vB or IPB lawsuit?

I hadn't thought about parked urls possibly leading to license violations.

 

one recommendation - stop using nulled versions

 

Although it may seem like this is the case, there is no need to make direct accusations. Let's not assume things here.

 

To be honest, neither had I - it's good to know.

 

Jelsoft contracts with a third party, Pirate Reports, to handle piracy investigations. At any given time there are about 300 sites to investigate. If a customer search on the URL doesn't result in a valid license result than they will start proceedings. Its how things are and they are working within their contract.

Because of this Jelsoft recommends that any parked domains use a 301 redirect to the URL listed on your license. This helps reduce confusion and so forth. Its just a simple precaution. I do know that Pirate Reports does try to err on the side of caution but sometimes things get through. They are only human and have limited resources. Even with that, less than 1% of our legitimate customers have ever been contacted by them.

 

Null is for suckers. There are good free alternative scripts available. If you have a huge site it's probably making money and you can afford the VB license. Never understood the need to NULL VB when you can use any number of free forum scripts.

I slap myself for being a moron.

 

Don't be so hard on yourself. u_u

 

Wayne this bit still confuses me....it always has done.

Currently I have five active domains, you can view identical content by viewing any one of the five domains, but they don't actually "redirect" to the primary domain.

bowlandcentral.com
bowlandcentral.net
bowlandcentral.org
bcforums.co.uk
bc-forums.com

All of these will take you to the same place, but the URL won't change in the address bar.

I constantly check this is ok - I even raised a ticket last month about it - but this post seems to suggest that I'm in breach of the licence.

I've seen quite a few posts on this at vbulletin.com and I think the position remains a little ambiguous.

 

If you ask most staff at Jelsoft, they won't care. However here is what Pirate Reports does:

1. Receives report of possible violation at bc-forums.com.
2. Checks customer database for that URL. If none is found, then proceed.
3. Loads site, sees it is indeed running vBulletin. If it is running vBulletin it must be doing so without a license.
4. Find contact information through registrar. If available, then contact, if not then proceed.
5. Contact host and issue a DMCA or equivalent takedown notice.

They get paid by the issue, not the hour. They get paid more if they get to step 5. They want to get to step 5. With an average of 1200 ongoing investigations at a time, they don't spend time looking for variations in the database.

Most investigations end at Step 2 but it seems that people in Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa take great pleasure in reporting their competition as using pirated software on a weekly if not daily basis.

This is why Jelsoft recommends 301 redirects now. It allows little room for error and incorrectly sent notices. It provides a better experience for the customer and reduces the chaos when Jelsoft has to deal with the fallout. Especially since only Pirate Reports can rescind a take down notice as they are the agents of Jelsoft that issued it.

 

i agree with you wayne it does make things a little easier with a 301

 

Thanks Wayne;

The problem with redirects is that people who find my main URL blocked for whatever reason can access the site with one of the others. If it just redirected that wouldn't work.

I'm concerned now because as things seem to stand by Wayne's post above, I could face a takedown notice, yet I've a ticket on vbulletin.com saying it's ok.

Could there not be some way of registering "subsidiary" domains? I can't be the only one to have registered varying TLDs on the same name...

 

In your specific case, the two domains that I would think that might cause problems are bcforums.co.uk and bc-forums.com. Checking should be done on any variation of the listed domain. They don't even need a TLD to search. What I would suggest in your case is to follow up with the ticket in question and ask that they append a note to your license that lists the alternate domains. That can certainly be done without too much effort.

 

Thanks Wayne, I have sent a reply in to the ticket requesting exactly that.

 

And that's why you're breaking license.

ONE DOMAIN.

Aliasing domains and running VB is against the license clearly.

 

But I'm NOT breaking the licence....

This is what Jake said in my ticket about it last week:

Jelsoft have repeatedly stated that as long as each domain points to *exactly* the same content as the main domain (and does not go to separate sub forums of the main forum to give the impression it's two different boards) then it is perfectly legal.

 

I can say firsthand that they are not doing step #4 above, or at least nobody I know of has ever been contacted prior to step #5. If you read some of the various threads at vB.com & other places I think you'll find a lot of other people saying the same.

Whomever at Jelsoft/IB pays the invoices for PR, they may want to request an audit of how many times PR has actually done step #4. If Jelsoft/IB actually has to pay more every time PR goes to step #5 it seems like there is a big incentive to PR to always skip step #4.

 

As Mark has pointed out, he isn't violating the license terms, really.

Jake's site is a remarkable example of a multi-domain but single-database setup:

MSC Forum
MSC Forum
MSC Forum
​

Those are three different domains, but they all point to the same content (and it's not a redirect).

Good point, there.

 

What if you pointed two or more domain names to the same forum, but used a template mod to ONLY change the logo? (Pretty sure I've seen a mod that did that.) All the content would be the same. Would you get in trouble for that? (Or is there a reason the MSC forums had no names in the header?

 

Personally I believe that would class as different content...though the sticky on vb I linked to does mention that differrent STYLES are ok, so that is ambiguous.

Myself, my conetent is 100% identical on each domain, so that's not a problem to me.

 

It's great to have someone "higher up" on here to clarify these things for us