Well, the analogy of the supervillain or corrupt governments wasnèt intended to completely illustrate what _our_ situation was, just to show that going underground isnèt an admission of wrongdoing. I had to use an unambiguous good vs evil case to do that. But there, as here, itès not an admission of wrongdoing. Itès an admission that the other side had greater power. Whereas saying, ÈOkay, weère going to change our policies so youère happierÈ is much closer to an admission of wrongdoing. And itès your community, if you want to do that, thatès fine, just donèt pretend itès the other way around.
I think going quieter but not compromising is a lot different than being a crusader. To me being a crusader would be going even more hardcore, participating in torrents, uploading full issues, making it a point to post everything Peter Davidès writing with a Èthere, now you donèt have to buy the issueÈ line at the end. And yeah, as tempting as much of that might be (particularly the last one) that would lose us the goodwill of the wider community. What I, ideally, would prefer is more Èoh, LJ banned usÉ Well, we werenèt doing any harm, so weèll go somewhere else and keep doing the same thing and still not be doing any harm. Treating Marvelès legal actions as the weather, just one of those things that have to be dealt with as they come, rather that actively thumbing our nose at them.
And yeah, it risks losing members of our community through attrition of repeated closures (if that happens), but thereès a network and anybody who cares enough would probably be able to find us again (that includes the publishers of course, but again, the goal should be that they realize that taking down a site again is counterproductive). While if we change who we are, we lose the community that makes us just as much. With the new rules, I know Ièll probably find myself checking less and less often, and eventually could see myself drifting away entirely.
In many ways, rules make the community. The rules attract the people who are attracted to those rules. Thatès why a freewheeling anything goes site attracts a different crowd than a heavily moderated message board. Change the rules, you change the people who want to be there. Change the Èslash friendlyÈ rule, for example, not even to something negative, but just to get rid of the positive, and youèd have gotten a whole different crowd from on S_D.
(in other news, Firefox seems to have suddenly decided I was french, and Ièm not quite sure how to deal with that or fix it. So if the apostophes are screwed up, my apologies. Or ÈpardonÈ, as the case may be).