Piracy - sticks its ugly head up again

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Good People,

Recently I discovered by chance that a volume of some of the best Ford Tri-Motor Project products had been poached from either the big sites (that we authorised to distribute some components of the Ford Stuff) or from the Ford Site itself and was being illegally distributed by an unauthorised web site.

I will not give this "suck and publish" site the advantage of FREE advertisement and traffic by naming the site - suffice to say that they have been made aware of the consequence of their illegal publications and have promptly removed all of the unauthorised Ford Project related product from their site.

Edward and I carefully monitor the "download" numbers from our site and the authorised sites and from that make decisions on what is popular and warrants new and further development along that particular path. Those that appear to be not so popular go onto the backburner.

This pirate site facilitated several thousand downloads of stuff that we did not know about - one product had over three times the downloads from the pirate site than we had in total for that product and in the other cases more than twice as many downloads as we had records for.

Several of the Scenery Packs (totalling over 1000 downloads) were missing critical components - AI Traffic, building models and textures which are provided by other packs available from the Ford Site. This disadvantaged the downloader and would have implied that our product is faulty.

This also seriously skewed our perspective on what was popular and therefore some important projects were stalled because of our incorrect understanding fostered by this piracy.

In a nutshell - because of the illegal distribution without consent or authorisation the Ford Project has had some very serious impacts for simmers and our current and future developments.

Another consequence for the simming community is that they are possibly missing out on their expectations of what The Ford Project Team is currently developing and what we will develop in the future.

The Ford Tri-Motor Project site is a vast and overall very complex project with many interactive components and everything is provided totally FREE.

The projects exists for your flight sim enjoyment - to ensure quality and development paths to suit your preferences we need to be selective about the distribution agents we use to ensure the products we make available are complete and recorded as legitimate downloads.

The only authorised sites for distribution of our products are the Ford Tri-Motor Project Site, www.GJSmith.net, and the following sites that have specially selected releases: www.Flightsim.com, www.AVSIM.com, www.Simviation.com and www.sim-outhouse.com

If you have downloaded anything related to the Ford Tri-Motor Project from any "unauthorised" site then please feel free to visit the Ford site (http://www.ford-tri-motor.net) and obtain the genuine and complete products for your needs.

Any Ford Project product that you may come across that you think may be from an unauthorised site please send us a quick e-mail and we will resolve the problem.

Your support in this matter will help us to maintain and continue to provide the best product we can for your enjoyment.

Sorry for the "wordy" thread but Piracy has many and varied impacts on our work as it does on other developers work and needed some clarifications.

Regards

Edward and Garry
Your Ford Project Team.

[rich12545]

Garry, very sorry to hear about this. I and so many others very much appreciate the work you guys are doing. Just going to the Ford Project site is enjoyable and I do it from time to time just to look around and without downloading anything.

If you're counting votes. mine goes to more of the India scenery project.

[Maarten -]

Garry and Edward,

I am so sorry to hear this. As you will know I have encountered several cases of piracy concerning my own work during the past two or three years and at this moment I feel the same disappointment and anger again you guys must be feeling right now.
The last time something of the kind made me almost quit from painting, were it not that so many people here encouraged me not to give up my activities and keep on doing the stuff I liked to do. The first results of these encouragements being my KLM Aerocarto DH-89 repaint and the NAC Heron paint for Pete Ham. The only action I decided to make was to make my copyright conditions in the text files even more stringent than I already had. However I notice that my motivation to make repaints and make them, under conditions, available as freeware for fellow flightsimmers, has decreased a bit.
Thanks to Milton's awesome projects I find my pleasure in a different way. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Don't let the buggers get you down. Please continue the great work you have been doing through the years. It is very very much appreciated, at least by me!


Cheers,
Maarten

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Maarten,

I appreciate your outlook mate and understand where your coming from.

I deal with piracy a little differently - I just get even with them. I have a very strong legally binding EULA for my work - which we also use on the Ford Tri-Motor site.

I have been forced to take legal action only twice since 2000 - one for a London based organisation and another for a particularly annoying Spain based site. Both cases were won and legal costs and recompense in accordance to the EULA was ordered by the courts in their respective countries. Both sites also ceased to exist after the court action.

I highlighted my EULA to the current Pirate Site - and detailed the consequences that applied to these two organisations and instances of my software and the Ford Site software were removed overnight.

This EULA was drafted for me by a legal firm in Germany - (long term associates from when I was a hard working CIO of a global organisation before I retired) - it is not based on copyright as that is uninforcable in many countries - it is based on loss of income from illegal publication.

It is basically termed Selectware - I select authorised sites - any publishing outside of that authorisation is legally bound to pay a nominal fee of $2US for each copy illegally distributed by any media.

This licensing concept can be used by anyone - you are welcome to visit my site or the Ford site - and check out the Selectware concept - feel free to "copy and tweak" for any of your work.

Here is a direct link to the Ford Selectware site as an example:
http://www.ford-tri-motor.net/selectware.htm

Each page that has any Downloads on it has a pointer to the Selectware EULA and I also include the UELA within any product that I package and release.

Regards

Garry

[Maarten -]

Wow Garry! That is very helpful indeed! Many thanks!
By the way, I think I know which organisation in London you mean. If indeed so, they didn't react on my (obviously way to kind) requests at all.

Best regards,
Maarten

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Mate,

I learned way back to deal with Poachers/Pirates at the same level of contempt as they deal with the developers they steal from. Don't get stressed - get even.

The Spain organisation even published a slander campaign against me and the credibility of the Selectware licence agreement - they were very sneaky and moved domains and data storage frequently all under false identities. However, they let it be known that they would be at a particular air show in Spain (set up as a display desk) - The German company served papers on them at the air show and police accompanied the servers and arrested them for internet fraud on registrations etc and then we got full identity details - next step was court for them...... They, like the London group, learned that the Selectware licence is a valid binding document in any country. Legal costs for them was very high.... Cost for me - zero just a bit of time spent on e-mails to associates.

Regards mate.

[Blackbird686]

Hey Garry --

I still cannot figure out why someone with nothing more than time on their hands would choose to "steal", for lack of better words... when they know that they will eventually get caught. I have seen several instances of this sort of thing in one form or another, and have, in most cases been able to help the victim catch up to these buggers. Still... Bloody wankers, the lot of them.

Keep up with your excellent work, there are lots of "blokes and sheilas" here at the SOH who will support your efforts, and will always appreciate what you and Ed have done for the Community. (Me included!)

BB686 (ooOOP, fergot me sig... Nigel stole me flag!)