Developers and Designers Beware

[woody1]

To the Moderators of this forum,
If this topic is not suitable for this area I apologize...


Developers and Designers Beware

This is to let every designer and developer in the flight simulator community know that we have a flight sim site " http://www.flyawaysimulation.com " who has on several instances gone to other well known flight sim sites and downloaded our "software" whether it be aircraft, panels, scenery, etc. and placed these "software" on his site.

Now for the sake of this post I will state that I found at "fly away simulation" a very crude and XXX rated topic between two individuals attached to a screenshot of a "N10RF" helicopter designed by a very reputable designer. It was at this time that I found several of my aircraft at his site which were placed there against my choice and better judgement.

I e-mailed the Executive Director of fly away simulation on Sun June 13, 2004 and informed him of the filth on his site. On Wed. Jun 16, 2004 I resubmitted another e-mail to them stating that this was unacceptable behavior and that they needed to do something about it immediately. On Thursday June 17, I received a e-mail from the Executive Director stating that this was the first he had heard from me and resend the info. I did and he removed the XXX rated language from the screenshot, but refused to remove my aircraft until I gave him the copyright and references to the aircraft.
Now as I see it, he did download my aircraft as everyone else would do. But he went one step futher and placed these aircraft at his site which is a members paid only site.
I simply told him to read the readme which is attached to all my projects and he would see the copyright and my wishes. My wishes were that he was to get my express e-mailed permission before uploading to his site, and that the site had to be available to everyone. Neither of these were followed. There are only a handfull of flightsim sites that are allowed to host my projects and his is not one of them and never will be.

After several e-mails he finally agreed to have one of his board members remove my files appropriately. Three days later the files were still there and I was told that the files would be removed in due course.

I informed him that he had 24 hours to remove all my files from his site. I am now posting this letter to let other designers know what this site does and to be aware of the misconduct and mistreatment that I have had to deal with from them.

More to come

[Daz]

the cheek of it..hope you are successful at removing ur files from the site

[ozzy72]

Unfortunately Lynn even in this hobby there are a few twerps and lower life-forms.
The most infamous is Ferdy over at FSPiratePlanet who has been at this game for a long time, and ripped off a lot of people and made money out of it and even caused some designers to quit.
Alas there are always one or two of their ilk around, best thing to do is not to go to their site and warn other people, by collective action we can pressure them.
Remember SimV is best

Ozzy

[Wing Nut]

I love it.  They try to charge you for a membership to download freeware...    Some people have cast iron little round things.

[Hagar]

[quote]I love it.

[Stratobat]

As I understand the situation this will become common practice before long.

I hope not!

Regards,
Stratobat

[woody1]

The point would not be that one pays a price (no matter how small or large) for a membership to access someone's site. My point in this was that his site was a paid membership only, flightsim.com, etc. does not have a paid membership only, as I recall anyone can access those files at flightsim.com.
What this individual did was take my files as well as other developers files and placed them on his site "without our permission" and without regards to our wishes. This was wrong to begin with, but to continue to ignore and refuse to honor our wishes was a "slap in the face" to every developer and designer out there. Yet he continues to defy us and we can't allow him and others like him to continue treating us like this.
The buck has to stop here, NOW!
Lynn,

[Hagar]

Lynn. Please don't misunderstand my comments. As a victim of software piracy myself I sympathise. In my case it was much worse than simply posting freeware files without permission. They were being offered for sale on a CD with no credit to me or my colleagues as the original authors. This was some years ago but still hurts when I think about it.

I wish you luck in your campaign. However, as Ozzy ponts out there will always be people like this around. This is nothing new & was going on long before I was involved in the hobby. It's upsetting but you might find that there's not a great deal you, me or anyone else can do about it even if we were to join forces.

[woody1]

Hagar,
I totally understand where you are coming from and believe me I did not mean to sound as if I was being inconsiderate (in my words )
I like to believe that if enough people speak up than something just might happen for the better... I can always hope for the best, right? (may not always get it, but I can hope)
I look at all the time and energy that was apent on these files and that I did it for the benefit of everyone who enjoys flight sim like us. It then burns me to no end to find out that someone has taken my files and used them in such a way that is completely against what I stand for.
Outside of everyone standing together and trying to make this outrageous and improper act go away sometimes it has to take a "legal" point of view to get the culprits attention.
Is it worth my hard earned money to go and stop one person when there are so many more just like him out there waiting to pick up where he was forced to leave? Why have copyright laws when you have people able or even allowed to break those laws and no one to enforce them... Some would say NO! Some would say Yes! I haven't really decided if it is really worth it, after all this is just my hobby...
Lets see what lies ahead for us...
Lynn,

[Hagar]

Lynn. It's not you being inconsiderate but these despicable pirates. Site membership is a completely different subject & clouds the issue. I was simply trying to clarify the situation.

Unfortunately from my own experience I've found there's not much we can do about these pirates. The late John "Tipster" Consterdine ran a similar campaign to yours before he passed away. Despite all his efforts the person he was fighting is still up to the same old tricks & possibly stronger than before. Intellectual copyright laws are not the same in different parts of the world. In some countries what we regard as software piracy is seen as quite normal & not regarded as a crime. Even the big corporations like Microsoft have problems fighting it.

If we as a group succeeded in bringing a case against him it would simply drive him underground. There's nothing to stop him starting up again under a different name. The best way to fight these people is to inform as many users as possible of the situation & tell them where they can download the files free of charge. You can add a warning in the Readme of your files to this effect:

This file is Freeware. If you have been charged a fee to download it you have been cheated. The file can be downloaded completely free of charge at Simviation.com etc etc.*

Most of these pirates don't bother to read the conditions or remove them from the files. It will not stop them but will hit them where it hurts, in the pocket. Some people without internet access or with slow connections will always be happy to purchase files on CD, whether they're freeware or not.

PS. The most important thing is not to let a few greedy people destroy our hobby. I was tempted to give it all up after the experience I described but decided that would be admitting defeat. This is something I'm not prepared to do.

*PPS. Someone came up with the idea of incoporating this message into the model or panel itself. This would show when the aircraft loads in the sim & requires a mouse click to hide it. This would be very difficult to remove.

[Mathias]

Ok, we've been there with this particular site around christmas 2003.
First the webmaster responded positive to remove our files but that never happend.
Contacted their ISP, turned out it's one and the same person as the webmaster.
Only way to get hand on this guys is by forcing them with legal action.
So what to do?

[Hagar]

Ok, we've been there with this particular site around christmas 2003.
First the webmaster responded positive to remove our files but that never happend.
Contacted their ISP, turned out it's one and the same person as the webmaster.
Only way to get hand on this guys is by forcing them with legal action.
So what to do?

OK. The first thing would be to find out where the ISP is based. If it's in a country that doesn't recognise intellectual copyright agreements or regard software piracy as a crime you might have problems taking effective legal action. The pirates are only too well aware of this.

[woody1]

Hi Hagar,
Excellant advice all around,

[pete]

However, charging a fee to access the site is no different to a First Class membership at Flightsim.com or what Pete is proposing for SimV.

... really Doug .. you ought to know I have No plans to EVER charge a fee to access simviation or its files ... there is a huge difference because at that site you have to pay a fee to access files .... Big difference!

.....

[Felix/FFDS]

However, charging a fee to access the site is no different to a First Class membership at Flightsim.com or what Pete is proposing for SimV.

Clarification - Pete's comments about "Simviation Membership" is more akin to public television in the US.  You still have free access to the files, and under the same conditions, but if you want to contribute to its upkeep and maintenance, you'll get an extra smile from Pete.

Other sites charge an access fee for the site, without which you cannot download anything.  Flightsim.com's 1st class membership allows you easier access, but if you don't want the 1st class membership, you can still access the files, albeit it takes a wee bit more attempts to get an open node.

Simviation: come in, drink the beer, and there's a jar for tips if you want to contribute to cleaning up the place.

Flightsim.com: Come in, leave a tip and go to the head of the line, if not, go to the end of line two and wait your turn.

Other sites:  Hear's the jar - no tip, you can't come in to drink the beer other people brought.