Should the "EAB File Server" be locked down to members only?
 

Hey all,

Quite simple really, please vote if you think locking down the EAB File Server to members only is a good or bad idea.

Your input would be much appreciated :agree

Please feel free to give your reasons regarding your choice if you feel that way inclined.

Poll will close on the 31st of October 2017.

Is there any particular reason? A technical / traffic / legal or so?

There's been numerous discussions about this in the EAB File Server thread; more recently see from post #1474 onwards.

In a nutshell, there are loads of internet sites and other Amiga forums linking directly to the EAB File server; for example.

I know, but I really like oldgamesfinder and use it quite frequently (I am lemonamiga.com admin).

I agree, it's private, and not a public ressource. Only our members should access it.

Agreed, but as long as it is not a managerial nightmare for Turran to implement.
Also on the other discussion, I agree that people that just register to leech shouldn't be allowed, but that calls for a more advanced system of checking who is who, or validation, and that goes back to my point of: as long as Turran doesn't get bothered extra to do it.

I agree that things like hotlinking are fucking lame. Fuck oldgamesfinder and Lemon Amiga. It's the EAB file server, not the "Amiga free-for-all fileserver".
There's already people in this board registered just to leech and don't contribute much if at all to the community, letting it be free-fort-all just makes it worse.
I don't even mind if it goes slow, because this is kindly hosted by a board member, but I do care about the cheekiness of it being abused by everybody, especially other sites.

Hi, i voted for no.

If you see it clearly, then you will recognize that "old games finder" is NOT claiming the files as being their own,
but providing a file searching service, for people who are in need of a game, and they are even stating from which FTP/Site the file belongs !

Part from my own belief, that God made everything shareable, you will understand that limiting the ftp to members only would limit the ressource access,available to the whole.

And who knows, maybe someday, some of the Leecher-only, will still have the file, in case of data loss, and may recover it from damnation.

And do you want to have billions of 0-posts-members registered, who just want to get the files ?

Anyway, the final decision should be to the Ftp owner as he can see If the FTP (counting all the years) is heavily stressed.

not yet voted.

when I agreed to DamienD request, I did just remembered how other boards act.
and this is so annoying, to register, just to see an attched image ... a1k, amibay.

maybe EAB should be different, give a good example how to deal with the community,
in the right way.

but turran may think about some messurement agains those leecher, contributing nothing, just collecting.
I know, not everyone has something to share, but others simply abuse what is offered.

ban whole domain for a month or two, with a note to register at eab, if they want continue.

once ppl know they are being watched, by registering to eab, they may think twice about leeching everything.

I voted yes as it's an EAB resource and should be restricted to members only. It takes minutes to register so its a small amount of effort to gain access to such an excellent resource.

If there was an EAB interface in the forums (much like a hierarchical directory-tree style Zone) then that would solve most of the problems. Especially if it required gaining access specially like the zone does.

I voted yes. The sites that currently link to files on the ftp could still host a link to them with the caveat that it requires membership to access.
I'm not usually one for restricting access to stuff, but bandwidth costs money and why should members suffer for the sake of freeloaders?

No.

From Turran's own posts, it seems there would be no benefit in doing so, it would only prevent other people from finding Amiga resources, and what's the point of that? Are we trying to stop Amiga from reaching more people all of a sudden?

Leffman said it for me :) Voted no.

...but guys it's not like we are stopping people; they should just be part of the EAB community and it's not much to register / request access really is it?

As others have said, various Amiga forums don't let you see images / sometimes even replies to threads without registering... EAB does not do that.

I voted No

I absolutely don't like the idea to prevent other people from finding Amiga resources

As for implementation, its not a problem for me. The problem is for the person/persons managing this board as the "register for account" bit will need to be done from the EAB forums, once you have registered here.

We also have to consider what to do with the mirror. As we do not run the same FTP servers, we can not simply sync the userbase.

I'm not against the idea of people accesing the resources freely, but more against the idea that other places hotlink or benefit from the existence of it. It's beyond being credited, I think it's cheeky as fuck.

Especially in places that restrict content like a1k, why would the people that choose not to share anything be allowed to have all that?

I think it's a more complex issue with no real solution.

[edit] saw Turran's message, yeah, if it has to be implemented form within the EAB, it could be problematic. RCK has enough responsibilities as it is, and other things to fix with the server before doing that.

It s a fact that then we will have people that register just to leech stuff, so it's not like it matters if they are part of EAB or not. I rather not see hundreds of bogus accounts.

you should implement a system Retroroms has implemented. You cannot FTP into their server unless you are logged in *at the same time* on their forum. Your login & pwd is the same for forum and ftp. And there is a limit on how many concurrent connections and how much data per hour can be downloaded. Going over the limit will blacklist your IP for 15 minutes.
That should stop leechers because they cannot use a download manager to leech the whole site in one go, it's mostly a click by click affair.

If bandwidth is the main issue here, you could always restrict download access to the primary FTP server based on logon credentials and contribution yet, allow unrestricted downloads to an FTP mirror. That way, even if members are not contributing, they could be redirected to the mirror. BTW, when a couple of members where populating their mirrors from the primary FTP server recently, probably at full bore, I never noticed a slowdown on the primary, anyone else notice? Oh, and thanks so much for this extremely valuable resource! :agree

Yeah, that wont work here =) However, I can limit bytes downloaded per account etc. It just does not work for the anonymous "FTP" account.

Bandwidth is not the problem =)