No banning should be 100% permanent unless it's for something major like continuous posting of porn of threatening to kill someone. At another forum I'm a staff member of we had a member who posted a link to a video, the last four seconds of which were (according to the admin who dealt with him) hard core homosexual porn. He got a week long ban. If he posts something like that again, he'll likely get perma-banned, yeah.
Although there are times where someone makes account after account after account to just spam. Seen a few of them. I think on one of them the site owner actually wrote to the public facility where the guy was accessing the account and got them to block the site.
It does all depend on what the preson's being banned for I guess, but year-long bans aren't really the way to go. A few weeks maybe, once or twice, before the really long bans or perma-ban.
