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I'm sure
a lot of you are aware of the debate about paysites vs. pirates that is
going on on all over the Sims
community at the moment. On one side you have Sims sites charging money
for
their downloads. On the other side you have pirate sites redistributing
pay and
donation files for free. I'm also sure that a lot of you are sick and tired of hearing about it, but unfortunately I don’t think it is a discussion that will go away any time soon. For one thing, because it is an important debate that will affect everybody in the community. So being the idealist that I am, I’m going to make a contribution to the debate and officially state my views on the matter. Please bear in mind that all of the below is my personal opinion, that everybody are free to disagree with. Wrong and right Okay. *steps up on soapbox* I'm not a paysite. As you can see there are no PayPal buttons anywhere on my site, and I don’t  intend to put any
up. I don’t even ask for voluntary donations. I’m not a pirate
either. I don’t condone
unautorized filesharing and I believe that any creator – free
or pay – has the
right to decide what happens to their creations.But ... I think paysites are wrong. In my opinion no private individual has the moral right to make money off what is an innocent hobby and passion for many gamers – including children. Especially since all custom content for The Sims 2 is basically made on a completely free and voluntary foundation. Let me explain. You would never have had ... You would never have had a single recolor or new mesh in your game if it weren’t for people like Numenor, Quaxi and RGiles who developed SimPE and the Colour Enable Package (CEP). They  did this entirely for free. They still
update both tools for each new Expansion
Pack – for free. Quaxi even maintains an vital database
with every single new
custom object ever made by ALL the Sims 2 creators all over the world
– for free.You would never have had all that wonderful stuff from Peggy Sims, The Sims Ressource, Vita Sims, Simfreaks and many, many more if it wasn’t for the efforts of creators and game code buffs at ModTheSims2 (MTS2) in the early days of the game. They worked out how to modify a mesh, change textures and colours, and put it all into the game – for free. Even today creators get advice and help on a daily basis at MTS2 – for free. All that FREE work is what paysite owners profit from. They are basically turning a community effort into their personal cash cows – making money on the back of others. I think that is wrong. The bandwidth, the bandwidth! But they only charge to pay for bandwidth costs, you’ll say. Yes, but bandwidth costs are immensely cheaper today than they were a few years ago. There are plenty of FREE hosts (like mine) and even if you don’t want to take your chances with one of them it is not difficult to find good hosting for less or little more than 100 USD – a year. That makes creating for The Sims a relatively cheap hobby.  (Unless it isn't a hobby, of course, and your only
goal is to
earn money from it – off the back of the FREE
community). And even
if you can’t or won’t pay that amount of money for a good host,
voluntary donations should be
able to cover a good deal of it. (I’m not talking about
so-called ‘Donation
sets’, but real, true donations where people give money
without expecting or
getting anything in return. I mean, you don’t expect to get a
new winter coat
when donating to the Red Cross, do you?).The legalese Then there's the legal side of it. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t give you a definitive stand-point on this. I don’t believe anybody can at the moment. But the EA Games EULA (the Terms of Use you agree to when installing the game) does say that you are NOT allowed to  sell custom content created with EA
tools. Recently EA have confirmed this in email
correspondence with a number of community members. You can see the
email
correspondence – and lots of other interesting stuff at this
site: Money Better Spent What may may throw a spoke in the EULA wheel are national laws on copyright and intellectual property. It is possible that creators (pay and free) can use these to argue that they own their creations and therefore have the right to sell them. A lot depends on whether the .package file format is seen to be protected by EA copyright. Personally I have seen convincing arguments both for and against. I am still waiting for a conclusive legal argument. Until that happens I'll stick to my moral objections against paysites. ARRRRRR! Enough about paysites and on to the pirates – those who work against paysites and share payfiles for free. You may have heard the terms ‘The Booty’, ‘PMBD’ or ‘The Site That Must Not Be Named’ in other forums. Or maybe not, because in many places the mere mention of these things risks getting  you banned. An
explanation: PMBD (Paysites Must
Be Destroyed) or The Site That Must Not Be Named is the website/forum
where the
pirates hang out and talk about things. The Booty is the website where
all the
payfiles can be downloaded for free. The two things are run by the same
people,
but not necessarily frequented by the same people.Like I’ve already said I don’t agree with The Booty. But I do agree with the pirates, whose main mission is to stop Sims sites charging for  their downloads.
They are a rowdy bunch, but they
are nowhere near as mean and nasty as their reputation says they are.
Granted,
there are some rude ones, but I find the majority to be intelligent,
generous
and very, very funny. They are always ready to discuss their mission
with
anybody who doesn’t agree, or find solutions for a paysite
owner who wants to
go free. The only non-advisable thing is to stomp angrily into the
forum and
tell them all what a bunch of evil bastards they are. That WILL get you
torn to
pieces – hooks, axes and all.But I suggest you go and check it out yourself. You may even bump into me over there. I don’t wear an eye patch, but I do swig the virtual rum that sometimes gets passed around. You hypocrite! I sense a question coming on: How can you honestly hang out with pirates if you don’t condone  unauthorized
filesharing in the Booty? Well, that’s easy. First of all
because I agree with
the mission, and PMBD is one of the few places in the community where
it can be
discussed freely. Second, because I can live with the existence of The
Booty. I
don’t download from it and I don’t contribute to
it. And it offends me a lot
less than what certain paysite owners do. For starters, see all of the
above. And
on top of that there’s the multitude of paysite scams that
I’ve witnessed over
the years, dating back to rather early Sims 1 days. Claiming that
income from
‘donation sets’ will go to charity and then
pocketing the whole profit
yourself, for instance. That offends me greatly more than a few pixels
being
shared where they shouldn’t be shared.*Steps down from soapbox* And there you have it. My personal view of the paysite/pirate debate. If you wish to discuss it or want to know more feel free to contact me. Please just make sure that you have read and understood all of what is on this page. I don’t share or steal payfiles. I have no problem with a creator who just wants a tiny bit of compensation for all their work - like enough to buy a bottle of red wine from time to time. It's the ones who are clearly into creating Sims 2 stuff for the money that ticks me off. But that doesn't mean I want them to close. I just want them to go free or change to voluntary donations for the benefit of the whole Sims 2 community.
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