Please rethink your stance on linking to user created content sites

  • Please, please rethink this! See quote below. IPAC's blanket refusal to provide even a simple link to a potential warehouse site hosting hobbyist-user created non-commercial add-ons is not reasonable. For years the flight simming community has thrived on such add-ons, allowing users to create sceneries, objects, and aircraft that greatly enhance the myriads of currently available and even no longer produced sims. The big boy sims all have users dedicated to enhancing their enjoyment of the hobby, and if Aerofly is to join their ranks, they need to get on the ball here. Currently, there are only a paltry 54 aircraft repaint and scenery models available, compared to the thousands of goodies available for those other sims. In fact IPACS is aggressively encouraging user created add-ons by producing wonderful software such as GeoConvert and the many default aircraft Repaint Kits. Why refuse to provide a simple link to potential sites where those users can share their hard work? And expand the user base for Aerofly?

    With this all said, we will not be able to allow for you to host or link to any content that violates copyright laws. Due to some question of this related to imagery derived from FSET we don't think that you should proceed with this through our forums. We aren't stating that you can't do whatever you wish on your own private websites and/or servers, we just can't run the risk of allowing this further from this forum.

    I fully understand the desire to avoid copyright and trademark conflicts involved in using third party earth images or airline logos. However, in most cases hobbyist created aircraft using commercial logos are considered to be no more than artistic renditions of simulated aircraft. And the USGS images often used to create higher res terrain are by and large infringement free. There is little chance that the commercial creators of such images or logos will see these non-commercial creations as little more than good advertising for their airline, etc. And in the worst case scenario all they might require is to remove the content from whatever site.

    Has IPACS or any of our users considered putting Aerofly user creations on the mega sim file sites such as Avsim or Flightsim? Those sites have tons of user created add-ons for all of the big players. Both of those sites have detailed, robust requirements for uploading software, and have handled most of the infringement concerns that need to be addressed. IPACS doesn't have to host their own site, but they need to have some way to let users know that such things exist, and that would be a simple link to another site. Providing this address or link to a users web browser should be no more an infringement than providing that web address in written form (as would appear in a newspaper article). The provision of this type of information is similar to providing a library user with the Library of Congress location for a book already in the library. The address or link itself is pure information, and is not protected by copyright or by any other intellectual property regime.

  • See my post from the original topic,...

    This sounds quite negative, as if we wanted to ban everything, that is not what we intended with our statements. Yes, please share your user made scenery with us but make sure that they are no copyright infringements. We can't check every image that you used and this makes it difficult for us to decide which downloads would be legal and which wouldn't. We just don't want to get into a law suit for sharing copyrighted material, that is all, and the best way to allow that is not to upload such material in the first place. To my knowledge USGS images should be okay but there are other image sources that may not allow sharing of their images, even in a processed format, who knows. I think if you share your contents with us and include your source and their policy for the image copyright clauses we could easily allow uploads for user made scenery using all kinds of satellite images.

  • We do take and have to take copyright issues very seriously. Its not just a matter of linking from our site to another place.

    If we do this, we want to be real sure that this does not violate any copyright issues, and if user contribute to this site,
    there is always the chance of violating something.

    Please give us time, to discuss this matter internally, and please do not post any links until we have made a decision here.