Rules

[Paul]

Just a few rules for your safety and to ensure your stay here is safe and enjoyable:

1. No rude, offensive, racist, libellous or illegal postings or images.

2. No posting of text or images which violate the copyright of a 3rd party (in other words unless specific permission is given by the creator or author of the images or text, please do not copy as this would be a copyright violation).

Images using the likeness of an existing copyrighted work to create new artwork (manipulated photos, logos, etc) are also not permitted.

3. No "hotlinking" to images from other websites (unless these are images you have copyright permission for and are on your own site, or unless hotlinking is specifically permitted by the owner of the site involved). If you are unsure of what hot linking is, and or the reason for this rule, please check out http://www.springfrog.com/jump.php3?que ... &pp=16&sd= for why this can get sites closed down (and can actually cost other websites money).

4. Messages posted to this board are soley the opinion of the person posting the message.

5. No posting regarding illegal sites, eg warez, hackz or sites promoting similar activities.

6. No spamming.

6a No writing of invisible text.

7. No posting messages which are intended to run programming code. This includes (but is not limited to) Java applets, Javascript, Shockwave Flash etc. Such posts may result in an immediate ban.

And one more rule... Have lots of fun!

[Paul]

Special rules for moderators:

1. Members who hold the position of Moderator should ensure the rules (above) are maintained in the Forums which they moderate.

2. Moderators who have not made any posts on Broomsticks And Owls Harry Potter Forum over a 4 month period may be removed from the position of moderator.

3. Have lots of fun!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Paul on 2002-04-08 00:41 ]</font>

[Paul]

Once you have been sorted into a House (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin), you will not have the chance to change to another House. Therefore please think carefully about which House you choose.

Signing up under a second (or further) member name and requesting to go into a different House to the one you are already in will be viewed as a violation of this rule and may lead to an immediate ban.

[Paul]

A Friendly Reminder about Posting

All constructive comments and posts are very welcome here at BaO. Taking this into consideration, it's very helpful and very appreciated if you take the time to contribute to the ongoing discussons. Please do try to avoid single-sentence posts like "I agree about that" or similar things - it's much more interesting and helpful for the flow of the topic for you to say why you agree or disagree, maybe bring a slightly different aspect of the topic to the fore, or generally expand upon your thoughts or feelings. Many of us, from time to time, are indeed guilty of the dreaded single-sentence post, but please do keep this in mind and try to avoid ths type of post wherever possible.

[Paul]

Clarification of Rule 6

Rule 6 should be considered to cover spam of all kinds. Please note that this includes (but is not limited to) advertising or promotion in any way of other Harry Potter (or similar) forums, whether in public or private areas of the forum, by PM or in any other way. Such action may be considered as Spam under rule 6, and may result in unlimited action (within the law) being taken against the offending party or parties, including (but not necessarily limited to) a full ban from the forum. If you wish to promote another forum you must obtain the express permission of the Administrator of Broomsticks And Owls.

[Paul]

Floo Network messages may be monitored for the safety of board members and to ensure the rules of the board are upheld. Floo Network messages may be publicly used by the management of the forum as evidence toward any dispute, argument or discussion if necessary.

[Paul]

A quick mention about not posting links to sites which use unauthorised images (from Harry Potter movies, other film or music stars, etc):

Please don't post links to sites using unauthorised images. As an example, one site in a post now removed from BaO boasted of over 20,000 wallpapers. That site was making money for itself from a huge number of basically stolen images - edited/cropped/enhanced photos which belong to copyright holders of those images. Such copyright holders have a right to charge for usage of their images if they wish.

You can see an example of the costs for legal usage of images at http://www.fotosearch.com/estock-photo/ (click on any image, and on the next page choose "Internet" from the drop-down box marked "Usage", for the idea of the cost to legally use images).

Consider that those image at estock-photo are not of famous people. Then think of how much extra it could then cost for legal usage of pictures from movies or of movie stars....and how much over 20,000 images would cost and you can see how grand a scale of a problem (and effectively how grand a scale of copyright infringement, ie theft from the copyright holders) this is.