Originally Posted by Silenia
Bandwidth is not free.
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Of course it's not. By posting this here you are stealing this sites bandwidth whenever someone is opening the thread? Really?
Do you feel like a thief?
Look, I (and you) cannot steal bandwidth from this site because they are giving it to us for free. I cannot steal something which is free. It's their decision to do so. There is nothing illegal in using their bandwidth.
Btw, your analogy with electricity is wrong. Nobody is paying for the bandwidths of servers except the server owners itself. And they are responsible for the servers finances, nobody else. If it's not profitable they either have to be a nonprofit organization (and somebody else is going to pay the bill) or better don't bring the server online at all.
There is however an unfortunate
problem in using their bandwidth. This problem occurs as soon as their business model does no longer work. And, read my lips, I clearly see that loosing this business model would destroy most parts of the Addon community and their distribution chain. However, there is nothing illegal going on here.
And, if this is the main problem, then
all automatic updaters are bad.
One way to solve this dilemma is shutting down (obfuscate) the links for automatic tools. For me this is the worst solution because you are taking away the benefit of automatic updaters.
Maybe there are other ways: Ask WoWMatrix if they support the sites they are getting the links from? Ask the end users for more contributions (heck, the users currently think everything is fine, there is little pressure for them to donate. But this might change)? Maybe Blizzard itself jumps on the band wagon? Or any other people with money and interest, e.g. magazines and the like? Write your own Updater which beats WoWMatrix and get the income from partners and ads? Use GoogleCode instead of WoW Addon sites?
On the other hand I'm not sure if the problem really exists. I'm using WoWMatrix and I still frequently visit the Addon sites. In fact all players I know do. As someone with a job, a family and playing WoW you only have that much time to surf the web, but I still go to Curse, WoWUI, WoWInterface and WoWAce.