Jay said:
I seriously doubt anybody "ratted out" fanedit.org. They received a cease and desist notice a long time ago regarding a certain fan edit just like we did, so somebody has been keeping tabs on them. It's not like the lawyers delete your file once you comply.
If a site plans on hosting files--even just torrents--they need to have the technical and financial resources of The Pirate Bay (profit estimated at $75,000 USD monthly according to Wikipedia) in order to deal with the legal fallout. And it hardly matters if you host outside the US; The Pirate Bay was raided and had all their hardware confiscated by the Swedish police because of a complaint filed by the MPAA.
Whatever your position on the legality of fan edits, the fact remains that smaller sites like ot.com and fanedit.org are not equipped to battle the MPAA in court. Providing files is a bad idea unless you want your door kicked in and your servers taken
No rats were needed for that. I agree to what you say, Jay. And we all knew it was a matter of time until someone bothered. 2 years are a long time actually and now it is again getting a bit more difficult to get fanedits.
Of course I for one do not intend to defend the fanedit.org case at court. I could not afford that at all. And I see it as a lost cause anyway, because fanedits do in fact infringe on copyright. They were just tolerated for quite a long time and we were all happy about that. Now these fun times are over. Next chapter.
This does not at all mean the end for fanedits or their sharing. In fact what the mpaa did started a lot of discussions worldwide and put a lot of attention, not just to fanedit.org, but to everything fanedit related. Still most people have never heard of them. So, as bad as it is to have the links removed, it was the best possible promotion for this artform.
I am very please to see the positive reactions HERE and on so many other websites. I got loads of emails wishing us well and hoping for a future and I want to say thanks for all the support. It's you guys that make all the work and effort worthwhile. And without the continuous help we simply would not exist.
Of course there are other voices too, who like to be heard. It's in the nature of things that opinions differ.
I once asked the piratebay mods, if they could do something about rude comments (like demonoid does) and they sent me quite a funny reply: "Not really. Only if it is about mud wrestling. And we don't care about mud wrestling at all. So, no."