[MOD] Important rule reminder.
It has been brought to my attention that several individuals and subbing teams in this fandom have recently implemented the use of for-profit links from adf.ly, something that is addressed in our community rules:
☆ Sales posts are banned in the community; any and all posts pertaining to sales will be rejected. If you have something you want to sell, please check out the links to the right for more relevant places to post. Links to online shopping sites such as Yesasia and CDJapan are allowed provided they are not affiliate or webgains links. For-profit links such as LinkBucks are banned as well.
I'll be honest: it's disappointing to hear that this trend is returning to our fandom. I would have thought that with all the issues regarding PayPal's refusal to let us collect money for the Japan fundraiser because they considered it a "sale of copyright infringing materials", and after the brief panic over people linking said fundraiser to VSA's producers, that everyone would be more careful and unwilling to both use and support money-earning methods like this.
We've addressed the dangers of copyright-violating content before. We've discussed the legalities of the things we do in fandom. People can debate over this until the cows come home and still get nowhere, because some will have no issues with it and see it as the subbers getting some well-deserved reward for all their hard work, while others will find it hugely hypocritical considering the fears that many subbers have about being subject to legal action.
But regardless of each person's personal morals and views on this matter, regardless of whether this is ethical or not, it is clearly stated in the rules that this is not allowed. I cannot impose these rules elsewhere on Livejournal, but there will be no profiteering off other fans for things that are free in this community, and it will always stay that way.
Therefore, I will be deleting all the posts in violation of this rule shortly; if I miss any, you're welcome to link them to me either through PM or in this post and I will delete them as well. Recurring rule breakers will be banned from the community. I cannot check locked posts in external subbing communities, so it would be much appreciated if people can alert me to reoccurrences in the future.
As per usual, feel free to comment here with any opinions, questions or concerns. Thank you for reading.
EDIT: I almost forgot to link to this, which was from about a year ago: http://arashi-on.livejournal.com/3866427.html
I'm going to copy and paste a part from it because it is very important and relevant to this issue at hand:
The suspect was in violation of the Japanese Copyright Act during the period of November 22nd of last year to February 5th by publicly sharing Arashi's concert footage from two different products including the DVD "ARASHI AROUND ASIA+ in DOME" as well as commercial broadcasts of variety shows on Youtube. According to the police, he has testified that he "wanted to earn some spending money" from it. The suspect Miyazaki had been directing viewers onto his own homepage in hopes of generating ad revenue. A copyright organization provided information and alerted the police to the matter. [T/N: In another article, it was further stated that his site had received tens of thousands of hits.]
☆ Sales posts are banned in the community; any and all posts pertaining to sales will be rejected. If you have something you want to sell, please check out the links to the right for more relevant places to post. Links to online shopping sites such as Yesasia and CDJapan are allowed provided they are not affiliate or webgains links. For-profit links such as LinkBucks are banned as well.
I'll be honest: it's disappointing to hear that this trend is returning to our fandom. I would have thought that with all the issues regarding PayPal's refusal to let us collect money for the Japan fundraiser because they considered it a "sale of copyright infringing materials", and after the brief panic over people linking said fundraiser to VSA's producers, that everyone would be more careful and unwilling to both use and support money-earning methods like this.
We've addressed the dangers of copyright-violating content before. We've discussed the legalities of the things we do in fandom. People can debate over this until the cows come home and still get nowhere, because some will have no issues with it and see it as the subbers getting some well-deserved reward for all their hard work, while others will find it hugely hypocritical considering the fears that many subbers have about being subject to legal action.
But regardless of each person's personal morals and views on this matter, regardless of whether this is ethical or not, it is clearly stated in the rules that this is not allowed. I cannot impose these rules elsewhere on Livejournal, but there will be no profiteering off other fans for things that are free in this community, and it will always stay that way.
Therefore, I will be deleting all the posts in violation of this rule shortly; if I miss any, you're welcome to link them to me either through PM or in this post and I will delete them as well. Recurring rule breakers will be banned from the community. I cannot check locked posts in external subbing communities, so it would be much appreciated if people can alert me to reoccurrences in the future.
As per usual, feel free to comment here with any opinions, questions or concerns. Thank you for reading.
EDIT: I almost forgot to link to this, which was from about a year ago: http://arashi-on.livejournal.com/3866427.html
I'm going to copy and paste a part from it because it is very important and relevant to this issue at hand:
The suspect was in violation of the Japanese Copyright Act during the period of November 22nd of last year to February 5th by publicly sharing Arashi's concert footage from two different products including the DVD "ARASHI AROUND ASIA+ in DOME" as well as commercial broadcasts of variety shows on Youtube. According to the police, he has testified that he "wanted to earn some spending money" from it. The suspect Miyazaki had been directing viewers onto his own homepage in hopes of generating ad revenue. A copyright organization provided information and alerted the police to the matter. [T/N: In another article, it was further stated that his site had received tens of thousands of hits.]