrent websites running their forums on vBulletin, hosting files ranging from Age of Empires to Zero Wing (hey, A to Z ^_^).

And they're going after the picture.


:gtfo2: Jelsoft.

[Brandon]

Well it wasnt Jelsoft it was Pirate Reports, there Anti-Piracy Team.

We better be careful, they may revoce our lisence for talking about this...;)

[Livewire]

Update: Jelsoft has reinstated Hongfire.com's license - the site is back up and running.

But it's still BS that it was even down for a minute XD

[Joker Boy]

So its over? That's it?

[Brandon]

No

vB dudnt even release a press release yet, im still waiting.