A2 File Front Content

[dvatreknerd314]

Hey everyone! A while back there was a thread started by a few people asking if someone could send them the files that have been uploaded to A2FF since that site changed their policies to block certain countries from accessing the site. What I have here is a Google Drive link that should, at the moment, contain three files (I'm just testing at the moment whether this works). If this works, I'll start adding more files to the link so that more people can get those files. I'm planning on adding all the files uploaded to A2FF in 2012 and 2013 as it was in Jan 2012 that their policies changed.

Also, I checked with Hellkite already about posting the link so hopefully there won't be any problems!

Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8uZ6X_xrHBueW9TZjNUcnJGQ28&usp=sharing

Please leave some feedback to let me know if the link works!

 

[Majestic]

Personally as a member of the A2 community found the change in policy on A2files (blocking particular countries) distasteful. To me it felt like discrimination and some of the countries that were blocked were strange considering a lot more cyber crime and hacking occurs from countries that weren't block. But since it isn't my site I can only hope there was some meaningful reason that wasn't made public. But the effect was felt far and wide over several communities like Bridge Commander for example.

I am also a bit concerned about the re-hosting of files on another site. While I understand your reasoning as it has the best intentions I would also recommend, if you haven't yet, to contact the authors and get their permission, whether you want to host them here or on the link you supplied. I am concerned as an artist rights must be respected and I know some artists (aka modellers/modders) prefer to only host on A2files, like I only host here. Checking with them first would avoid any issues that could crop up later down the road.

Lastly for now I'll leave the link, as you said it was ok with Hellkite so it's ok by me. But if permission issues do show up I may have to remove it, but for now it's fine.

But I would recommend following those suggestions about contacting the artists first before re-hosting, to avoid any imperial entanglements, um I mean permission issues.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Ok, I'll do that. And while I'm getting permissions from the needed modders, can someone confirm that the link I posted is, in fact, working?

 

[Majestic]

It works mate, took me a bit to figure how to download but it works.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Ok, so I decided to change how this link is organized. Each file is organized according to the author of the file. If an author does not want their stuff up here, I can easily remove the folder. At least that's my logic to this.

 

[Freyr]

Personally as a member of the A2 community found the change in policy on A2files (blocking particular countries) distasteful. To me it felt like discrimination and some of the countries that were blocked were strange considering a lot more cyber crime and hacking occurs from countries that weren't block. But since it isn't my site I can only hope there was some meaningful reason that wasn't made public. But the effect was felt far and wide over several communities like Bridge Commander for example.

The actual reason was that the countries blocked were using filefront pretty much solely as a hosting/download site for copyrighted material. When material was deleted by the staff people were just re-uploading things under different titles. The main site either needed either significant additional levels of manpower to do nothing but police uploads or a reduction in the scope of the problem.

Alternatives to the chosen policy were suggested, but rejected.

As the site admin of A2files and a Filefront Network Administrator I am perfectly happy with files being mirrored elseware under the circumstances. Further, I would note that A2file is a broken shell which will not receive any further support. On this basis I would suggest that it is not a suitable place to host files going forward, especially when you can only see the latest downloads ~30% of the time and when members of the community cannot download them. In my opinion consideration should therefore be put into hosting files somewhere else, such as MSFC.