Cache network engaged - Bad Dragon sponsors U.S. cache node by Inkbunny < Journal

Would that be such a bad thing? Perhaps an ""Inkbunny Editions" range?

Keeran

10 years, 5 months ago

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definitely not a bad thing

Hornybunny

10 years, 5 months ago

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You're not the only one.

AltheAlbinoFox

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

Well, clearly Jeffy's tongue would—
What am I doing, this is supposed to be a thread about servers X)

But yeah, Bad Dragon®. It's surprising how many ways they work to make us happy! I'll leave it at thanking them for that =D

JeffyCottonbun

10 years, 5 months ago

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OMG!!!

Hornybunny

10 years, 5 months ago

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You could use Snowball the Deer colored jeffy orange or kevin white.

It's the closest thing they have to a humpable bunny butt.

maxinered

10 years, 5 months ago

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Awesome! More cache is always good. Does anything change for developers?

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ maxinered

We've added file links to the Search API to help developers access the first file in a submission via an appropriate URL; other URLs may no longer have "inkbunny.net" at the front, but you shouldn't have assumed that anyway. Other than that, programs should access the main server as normal.

CareBear

10 years, 5 months ago

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I have never seen any lag on Inkbunny, either while I was in the US or in Europe.

Pages always load instantly.

It seems like that money could have been better spent improving the existing infrastructure.

Adding more infrastructure adds administrative overhead and cost over time.

GreenReaper is already sitting aside by himself at conventions typing SQL commands into terminals to keep things running as it is...

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ CareBear

If you're thinking of Califur, I was migrating WikiFur and Flayrah to a new server. It's annoying, but it doesn't happen more than once every few years. :-)

I'm glad you've had a good experience to date! I'd personally noticed a difference in content delivery between, say, Inkbunny and Fur Affinity while in Texas – although there were several back-end and database issues impacting performance as well, which it made sense to solve first.

You're right about the administrative load, and this was something I strongly considered before deciding to go down this path. You can see the arguments against it in our donation drive Q&A. But we were starting to encounter issues. You see that 80Mbit spike yesterday? That's from one person. It was a legitimate bulk download; but a few days ago it would have caused congestion for other users - both network-wise, and through increased disk activity. We want to allow fast downloads, but we also don't want them interrupting other people. Now, that goal is far easier to achieve.

Bandwidth has been getting a lot cheaper, but because of the way our host (like many others) works on a "sales loss-leader" basis, it cost less to provision a new server with 1GBps and 100TB/month than to upgrade the network connection on our main server. As it happened, our existing on-site backup was running out of space - in other words, this was an opportunity to improve our existing infrastructure. We just used the server we were getting to mildly daze two furs with one stone. :-)

As for the U.S. cache, we're not paying for it, so the only concrete cost is administration. I suspect it isn't too expensive for Bad Dragon, either. IOFlood hasn't offered VPSes since 2011, but they may have had some hanging around.

For Inkbunny's team members, creating and deploying two quite different nginx configurations was a very useful learning experience, one which I expect to apply to other websites. And now that we have a cache system, we can scale beyond two servers as and when required, with far less additional effort.

TwistedTales

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ CareBear

Your experience does not define everyone else's.

Roketsune

10 years, 5 months ago

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Woohoo, yet more improvement to our glorious home!

Jewel

10 years, 5 months ago

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Nice!

Flygon

10 years, 5 months ago

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May it be stable as possible, man. We've had a good history with them, what with stuff generally not going down. I trust Inkbunny will be just as well served!

IrritatedCharizard

10 years, 5 months ago

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I had good ping early well never tested it but everything was loading all fine, but atm im getting 175 - 195 ping, currently switched back to main server and it's loading.

Time Warner sucks assssssss :/

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ IrritatedCharizard

The alternate route to the U.S. server might be better (or worse), depending on your ISP's connectivity. Worth trying! (It's us-alt.ib.metapix.net if you want to see how it pings.)

IrritatedCharizard

10 years, 5 months ago

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I tested earlier and it wasn't loading images but seems to be working now on the alt US, ping is also under 100ms.

I guess ill just change servers when until I don't need to anymore lol

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ IrritatedCharizard

Our data suggests that the regular route to the Arizona server is better in almost all circumstances, which makes sense as that provider is 10Gbps rather than 2Gbps. So, if you're looking for a default, that would probably be it - but if we add another U.S. cache, it'd be worth trying that. The time to test is in the middle of the evening, U.S. time, as if you're seeing congestion that's when it tends to peak.

IrritatedCharizard

10 years, 5 months ago

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Will keep that in mind, thanks for the assistance.

WhiteWolf101

10 years, 4 months ago

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@ IrritatedCharizard

Just an FYI for you, I am donating a Eastern Canadian cache server, you can test that out at qc.ib.metapix.net for ping, its the Quebec server in the settings page!

GreenReaper

will be posting official news about it in soonish (maybe today even?)

It should be setup right now so clients are automatically connecting to it if they fit the defined regions, but if you happen to be outside of those and think you get better ping to that data center, give it a shot and see what happens :P

dahan

10 years, 5 months ago

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Yay, awesome! :) What does "non-private files and thumbnails" mean? I.e., what's considered "private"? I assume mature/adult art that requires a login to view is still non-private, since I'm getting those from the US cache.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ dahan

Yeah, the "no-guest" setting and rating-block does not restrict raw content access via the URL, although we do block embedding on other sites via a referrer-check.

We considered splitting up work based on guest or adult-content status and then decided that unless a cache asked for that, it probably wasn't worth doing - and if they did, they probably weren't someone we wanted to work with anyway (if nothing else, it's what we most need to be cached, as it is popular).

XavierTehFurry

10 years, 5 months ago

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If you have AT&T and have no other ISP to switch to in your area (yay 'Merica), I'd suggest Private Internet Access (PIV) for a VPN. They're cheap, fast, reliable, and they don't log anything.

BeardedFox

10 years, 5 months ago

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I've noticed suggestions have stopped appearing in my emails, this have any connection or did I mess up on my end?

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ BeardedFox

This appears to be is an unrelated issue - Microsoft (Hotmail/Live/Outlook) has been dropping our email from Monday. We're not at all sure why, but we've asked them and we hope that they will fix it soon. You are welcome to ask them as well!

BeardedFox

10 years, 5 months ago

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Ahhh ok, thanks =)

pharwarner

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I feel uncomfortable about Inkbunny accepting sponsorship from Bad Dragon. Its leadership has recently faced some very serious allegations. I really didn't expect to see Inkbunny accept donations from somebody like that, I'm a bit gutted to be honest.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ pharwarner

We appreciate some have reservations over Bad Dragon's business, or their staff, or the jurisdiction in which they reside; just as some are uncomfortable with Inkbunny's content, its members, or those running it. This is one reason we structured this feature in such a way that you are free to choose whether to use it, and that private data is not held by this cache.

At the end of the day, we're here to help artists showcase their work, and we felt it'd be inappropriate to turn down a significant improvement to our service which our donors would otherwise have to pay for.

Now that we've deployed a cache of this type, it should be far easier to deploy others. We'll continue to seek out partners for cache sponsorship - some of whom you may be more comfortable with!

Zenobius

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ pharwarner

They've received allegations again or is this about them selling their defective toys at full retail price since 2014? --> http://minivoice.tumblr.com/post/92778941209/not-sure-.... or their horrible attitude towards furries in general? (such as outright stealing artwork/logos and etc.) --> http://cannedcowboy.tumblr.com/post/100369483616/final...

On one hand I can understand since they are a company that sell sex toys, on the other hand they shouldn't have to treat the fandom like this, so seeing them fund Inkbunny's new server just sorta fills me with mixed feelings.

pharwarner

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ Zenobius

I refer to allegations of sexual assault by the owner of the company against a friend of mine. I've never had any experience of the products that the company produces, I can make no comment there. This is what I refer to... https://inkbunny.net/journalview.php?id=171283

Royyy

10 years, 5 months ago

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I hope this doesn't eventually lead to BD ads everywhere. I'm getting sick of how obnoxious they are as a business.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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All Bad Dragon asked for was public recognition of their support, which we've implemented as a footer mention and link when you're using their sponsored server. We felt this was reasonable and proportionate considering the nature of their contribution.

Royyy

10 years, 5 months ago

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That's fair. I'm glad you guys are getting some support. I'm just getting hella skeptical about anything in the fandom these days with everything going so corporate and business-y and how it's ruining the fact that we're supposed to be a community, not a market. That's a whole other topic though.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I must admit, your current icon makes me wonder whether you are complicit in this trend! :-)

Royyy

10 years, 5 months ago

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Ahahaha. Being fancy and professional does not mean I want money or to have money be a major governing force in making community decisions~ I just miss the good old days when everyone was treated mostly equally and now we've got all this exclusivity bs with patreon and adspace spamming on furaffinity and now BD is making an art website to try and "compete" like it's some kind of marketplace. We're supposed to be a community where people are free to share and talk to each other without having to sift through ads and ych auctions and patreon exclusive content and all of this money-related nonsense.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I'd say we are in a marketplace, albeit one more of site philosophies than finances. Each furry art site offers unique features, and attracts a unique community.

For example, Fur Affinity is supported by significant levels of advertising, which its artists presumably find valuable (or they would not pay for it). We believe there's value in a site which lacks this, which attracts a different community.

A well-performing marketplace has something for everyone. Perhaps Bad Dragon feels they can fill an unmet need, and I'll be interested to see what their offering is.

As for money, it's just an token of value. Our donors feel that our service has value - in return for their donations, we undertake to provide that service (using the services of others), and provide recognition for their contribution.

Bad Dragon is led by furry fans, who value Inkbunny and are willing to help us by offering a service which they can access at a lower cost than we can due to economies of scale. In turn, we can provide what they want - improved service for them and their customers, and recognition of their contribution to the community. Rather than a sponsor icon, they get a link, but the principle is the same.

Over time, furry fandom has become something which you can make a living out of. This has had great benefits for the quality and availability of material such as furry art, fursuits, and adult toys. The cost is increasing commercialization, but there is still plenty of "community" out there - and to be honest, the best artists have always required payment for their work. We've gotten to the point where it is feasible for great works to be paid for by large number of people, and I think that is something to celebrate, despite the cost.

Royyy

10 years, 5 months ago

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I've drawn parallels from a community like this to a community like theatre houses. Money is always involved in anything for anything to be produced and that's fair.

What I don't enjoy is how it becomes a battle for who can make more money and that's not what a community is. It becomes a case where you're using fans and community members as a means to make money for the sake of making money and I think that's what ruins the community. I'm an artist myself and I like taking commissions but at least I make sure everyone can see it.

I'm not claiming that everybody is going this way, but there's an awful lot of big names that charge a lot more money than they need for the sake of making more money and not for the sake of giving back to the community, and that's why I think it's changing the community into something that's a lot less inclusive for people who can't afford to take part as much. Just because people want to be paid too much and there are people who are willing to pay doesn't make it right for the rest of us.

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

"	Just because people want to be paid too much and there are people who are willing to pay doesn't make it right for the rest of us.

Doesn't it? What is "too much"? Who gets to decide that? What happens if some artists don't agree? :-)

Besides, supply follows demand. If a few can get away with making a lot of money, it won't be long before others try to do the same, but at a lower price. You may have to change who you associate with, but you will never be short of artists to follow and collaborate with.

(I've also seen complaints from some artists that they get paid "too little", that they can't make minimum wage… but why should they, if people are willing to do the same for less - or better, for the same price? If you can't make a living doing what you love, that just means you have a hobby, not that the system is broken.)

The community of "artists who are making money" has increased because the tools for making so have been democratized - just as shared art galleries like Yerf, the VCL, and later Fur Affinity, SoFurry, Inkbunny and Weasyl democratized the personal art gallery. And just as this helped fuel an explosion of artistic creativity, so, too we'll see an explosion in ways to fund art projects through the use of Patreon, Kickstarter and the like - which I suspect will lead to more and better furry art being created, because it means more people can devote more of their time to projects which are of value to others.

In my experience, furries are pretty good at adapting technologies to the needs and sensibilities of the community. I don't want to highlight specific artists, but I see some doing interesting things with Patreon beyond the classic "pay for things I was already doing" model. Indeed, the old "pay-site" model has been rendered obsolete; now you can pay to support not only the artist you like, but the specific work you like.

Some of these experiments may work; some will be rejected by the community and fail - but if they have value (providing a greater good to a greater number), they will endure. I think this is a good thing regardless of whether some get rich. After all, they will only do so if they deliver value to the community - and as standards rise, that will lead to a lot of free work beforehand, which you will see on sites like Inkbunny.

This completely ignores the people who do do this as a hobby and have no intention of making any money. I don't think those people are going to go away, either; though it may be increasingly hard for them to "keep up" as furry art becomes more professional.

Royyy

10 years, 5 months ago

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That's exactly what I mean though. I don't think this is the right place to make something such as this "professional" because it pushes away people who are attempting to be here for a community experience. To expect people to walk in with a packed wallet just to participate is insane. It's creating an exclusive club for members with money and that's not what a community is.

If things like this progress then it'll turn out to be like miniature paysites everywhere and the social aspect of it will either cease to exist or go somewhere else, in which case if the community side of it sparks up again I'll have no problem staying and drawing content and improving while keeping my art free to view. It isn't fair to have people be expected to be paid $6000 monthly to draw half-ass coloured sketches every so often that only those people can view. Mind you, actual concept artists who pay a lot of money for professional training don't get paid that much to draw what they -don't- want. That's what's absurd about all of this to me. It's not that I get to decide how much anybody is worth making, but using the real world as a model and comparing the talent of artists like Feng Zhu who probably didn't even get paid that much while at his job before creating an institution to professionally train people who also won't get paid that much; I don't believe it's fair for me to run a patreon and charge stupid thousands of dollars for my "hard work" that I half-ass to get paid regularly.

I'm not saying everybody does this, but there are multiples who are popular that abuse this system and that's what's ruining the experience for everyone else. I can only say that it saddens me that people buy into it just because it's porn.

I understand that artists work hard and deserve to get paid. I take commissions, myself. I think Patreon is fantastic as a concept but the amount of people abusing it to make a living doing almost nothing is sickening. To go back on my theatre community model, there are a number of people who do theatre for a living, but it's not an exclusive club and most of the time money is made from dinners and whatnot as opposed to the productions themselves. People can attend rehearsals and talk about it and join in and learn and not have to pay a penny because it isn't an exclusive club.

It's like if I were to walk up to a theatre house and people stop me at the door and say "If you want to come in you have to pay me monthly to be here and to experience the centerpiece of the community." That, to me, is why it ruins a community.

I digress, this isn't really the place to be having such a political argument, and you're right to disagree with me. I just feel like it'd be nice to see artists be a little more selfless every so often.

Makujin

10 years, 5 months ago

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In before masses of ads every freaking where. :(

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ Makujin

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. We simply don't need them! Our donors have been very generous.

MorhlisDizzi

10 years, 5 months ago

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Screw IMVU! We've got Bad Dragon ;D!

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 5 months ago by Owner

@ MorhlisDizzi

We've got the fandom, and Bad Dragon is part of that. A crowd is more sustainable than a company. :-)

That said, we're grateful BD stepped up; it pushed us to do things we might not otherwise have done.

anthrofurry

10 years, 5 months ago

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then it looks like belgium has a great ping to :) did with 2 and great results :D

PING 5.79.80.67 (5.79.80.67) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 5.79.80.67: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=11.5 ms
64 bytes from 5.79.80.67: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=11.4 ms
64 bytes from 5.79.80.67: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=11.3 ms
64 bytes from 5.79.80.67: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=11.4 ms

Pinging inkbunny.net [5.79.80.67] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 5.79.80.67: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=54
Reply from 5.79.80.67: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=54
Reply from 5.79.80.67: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=54
Reply from 5.79.80.67: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=54

and i see we use 10 hops and still that speed ,,, great one :D keep it up

GreenReaper

10 years, 5 months ago

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@ anthrofurry

Looks like you're almost three times closer than I am! :-)

anthrofurry

10 years, 5 months ago

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im from belgium :) the leaseweb server is in the netherlands :) and if i check the location its even in 200km range :D

LeonWolf

10 years, 4 months ago

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I live in the Netherlands so i have no idea what people are talking about :D

GreenReaper

10 years, 4 months ago

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@ LeonWolf

While you will not access these servers, they still provide a small benefit - the removal of the U.S. and Australian load means that your requests to the Netherlands cache are served faster. Disks can only work so fast, even when you have four of them. :-)

ALESSIO626

10 years, 3 months ago

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cool i liv i belgium and a inkbunny server is in nederland nice :D

tory

10 years, 2 months ago

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How in the bloody hell is it legal for Inkbunny to host content in Australia?

GreenReaper

10 years, 2 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 2 months ago by Owner

We don't host content involving human or essentially human characters in sexual situations, including cartoon depictions, which have been the focus of legal issues with such content in Australia. We forbid adult photographic/movie content, which might be subject to ACMA. We are also an adult-only site.

If you are nevertheless uncomfortable using this cache, you're welcome to select another in your account settings; for example, Tokyo, Arizona or the Netherlands. All caches use HTTPS.

tory

10 years, 2 months ago

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if you scroll down to section 473.1 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cca1... of that you can see that federally the definition is apart from ambiguous includes depictions.

"material includes any film, printed matter, electronic data or any other thing of any kind (including any computer image or other depiction)" in Crimes Amendment (Child Pornography) Act 2004 No 95

there was a NSW specific article also since the node is in Sydney but I can't find it that further defined "other depiction" to include stories or pictures of any character whom is or appears to be under the age of 18 and may be used to "groom or otherwise coerce a child" is considered child exploitation material (see: child porn)

tory

10 years, 2 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 2 months ago by Owner

also; https://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=752730

strapping some fur onto a character doesn't hold up in court (no bad vibes toward HornyBunny but it IS cp here)

shit, just search for maggie simpson on this site in general

GreenReaper

10 years, 2 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 2 months ago by Owner

We'll see if it holds up in court if and when it is tested; to my knowledge, it has not.

We do prohibit mere neko-style additions. This is harder to judge within stories, but my personal idea of an anthropomorphic "golden-furred fox" would be something like this.

GreenReaper

10 years, 2 months ago

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Edited 10 years, 2 months ago by Owner

I believe you're talking about this law. It is our belief that a clearly non-human animal cannot be considered to legally represent a "person" (just as a drawing of a real gorilla would not), and hence cannot be a "child". We are willing to defend that belief in court, if necessary – though of course we hope that the DPP would use its discretion to focus on abuse instead.

To access an Inkbunny submission page containing sexually mature or adult content, a person must agree to access such material, which includes an agreement that they are an adult. All pages, even those General-rated, contain a tag indicating that they are adult-only, which should prohibit access to children whose Internet access is being properly filtered.

tory

10 years, 2 months ago

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