Glad I grabbed all of Ethnicfs's freeware before they removed everything!😅

I'm not well-versed in IP law, but in my experience terms of service copypasta is typical for many business sectors, unless we're talking about really big hitters. I seriously doubt that operators of hosting or similar sites routinely hire lawyers in this business, and if they do, the lawyers will likely copy paste any other TOS they find on internet anyway rather than come up with a tailored solution. Most often the actual content of terms and conditions does not matter as long as it is a 'market standard' and nobody usually really cares what the user base thinks because the users usually do not care anyway. What’s worse, the effect of copypasta is that even careful users will often justify rather draconian terms to themselves when it turns out that they are likely to find similar terms elsewhere.

This leads to a long-term trend of unrestricted conditions layering, regardless of how relevant it is to a particular business and whether it actually makes sense and is able to fit the owner's business idea and, most importantly, whether is it fair.

In this case, claiming that one can retain all their ownership rights to their content while providing an irrevocable license to keep and distribute it is an amazing display of legal nihilism and shows a lack of respect for basic IP rights. It is not uncommon, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Edited February 20, 20233 yr by Ohmsquare

They disabled my account because I broke some rules but it's not mentioned exactly which ones. 

Which also means I lost my purchases made there as a customer. An Aircraft and some airports. I can no longer access those.

Just as a heads up what can happen. 

Ah well, I should not have bought something from a website in Tonga.
I'll stick to EU based websites from now on as I usually do. At least we have customer protection laws here.

Was inexpensive stuff that I lost, so I won't bother going after them.

Edited February 20, 20233 yr by darshonaut

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

 

Do not reverse the roles. The accused has no obligation to explain themselves, the accuser has the duty to present the case after a thorough screening of the evidences. And as Marc said above ‘Much ado about nothing’.

Are you a lawyer?

Whether this is much "ado about nothing" is not for you or me to decide. The only opinion that matters is the one from uploaders to flightsim.to. 

If there are concers, the site owners should address those publicly to generate "trust". More trust means more business means more money for everyone. Win Win! This is not a difficult concept to understand. 

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Michael, we have known each other for a long time on forums so allow me to respectfully disagree .

Do not reverse the roles. The accused has no obligation to explain themselves, the accuser has the duty to present the case after a thorough screening of the evidences. And as Marc said above ‘Much ado about nothing’.

Don't worry, I never insisted in being always right 🙂

I am still asking myself why none of the flightsim.to people turn up here, even more, if they want to engage with the community. While AVSIM isn't the community as such it is certainly a not unimportant subset of it. Umberto did so when there were issues, iniBuilds did, and others, too, and usually this was to the benefit of both sides.

I can't deny I dislike the new premium membership. This isn't because of being greedy, I donated to flightsim.to in 2021 (just looked it up) and I was about to repeat it in the last year only to find donations were closed already. Actually, I belong to those quite often to donate to free software and services I find worth it, and I donate to AVSIM regularly. However, I prefer to freely spend money for free services to show them my appreciation instead of being - even mildly - urged to do so. 

But that's me. Others may well disagree.

Kind regards, Michael

15 minutes ago, darshonaut said:

Ah well, I should not have bought something from a website in Tonga.
I'll stick to EU based websites from now on as I usually do. At least we have customer protection laws here.

Was inexpensive stuff that I lost, so I won't bother going after them.

I here they have beautiful beaches in Tonga. So there's that.😄

2 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

Are you a lawyer?

Whether this is much "ado about nothing" is not for you or me to decide. The only opinion that matters is the one from uploaders to flightsim.to. 

If there are concers, the site owners should address those publicly to generate "trust". More trust means more business means more money for everyone. Win Win! This is not a difficult concept to understand. 

Which is what they have done, but now you've got modders sticking to their guns even though they probably realise it's a storm in a teacup especially as the ToS was from 2020....., egg on faces all round with this AVSim inspired fiasco, but don't let that stop the pitch forks from coming out!

Apparently here is proof of fs.to "un-deleting" content. They are shown as the author of an atr-72 mod that was originally archived by the actual content creator.

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1172mm2

Yesterday I entrusted my car keys to a friendly person. I don't know who he is, but he made a convincing case that I would get it back. I don't know where he lives either, but he has a letterbox in a Berlin office tower block and introduced himself as "Z37xy". I am very optimistic about this....😉

Edited February 20, 20233 yr by simmershome

44 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Which is what they have done, but now you've got modders sticking to their guns even though they probably realise it's a storm in a teacup especially as the ToS was from 2020....., egg on faces all round with this AVSim inspired fiasco, but don't let that stop the pitch forks from coming out!

It first became 'a drama' last year in a modest way - https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/to-all-developers/563974

I guess the premium idea set people thinking again. 

Overreaction or not, the message is clear enough - more control over the file, or you get no file. 

1 hour ago, darshonaut said:

Ah well, I should not have bought something from a website in Tonga.
I'll stick to EU based websites from now on as I usually do. At least we have customer protection laws here.

The site is registered in Tonga, the business is done through a British vendor subsidiary of a California outfit as per the chapter 10 of their ToS.

1 minute ago, Dominique_K said:

The site is registered in Tonga, the business is done through a British vendor subsidiary of a California outfit as per the chapter 10 of their ToS.

My confidence level just went through the roof!

1 hour ago, darshonaut said:

They disabled my account because I broke some rules but it's not mentioned exactly which ones. 

Which also means I lost my purchases made there as a customer. An Aircraft and some airports. I can no longer access those.

Just as a heads up what can happen. 

Ah well, I should not have bought something from a website in Tonga...

Well that is appalling.  So if you upset the mods, rather than just losing access to the upload file system and your personal account for posting, they take away your right to access your purchases from their store, and any future updates to them?  I have purchases there as well, such as the GotFriends Edgley Optica. 

I wonder if GotFriends will be able to honour this purchase though their site?
Certainly that is the last purchase there from me now.  

Many of us sign up to all sorts of sites without noticing everything in TOS, but it usually doesn't matter as we only care about what they actually do, not about what they have the right to do. I get the impression the nub of this issue isn't monetisation but uploader trust over the deletion policy, following claims of delete requests being refused.

A site like this really needs goodwill from users otherwise it becomes harder to attract new ones. Perhaps the wary uploaders would be reassured if they had an express right to delete in the TOS. 

1 minute ago, bobcat999 said:

Well that is appalling.  So if you upset the mods, rather than just losing access to the upload file system and your personal account for posting, they take away your right to access your purchases from their store, and any future updates to them?  I have purchases there as well, such as the GotFriends Edgley Optica. 

I wonder if GotFriends will be able to honour this purchase though their site?
Certainly that is the last purchase there from me now.  

I find that worrying too - I'm not an uploader so I'm not caught up in the deletion issue, but it isn't acceptable they can close off access to purchased products, if accurate.  I got my Optica there too.  I've seen other sites who 'sin bin' users (on forums) but will still support their purchased products. GF seem quite responsive to customers on Discord so maybe worth asking them there.