I'm sharing a pay site thought and some history...

[Dark Lunaris]

Okay, so, not THAT long ago, I was VERY new to the community. Not new to SIMS2, but new to the people, the sites, the going-ons.
I knew nothing about the EULA or the legality of pay items.

I had logged online to MTS2 on and off for up to 2 years ago, but lurked and never said too much besides sparsely uploading very few creations now and then to MTS2. But I would often vanish for months (a year at one point) at a time.

So I was old in a sense, but still knew nothing.

So anyway, from my "know-nothing-at-the-time" standpoint, I saw so many pay sites popping up here and there.... it looked from my point of uneducated view, that every CC creator who got any good would eventually branch to paysite-ism... stumbling on Raonsims and peggy and other random CC creators with paysites at this time got me thinking.. hey... it's normal. Accept it. I'm sure this is how all new people to the community view things.

"If you start to like someone's work and that person gets popular, you better get used to paying up!"

Of course, I was surprised when I found Nouk's site and saw all content was free. I thought.. there had to be a catch, because with all those pay sites, someone with talent (more talent than the pay sites actually.. seeing as my eyes never cry from neck gaps or bad animations in Nouk's work) would give everything away free! Where was the catch?
Wow? No catch? Is Nouk the most generous person or what??

Confusion. Then I discovered PMBD.

Now, although, I thought paysites were "normal" for a while. And acceptable (err... accepted by the community)... I, myself, never liked them. I refused to pay money for custom content. I refuse to pay money for ANYTHING internet related... like website access or memberships... to me.. it was always bull.

I had THIS reasoning, since I was much younger. I was a perverted child (okay, come ON, don't tell me most of you were not perverted children), and I had this hentai obsession... (oh noes)... and I got so mad everytime I was trying to find hentai and I came across "buy a membership or you no see" websites. It upset me so much that a friend of mine and myself made a website with free hentai all the time and vowed to never charge for it...

So I guess my hatred for pay sites runs way back...

The old website BTW has grown massive now though. I think it has probably one of the biggest free doujinshi archives ever... and some of the sections crash once a month due to bandwidth exceeded.. lol.. (only for a day or so though) but this is still huge bandwidth. The site is not really mine any longer, my friend runs it and pays for it herself.
Now, my friend does have some sections of her site with banners, because she cannot afford not to, but the MAIN domain is hers. What counts is that it is free AND huge...

Some people complained before about her sharing free doujinshi scans, saying it was ROBBING the artist... and THAT reminded me of this sims CC thing too... because doujinishi are fan comics and are sold for the price it costs to print them in Japan. The doujinshi creator makes no profit. If my friend were uploading manga.. that'd be different, but doujinshi is non-profit... she's been to japan enough (and has done her homework as well on the subject)  to know...
You can buy doujinshi for about $2 sometimes less on average. More expensive ones are only expensive due to thickness and paper/ink used in printing. Which is why it BOGGLES my mind when I go on Ebay and see random doujinshi being sold at $50+.... someone is making GROSS profit.... This all seems so familiar...

But anyways, I think I went off topic, but, I just thought I should add some thoughts... how I thought before, as a newbie to the community, and how I think now, after being here for a while...

But it's scary.. how a newbie walks in and thinks... it's NORMAL to pay for CC.. I guess this is what we are here to stop.

I think the more this place branches out, the better. I like the "blind now seeing" thing...

btw, if you want my friend's site, lemme know. I'll leave a link. (It's nothing terrible, and she has many warnings on everything.. so I suppose it's safe. At this point, I think everyone and their mom have seen hentai/yaoi/pr0n SOMEHOW on the NET....)

[pinksmoke]

:oops: I was a bit like you last time, and I used to subscribe A LOT. And it wasn't until a while ago that I found the goodness that is PMDB. But shit, that's two hundred dollars down the drain.

[Dark Lunaris]

:oops: I was a bit like you last time, and I used to subscribe A LOT. And it wasn't until a while ago that I found the goodness that is PMDB. But shit, that's two hundred dollars down the drain.

Aargh! Oh, that is awful!

I was only lucky I was too damn stubborn to pay.
But for non-mule-like normal people... I think this is a common problem.. $200??

That hurts.... >_<

We need more killmarks here.

[aSIMmetrical]

Personally, I didn't object to paying to help cover bandwidth costs, but things have changed since I first started downloading stuff for TS1, when most sites were $5/mo or less, nobody charged per item or had downloads that were only supposed to be available if you subscribed during a particular time period or for several months in one go, nobody was known to be hiring creators to make things for pay, and paysites were far less common. It's particularly nonsensical when there's a giant, all-free Sims 2 site that people can upload to, whereas in the TS1 days you pretty much had to make your own site or upload to TSR (and while Sims 2 files are larger, bandwidth is cheaper now than it was 5 years ago).

[Dark Lunaris]

Personally, I didn't object to paying to help cover bandwidth costs, but things have changed since I first started downloading stuff for TS1, when most sites were $5/mo or less, nobody charged per item or had downloads that were only supposed to be available if you subscribed during a particular time period or for several months in one go, nobody was known to be hiring creators to make things for pay, and paysites were far less common. It's particularly nonsensical when there's a giant, all-free Sims 2 site that people can upload to, whereas in the TS1 days you pretty much had to make your own site or upload to TSR (and while Sims 2 files are larger, bandwidth is cheaper now than it was 5 years ago).

Hmm.
I was around in the TS1 era. God knows, because I modded a lot for TS1... but I did my modding at home for myself only... I never uploaded or downloaded much of anything at all... I think I may have DLd some furniture.. but that was the extent of my TS1 online-ness. I did not know there was pay TS1 sites... until I heard that recently. I was very much an offline gamer....

And wow... my modding skillz... they were poor on TS1, because I downloaded almost no tutorials and fiddled with skn2obj and MS3D with no 3D program knowledge whatsoever.. I made my bone assignments by copying the code in NOTEPAD. I'm surprised I got things to actually work! I did.. but... wow.. lol

The internet sits in front of me, but I am never truly on it... it would seem. O.o
Most of my major DLing started with TS2.

[Ensign EO]

hay post pron link pls.

I never downloaded for myself until TS2.  My dad got most of the CC I have for TS1.  I started looking around for TS1 content myself when I was really bored or something, and I recall being kind of peeved that some people were charging for their content.  How it is now with TS2, I'm a little more than peeved.  :wink:

When I started with TS2, I was never at the BBS (I guess I'm special?).  I started at GameFAQs, since I've been using it for ages.  Then I wound up at MTS2 because people sometimes asked for where to get downloads.  Then I ended up at MATY for one reason or another.

I was more excited about finding Louis's site than I was about finding Peggy's site, Seomi's hairs were practically a godsend and Rose's didn't seem all that nice in the beginning.  I didn't, and don't, expect any catches from most free sites (especially when I see that the owner is more or less an active participant on public fora), but that's just me.

[Dark Lunaris]

hay post pron link pls.

I never downloaded for myself until TS2.  My dad got most of the CC I have for TS1.  I started looking around for TS1 content myself when I was really bored or something, and I recall being kind of peeved that some people were charging for their content.  How it is now with TS2, I'm a little more than peeved.  :wink:

When I started with TS2, I was never at the BBS (I guess I'm special?).  I started at GameFAQs, since I've been using it for ages.  Then I wound up at MTS2 because people sometimes asked for where to get downloads.  Then I ended up at MATY for one reason or another.

I was more excited about finding Louis's site than I was about finding Peggy's site, Seomi's hairs were practically a godsend and Rose's didn't seem all that nice in the beginning.  I didn't, and don't, expect any catches from most free sites (especially when I see that the owner is more or less an active participant on public fora), but that's just me.

Lol. Yea, but this was before I knew how cool Nouk was! XD

Louis and Seomi do lovely work and they are both free.... I don't get how paysites can survive at all when Nouk/Enalya/Louis/Seomi (and others) give their way better stuff out for free... I seriously don't... O.o

Here is the archive link:
http://www.zelas.net/darkroses/

This is a direct link to the doujinshi sections.
http://www.zelas.net/darkroses/doujinshi.html

This is very old webdesign. We never bothered doing a lot of revising since about 1999-2000. But the site is easy to navigate... I guess that's what matters. It's an archive anyways.

All credit for the past 5 years should go to my friend zelas (Zoey Hellmaster), because she does all the work now (uploading new stuff.) All the doujinshi (except for a few gifts) are her own that she purchased online or in japan. She scanned them all herself... that stupid yugioh section is WAY too huge and crashes everything all the time...

[Zazazu]

Coodles. Will check when I'm not at work. I'm not super into hentai and the sort (and I'm more aural than visual, anyways) but variety is good...especially free variety recommended so that I'm less likely to get absolutely bombarded by popups.

[JFederated]

It's kind of hard to read, typographically, optically, and English isn't the author's native tongue, but I remember reading this waaay back when paysites for TS1 started popping up:

http://www.simchaotics.com/TShistory.htm

It's sort of a chronicle of the whole thing dating back to 2002.  Ra (?) was saying the same things then as we do now.  It's interesting to see the simming world rotate on its axis, lol.

[djslippyman]

LOLZ

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Lunaris.  As a fellow hentai fan and pron collector its nice to hear about others in the Sim community. I'm currently running a month old blog site at merging the two interests, bookmarking my own searches for content and sites, and trying to attract interest in the Sims 2 from these "outside communities" due to its wide appeal and modding ability.

http://sims2unlimited.blogspot.com/index.html in case you are interested.

Sorry to here you got interested through Sims CC thru paysites first.  I didn't run into the same situation but I can see how others have, that's the biggest danger with paysites.  

[AwwBoo]

Hi ya.  New here...

I admit to also subscribing to a lot of pay sites.  It was just recently (like within the last couple of days) that I discovered the great pay-site debate.  See, I always thought they really did need the money for bandwidth.  (Silly me.)  However, I found Nouk's site and the EA response, and thought "Wow, what they are doing is illegal!  I probably shouldn't be supporting them, eh?"  From Nouk's site I found a link here, and now I too am against the whole paysite thing.

I did quite a bit of research through various sites about the whole thing, reading both sides of the argument, and it is pretty obvious that the paysites are in the wrong.  I'm just very embarrassed that it took me so incredibly long to figure it out.