Just a quick note.

This could be made a sticky, I agree that piracy is basically theft and should be treated as such. A committee to help people who have been victim to this is a great idea.

Also, if there are any designers out there who want to copyright their work (whether it be music, documents, aircraft designs etc.)  I've been told a good and inexpensive way to copyright work is to burn it on disk, put it in an envelope, and send it to yourself (via snail mail). Don't open the letter, just store it away safely. The letter postage goes down in a data base (i think as a code) and is printed on the envelope (again, I think but am not certain). Such information as the date of post is stored. When needed, you can open up your envelope in court and prove that it is your work.

I'm not certain about this method as I was told this by a friend. If you're interested, best to search on google and read up about it.

Even though there were not that many posts, the posts seemed a bit too long for me to read. So pardon me if I repeat anything. NOTE: Each post did have a really great point.

According to Copyright Law: new file that is created for the first time, and this also applies to Freeware Addons for any FS, is covered by the Law. We all know that we DON'T have to do any processing in order to ensure copyright protection.

However, it doesn't matter how long we stop posting addons. Those thieves will always be waiting for us to continue posting. Time is of no matter to them.

What we should do is create a system or organizational structure that can enable us to verify the authenticity of new addons. How are going to establish that? I don't know. But any of you might now.

We have many developers around here [in SimV alone] that are able to create very helpful utilities. Can any of such developers be able to create a utility that is capable of verifying new addons? The answer "NO" is likely, but there's always the "Yes" possibility.

How about a community structure that is closely connected to one another so that many sites can communicate easily and be able to verify each new addon more quickly and efficiently?

Of course, you people can come up with better ideas that I can.

You could ask members to boycott websites that refuse to remove unlicenced products. Just an idea...

i pretty much agree with all of you , a lot of hard work goes into creating these excellent add ons and it should not be abused by anyone . greg brown appreciative user of downloads. well done guys!  8)