Alizee forum may possibly shut down?

[Scruffydog777]

I received the following e-mail from Riccordo of Alizee forum.

dear users,

Due to users posting illegale or copyrighted material, including selfmade youtube videos with playlists, my adsense account for aliyee-forum got deactivated.

I will no longer support illegal sharing through my site and risk getting my whole account suspended.

if you guys dont want alizee-forum.com to shut down, well then help me out and tell google ur sorry. i dont know how u do it, but im open for suggestions.

kind regards

riccardo

To those of you who don't know him, I beleive he was the original founder of Alizee forum. He is from Germany so I'd have to believe he's still there and operates the forum from there.

The reason I mention where it's based is I've posted several videos over the past few years, mostly using videos of Alizee and mostly from the early years, but also including some clips from Psych and Les Enfoires of recent years.

Now many of my videos have been flagged by Youtube, but they still have allowed them to be posted with the exception that they've been banned in
Germany.

So I don't know if what's going on over there has to do with Germany or is it an internet thing in general, but of course it could have implications for our forum.

This is a very busy time for me and I don't really have time to check into it and wonder if some one else can find out exactly what is going on here.

[melovelily]

So that's why the pictures/videos section was removed from the ( english ) forum

Hope we don't suffer the same thing ( i miss the videos section, NEVER FORGOT ABOUT YOU :"( )

[Karin]

well... how I understood, the problem was copyrighted material like photos, videos, fan videos and other... easity said 90%+ of material there... now, is forbidden to post copyrighted material which is for me really crazy, cause then you can post nothing

[SpanishFan]

That should not affect this forum since it is just an Adsense issue and the owner of that Adsense account choosing to ban copyrighted material instead of getting rid of Adsense.

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by SpanishFan

That should not affect this forum since it is just an Adsense issue and the owner of that Adsense account choosing to ban copyrighted material instead of getting rid of Adsense.

Could you explain what AdSense is? I just don't have the time to look it up myself.

[lapinschous]

AdSense basically allows webmasters to own money through different way across the internet, whether it's youtube, forums or individual websites. It centralizes everything in order for you to earn revenue from advertising.

[Davedel]

I followed a Google AdSense users postings a while back. He had his AdSense account closed by Google and he didn't know why. He finally figured it out. He could make only one appeal and then it was up to Google. Google sometimes won't tell you specifically why the account was banned, just a generic reason, but in AA's case the reason is known. Check out the video of Rob explaining how he got his AdSense reinstated:

[Un-rêve]

AF has been around since forever as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure the mods there won't let these swines get the best of them, especially when it comes to Alizée.

[digimaze]

I'm watching the commentary fly back and forth, and as the owner of an Alizee fan site that's been around about as long as the Alizee Forum (mid 2003) I guess it's time for me to toss in a few facts from my perspective in an attempt to clarify things.

Sure, I've been forced with the same decisions that Riccardo has had to make over the years: do I accept ad banners? Do I solicit donations to help defray the costs of running a server and a domain? Do I sell merchandise? My choice was to not collect any money for the service I provide to fellow Alizee fans. That doesn't make me a hero- it just provides me with a limited means to inure and indemnify me from possible legal action.

Previous lawsuits have indicated that it's pretty clear-cut how the copyright holders feel about it. If you wish to protect yourself from legal action due to possible copyright infringement, you must run it as a not-for-profit fan site, and yes (as indicated by a recent court case in Sweden) that includes ad banners. Please don't demonize the people that are selling the ad services: they have a business to run and the minute you start dealing with them you have made the transition from a "fan site" to a "commercial web site" and that's exactly how it seems the law looks at it.

I can understand that Riccardo is upset about losing the revenue, but is making money more important than providing a service to Alizee fans? Clearly we come out on differant sides on this issue.

My promise to you is: The Alizee Hub will continue not to seek revenue from the work of those fans whose hard work has provided us with content over the years. I also will continue to refuse any offers of financial support through donations that are offered to us. It's just not that expensive to host a website to want to run the risk of getting shut down... but that is just my opinion.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and the vast amount of content that has been hastily deleted from the Alizee Forum will be back online. Maybe upon further consideration they will come to the conclusion as I have that ad banners just aren't worth the risk.

digi

[Lili4ever]

for all we know, Ricco, might be running more projects and they might have been also affected by it.