A developer has every right, legally and morally, to state where and how his work is distributed. Period. It's not open to discussion or interpretation
Piracy of Freeware products - an analogy.
A person opens a clothes shop because s/he creates unique or special clothes, pays the rent for the facilities and all other running costs, fills the shelves with stock created using their own time and effort and then invites people into the shop and allows the visitors to have, for free, anything that they want. The only thing this person asks is that the clothes are not passed on to other clothes shops without his consent/knowledge and that they are never sold.
Occasionally the person gives some of his special clothes to a few bigger shops that he knows will deal with them appropriately in his eyes and not abuse his principles or beliefs on the nature that these are to always be gifts. This is a decision made by the manufacturer for various reasons and the manufacturer has the right to pick and choose the shops as it is his product.
Then some unscrupulous people repeatedly go into the major clothes shops or the individual manufacturers shops and take volumes of the stock from the shelves, then place that stock in their shop and imply it is their stock to give away, or even worse, they sell the items.
This process increases the stocks of the unscrupulous shop and makes their shop more appealing to those that are looking for clothes. The patrons of these shops are not aware that the stock actually came from another shop, as they rarely read the labels (if they are left on the clothes).
As these unscrupulous shops increase their stock by visiting other shops and taking from them, without consent, to populate their own stocks, they expand their shop and reach broader markets than the smaller clothes shops who are doing it all as a service to the community.
Some of these unethical shops even accept, without question, stock that comes from anonymous contributors and put that stock in their shop without even checking where they came from, never read the label, or they sometimes remove the label. They are simply happy to just increase their stock and therefore imply that they have more to offer than then other shops.
So not only are they poaching product from other clothes shops to increase their own, but they are also diverting patronage of the other shops with their ambiguously increasing stocks.
Some people may say this is outright stealing for gain - others may say it is a good business practise - or bugger the small manufacturer anyway as they have less to offer than these supposedly big shops.
The only conclusion to this cycle is that the smaller clothes shop will close simply because patronage and support is down and they are constantly being abused by the processes above. If people continue to use the unethical shop, or continue to turn a blind eye to the ethics applied by these shops then how long will it be before all of the smaller clothes manufactures and specialist end up closing down and stop making any more clothes for free.
Who wins and who looses then?
Repainting Aircraft for a fee.
I get a bite now and again about charging a fee for a small percentage of my repaints of aircraft - may I offer the following.
If I had a car that I wanted to have some artwork here and there, or even just wanted to change the colour of the car. I take the car to a Spray Painter and ask him to do the work for me. Should I demand that he do that work for me for free, because without the car, which was designed and manufactured by someone else, he would not have an object to repaint so therefore he cannot charge me for his work. Or should the painter, contact the manufacture, the dealer and others in the sales chain and seek permission and/or pay commissions etc along that chain?
The same would apply if I wanted a painter to repaint my house. Should I get the painter to do it for free because the house was designed and built by others?
In both cases the answer is obvious, of course I would pay the painter for his time, efforts and materials, if necessary, to achieve my needs. I, nor you, would even consider the thought of seeking approval from the manufacturer of the car or the builder of the house to do these tasks.
However, in the simming community, there is a courtesy and ethical understanding that we like to impose that we believe the developer of an aircraft has a right to chose how his model is used in our community. I wholeheartedly support this ethos and, in my case, in relation to repainting aircraft textures, I do indeed seek permission and approval from aircraft developers to paint their "OBJECT" before I even consider doing the task for a fee or releasing them for a $2.00 download fee.
I even seek their permission to publish through my site, and the authorised sites, my many many hundreds of FREE repaints for their aircraft.
Additionally, as part of this process I then have an obligation to also ensure that my products are distributed in accordance to the aircraft developers wishes as well as mine - and they also often exclude some of the sites in question throughout this thread.
So often, I am not only trying to protect my rights as a repainter, but also the rights of the aircraft developer to choose how and where our products are distributed.
Anyway just thoughts from my perspective.
Regards and happy simming
Garry J. Smith
http://www.gjsmith.net 
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