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Guest Shalomar

Illegal Distribution of software

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Guest deKoven

Well sir, I guess the only comment I could add is that you're prolly preaching to da choir here. I know for myself that when/if I buy or DL items I'm pretty sure where I'm getting them from. My advice? There are a lot of scumbags out there; there have been in the past and they will always be around in the future. It's human nature; most people are honest as the day is long, but ya gits da occasional rotten apple. You've done, in the spam mail case, what you needed to do to control it. I'm thinking that you just need to sort of lay things into perspective re the pirating of your creations. If you blow the only one you hurt is yourself. It's your blood pressure that'll go up. They won't even notice. They won't notice if you stop creating, they'll just find the next person and go on cheating. I will hasten to add here; I am not a creator. I don't seem to have the skills to make things for FS or any other game. I can modify some items but making them from scratch is beyond me. I support the community as I can, 'though I'm on a pretty tight budget. I'm grateful for all those who create for FS, it's my recreational "thing" right now.

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Guest odog

Mr. Smith, I can understand your frustration, but you cant let it detract from your enjoyment of our hobby. I have been building aircraft since 2k2 and have seriously cut back on what i choose to release publicly. I have gone to email delivery, or 'secret' sites to download what i dont want dragged all over cyberspace. I use the emails that I get from my 'freeware' released at Avsim to distribute my "mailware". I figure, if people are too busy to drop an email, then maybe they are the types i would like to stay away from. Plus, YOU control who gets what. I still enjoy uploading a plane/scenery here and there, and supporting freeware developers in general, but everything has changed since 2002. From what i can see, the 'community' that was built around sharing freeware and the tools to make them, has gone underground or gone payware. Freeware still exists, but not openly shared like before. The only reason I can see from my chair, is anyone who can push a vert, or paint a poly is charging for their work. Claims of complexity and time consumption abound from them, but I say, the single freeware developer devotes as many, even more hours than a payware TEAM. Using freeware tools to make payware, to me, is just as disgusting as your situation. So, it looks like a 'chicken vs. egg' situation to me... did pirates create the payware rush, or did overcharging for what used to be free/reasonable, anger a segment of the community so much, they turned to breaking the law? I honestly dont know, it is wrong regardless. There is no excuse for what has happened to your work, it happens to mine all the time, but I just adjusted my approach to it all. Im still just as happy, and no one sends me mean emails, or uploads my work w/o my permission anymore. this is just my opinion, right or wrong, i dont really care. I sleep easy at night knowing certain people can not get their hands on my work. and i like having that power. my advice is to only release textures you dont care what happens to, and keep the sweets under lock and key. Make your site restricted to those you trust, get real email addy's and you can keep track of who is ripping you off and bounce them. and dont go payware, it's all too commonplace these days. good luck, I hope this will not keep you from enjoying your niche. joe

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Guest jordanmoore

This is preaching to the choir.Anybody reading your post is already here, and most likely isn't searching those other sites or paying them for membership. Your intentions are good, but you have the wrong audience.As a developer, I can agree that things are very challenging in the flight sim community (for freeware and payware developers). However, when I see a developer of either sort threatening to quit for this reason or that reason... I can't say that I have much care for that. If you don't want to develop, if its not rewarding enough. Then quit.For every time one of my files has shown up on one of these other websites, I have recieved 2 emails thanking me for my hard work. Some recounting personal tales of real-world experience in an aircraft I have released for flight-sim. That reason alone would keep me from quitting.There was also a point about these bad websites moving in and taking control of our hobby. I don't see that. However, when I see a flight sim developer in our "good" community threatening to quit if people don't behave or do the right thing, that is where I see an issue of control.Jordan Moore

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Mr. Smith, Joe and all othersThis is clearly a tough nut to crack, as any legal action against these offending, slimeball and parasitic type-sites would cost deep in the purse. I am old to flying and flight simulator in general but young to the design side of things and like most if not all freeware designers place notices in readme files that state my wishes as to distribution, credits etc. Excerpt from my readme (placed at the top of page)// Hello All Flight Sim Enthusiasts.

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"(3) Occasionally, spend a dollar or two on a donation to a developer to help them cover the substantial cost incurred in providing you the free products."That comment in the original thread is what compelled me to respond..I tried commenting on the thread in the main MSFS forum, but it was in the midst of being moved and my post went into la la land. I'll be briefer this time...All the replies are good, first of all. Sorry to say, these sites exist and the only way to shut them down would be to rid them of their sources of income. We can boycott those who advertise on the sites, but individuals are still attracted to the sites in the same way some are duped by infomercials into paying for products that we can get at better quality and a fraction of the price. Nothing will change that.Legal action is too expensive for most of us who contribute freeware, and these sites know that. They hide behind their own quasi "legal" mumbo jumbo to basically say our copyright is theirs when we use the word "free". That isn't true, but who has the funds to fight? My concern is why leave freeware because there's someone trying to steal from us? Why gripe about the "thousands of hours" of work? Does anyone believe freeware is created for everyone but the author? I am my own "number one" customer. I'm going to do the work for my own satisfaction--I'm not going to ask for a handout to defray the costs, nor am I going to stop doing work if I find my work poached (and it has been). I've cut the amount of work I've released, not because of sites that poach, but due to ungrateful, childish users (from age ten to seventy) who seem to think I owe them perfection or something pretty close to it. But I still do new projects, and if it appeals to me enough, I still release them--just not as widely as I used to.But it would be foolish of me to rant about my work being stolen. I had a home break-in last year. Thousands of dollars of goods were stolen, and even videotaped memories of my daughter's infancy which I will never get back. I can either stop living, write letters to every paper complaining about man's injustice to his fellow man, ask for donations for our crippled family, or just go on with life and take it as it comes. I choose the latter, and what happened to me is far worse than some site poaching some of my files, which I've also had happen.So I like the post which says "you're preaching to the Choir" Garry. Those who participate in the forums here already show their disdain for such sites by participating in one with the highest standards. You can still derive pleasure from your creations by what they do for you--that should be your first and only test of whether you wish to create. Don't give the bottom feeder sites the pleasure of getting to you, and also, be fair and honest about whether your work is freeware, or "freeware in the hopes someone will lend you a dime". I know I will not ask for a dime when my work was created first and foremost for my own consumption. As to the sites that poach, think of their owners and advertisers as being on the bottom of the pond or the bottom of a camel's foot. That gives me more satisfaction than any other thought, because 90 pct. of the lowlifes who steal from us live far sadder lives than we do.-John

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We have been talking about it for nigh on a year, but we are getting closer to actually doing this; opening up a mirror of the AVSIM library. The mirror will allow any site that wishes to link to AVSIM library files via the mirror. All files on the mirror are controlled by AVSIM, and as with AVSIM's base library, the author has the final say as to his/her file dispositions, including whether it appears in the mirror system at all. That is, they can ask that it be removed, up-dates tied to earlier releases, etc. In short, authors will maintain control of their work as always. Why is this a fix? Simple; if there are 5,000 sites out there linking to the library, why would anyone pay to get access via the poacher's sites? I predict a short life for the poaching sites, once the mirror is online and serving up to the world-wide community.

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Guest DemolitionMan

TomThat's a very cool idea. Hopefully it'll put a stop to people like Ferdy and people like him. A bit OT: Did you recieve my mail btw?BestGrahame (EDHL)

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Guest davidvoogd

(Copy of what I posted in the same thread at Simflight.com)I think Francois had it right when he said (On the simflight forum) it's the general attitude of the world now. These days, and especially within my age group (23) it is almost as if no matter what you do, it's ok, just as long as you don't get caught. Or even worse, if enough people do it, it's ok! We have lost our sense of respect, tradition and decency. It really all comes down to respect, or the lack of.Piracy is absolutely rampant, whether computer software, music, or even satellite signals. Most everyone just thinks hey I won't get caught, so what does it matter? Personally, it's not about getting caught or not - it's about doing what is honest. Unfortunately again my generation especially just doesn't seem to care about honesty.On that note however, something I think would help the entire community would be a common EULA created for all freeware developers to use. It would be created by lawyers of different nations to be internationally binding, and easy for all authors to use for their software. This would make it easy for all authors to protect their work.Perhaps an organization could be developed cooperatively with developers, Simflight, AVSIM, Flightsim.com and other honest communities to enforce this EULA as a whole, one single setup. Perhaps even Payware could be incorporated and this same organization could be used to fight piracy as well.I think the only way we could possibly actually tackle this is to work together.

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Like I posted at simflight: the problem is that the poachers have addresses that are likely to be among the first new users of the product try when wanting to find information about it.When I started with MSFS back in '99 the first URL I typed in was www.fs2000 dot com which of course leads to the disreputable payware distributor and poacher site of "perfect" flight.fsplanet is another such natural URL.Maybe a marketing campaign would help but unless kept up indefinitely it'll only cause a momentary blip.You might preempt some things by preregistering fs2006.com/org/net, thus cutting off at least one potential venue for the poachers to snare beginning users of the next likely release.

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Guest Shalomar

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!When I purchased FLY 2 Terminal Realitity told me to download my manual from File planet. Not being on the Internet I went to my sister's house and waited 45 minutes for a server to become available. The whole while I was reminded I could get my download instantly for a fee of... I wound up with the manual for FLY 2K instead but I wasn't going thru that again! I told TRI I wasn't on the internet and they sent me patches on CD. Support was pretty good at least for me till they pulled the plug. On WWW.iflytri forums one day I saw a suggestion to get stuff from avsim.com which I had never heard of. I started out by getting the right manual instantly and I have never been to any flight sim site since except direct Avsim links. I agree with Jordan Moore that once people experience Avsim they don't swim with the sharks. FLY 2 has actually matured and gotten much better since TRI stopped selling it, all thanx to freeware developers. Now Take Two started selling it again and PDMG released its 757, 767 and 777 aircraft for sale by Shareware. ROTW has released a DVD chock full of addons, all stuff available from Avsim but THREE gigs would be a big download! As for donations my conscience has been bothering me, I did send ROTW 50 bucks and intend to make ones to Avsim and F2F. As for piracy, if a comercial company has stopped printing something and it is not available secondhand whaddaya gonna do? MSFS has squelched a couple of competitors I preferred.Best regards, Donny:-wave

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Guest Glen Gordon

I recently had the same issue with a few of the sites in this thread.www.simnetwork.com and www.simnetwork.net placed one of my repaint files in their joint file library without seeking my permission.They were selling "1st class access" to the file library (including my repaint) and made the free access difficult to see.I wrote www.simnetwork.com via their web comment page asking them how I was suppposed to download the file and stated that it didn't appear obvious.The result? I get the following email in return:--------------------------------------------------------------There is nothing abnormal you have visited the 1class membership that has faster download

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I'm a freeware artist, and my repaints have all been uploaded without permission to various sites, including the ones mentioned above. The free-to-download sites don't bother me, however, the ones who uploaded my work without permission AND demand payment to download my files do irritate me.I understand your feelings, Garry, but you're not alone! My action plan is still under consideration, due to my limited personal time.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/130611.jpg

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Guest Glen Gordon

I checked via an alternate IP address and as of 01/01/2006 www.simnetwork.net still had my file present on their site and was still charging money for '1 CLASS' membership access to the file.Perhaps they needed a reminder to remove it.

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Guest Ken_Salter

I just checked this site and they have FSAutoStart posted there, even though the README file states distribution must have consent.And they even left the avsim.diz file in the zip, showing that they poached the file from AVSIM!

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