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How can I report those who download torrents?

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Hello.

How can I report people for downloading Flight Simulator merchandise without paying for it? Do I send an email to the company whose product they are illegally downloading? 

I know the name and IP address of a few people doing this, and I'd like to report them because they are killing our hobby as well as committing piracy.There are also people on various torrent sites with pages of uploaded Flight Simulator DLC I'd like to report but I'm not sure who I should report them to. Ideally I would like to see them banned from these sites and their uploads removed.

 

How should I inform the appropriate authority?

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I do not understand why in the world you care, as nobody can stop it. Where I live 95% of people pirate and nobody cares to do something about it.

 

You can't remove torrents, nor ban them. Only thing you can do is to report to the developer of the software and the developer can contact the police for the uploader to be prosecuted whether they live in a country where piracy is illegal or not. Let's say victim is Aerosoft, then you contact Aerosoft and give them the details.

 

Another thing you could do, is convince these "people?" about how hard the developer actually worked to make the product, and how many thousands of hours it took, hence maybe their mind will be change.

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Good topic with no great solution.

 

I understand what the other posters are saying and it is mostly true, piracy can never be stopped.

 

Best thing that I do is preach. I will bluntly tell any person I encounter why it is wrong and bad and that they should stop. Promoting good ethic values and honesty is good for everything, not just piracy.

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On a sidenote, if FSX/FS9 never had any payware, then how would we be off right now? I don't use payware and I'm well off as I know where to find quality.

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Sorry buddy, but it's a lost cause - the big companies and manufactures don't really care about individuals downloading pirated versions of their products - in the nowadays community, it actually help them boost sales sometimes, since people who didn't used to buy products for the fear they won't like them, get to test them out and then, if they're good people who appreciate other's hard work, they pay for it.

 

But mainly, the amount of resources and money they'll spend "catching" that bad guy would cost them more than they would ever get, and they usually don't get anything, on the account that in most countries (mainly Asia and South America, but also in Europe, due to the European Data Protection Directive) the measures the companies take to identify the user are breaking the various privacy acts which result in the lawsuit being dropped.

 

As long as they don't download it in order to distribute it to others / sell it to others / manipulate and reverse-engineering the software, they don't care.

 

Take Microsoft for instance - they want you to buy Windows, of course, but they they prefer people will use unlicensed versions of Windows rather than people installing other OS like Linux or moving to Mac. Why? the reason vary between one firm to the other. In Microsoft's case - when a user installs a Windows, licensed or not, he/she are enjoying the usage of Windows, and they are likely to do one or more of 3 things:

 

1. Buy a license for Windows (in case the user has some sort of conscience)

2. Recommend to others (family, friends, coworkers) about Windows, which in their turn might buy a license.

3. If ever comes a time where the user wants to buy a product that both Microsoft and another company manufacture,

 

Microsoft will have some sort of credit-points in the user consciousness, which, might lead him/her to buy the version Microsoft is offering. In that case, Microsoft "look-the-other-way" policy on private people using unlicensed Windows, turns out to be their greatest marketing strategy, because let's face it, so many people nowadays use unlicensed Windows, it's no joke. I myself don't have that problem since I'm only using laptops for the past couple of years which always come with a license anyway, but if you look at the Windows sales figures you'll see that most of the revenue on that front is not from private users but from commercial entities which buy many licenses in bulk at once.

 

Example? you're a boss of small start-up company, you use an unlicensed version of Windows on your home computer. At some point you break even and your company becomes a huge deal in your field so it's time to hire more people. More people means a new big office. More people + a big new office = many new computers. But which OS will you install on those shiny new PCs you're buying? or maybe you'd rather buy Macs altogether? 

Here is where the experience you have at home with Microsoft kicks in. You maybe didn't pay that few dollars for the Windows version you got at home, but now that you've got to use it, and you enjoy how easy and simple and familiar it is for you, when it's time to decide on which OS you want to spend the company's dime on, you'll go for Windows. So by looking the other way around, and not making a big fuss out of you using an unlicensed version of their product, Microsoft earned a way-bigger profit later in the future.

 

As for the small "young" companies who has a portfolio of say, 3 FSX add-on products, it's sad, but there's not much they can do. As said above, in most countries, they amount of money they'll spend will cost them way more of what they'll (usually won't) get, plus they can end up being sued themselves by the little outlaw for breaking his right to privacy. Absurd? I know, but that's catch 22 right there for them, and there's not a damn thing they can do unfortunately, unless someone wakes up and start changing some regulations. (don't get me wrong, I'm pro-privacy laws and data protection acts, without them anyone can expose you and use sensitive data against you, but in specific cases I think that registering someone's IP address in a list of people who use your product illegally should be considered as an information you should be able to collect).

 

Wow I didn't plan to write that much, but hope it clears things  :rolleyes:

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Sorry buddy, but it's a lost cause - the big companies and manufactures don't really care about individuals downloading pirated versions of their products

 

Bet the music industry would disagree with you there.

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or the movie industry, I was just reading the Expendable 3 took a beating as it was uploaded 2 weeks prior to release :(  

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Bet the music industry would disagree with you there.

 

I was of course referring to computer software as the creator of this topic stated - "...or downloading Flight Simulator merchandise without paying for it...".

 

Of course everything I wrote doesn't apply for music, movies, TV shows and various services (such as home-training video and premium websites designs).

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Bet the music industry would disagree with you there.

For every album downloaded illegally somewhere a fluffy white bunny dies

 

For every report of illegal downloads to the authorities means more paperwork in the filing cabinet and more doughnuts eaten

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There's really no point in attempting to stop piracy - for one thing, it's technically impossible (all you could do is to delay some torrent sites, but they're going to pop up again anyway) and, more importantly, the payware developers don't seem to be terribly affected by piracy in the first place.

As far as I can see, the flight sim industry (i.e. payware developers) is thriving, with new products appearing ever more often and with, in general, increasing quality. So, in the end, it seems that despite piracy the developers are making good business and we who are honest customers are enjoying the benefits.

 

On another note, I think many publishers need to learn an important lesson: To provide a demo version of their products so users can test whether it works on their particular system. I have no doubt that this would keep many from simply pirating a product. Some publishers already offer time-limited demos, which is a great way for people to see if the product is worth purchasing. I hope more will adopt this practice in the future.

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Didn't PSS fall out of business due to piracy or was this just some dodgy excuse to drop their online installers?

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