Down or Up with FAIO?

There has been a lot of controversy in recent days regarding the FAIO website which, for those of you who don't know, is an online site where over 220 Adventures in Odyssey episodes are available for downloading. Recently an anonymous guy has started up a website called Down with FAIO. On the home page it is written:

This site is dedicated to the destruction of FAIO, a site that provides Adventures in Odyssey episodes to people for free. It takes Focus on the Family (the producers of Adventures in Odyssey) a lot of money to make the episodes. And if all the 6000+ users of FAIO would buy the albums instead of listening for free, Focus would have more money to make more products. So if you would like FAIO to be shut down, let us know. We're doing what we can here, but we need your support.

FAIO is not a good site, but it isn't necessarily bad. It is, however, taking money away from FOTF, but, as the webmaster has stated, they endorse donating to FOTF, and he does so himself. Down with FAIO is also not a good site, but not necessarily bad. It definitely brings up good points about it's point of view, but for a little while, it was being done in a somewhat hateful way. I'm glad it's been cleared up.

On the FAIO website, the webmaster says in response to the question, "Is this site legal?": "Have you ever watched a copyrighted video on Youtube? It's just like that; these episodes are copyrighted, but it's the ones who upload or download them that are in the wrong."

My problem with that answer is that the way the episodes are formatted, it's like he's asking people to download them. He puts a link that says, "DOWNLOAD" beside many of the episodes. It is a choice to just listen to the episode on the website, but many, I'm sure, will take advantage of the ability to download.

The first thing you see when coming to the "Episodes" page is this:

You are about to access the LARGEST archive of online Adventures In Odyssey episodes in existence. AIO does not make these episodes for free. They rely on donations and income from merchandise. If everyone comes here and listens for free, they can't exist. All of these episodes are available elsewhere on the web. All Faio does is collect these already-existing episodes and archive them. Faio does NOT support the uploading of copyrighted content. If you like what you hear, you should buy the episodes on CD. It's convenient, easy, and best of all, you help support a great Christian ministry. Happy Listening!

Elsewhere, on the "News" page, Zack the webmaster says

[A]fter a legal investigation...Faio was found to be perfectly legal....Whether or not this website hurts FOTF is up to it's USERS. If the users want to support AIO, they can click the buy links or a donate to FOTF link.(Found on just about every page in the sidebar, as well as multiple places around the site.) If Faio wanted to, we could provide links to EVERY SINGLE episode. Instead, we only provide links to streaming links. There are hundreds more that are download only, but downloading is against the Faio policy, and it's also against the law. Faio and most of it's users love FOTF and AIO. Many users actively support FOTF. Faio is a website that stands FOR Focus On The Family. These activists are against Faio, so really they are against FOTF too. Also, this is a FANSITE. This website was not made for profit of any sort. Any income it may get (such as from advertisements and such) goes to help this website, or straight to FOTF as a donation.

He makes some very good points, and I pretty much agree with what he says. Therefore, after digging deeper, I no longer believe that FAIO is a bad website, and therefore, do not think that Down with FAIO should be supported. That website's anonymous webmaster also pretty much renounced his hostility toward FAIO yesterday when he said

I'd like to make a public apology. I'm sorry for the things I've said. I was being very rude in some of my comments on FAIO. I've thought about it. I was just doing all this because it sounded kind of cool. I like making websites, and I liked arguing with FAIO Admin. But really, I use his sites and I download episodes from them. I don't really have any major complaint against FAIO (except the swearing and the rude comments by their followers) I will change or delete this site and make [an] apology on FAIO soon. I realize that I was being stupid. I wouldn't really be able to change FAIO by doing all this. So again I'm sorry. To you too Faio admin. BTW, don't stop visiting the blogs because of this. They were not rude in the comments they made in the guestbook. They are both good blogs. Thanks everybody.

That pretty much sums up my words about the subject too. Aside from the swearing that's apparently going on at FAIO in some of the comments, they aren't doing anything that really wrong or illegal. Hopefully my getting involved in the controversy for a short time before I had adequate information hasn't turned anyone away from my blog.

Thank you for reading! Please comment!