01. All users must be at least 18 years of age and registered! Go to the Registration page to setup a username and password upon submitting a valid email address. If you already have a nick you use in other DC hubs, please continue to use it here. If you are choosing a nick for the first time, don't create one with all capital letters, gibberish, or something crazy for shock value; this is the name people will come to know you by. Once you select your nick, it can only be changed by an administrator; if you change it on your own, you will be ejected from the hub for not being registered. We encourage reading the FAQs and familiarizing yourself with the Bootleg Archive database, which you can later access from the hub.
02. All members of the hub must share no less than 15 gb (also see Rule 4), 10 gb of which consists of designated lossless audio formats (SHN, FLAC, APE). Video and DVD must be music related. Other forms of lossless audio are not allowed because of standardization, including MKW, Wavepack, OptimFrog, LA and LPAC. Noobs must share at least 1 gb to login; 7.5 gb after 30 days, and 15 gb after 60 days from their membership date. Anybody below minimal levels will be kicked and eventually banned from the hub for leeching. If have no lossless audio files, you can go to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/tunetree/index.html and get started there.
03. Minimum of 3 slots open (2 if you are in BA only), with a maximum of 15 hubs. The minimum allowed upload bandwidth limit is 6 kbs per slot, ie. limiter set to 18 kBs = 3 slots. Share back what you download in the hub. If you have limited disk space, limit your downloading until you can afford to add more, and create an archive folder with a list available for requests. Users who download daily but never increase or change their share will eventually be asked to leave; maintaining 15.01 gb is not an all-you-can leech ticket.
04. Do not attempt to download DVDs until your share reaches 15 gb.
05. Do NOT share incomplete shows. Do NOT share your incoming directory (downloading into your share). Create a directory for your complete shows and share ONLY that directory. A show encoded in Shorten format that does not have an md5 checksum file is not acceptable, and considered incomplete. All shared audio should be checked for integrity and SBEs (Sector Boundary Errors) using Traders Little Helper or another utility. Information detailing why checksums must be verified can be found at http://userpages.umbc.edu/~hamilton/shnfaq.html.
06. Do NOT share any commercial or "In Print" material, including "remastered", mono, trance or quad mixes, Dr. Ebbets and MFSL releases. Do not share radio interviews or recordings that include playback of an artist's commercially released material, unless they are only small promotional snips. With the commercial release of previously unavailable works, all such recordings must be removed from users hub shares without delay. Please help to keep this hub free of copyrighted or licensed materials and in compliance with the law, so we may continue to enjoy collecting and trading bootlegs.
07. Do not share pornography, theatrical movies, racist or hateful content, warez, cracks, serials, games, comic books, adware, spyware, shareware, freeware, executable or dll files. Do not share system files, installed programs, useless or junk files such as tmp, temp, dmp, chk. Sharing files with extensions dctmp or antifrag indicate you are downloading into your share and will result in being kicked from the hub.
08. Do not share media files that are rar'd, zipped or contained in a disc image file, such as .iso or .bin. All DVDs must be in their proper folders (VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS, JACKET_P, etc.) and open to inspection. A video DVD missing IFO and BUP files is incomplete, and never insert additional files (such as md5s) into these folders (they go in the root folder). Do not share ripped or demuxed DVD audio; unless it is LPCM, it is lossy and not permitted outside it's native container. Do not share DTS-WAV files encoded to FLAC or another lossless format; these files are lossy and need special codecs to be played. Listen to the files in your share!
09. Do not share uncompressed wav or aiff files. If you need to decompress files, choose an output directory that is not in your share.
10. MPEG-1 Audio (mpa, mp1, mp2, mp3), MPEG-2 (aac, ac3, dts), MPEG-4 (aac, m4a) mpc, ogg, wma, real audio and other lossy audio formats are FORBIDDEN in the hub without exception. Never transcode lossy audio to a lossless format and share it; you will be banned if discovered. Make it a habit to spot check your share for lossy-sourced audio, to prevent spreading altered and damaged recordings throughout the trading community.
11. Only queue one show at a time from a user unless you get prior permission to queue more. Never demand a slot or harass other users by begging. Do not grab multiple slots from the same user if you are in multiple hubs. Do not leave autosearch for alternate sources ticked and download your fellow user's filelists over and over, or you will be kicked. Segmented downloading clients are not recommended, and we ask that you disable this feature in the hub in consideration of other users. Clients that do not permit segmented downloading to be switched off (DC .700-.705) are not permitted; please upgrade or downgrade if you have a version within this range. Treat others with respect and consideration.
12. No cloning (do not connect twice to the hub with the same computer), multiple registrations or logins. Do not use share faking, slot blockers, or emulation clients that hide or alter your tag. You will be banned if this is discovered.
13. Do not advertise, recruit or solicit for other hubs. Do not flood main chat with advertising, text pasted from clipboard, banners, or an excessive list of "Now Sharing". Reasonable lists of new shows (5-7) and discussion of the status of hubs that we all frequent are permitted.
14. Stay in the hub while downloading. Do not remove a show from your share that you know another user is downloading; bring your grevience to an Op so we can find a reasonable solution.
15. Do not ignore or disrespect an OP. Do not ignore PMs; they are attempts to work out problems without kicking or disconnecting users. If you have a problem with one, PM your situation to another. Expect to be kicked or worse if you swear or curse at an Operator or hub member in main chat, no matter what the provocation. Do not use support@bootlegarchive.com as a vehicle for venting anger and frustration in an abusive way; it is manned soley by volunteers who give of their own free time.
16. Please refrain from blogging or ranting in main chat. If you curse excessively or make fun of the bot's head gear, he is programmed to warn you, and then give you a 20 minute timeout to cool off. We will not stop you from PM'ing the Madhatter, but remember you are talking to a bot script. Note: Madhatter is not a trader or fellow member of the hub and is not subject to any rules.