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Flightsim.to new business model and terms of service leaves content creators without rights to their own work

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Once your creation is on their website, it is basically out of your control. If they give the contributor the ability to delete their contribution, then you regain full control. That is basically all that is asked here. Wait and see seems to be the solution on our end.

As far as insulting the loud minority that has complained, that does not endear me to Flightsim.to They display an arrogance that is as disturbing as their heavy-handed approach to control freeware contributions. Now they have 2 problems: trust and humility. I have enjoyed going to their website and have downloaded several packages. I don't know if I will continue visiting their site. The loud minority has done them a favor by endorsing a boycott and pointing out that their policy is effectively theft. It seems to have led to a much-needed change in their policies. It does not seem to have changed the personality of the website.
 
As long as we're on the subject of deleting contributions...

The FSDeveloper Resources contributions can be deleted by the contributor or an administrator. So things you upload there are under your control as far as deletion. This is a 'soft' deletion as the content remain with FSDeveloper and can be undeleted by an administrator. We would do that if something was deleted by mistake or if the member changed his mind as to the deletion.

Posts, along with their attachments can be deleted by the poster or by an administrator. This removes the contents from view. If you want to delete 1000 of your posts, go ahead, but it will be a one-by-one process. I won't do it as I'm 70 and I'd like to have time to enjoy life before I go.

The WIKI is a bit different as it has a history, and it can't truly have info deleted, although editing can change the current contents of the WIKI.

Arno may have more info on this, or perhaps corrections if I'm wrong here.
 
The ability to delete is good, although I can't find anywhere to request deletion, the main issue I have is being able to exploit it for their own commercial use in perpetuity.
 
Just a question ...
On the French forum http://www./pilote-virtuel.com, where I'm a moderator, I have users' voices (not developers ;)) saying that .to should propose to amend its conditions concerning deletions and that a compromise would be interesting to be found "for the well-being of the all people".

Considering the last proposals made by .to and exposed on Twitter (see #post 95 of mgr), how many of you would be in favor of going back to .to?

PS: As far as I'm concerned, I don't trust it anymore but that's just my opinion: all my downloads are now on my homesite and they stay ont it.
 
I think if they change the deletion policy to let the contributor delete their own material, then they can be used as a repository for freeware. For commercial projects? Perhaps.
 
=Hollywood= said:
The main issue I have is being able to exploit it for their own commercial use in perpetuity.
Click to expand...
They don't really have that option though? As stated in their current ToS:
The Site does not have any additional rights, such as selling, billing or sublicensing of your User Content against payment without your express permission, or re-uploading your User Content to third-party sites or claiming ownership of your User Content. The Site may use your User Content solely in connection with the Flightsim.to services.
Click to expand...
So they can't start selling it... And when/if the new ToS allows for deletion then there will most likely be something like that the licens you granted them is terminated after the files is deleted.
 
Truelz said:
They don't really have that option though? As stated in their current ToS:

So they can't start selling it... And when/if the new ToS allows for deletion then there will most likely be something like that the licens you granted them is terminated after the files is deleted.
Click to expand...

They changed it in their TOS on the website. The version that caused the stink said that they can monetize the freeware addons, that you granted them a royalty free license to be able to commercially distribute your addon, and exploit it for all perpetuity. Thankfully they have fixed that in the TOS now.
 
@Didier I would never go back. Trust is very important from my side. I had 178 files in. And I got messages, the files I requested, are deleted. But I can see, they are only archieved... So I stopped in believing everything, they announce.

Thomas
 
Erh..... fs.to definitely don't care anymore.... this makes me sick to see what they did with the ATR...
 
Are we sure about the ATR story?

The mod creator is still uploading there and put the plane's code up on Github.

It may be that they decided to renounce it and handed it over to the admins to host.

In the Reddit link it's another developer complaining about a mod being nabbed in image 4. Which is still obviously not good.
 
It seems like big issue here is theft of intellectual property, potentially, but co opting intellectual property, on the other hand, is perfectly fine. I don't see any significant difference between selling someone's intellectual property and intentionally throttling download speeds, while simultaneously pumping banner and pop up ads, in order to sell intellectual property through subscription. The consensus seems to be that charging people for access to the same content I provide for free, is not the same thing as exploiting that content for one's own commercial use, because a TOS includes a provision that freely shared content may be deleted, or removed from access by me.

Am I mistaken? Are they are cancelling the premium accounts, as well?
 
I will not go back at this point. Trust is gone. If some time far out in the future things has changed dramatically. Maybe.

For now I can see that both Flightsim.com and Flyawaysimulation.com are taking the opportunity to improve their sites proposing more control to developers, and fundamentally I believe competition is good and we had come to a point where fs.to had become so dominant that it was bound to go wrong.
 
=Hollywood= said:
They changed it in their TOS on the website. The version that caused the stink said that they can monetize the freeware addons, that you granted them a royalty free license to be able to commercially distribute your addon, and exploit it for all perpetuity. Thankfully they have fixed that in the TOS now.
Click to expand...
You say that, but that part i quoted was also there in August last year... As far as I can tell they actually have had that part since they changed the ToS to not allow deletions some time early last year
 
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I am not a developer, but I am the owner of a meanwhile very successful German-language flight simulation blog with more than 600,000 page views per month. One of the main topics is the presentation of freeware. Most of it links to fs.to, because that is the most significant platform for MSFS freeware. My intention is to bring the excellent works of the developers closer to my readers, and not to advertise the platform.

The concerns of the developers are completely understandable for me. Especially since the terms and conditions have been changed more and more to their disadvantage. After the launch of the platform more than two years ago, the terms and conditions not only guaranteed the deletion, but also the simultaneous promise that the license grant to flightsim.to would expire with it. Quote:

"As soon as you decide to delete your User Content(s), we will irrevocably delete it completely from our server(s) within two weeks and will no longer make use of the above-mentioned license in the future."

Read more at Archive.org

Flightsim.to • Terms Of Use

✓ Your #1 Source for the latest and best Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Mods, liveries, plugins and add-ons. Download for free and enhance your experience in MSFS 2020.
web.archive.org web.archive.org

fsto 7700 13.jpg


I have also pointed this out in my blog:

flightnews24.de

Flightsim.to: Seven, seven – falling from heaven? | Flightnews24

7700: Die meisten der mit der realen Luftfahrt Vertrauten und wahrscheinlich auch viele der Simpiloten kennen die Bedeutung dieses vierstelligen Codes. Er wird dann im Transponder eingestellt, wenn sich ein Flugzeug in einer Luftnotlage befindet. Um sich diese Zahlenkombination leichter zu...
flightnews24.de flightnews24.de

I think that there will be a fair treatment of developers only when the terms and conditions will contain this part again in some form.

I and certainly many users of freeware hope that there will be a soon solution with fs.to or, if that will not be possible, alternatives where the great freeware products are shared fairly.
 
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