Advertisement and sharing: Where is the line drawn?

[Denis P]

Howdy forum.

Recently, there's been a few events leading to some people getting their green card revoked and shipped off from Altis (Out of respect for the people's privacy I will not give you their names, though you probably know their names already, so not giving you their names is just stupid, but again: I respect their privacy) for advertising, but the question some people are asking is: "How?".

Let's kick things off:

First of, what IS advertising? In my personal opinion it is promoting products/services for financial gain, and after looking into the Oxford dictionary, I found their definition of advertising to be this: "The activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services."

Wow, seems like my definition was almost spot on, huh? Here are a few good examples of advertisements (and these are all fake and to be used as examples only, so plz no ban):

"Buy the Mouthblow vacuum cleaner now for only 399£! It blows, just like your mother!"

"Buy one pair of socks and get another pair of socks TOTALLY FREE! Only 6.99 per pair!"

"Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com. Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com. Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com. Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com Join our   community at altislifeisawesome.com. Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com. Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com Join our community at altislifeisawesome.com."

Granted, there's no financial gain in the last example (unless it is a pay-to-play server, which is effectively against the BI Studios Server hosting agreement), though if someone spams the chat like that it's still considered promoting their own stuff, so we'll let it in as advertising anyway.

But what is sharing? Again, I will give you my personal opinion on what I believe it to be, which is giving away information about something to someone you know that you have no financial gain from or real  connection to either financially or personally. Looking back into my best friend for this topic, I find the definition(s) of sharing (verb) to be:

1.2: "Use, occupy, or enjoy (something) jointly with another or others."

1.5: "Tell someone about (something, especially something personal)."

Let me give you some good examples of sharing:

"Hey mate (to a friend), I found this other cool server. Want to come and play with me there as well?"

"Dude, this kid keeps joining our Teamspeak channel whenever we switch. Wanna' switch to my own channel?"

Both of these examples show no clear attempt to advertise anything. The fictional player in question is asking their friend if they want to tag along, and it is up to the friend if they want to be a part of it or not. If the player in question had gotten banned AFTER getting permission from the friend to give them the information, then banning that player is just plain stupidity.

This thread is not meant to harass anyone. It is just to show you what advertisement actually is so that you can all understand the difference between that and telling your friends/contacts about something.

Denis P out.

 

[Jay]

The line is drawn at any mention of other servers (game or teamspeak).

It's like this for a simple reason, which I'll use your examples for;

"Hey mate (to a friend), I found this other cool server. Want to come and play with me there as well?"

"Dude, this kid keeps joining our Teamspeak channel whenever we switch. Wanna' switch to my own channel?"

Admin see's one of these in game chat (they can see every chat, including group). They immediatly see someone mentioning another server address or IP. They don't have time to check the address or IP to see what it actually is, so they ban you.

It may not strictly be advertising, but as I said, admins, or even other players, cannot know for sure what you are "sharing".

This is still advertising, Oxford may define advertising as for financial gain, which is bullshit, look at things like petitions; for example: Person X starts petition to get a new bus stop because they are lazy. They take to every social network known to man and the word is spread. No financial gain, but a new bus stop may be put up soon.

 

[Jay Berry]

You do know were not stupid right? I'm sorry but this post is beyond a joke mate, stop sticking your nose in where it's not needed! The world doesn't revolve around you're opinion so do us all a favor and shush

Thanks.

 

[Mr Cardoso]

Let me give you some good examples of sharing:

"Hey mate (to a friend), I found this other cool server. Want to come and play with me there as well?"

If your using our community teamspeak, and you tell a user to join another server, that's advertisement.

Grab your phone, use facebook, use whatever you want, but don't come into our community (that incluides teamspeak, ingame or any other provided service from us) to talk about another one.

Now i'm locking this topic because this is not a chit chat thread, your opinion was noted.