As many of you are aware, we've had a spot of bother with our Sharing section, where unscrupulous and loathsome individuals have been selling your downloads for profit.
The good news is that we are taking measures to prevent that, but as a consequence we've recently changed a few things:
The short version:
Brand new members will not be able to see the Sharing section yet. Sorry folks, but hopefully you will understand why once you read the rest of this post...
The longer version:
We found that audio downloads - as provided for free by the very kind members of this community - were being abused, and some unpleasant, money-grabbing folks were selling copies of the audio they had downloaded here for free, on eBay for profit, which obviously goes against the spirit of fans sharing this stuff with other fans for free.
To add insult to injury, many of the recordings being sold were from the personal collections of forum members, who had been to all the time, expense and risk of recording the gig themselves and sharing it with the rest of us.
As I am sure everyone here knows, we are first and foremost a fan forum, which just happens to have a Sharing section for members who participate in the community. We are not a "download site" with an archive for you to profit from.
So, what have we done about this:
The first measure we have introduced to limit this type of activity is a post threshold, whereby new members need to say hello and get involved in the community a little before they are able to see the Sharing section.
By default the Sharing section will not be visible to new members, until they have reached a certain post threshold.
We know this is not foolproof, but it's the first step we are introducing. There will be other steps.
Furthermore, we are actively tracking people who are selling fan recordings form the forum on eBay, and reporting them to eBay to get their eBay accounts banned. Additionally, I will personally do everything I can to besmirch the not-so-good name of anyone we find doing this, so the rest of the Sisters community knows who you are and what a shitty individual you are. Your name will be mud, as they say.
It goes without saying that any forum member found doing this will also be banned from HL, and we will use any personal details associated with their account (such as email address, IP addresses, etc) to prevent them creating a new account.
We will continue to monitor the situation and take action as it seems appropriate.
Thanks for your patience, and I trust you all understand.
QB
