Is discussion of VPN's banned on the SDMB?

[DCTrekkie]

@Isosleepy

The owners of the site are letting us operate with very few restrictions. But not zero. Among those very few restrictions are don’t threaten to sue, for example. And restrictions in line with their great sensitivity to copyright issues. Hence the absolute ban on discussions on p2p.

If they decided to ban discussion of sugar, it would be their good right. Even though most uses of sugar are perfectly legal. It would make discussions on how to make apple pie more difficult, and in order to discuss pie-making the moderators would probably need to offer pretty strict guidance - the alternative being to ban pie-making discussions for the risk of discussions on sugar ensuing.

We’re not talking about p2p though. The mods have decided that VPN’s are primarily for p2p despite evidence to the contrary, and are apparently unwilling to even discuss the possibility that they’re wrong.

I’m not challenging the ban on p2p/torrents. While I disagree with the reasoning I understand why it would be enforced by a corporate site, particular a media owned one.

Engineer_comp_geek even admitted that it’s not an actual rule, just his preference, and that other mods may\do allow discussion. As far as I can tell, what he considers not on “the legal side of the line” is recommending a service that, like most paid VPN’s, allows (but doesn’t encourage) p2p use.

@engineer_comp_geek

We have been a bit inconsistent in the moderation of VPN topics. Since the primary use of all of the VPN services listed is illegal file sharing, I tend not to allow much discussion at all about them. Other moderators want to allow the legal discussions of VPNs, but as this thread shows, it is difficult to keep everyone on the legal side of the line. The main feature of aiding illegal file sharing has already been mentioned, and I suspect that most of the VPN services listed are used more for illegal file sharing than any other purpose.