Ban from commuting & Transport

foggy_lad

I have been banned from Train & Rail Systems unfairly in my opinion. I answered a post and it appears it has been taken as a direct reference to a poster who has closed their account. That poster had a flickr account which has been closed and another photo site account which has also been closed, both showed pictures of Mark3 carriages stored on Irish rail property which is not open to the public. I reported one of this users posts which had a link to their flickr page with some of the pictures.

I then received a warning in a PM from monument for reporting the pictures telling me to stop reporting such pictures or expect to be banned. I was only reporting content which in my opinion is against the terms of boards.ie

http://www.boards.ie/content/terms

We expect you to act responsibly in posting Material on Boards.ie. You agree, through use of this service, NOT to use boards.ie to:

post illegal Material

post Material that promotes or encourages illegal activity facilitate or encourage any violation of these Terms of Use

post Material that infringes any patent, trade mark, trade secret, copyright, rights of privacy or publicity, or other proprietary right or intellectual property right of any party

Now I agree that I can't say with any certainty that the person who took the pictures was trespassing(there was no evidence apart from the pictures) or did not have permission to take and publish the pictures, but by reporting the pictures I was hoping that a mod or admin could make a more informed decision on the pictures based on what they may know about copyright and risks to boards.ie from people posting such information which the average user would not know of.

Both of the image hosting accounts which had the pictures have since been removed and the boards user that posted the links to the pictures has since closed their account and while we may not know their reasons it makes my decision to report the images more appropriate knowing that such prompt actions were taken once Irish Rail became aware of the pictures.

It would appear that I have been banned for the following post

Originally Posted by foggy_lad View Post
If photos were taken on private property without permission then Irish Rail have every right to ask that they be removed from any site.

This is a general reply to another poster and a statement of fact rather than any statement about the pictures or the person who took them.

My ban from Train & Rail systems has now been extended to C & T which I also think is unfair.

Boards.ie would be shut down fairly quickly by the lawyers if users stopped reporting posts and images which might be against the rules because they feared being banned!

I am assuming you can see the PMs between myself and monument regarding this issue and have my permission to post my PMs or parts of them.




On a separate issue but relating to both C & T and Train & Rail Systems, It appears that recently many C & T users who had received bans and warnings/infractions in the past because of their interactions with me have had most or all of those warnings and bans reversed and their records expunged, Can an admin please explain why their bad behaviour, trolling and personal attacks on site are being forgiven/ignored while I have not been given the same amnesty? Especially considering that at one stage there appeared to be an orchestrated campaign of posters posting just to inflame leading to many of the warnings i recieved.

nesf

Hello we will look into this.

PMs are private. No one but the people involved can see them unless they are either shared with others or reported (only do this for abuse/legal threats or similar and in this case only the Admins can see the posts).

In this forum it is allowable to post PMs between the mod and the user that are relevant to the dispute. If you feel these PMs would help in this issue feel free to post them it would be helpful to us.


Regarding the other users, well, what's available publicly is on this forum, feel free to read it.

foggy_lad

Thank you for looking into this, I know that my record in C & T is not spotless and a lot of that is my own fault for rising to baiting and flaming by others but in the last while I have tried to reign in my "opinions" and have tried to be more accepting of the views and opinions of others on the forum.


Here are the PM's

monument wrote:

foggy_lad wrote:

monument wrote:

Hello Foggy,

Did I not warn you before about reporting this type of thing?

If not please view this as a warning: Only report things which are against the R&TS charter, lesser so the C&T charter, and as ever the general rules of boards.ie.

The complaint "Pictures appear to be taken be a person trespassing on railway property" has nothing to do with those charters or rules and you've just wasting our time by reporting them -- the mods have no clue what permission anybody has or who they are (they could be IR staff, contractors, RSC, etc).

From a personal perspective: I think they are nice shots!

Please excuse the sharpness / straight-to-the-point style of this message -- I'm massively busy today.

Thanks,

Regards,

Cian

I was of the opinion that material which has been obtained through illegal activity is illegal and not allowed on boards.ie as per the terms of use

We expect you to act responsibly in posting Material on Boards.ie. You agree, through use of this service, NOT to use boards.ie to:

post illegal Material

post Material that promotes or encourages illegal activity facilitate or encourage any violation of these Terms of Use

post Material that infringes any patent, trade mark, trade secret, copyright, rights of privacy or publicity, or other proprietary right or intellectual property right of any party

The pictures also encourage illegal activity by encouraging others to trespass on railway property as well as denying Irish Rail rights to the pictures taken.

If the posters are IR staff, RSC, contractors, etc they are possibly taking and posting the pictures without the express permission of Irish Rail.

Anyway I apologise if I have been looking at this from the wrong perspective, I also think they are nice shots but will pass details of them on to Irish Rail to allow them the opportunity to view them and make a decision on their future.

Regards

Fergal

Hello Fergal,

I don't agree with your view on this -- stop reporting such pictures or expect to be banned.

If you have enough evidence to prove somebody was trespassing, I'd suggest handing it over to Irish Rail so they can report it to the gardai, if they want.

To deal with your points:

• You don't seem have enough info to go around accusing people of trespass and/or not having permission to do something on private lands.
  
• Somebody taking pics without the "express permission of Irish Rail" is not breaking the rules here. And if it was it would be up to Irish Rail to complain to us, not you.
  
• Photo taken when trespassing may or not be illegal material but we can't establish or deal with the matter of trespass (that's up to Irish Rail and the gardai).
  
• As far as I know talking pics of trains or trams or buses does not break any proprietary right or intellectual property rights.

I'm finished with this issue, I'm CCing this to both BuffyBot and Victor -- they will give you a different answer if they want, there's no need to contact them.

Regards,

Ciain

I am not sure if they will be of any help but it does show how I was thinking that a user posting material they obtained through dubious means might be against the terms of use. While it is impossible to state 100% that there was trespassing going on it is very clear from some of the pictures that the photographer was wandering around Irish Rail's north wall property which is not open to the general public and the speedy removal of the pictures and both of the person's image hosting accounts would indicate there was no permission granted for access or for taking or publishing the pictures. Can you say if boards.ie was contacted by Irish Rail about removing the material linked to by the user?

nesf

I'm going to have to discuss this with the others. I'll try and get back to you as soon as I can.

nesf

Hello foggy_lad we've discussed it and the decision is as follows:

Your record on the forum supports a permanent ban (we all agree on this) but this particular incident didn't really warrant such a harsh ban. So we've decided to reduce the ban to two weeks and review your posting in 3 months. Any bans picked up between now and then will definitely be permanent. If your posting doesn't improve, i.e. if you are still at the heart of most of the trouble on that forum you will be banned for it. We are giving you this chance to improve your behaviour rather than ban you permanently outright.

You may appeal this, however this decision was discussed with the Admins also.