I think we can all agree the only winners here are the lawyers.  Big surprise.

Below some thoughts shared today on fsdeveloper.com and written after Ian Stephens from Flyawaysimulation contacted me asking for inputs to their Tems of Conditions. These are thoughts behind principles - not an attempt at a legal text.I hope not just Flightsim.to but also other sites think about their terms. Most are poor copy pastes full of unnecessary elements or even contradicting. I have been contacted by many who would like to host Global AI Ship Traffic but it is also important that those think about their Terms of Service to protect themselves.

And before sharing the thoughts, a comment to some of those users who have tried to downplay this or ridiculize this discussion or the motives behind...I have both studied Business Law and worked with IP protection as part of my duties for 27 years for several multinationals, whose products all of you would be very familiar with. However,I am not a lawyer, but I do have sufficient professional experience in the area to conclude that the Terms of Service provided by Flightsim.to was and is extremely single sided and not respecting creators rights. Before I started the fire I did try a dialogue, but while they did try to clarify regards to the Creators Program, they did not want to respond regards to Terms of Service. And then I tried to pull my stuff which they first did not accept, and then did anyway, when the fire was on.

Then to what could be reasonable basic principles :

Creators must be able to remove permanently all or part of their content without having to present any specific reason - a back up can exist at the host for technical purposes, but the content should disappear from the air if the creator wish so

The host should be entitled to remove uploads if they do not live up to site guidelines, but the host should not be allowed to modify a file.

The host has no obligation to keep the file available forever, but similarly the creator only grants a right to host and share until this right is revoked

The host should be able to exclude a creator if guidelines are not respected

Creators should be able to cancel their account and with that all thier uploads

Changes to Terms of Service should be communicated well in advance with an option for creators to remove content before a change take force in case the creator doesn't agree to the new Terms of Service

The host should not take on the risk in case of copyright infringement; that should rest with the creator. In case of breach the host should be able to exclude content and creators with immediate effect.

The agreement should go for one specific site or a clearly defined group of sites

 

The below three points are my absolutely subjective opinion, but still reflects discussions with several friends in the community

it is fine that there is a Premium subscription for fast download and paying the service of organizing and running a download site

It is fine that there is a donation option

Having a Creators Program like Flightsim.to will introduce is okay, but as freeware creator I don't need it; we don't want to run businesses, and if a "creator program" is bringing the premium price up then it does not make much sense. Leave contributions to the developers to a donation button. Use excess income to broaden bandwith for the free download. We do freeware so it is available also for students or retired people or those who lost their income.
 

Henrik Nielsen

1 hour ago, KL791 said:

Having a Creators Program like Flightsim.to will introduce is okay, but as freeware creator I don't need it; we don't want to run businesses, and if a "creator program" is bringing the premium price up then it does not make much sense. Leave contributions to the developers to a donation button. Use excess income to broaden bandwith for the free download. We do freeware so it is available also for students or retired people or those who lost their income.

 

Henrik Nielsen

Exactly my point with over 400.000 downloads here at AVSIM alone excluding before the AVSIM hack I always did freeware in that spirit... After a long hiatus at the contribution front was just picking up the speed again and planning to do some other stuff... But off to do some flying done with this....  

I considered hosting my addons there right at the beginning because of the range and decided against it. 99% of .to domains are used to avoid any legal action or to make it extremely difficult. You are always the fool if you put yourself in the hands of the operators of such domains. I had also voiced my concerns on German sites and was then hated for it. Unfortunately, I was right.

It looks like flightsim.to is willing to change their deletion policy. Their proposal is to allow creators to delete their files immediately as they wish. However there would be a 'deletion period' for four categories of content, where users/creators would be notified that the content will be deleted but it will remain available for download during that period and after that, it will be deleted.

- Libraries: 60 days deletion period
- Standalone aircraft: 30 days deletion period
- Popular file, at least 100K+ downloads: 7 days deletion period
- Featured file, e.g. on social media or our news: 30 days deletion period

Since the .to administrators seem to love shooting themselves in the foot, they also unilaterally decided to pull all of the GotFriends content off their online store, presumably in retaliation for GF removing their freeware content and saying future payware wasn't going to be sold through .to.

 

 

They've gone bonkers, haven't they?

8 minutes ago, madman320 said:

It looks like flightsim.to is willing to change their deletion policy. Their proposal is to allow creators to delete their files immediately as they wish. However there would be a 'deletion period' for four categories of content, where users/creators would be notified that the content will be deleted but it will remain available for download during that period and after that, it will be deleted.

- Libraries: 60 days deletion period
- Standalone aircraft: 30 days deletion period
- Popular file, at least 100K+ downloads: 7 days deletion period
- Featured file, e.g. on social media or our news: 30 days deletion period

Seems very reasonable to me. But then again you can give some people bars of gold but they will turn around and complain you didn't give them something to carry it in. 

Those terms seem dead sensible. 

More than a bit gross about Got Friends though. They pretty much grew up together. 

 

Edited February 21, 20233 yr by carlanthony24

5 minutes ago, ndts said:

Since the .to administrators seem to love shooting themselves in the foot, they also unilaterally decided to pull all of the GotFriends content off their online store, presumably in retaliation for GF removing their freeware content and saying future payware wasn't going to be sold through .to.

 

 

GotFriemds does not want to be associated with that site correct? it's Flightsim.to site? So, they can pull it if they want to seeing as GF doesn't even want to be there anymore? If the answer to all is yes (and it is), then what's the problem other than people in here enjoying making a tempest in a teacup? If people don't like this, they can always go out and start their own file hosting site. Good luck!

There has been some back-pedalling but the damage is done I think.  Trust has been lost. All unnecessary and pure self destruction. 

I am sure the site will survive and will build back over time, but there has been some poor decision making and lack of judgement. 

27 minutes ago, ndts said:

Since the .to administrators seem to love shooting themselves in the foot, they also unilaterally decided to pull all of the GotFriends content off their online store, presumably in retaliation for GF removing their freeware content and saying future payware wasn't going to be sold through .to.

 

 

I just saw on flightsim.to discord that this was probably caused by Got Friends 'abusing' the site update system. Probably 'updating' its contents with some .txt file or something else to bypass the non-deletion. They have already been unbanned and one of the Got Friends devs said there that it's all cleared up. It wasn't retaliation at all.

Let's not create another controversy, please.

 

16 minutes ago, madman320 said:

It looks like flightsim.to is willing to change their deletion policy. Their proposal is to allow creators to delete their files immediately as they wish. However there would be a 'deletion period' for four categories of content, where users/creators would be notified that the content will be deleted but it will remain available for download during that period and after that, it will be deleted.

- Libraries: 60 days deletion period
- Standalone aircraft: 30 days deletion period
- Popular file, at least 100K+ downloads: 7 days deletion period
- Featured file, e.g. on social media or our news: 30 days deletion period

Good. If this policy is introduced, I don't think there's anything left for the devs to complain about.

 

I get it but don’t get it. 
 

Let’s first acknowledge that everyone is using MSFS IP for free to create their own IP. 

Creators should have control over how their IP is monetized but once you put an original out and ask someone to invest real money to distribute it for you there are trade offs. 
 

If I create a 3 gigabyte Airport that becomes the most downloaded file in flight sim history because a website made it available, made it free and yet cost them a certain amount of money to distribute for me, the idea that I can just delete it and take it somewhere else slap a $14.99 price tag on it and take all the profits after someone else’s distribution channel made it relevant is crazy economics.

They are investing distribution costs into you. You trade your time for their distribution channel. There has to be reasonable give and take in all that. It can’t simply be I get “god like” control when you don’t even care to exercise that control until people notice you. 
 

Not saying creators shouldn’t have rights, especially around monetizing the products but no creation that’s put out in the public sphere can be controlled absolute. 

If someone want's to send them a copy of my post above on principles; welcome. I started a dialogue with them. They only answered part. I asked again about the other part. They did not answer. Ultimately they deleted the discussion thread which could have saved them from all of this. They start to come out of their cave, which is good, but there is more to it than their suggestion on deletion. Tomorrow I will take care of my day time job and then prepare the Version 4 of Global AI Ship Traffic.