So, suppose you're tracker staff...

[anon]

...and the following situation takes place:

There's a user in your place that's pretty much the "perfect member", so to speak. He has a good ratio (not too low, not too ridiculously high, and without cheating), seeds torrents permanently, is well-known in the community (forums and IRC) for his constructive and respectful posts, maybe has even sent some feedback which helped improve a specific site feature or the tracker as a whole. Basically, he respects all the rules.

However, for one reason or the other, you check his IP or change history, and find out some interesting stuff. Namely, all the IPs before a certain point in time belong to a completely different range and country, and the password and e-mail were also different. So, in reality, he actually broke at least one of the site's rules, by trading his way in, or even hijacking the account. (It could also happen that he moved to a different country and changed his details for security reasons, but for this hypothetical situation we'll assume the account has been either traded or stolen.)

The question is - what would you do? On one side, he broke an important rule, so he should be banned. But on the other, he used the account for the better, being a good sharer and a very helpful community member, so your tracker would suffer a loss by disabling his account.

[Resurrection]

Take away some or all of his privileges...

Crime doesn't pay...It cannot go unpunished...

[MiCRON]

Send a PM telling that I know how the account was acquired, and ask for an honest answer. If the answer is straight and honest, I'll let it pass. We all steal is some way by downloading stuff off the internet, and for me, disabling an account for a reason like that is just too light. Then again, who knows, the user might just be a fed.

[Gapo]

Ask him a direct question and see how he responds. If he is genuine, humble and apologises for his betrayal, poor use of judgement and unsuitable behaviour, then grace him for being forward and approachable. No point to give unnecessary punishment. Be that as it may, a last and only warning is to be issued. Akin behaviour is completely unacceptable and will result in further consequences. It shows you are able to comprehend a discerning understanding.

If he stole the account, even if acting in good faith, disable the person regardless of excuse. It merely is adverse, unfit and exhibits bad judgement. Before you do that, be sure you have understood and heard the story right.

Crime doesn't pay.

Tell that to the banks and the pharmaceutical and petroleum industry.

[hellman]

i personally don't think h should be banned .. as long as he is a good member n does'nt cheats n gives feeback n all
u can't say for sure he traded.. but as a cheater m not against trading but sure am against selling n scamming

[Instab]

in this case i'd leave a usernote. nothing else.

[Mihai]

Usually cheaters like us see things different because we have lived problems like that.I for example would just leave a note on his profile like Instab said and would only ban him when he would do mistake number 2.And that is because almost half of the users on a tracker don't really help out too much, they just care about the files and the ratio and that's all.I would be maybe a bit disappointed...But heck, If I would be a tracker staff I would invite people all the time on irc channels and forums, no need to steal accounts or other stuff like that.

[mirrormask]

it totally depends on the kind of tracker we are talking about.
on sites like what.cd staff is expected to ban for the slightest offence, while there are more relaxed sites that would most likely let the shady past of an otherwise decent member go unpunished.

[slikrapid]

The question is - what would you do? On one side, he broke an important rule, so he should be banned. But on the other, he used the account for the better, being a good sharer and a very helpful community member, so your tracker would suffer a loss by disabling his account.

its a no-brainer really: he keeps the account regardless of the way he got it - a file sharer with all those characteristics is not too common, thus a valuable member, meaning he gets a free pass on account of his contribution to the community - that would be a reasonable decision, after all, the rules are not supposed to be 'set in stone' but rather a guide for acceptable behavior, which can be bent if necessary - only in a bureaucratic/mechanical/non-human system the rules have priority over case-specific individual situations

other than that, a 'yellow-card' type of warning/notice seems appropriate as well - any attempt to seek apologies or repentance is imo (hypocritical) authoritative moral preaching (that may very well be a sign of personal psychological issues re-directed to a convenient 'victim')

[Extraterrestrial]

Crime doesn't pay...

It may be useful to state briefly what exactly is meant by crime. From the formal or legal point of view, a crime is an action on which the community ( in our case the BT private trackers) has set a punishment- a definition which, like most formal definitions, does not take us much further. Another angle, from which we penetrate further into the essence of the question, is the view that crime belongs to the category of immoral actions. Even the professional criminal thinks of theft as of something immoral, namely when it is committed to his own detriment, or to that of a member of his gang.

It cannot go unpunished...

present-day punishment contains two elements:
Firstly, it serves-as it always has done-to satisfy the feelings of revenge and revulsion on the part of the members of the collectivity.
Secondly, it is the safeguarding of the community ( la defense sociale).

Thus in our case, I think of hacking/trading accounts as the same because what is built on falsehood is false, however, punishment may differ depending on the seriousness of each case, while hacking should be punished by banning, trading should be punished by a warning or something like that especially if he used the account in a good way.

just my two cents.

[pimphead07]

If I were a tracker staff, I would place the tracker ahead of its members. So as long as he is helping the site out and not breaking any more rules, I'll let i pass. Because at the end of the day, its the tracker which is benefitting. So, for me, he has atoned for his mistakes and I'll let him know that he has been pardoned for his earlier offence because of his good work at the tracker. Think of it as probabtion

[ErRor]

if he is a good member then i should give him a chance to explain his situation

[Nobody]

This seems largely dependent, in my opinion, on finding out who owns the account now and how it was acquired.

If it can be determined that it is still the original owner (which can be accrued rather swiftly by dispatching an email to the original e-mail address, requiring a response from it with a keyword in the next ten minutes), I would be more than willing to work with the individual as much as possible, and recommend a difference course of action if it were to happen again. PM'ing staff or whatnot to avoid raising false flags in the system.

If it cannot be determined that it is the original owner, all bets are off. It's not his account, and so he can not be privvy of the privledges I would associate with the original owner and their good behavior. If the person had continued to seed well and make constructive posts as the original owner had, I might be tempted to offer the user a fresh account with a few bonus points to get them off the ground and not allow any other large-IP changes/email address changes--but that's a pretty big "if".