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Hmmm.... what is likely to alienate customers more? Allowing musicians (who are deeply affected by this turn of events on both a tactile and emotional level and are deeply emotionally attached to a company who has been supplying our business with quality instruments since before many of us were born) the latitude to express our opinion, or telling those customers "If we don't like what you say we will throw you out of the sandbox?"




I'm a strong advocate of freedom of speech, but I'm also an advocate of responsible speech.

A person is free to express every strong opinion he has at his daughter's wedding reception, but the family is still likely to be ticked if it causes a family turmoil and changes focus from the wedding to the argument.

It costs PGMusic money to provide this forum. They don't charge us for the access. I doubt that they budget the funds just so we can post our opinions. The forum is so potential customers can see how existing customers use and enjoy the product. The difference between responsible speech and irresponsible speech is that Responsible speech does not change the focus from their product to our opinions.


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The Constitution of my country allows me the right to state my opinion if I don't cross a line and say something bad about anybody's mama. It also allows me to own a gun to protect myself, to vote for my leadership, etc..... If those rights do not cross northern borders, so be it, but with a large American potential customer base, which way is more likely to win friends and influence people? That eye on the business model seems to indicate a little more relaxed posture on forum content would be prudent. Nobody here went off on a wild rant full of expletives and n-bombs. And the discussion has been aimed at what most of us perceive to be wrongdoing against another company we love.




it isn't a matter of rights crossing the border... even here in the USA federally guaranteed personal rights don't override the rights of private companies to control the content of public media that they pay to provide freely to the public.

There is a point where rights and entitlement get blurry, and I think we're pretty close.

For businesses, allowing strong opinions to be associated with their product is generally a lose-lose situation because for any given strong opinion, about half the people seeing it will be offended by it. It may make a customer feel good to vent, but after he's wiped the mud from his feet and walked away feeling clean, the mud still remains on the website to make subsequent visitors feel uncomfortable.

Discomfort and sales are not compatible. Sales are all about making people feel comfortable and excited in a good way. Encouraging sales is the goal of this web site. Talking about how the country is going down the tubes is detrimental to the goals of this forum.

But that's just my opinion. Not everyone may see it that way.