Should talk about piracy be allowed for blues or disallowed for golds? v8 [Discussion]

[Missing User]

Hey Facepunch, Anime Doug~ here.

Got an interesting discussion topic for ya today, regarding piracy and Facepunch. As many of you know discussion of piracy is a bannable offense on Facepunch, except for in one section which you may not have known about, [B]the Gold Members Forum[/B]:

[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/torrentees.png[/img]
Pictured: Piracy in the GMF.

Now, by hosting these talks on Facepunch, garry (real name: Garry Newman) is clearly aiding/facilitating copyright infringement for everyone on his forums with Gold Membership or access to the Gold Members Forums. The same argument was leveed with some degree of success against the owners of The Pirate Bay when they were convicted of accessory to crime against copyright laws in a decision by a Swedish court in April 2009. Copyright laws are generally much more lax in Sweden than in the United Kingdom where Facepunch Studios is registered as a company. Garry Newman could easily be charged and convicted if the proper authorities were alerted and he were taken to court.

Based on this knowledge you should have discerned by now that garry is either a hero for standing up against corporate greed, or a massive hypocrite of the highest caliber.

[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/piracy.png[/img]
Pictured: Four of many bans proving garry to be a hypocrite.

garry has been known to ban users for discussing the piracy of his game (Garry's Mod, $10 on the Steam platform) in all forums; however, he allows discussion and trading of torrent links/access to a wuala with a massive amount of pirated games in it in the GMF. Even other Steam games, made by the company who accepted him into their online catalogue of games and made him all of his wealth, are up for grabs in the GMF... seems kind of like a slap to Steam/Valve's face when you think about it right?

I've thought up two topics for everyone to discuss, listed below:

[B]1.[/B] Is garry a hypocrite or a hero?

[B]2.[/B] Should garry allow talking about piracy in the Blue sections of the forums, or ban it in the Gold Members Forums?

You can also bring up other topics to discuss, and feel free to voice your opinion even if you think its silly! No voice should go unheard in this.

Personally, I think garry is a hypocrite, and I would liken the current situation with Facepunch to a drug dealer setting up a sandwich shop as a front to his cocaine smuggler business in the back room. The only thing different is Facepunch is the front and piracy is the cocaine.

[B]v2 Special Content:[/B]

The Gold Members in v1 were arguing that they use the thread for the discussion of torrenting linux distros, which is just absolutely not true:

[img]http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8270/torrenteecontent.jpg[/img]

Pictured: Not even a little true.

[B]v3 Special Content:[/B]
Hey guys, just to give you an idea of what to expect in the next Doug Discussion Thread, lets just say it will be about the morality of international child labor. Look forward to it.

Quote of the thread: "[I]You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.[/I]"
-Henry David Thoreau

[highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("Spammer" - Dragon))[/highlight]

[highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("Doug" - verynicelady))[/highlight]