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)

Here is an idea that I have shared with Masternerd.

Quote:


What do you all think?

Let me see if I am understanding all this correctly:

1) Piracy, including that of freeware, is a major contributing factor leading add-on developers to stop creating and contributing to the Flight Simulator community.

2) As the problem of piracy is pervasive across several different communities that are under different administrative bodies, an internal watchdog group would face the difficulty of trying to bring together various Flight Simulator community factions and get them to agree to a set of mutually binding rules or guidelines.  This challenge could possibly be akin to the difficulty one would find in herding cats.

3) Piracy is easy and anti-piracy enforcement is difficult.  Unfortunately, with present technologies and the speed of file distribution, it would seem a practical impossibility in attempting to stop piracy.  Ever more reasonable goals seem to revolve around engendering non-binding agreements by website administrators to enforce anti-piracy policies over files they offer for download.  Unfortunately, besides publicly identifying violators, without engaging in a legal process there are many gaps for pirates to exploit.

4) The scope of the problem leaves many members of the community feeling overwhelmed.  Thus daunted, members of the community find it difficult to want to participate in anti-piracy endeavors.  (see, herding cats through a dog pound).

Personally, I would love to tackle the issue of piracy, but I agree that it is a huge problem that is perhaps presently addressable on a community by community basis.  That being said, the initial problem that seemed to grab everyone's attention was not so much the piracy (I think many are almost numb to its greater presence) but that we are losing developers to piracy.  That is, developers are becoming frustrated and losing motivation to contribute to the Flight Simulator community.

While we may not be able to stomp out piracy, we may be able to address this problem from the other end.  That is, what can we do to encourage happy, fulfilled developers who want to continue to contribute to the Flight Simulator community?

Do we offer sponsorship?  Do we offer material incentives?  Do we assist in finding a way of secure testing and distribution of materials?  Do we send them brownies?  Do we offer them a round-trip ticket to wherever for really good designs?  Do we offer contests to designers with trophies and awards to appeal to their competitive nature?  Do we simply ask what makes them tick and what do they want?

Yes, we should do what we can to stop piracy.  But, anti-piracy efforts may be a Sisyphean task.  So, perhaps we should re-direct our efforts to something that may be more possible a goal.  Let's find out what will encourage developers to find happiness and fulfillment in their contributions and efforts on the behalf of the broader Flight Simulator community.

Ideas?

It looks like people in other site forums like FlightSimWorld.com don't like this idea of a watchdog group. In fact, they appear to be most pessimistic group I have every seen when it comes to things like this. One kept telling me that it will never work, another kept telling me creating a watchdog site is a sure way of getting sued by the pirates for slander since the site will be making certain individuals look bad. After several failed attempts of clearing things up for them by changing the overall purpose of this group idea to a more sutble one [based on Masternerd's idea], I decided to ignore them and left the topic alone over at that site. It's that sort of pessimism that allowed pirates to easily rip off unsuspecting FS fans for years. I have never seen such low self esteem in my life.

If setting up a site like a watchdog group that only serves to show who is the pirate and who is not would get the members to be charged for slander, then why don't I see the same thing happening with the guy who created The Squeaky Wheel? I saw a show in the Discovery channel about things that we love to hate, and one of those things was customer service. The show featured Jeff Harris as the creator of the website. The hotal that he was complaining about told him that his idea of making TheSqueakyWheel.com would never work and they laughed at him. But as the site grew in popularity, the hotel didn't charge him for slander; instead, they settled the complaint he made before and all is right.

Now, if a site like The Squeaky Wheel can make an impact like that, then I'm confident that making a watchdog site in the way Masternerd pointed out will make an impact by making it difficult for pirates to fool an unsuspecting FS fan into buying pirated freeware and payware that may or may not work properly [or worse, screw up the Fs fan's computer].

I understand that stopping people from downloading pirated stuff using peer-to-peer software is virtually impossible, but you and I already know that's no longer the point.

So, who's willing to jump start this right now?

My suggestion ......... put numerous complaints in at squeeky wheel .... and advertise squeeky wheel on all the FS sites  then peeps can choose to go and look at the complaints ...... and if email addresses of the relevant offenders are included in the complaint then they will be bombarded everytime someone looks at the complaint.


See ....... keeping things simple might be the best way of working.