Which sites were shut down? When was this?
Also, what flg can do is important. They are way more public then this site. You think gw would have shut them down already, if that was an issue. Bell of lost souls as well.
Recently, it was the Faeit Rumour site or whatever it was called before and after. It was taken down for a period of time as a result of falling foul of GW legal. Previously, you had Landraider.com and Vassal, to give two better known examples.
Vassal, admittedly, was an extreme case, but is still an example of what can happen if someone just says 'let's forget about copyright'. It's very easy to start down a slippery slope.
I still fail to see why Frontlinegaming matters. They do what they do, we do what we do. What's the connection?
I hope the super-mods do reconsider... I think it'd help maintain forum attendance and keep the interaction going. It makes certain discussions very difficult, especially when it pertains to rules, codex and army list analysis.
It's up to Raine not to the Globals, so there's nothing for us to reconsider. He decides legal policy, not us.
How does it make those discussions difficult? I've got through over 10,000 posts without a single copyright infraction for almost nine years on this forum, and I've analysed and reviewed so many army lists during that time period I couldn't possibly count them all.
As for rules. Quoting rules has always been permitted in the rules board when the rule is being subject to debate (i.e. who is right/wrong about a rule). What has never been allowed is explaining how rules work to those who don't have the codex, as that's breaching copyright.
Also, I'm going to remind all of you about
this sticky topic and the replies to it.
Finally, the idea that copyright rules have led to less activity over the years is not the case. The copyright rules have been the same for years. They go all the way back to the early days of the forum and site, and as a cursory glance at the forum stats shows, activity was massive back then, and that was with the same forum rules as we have now on copyright.