Freeware Pirates!

[jordonj]

I have spread the word to all the forums I belong to...

Other than that, there's not much else I can do...

[Katahu]

Some of the people who are new to flight sims are ocassionally the ones who still attend high school. Even though MOST students don't have a VISA or Mastercard on themselves, they sometimes go to their parents for assistance.

So, I took the liberty of sending an email to my old school [where I graduated] because I know for a fact that some of the students there [to this day] DO have  plastic in their pockets. I requested that the school post information about the situation so that the young [nor their parents] won't get ripped off.

It may be only one school, but word spreads like an epidemic.

[Pinchaser...]

A friend of Ferdy one wonders?

thats what i was thinking....i smell fsplanet.  ::)

[beaky]

Bottom line is that these freebies were created thru lots of hard work and talent, and offered for free in good faith. It's not ordinary stealing- it's worse! >:(
What authorities should be notified? And if there's an e-mail address on that site, we should let them know the word is out.

[The Ruptured Duck]

hopefully they will be smart and stop after I e-mailed them this message:
Goddam usted bastardos pobres para vender el freeware. Usted merece morir y encontrar infierno. La parada o all

[beefhole]

I guess I should have said "copyright infringment is copyright infringment".

But seriously, people have been suing lately over loss of "digital property", so why cant some legal action be taken in this instance?

For one, the dudes in Colombia (I think he is-thats what Theis said). And this is a minor crime on the scale, even if it's big to all of us. The unfortuante truth is that, normally, in most circumstances, our power stops at sending him/her hate mail. Really, the best thing you can do is spread the word.

[chomp_rock]

The biggest problem is, this is freeware piracy, the person who did this can not be prosecuted for financial damages since the people who he stole from does not sell their addons. The best thing to do would be to notify the admin(s) of the servers his site is hosted on since it would be very hard to contact HIM and make any valid threats for legal action because he lives in South America.

Whois info from http://resellers.tucows.com/whois

Whois info for, virtualcol.net:
Registrant:
Jose Joaquin Gonzalez Forero
Trv. 119 No. 145-44
Apto. 312
Bogota,

[TacitBlue]

hhhm, so we have his address, does anyone have an A-10 I can borrow?

[ATI_7500]

hhhm, so we have his address, does anyone have an A-10 I can borrow?

Ask Bin Laden to do the dirty work for you. Just tell him the guy in the White House is just a clone, and the real Bush is hiding in that place.

[Theis]

or even better: Say to bush, that there is where binladen is.
bush have greater weapon and more money
one F/A-18 should do  the job fine

[Katahu]

Come one guys. You're not suppose to demolish the guy. You're suppose to put him down quietly.

Take a vile of Potassium Chloride and a syringe. Do an IV push without....  UUhhhh.... never mind. I should keep quiet.

[chomp_rock]

Don't tell Bush that this guy's address is where Bin Laden is, his entire country will go up in a nuclear fireball.

[legoalex2000]

The biggest problem is, this is freeware piracy, the person who did this can not be prosecuted for financial damages since the people who he stole from does not sell their addons. The best thing to do would be to notify the admin(s) of the servers his site is hosted on since it would be very hard to contact HIM and make any valid threats for legal action because he lives in South America.

Whois info from http://resellers.tucows.com/whois

Whois info for, virtualcol.net:
Registrant:
Jose Joaquin Gonzalez Forero
Trv. 119 No. 145-44
Apto. 312
Bogota,  00000
CO

Domain name: VIRTUALCOL.NET

Administrative Contact:
   LandHost.net, Dpto Dominios  dominios@landhost.net
   Jose Sanchez Pescador 7
   Madrid,  28007
   ES
   +34.661540804
Technical Contact:
   LandHost.net, Dpto Dominios  dominios@landhost.net
   Jose Sanchez Pescador 7
   Madrid,  28007
   ES
   +34.661540804


Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 31-Jul-2004.
Record expires on 03-Mar-2005.
Record created on 03-Mar-2004.

Domain servers in listed order:
   NS1.LANDHOST.NET   67.19.157.250
   NS2.LANDHOST.NET   67.19.157.251


Domain status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

all the answers we need are right here...

dominios@landhost.net

mabye they are the ISP?!? this ISP is in Europe, so mabye one of you an call him or something...

**edit** except when the ISP only has one page, with no information. risky business i smell, eh?

[legoalex2000]

part 2

as an update to my research. I did various searches with 4 search engines.  plus i did in depth searching with google. what i found is interesting.

90% of the websites hosted be Landhost were not available, and an archive.org search shows they have not been available for at least the laast year.

of the 10% that show up, more that half the links were broken...

back to the original story here. i found a "backdoor" to landhost, but their site is mostl down and none of the contact links work (except for the info@ link)

otherwise, contacting the ISP isn't going to help in this matter

[Theis]

got this message from the owner of the site

Dear virtual friends. My name is Jose Joaquin Gonzalez, director of virtualcol.com. I want to ask for excuses you publish by the sale of software AI COLOMBIA XP, which I clarify IS NOT OURS, ROY SIMULATION SOFTWARE is of a called developer company, that contacted to us by electronic mail to sell it in our virtual store. We advanced the sale but the delivery was made by these gentlemen. By rules our we ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR the ORIGIN Of the PRODUCT, nevertheless developer who I am of software COLOMBIA VIRTUAL , I commit ourselves to be but pending of this to avoid these disadvantages. Again I request public excuses to them and the promise to be but pending to avoid this type of sales in our virtual store.

Regards.

Jose Joaquin Gonzalez F.