Due to the recent withdrawals of several big-name developers, cause by the increasing threat of piracy [both from within and from without], I feel compelled to suggest that the flight sim community should team up and put together a community-run watchdog group that acts as an online version of INTERPOL. This group should be able to oversee all freeware and payware addons released and determine whether or not the addons are legitimate using an established system of identification and confirmation. On top of that, it should be able to keep an eye on sites that are suspected of pirating addons. And if piracy has been discovered, action would then be dealt with accordingly through legal channels.

But all of this won't be possible without first having all of the administrators of all the flight-sim based websites that are visited hundreds of times a day get together and create an aggreement on this and pool their resources together. Heck, for starters, someone should at least make a website that can spearhead this operation. If my finances ever permit, I might be able to start a second website of my own that would act as a base for this idea. Unfortunately, I don't have enough money to do that. So I'm stuck.

Any suggestions on how to put this plan into action?

Cheers,

Jessy Corrales
Flight Sim Ground Vehicles Admin

ozzy72 wrote on Jul 15^th, 2007 at 3:08am:


Never say never.

If there is a will, there is a way.

ozzy72 wrote on Jul 15^th, 2007 at 3:42am:


I know what you mean Ozzy. Egoes really do tend to be a pain in the ass. That's why every human has a "super ego".  But I still hold on to that one speck of hope that one of these days, every major website would one day settle its differences with others and start solving problems.

Good idea Kat but you need to remember. Many people do this for hobby as it is fun for them and rewarding. You start making freeware addons that need to go through a "committee" for approval and to get "registered" as a freeware addon on for the flightsim community and the whole idea of this hobby starts to lose sight of why people create freeware addons in the 1st place.

They can't keep music & DVDs from being pirated how do you think they will track simulator add ons that are "free" in the 1st place.

It is a very small percentage...

Dave

You know, I just had a better idea while I was sleeping; although I can't remember what I dreamed about except for the this new idea.

Instead of making this watchdog group a police force, how about we charge it with sending out information? Pirates [both the freeware and payware types] rely on ignorance from any flight sim new commer so that they can trick the new commer into buying freeware addons. That's when I realized that knowledge is power. The more people who know about sites like Flight Sim, AvSim, etc., the less likely a pirate would be able to fool a new commer.

Not only that, instead of having a group being on the look out, how about the entire community members? Every addon developer likes to keep an eye on his or her creations [whether it's freeware or payware]. But those developers can only go so far on their own to protect them. In that case, why not make the community members [on volunteering basis] be on the look out and act only as wistle blowers to let everyone else know about the piracy being committed? At the same time, other volunteers would work on letting every new commer be aware of freeware site like FSW.com and such. But for this part to work, the community would need to make an agreement with Microsoft and ACES team in terms of how to relay this information more effectively.

What do you think?

EDIT:

The purpose of this new idea is to reduce the pirates attempt to fool an unsuspecting buyer.

It's very hard for me to make a proper assessment between payware and freeware. In that case, I should've rephrased that that sentenced.

Aye that was John (FSTipster)