Post 356 is interesting, if not surprising: for the crime of not being all sunshine and lollipops, Thoma$$ deletes a member's account.
How prepotent they are.
But as a second thought this shows hos much they were powerless to do such a stupid thing.
There was a Brazilian site back on The Sims 1 days which had some of the prettiest furniture I've ever seen... they're not around for TS2 although I wish they were. If I recall correctly they were free, but they might have had some donation sets. I can't be sure about it, maybe I just ignored the donation sets as I couldn't pay for them. Also, isn't one of the creators in SimGuys Brazilian?
Giselle, for sure, Fashion show. They had a sims 2 site for a while but both kids are in college now and had no time to continue to make stuff. Also, they became too popular and couldnīt afford the site expenses. I never managed to convince them to become file sharing, unfortunatelly. 77 Simlane is Maressa. She is married with a small kid now and she is making concerts (she plays drums) so she is very busy. I didnīt found their sites iin the brazilian sites guide, so I suppose they are down.
I have personal contact with all of them if someone needs to ask anything, they are my personal friends, I know each of them since they were kids (they are now on their 20īs).
I suppose it doesn't matter where you come from, there are some who are going to take advantage of the fact that others will pay them for CC.
Different cultures have different views about what is correct and what is not. It is considered illegal and immoral to manage a paysite here in Brazil. Itīs easy to convince someone who wants to set a pay site to not do it, I did this several times here and it was enough a couple mails.
As a second example, see what happens about asian sites. Chinese donīt care about steal from other sites but they become very angry when they are ripped off (see Teru_K example) specially by koreans because there is a 2000 years of history of tension between China and Korea. Koreans are very suspicious about any foreign, see Daum case. Is part of their culture and historical experiences. I believe thatīs why also that Peggy donīt care about the booty and what the pirates does. She is making a living from sims 2 and donīt care what other people thinks. Japanese are completely closed for all other countries, you rarely heard about japanese sites but they exist and have lovely stuff.
Russians are big file sharing, incredible organized pirates. I remember how much hard time Simfreaks had with russian boards and how they easily and fast spread my creations when I became file sharing. I used to have contact with a big board leader a nice girl who I was used to send information about file-sharing and how to do it. Simfreaks and TSR tried hard to catch them without much success.
So yes, it makes a lot of difference where people come from because cultural habits and concepts are different. You canīt think that all people from all places are the same, because is not true.
I am no Saint, but I'd rather not steal money from children by charging them for CC.
This is the main reason why I first fought pay sites. I could not stand children complaining that they would love to keep downloading from Simfreaks but could not afford. I honestly donīt know how a paysite member can stand such thing. But I am very known to have a soft heart. I suppose they are completely heartless people.
As a note, the DDoS attack to TSR was real. I know at first hand but I canīt talk about for obvious reasons. And it didnīt happened just once
But I know at first hand that Simfreaks also made DDoS attacks at least once. It wonīt surprise me if TSR people also did it.