I've got a question. Why is it a-ok to talk about drug use ad nauseam in these forums, but when someone brings up that they bought a Star Wars bootleg dvd the thread is deleted?

Is it ok to talk about one illegal thing, but not another for some odd reason?

I don't know, it just don't get it...
I think drugs are horrible and the discussions in this forum could actually influence people into using them.

Where do people discuss how to use drugs on the forum?

Zodo, take this. It'll help you relax.

You have any for me?

Zodo....maybe you can direct us to a thread where this is happening.

(Not as a mod)

Bootlegs on a site about dvd might bring legal action

conversations about drugs in an "other" forum will not. Plus there is much to learn from some of those threads.

I didn't say there were discussions on 'how to use drugs', but there have been many in the past that discuss 'drug use'.

ie: "Poll: what drugs have you done", "My wife doesn't want me to smoke pot anymore", etc...

There have been many

You all probably just can't remember b/c you've been doing too many drugs.

The incriminating "Where can I get it?" question pops up a lot more in discussions about bootlegs than drugs.

That's going to cause drugs use?

I think acknowledging the role drugs have in life is fine. I've seen how-to stuff get slapped down, hard.

Having done some work with PDFA, they think it is healthy to discuss drugs. It is when you make them a secret taboo that you're helping promote them.

I was worried about the last drug use thread I started - I tried to keep the illegal part under the surface, but that didn't last long.

Personally, I think bootlegging is worse than drug use.

Bootlegging is stealing - it doesn't matter how much you want to justify it, its still stealing.

Drug use is a personal choice. I decide if I want to use drugs; it doesn't effect anyone else - except supporting the terrorists

We may have gotten a bit too loose on the drug talk lately. I thought the thread about "is it cheaper to smoke marijuana than cigarettes" was a valid discussion, as long as it was done in fairly vague terms. I felt a bit uneasy when the "it only costs me this much here" posts started, but not necessarily enough to close the thread(maybe I was high ). I remember locking up a marijuana growing conditions post in the past.

This would be a good time to remind everyone about the "Report this post to a moderator" link. I don't recall seeing any reports about any drug related threads, so there's no way to know that there were any complaints(until this thread).

I have no problem with drug discussion or people who use drugs (and as long as it's not instructions on how to purchase, I have no problem with bootleg discussion either), but that's a pretty naive outlook. You do affect others.

das

DVDTalk

*Now sanitized for your protection*

Well don't foget what Uncle Remus said:

<B>"You can't get away from bootlegs... there ain't no place that far"</B>



-k
###

I have no problem with the discussion of how to properly take Aspirin or Cough Syrup...

Here's what it boiled down to. Every time people talked about bootlegs, people started asking where to buy them, etc.

We tried to say, you can talk ABOUT the bootlegs, but don't talk about where to obtain them. But people didn't listen, and eventually it was consuming too much of the moderators' attention. It was more trouble than it was worth to allow discussion of bootlegs, so we were forced to simply ban all discussion of bootlegs.

I'm sure if the drug discussions always degenerated into questions and information about where and how to obtain them, they would quickly be banned also.

Wow. That is quite the assumption you're making there, and you know what they say about people who assume.
"When you assume, you make an as...."

I'm sure you know the rest of that saying.

the bootleg discussion would work better as stated by the above, without everyone asking were they can get there copy. thats the problem really.. people don't know how to handle it when it comes down to it. Oh well. I'm sure if everyone played nice and actually walked the thin line, discussion of bootlegs would be a little more mature about it.

Yep. When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of u and mption.

das

Can someone please tell me where to get these bootleg drugs?

I dont know about about the rest of you, but I sure loves to take a bunch of drugs AND watch bootleg DVD's at the same time.....so much fun!!!

Ok, ok, ok... I simply MUST jump in here with my opinion.

We've all heard the analogy of the butterfly flapping it's wings which indirectly leads to a typhoon (or maybe you haven't; I've heard many times myself). It's a parable to illustrate cause-and-effect. But should the butterfly be "held responsible" for the ship that was wrecked by the typhoon? The very notion is absurd.

Yet every single day, I see our society seeking to distribute blame for specific crimes and unfortunate incidents. Assigning fault seems to be greatest national pasttime, but it solves absolutely nothing. Why can't each of us be held responsible for OUR OWN ACTIONS (within reason, of course; minor children and those with severe mental disabilities cannot be realistically held responsible for their actions). If someone told me that they decided to try (insert any drug here) simply because they read about it on a dvd discussion forum, I'd feel compelled to beat them senseless. If a person is that idiotic, the gene pool (and by extension, the entire human race) is better of without them. But stupidity is no excuse for transferring even a little bit of blame to some anonymous individuals who happened to discuss drugs (either negatively or positively) on a website forum.

If the mods wish to ban or limit such conversations, so be it (this is, after all, a dvd discussion board); but that decision should be based ONLY on the mods' preferences and what they consider to be legitimate discussion. The decision whether or not to allow drug references should most definitely NOT be based on speculation as to how such discussions might/might not influence others.

And since someone is bound to bring up minors surfing these pages and being influenced to try drugs as an argument against the above, allow me to rebuff such comments in advance by asserting that kids, though generally easily influenced, are not - for the most part - mindless automons. Children are capable of determining "right" from "wrong" at an early age. By the time they reach puberty, most kids are already very aware of "drugs" and have likely established in some ways how they feel about the issue. Whether they read a few comments about drugs or not on the internet is highly unlikely to sway them one way or another. It's my opinion that the parents who are quickest to lay the blame on the nearest scapegoat (an unfortunately rising number, it seems) do so out of doubt of their own parenting abilities - but pride won't let them admit it, so they seek others to blame.

Just my opinion, folks.

Because if the studios find out about the drug topics they aren't likely to cut off the flow of freebies.

Wow Groucho; Kudos on having to cojones to suggest such a thing. I implied the same thing on a completely different (yet quite popular) home video discussion board (email me if you want to know which one), and was immediately "gagged" by the administrator for simply inquiring about his motivations in defending Artisan over their SLEEPLESS dvd SNAFU. I never "accused" anyone of anything, but by merely suggesting that his opinion could/might be influenced by his position as webmaster and his dependence upon the studios for "exclusive" information and chat participation (I don't think he gets "freebies" per se), I was given the quick heave-ho.

I was upset at first, since I was instrumental in getting the board going in the first place; but I've found substitutes elsewhere in the meantime.

Given your posting style of late, I'm not sure whether you intend your comments to be a joke or serious, but if the latter, they are incorrect.

As has been stated before, we closed down the bootleg discussions mainly because they became moderation headaches. If you do a search through this forum you'll see that ever since Geoff allowed BadAsh's Star Wars review thread to stick around, we've gotten numerous member complaints about even allowing that and saying that the studios wouldn't be very happy to see us allowing this. And it wasn't until they started creating too much work to maintain civility that they were closed down.

I'm sure you guys have seen me post before. I hate censorship or anything near it. I hate that curse words like **** and **** are censored like they are in this post. I hate if someone's acting like a dick, I can't call him a dick. But I understand even if I don't agree. But in this case, I even agree. I remember all the discussions over bootlegs, and it seemed to me that everyone was more than willing to allow the discussion of content as long as it wasn't a discussion of particular methods of how to break the law. They tried it, and people couldn't keep the discussion on topic. It's unfair to expect the mods to police us in areas where we clearly cannot contain ourselves. On top of that, it sounded at the time that members were also complaining. Unfortunately, there was no other logical course of action. It's a shame, but it seems like as a whole we're not mature enough to handle such a borderline topic.

das