vBulletin revokes Hongfire's license...due to loli

[El Riot]

From Hongfire's current front page:

The <a href="http://www.piratereports.com/">company outsourced</a> by <a href="http://www.vbulletin.com/">Jelsoft</a> for handling copyright infringement has decide to have our license revoked due to <a href="http://www.hongfire.com/vbulletin.txt">moral reasons.</a>

Put your anger against them, not us.

Please don't go harrassing Jelsoft on their forum. Its not Jelsoft's fault - it's the one of their lawyer. If anyone wants to talk about this go see <a href="http://www.digg.com/software/PirateReports_revokes_vBulletin_license_of_HongFire_com_for_moral_reasons">this</a> digg article instead.

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Update: <a href="http://blogs.dirtyworker.com/2006/12/23/vbulletin-license-problems/">Someone else</a> that owns a license for VBulletin has been inquiring about this because he is worried about what jelsoft can do when it comes to revocation someones license

I'm not a fan of Hongfire or their yar-har-har ways, but I really don't like this.

Check out the digg article; there's a response by PirateReports.

From the link "moral reasons" above, which contains the correspondence between HF and the lawyer:

Despite your Lawyer's opinion we do not consider child abuse be it animated, fictitious or otherwise to be an appropriate association with the Jelsoft Brand.

Please either remove all sexually orientated lolli posts and graphics or your license willl be revoked under the Acceptable Use Policy and your network asked to delete the whole forum.

This is a bit worrying. Doesn't Gemot run on vBulletin?

[Shii]

vBulletin previously threatened to revoke Something Awful's license because the forum's administrator spoke poorly about vBulletin's quality.

I am not a big fan of either forum, but you have to admit, vBulletin is one of those pieces of software that always has you on a leash. You have to do what Jelsoft wants or they simply take your forum away from you.

[Claudio]

This is why I code everything I put on my web. Sure, it might not have as many bells and whistles, but I can put anything I damn please on it.

[Shii]

Another option is using free software such as punBB, which gives you total ownership.

[Misu]

Originally Posted by Shii

Another option is using free software such as punBB, which gives you total ownership.

And unfortunately does not give you half to the ever important spam filter protection without either a lot of custom coding or a myriad of plugins, which sometimes conflict with each other and what not. Also, coding up something like a bulletin board from scratch is kinda a waste of time as there are ample out there that do what we need it to do. I'd rather spend my time coding something else (and in fact, we do have some interesting projects being coded right now).

I admittedly don't like the stance they took, but it is Jelsoft's outsourced antipiracy companies opinion and not their own (who knows, with enough complaints, they may consider getting a new antipiracy company). And frankly, I highly doubt this forum is going to be complaining about the quality of vBulletin nor particularly worried about the content either, as we keep NSFW images out of the boards. I don't think the Gemot has much to worry about and it's not a big enough thing to stop me from using a perfectly nice piece of software (that I spent some decent money on too).

[Shii]

My comment was more directed at Claudio, and Hongfire who don't seem to realize that punBB can convert posts directly from vB3.

I don't think the Gemot will get in any trouble over discussing unauthorized translations. If anything VisualNews itself is in more danger for hosting them directly, and I think you're right not to worry about that, Misu :)

[Misu]

Hehe... but that would kill all of hongfires features, especially their imageboard. So much vBulletin plugin integration on that board. And besides, what would Hongfire be without its massive loli gallery? xD

[Edit]But wow, I just read up the email between the hongfire rep and the piratereports rep, and I must say, the piratereports guy was quite an asshole...

[Message]

On the other hand the HF mails were not very... shall we say, sophisticated. I'm not surprised that they just cut the knot and closed it.

[Misu]

Hehe.... if we ever get into a legal battle about anything Message, your being the spokesperson XD. I doubt I could do much better the the HongFire rep besides putting in more facts to back up my argument, so I'll leave the talking to ya XD.

So, they revoked a licence. For a board that routinely trades copyrighted material, surely they should be used to having no licence? :P
Why do they care? Just carry on using it anyway...

[Misu]

They care cause in the email exchanges, PirateReports continually threatens that if they use vBulletin unauthorized that PirateReports would continually harass their service provider to completely shutdown the site and delete all of the content, including the database, which would result to a monumental loss for HongFire unless someone there was smart enough to backup the db on a personal box and not with the service provider.

Well, they're back up now. People at Jelsoft changed their minds, I guess.

[Misu]

Probably too much negative publicity.

[Talbain]

I wish Hongfire would've stayed down... they should be using SMF or some other forum software anyways. vB's forum software sucks.

[Message]

You've obviously never seen its administration panel. vB is the most advanced forum application I've ever seen.