Thanks!

And to pro-paysite people:

Have you tried writing to EA yourself?

Why not?

Do you fear that calling attention to your activities might cause them to look into your activities sooner than later?

If you truly feel that you are doing nothing wrong, then ask EA directly what they think, and don't waste time dealing with middlemen like us.

Do feel free to post screenshots of your correspondence here.

Do you need contact information? Just ask.

We would LOVE for you to write EA and get told directly that your activities are illegal. Maybe then you'd stop trying to argue with us, which is futile. and start arguing with EA, which is even more futile but will save us the aggravation of repeating the same very simple concept over and over again to you.

If any item of content is unavailable unless money exchanges hands, it is a sale.

Commercial profit from Sims 2 content is against the contract you signed, which is a legally binding agreement.

If you sell anything designed specifically to work for the Sims 2 games, you are breaking the law.

Don't like it? Write EA.

Please.

Here's a handy cut and paste letter to send, but feel free to write your own:

"Dear EA:
I run a Sims 2 fansite. Its address is http://yoursitehere.whatever.

I offer X items on this site. X items are free for anyone to download, and X items are available only if the visitor to my site pays me X amount of currency.

Is it okay for me to sell X items for X amount of currency?

I do this because insert excuse / reason here. Is this against the terms of the EULA I (supposedly) read and clicked "I agree" to when I installed your games?

Please advise. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Yournamehere."

There you go. Now please go ask EA directly. Be sure to go to the parent company site for the most accurate and swift responses, as it is the parent company who will set the terms for all other satellite companies involved with the Sims 2 games worldwide.

Cheers.

Credit and copyright are two different things, which I think may be the problem.

You can and should get all credit and praise for work you do.

However, you can not claim copyright on items which can only work with EA's intellectual property, the Sims games.

Even if copyright issues and laws are different in your home country, you still need to abide by the EULA of the parent company, which is not based in your country. The EULA is the agreement all Sims players click "I agree" to before installing the game content.

As otherwise noted, it is also not a copyright law issue as much as it is a contract law issue. The EULA is a contract which expressly forbids users from selling content in any way, whether the sale is straightforward, as in subscriptions that are required to access content, "donation" "gifts," and so on.

I encourage you to share your work freely, so your name can be known as widely among English-speaking Sims fans as elsewhere. It is another way to ensure you get proper credit for your hard work and good ideas.

We are quick to defend creator's rights in the pro-freesite community. Please see threads here, specifically those concerning Linda Berkvist's work (Enayla, who is known best for her Sims skins). Linda's work is frequently stolen by paysites which try to sell it (such as 2-for-u, and most recently her work showed up in another game, Second Life). We believe that Linda's work should be credited only to her, and have gotten very angry on her behalf.

If you ever see any of your work being distributed without proper credit, especially if someone is attempting to sell your work, please let us know. We will help you.

What is so difficult to understand?

If you make something for sale that does not require EA's games or tools to work or have usefulness, good for you.

If your creation depends on the game to work properly or have usefulness, you may not sell it.

The end.

As HawkGirl said, it is a moot point.

You can create anything you like for use with the game as long as it is non-commercial.

Non-commercial means you don't get paid. Period.

An item is a pay item if any money most be paid in order to acquire the item.

You can call it a gift, donation, surprise, bonus, present, or invent your own special term, but if you accept any money at all for it, it is a pay item, and that makes you in defiance of the EULA, and your activities thus illegal.

So, let's review.

Your item is intended to work for The Sims 2? EA owns the rights to it.

If it is a .package file, Sims2Pack, Sims2Skin, or similar proprietary format, EA owns the rights to it. It's not a Word document, people, where a .doc does not belong to Microsoft, this is EA, where their .package (etc) files are protected by their legal documentation.

If your creation will not work without Sims 2 tools, games, or products? EA owns the rights to it.

Some charities do give away incentives.
Point one: they have filed papers to declare themselves charities, and charities have different laws and rules applied to them.
Point two: you are not a charity.
Point three: incentives given away do not break the EULA of another company which has specifically made it illegal to sell them.
Point four: many people give to charities and reject the gifts.

Is it illegal to go to the grocery store or doughnut shop and buy a cake and then sell it as yours at a school bake sale?
Technically, yes.
However, the embarrassment most people would feel trying to pass of a grocery store baked good or Krispy Kreme doughnut as their own prevents most people from trying this dodge in the first place.
Also, no one is pretending to be Dunkin' Donuts when selling those doughnuts.
Also also, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts often work with schools and give them a reduced price on their products specifically so they can be resold for fund drives.
EA does not allow anyone to buy their games directly from them at a reduced price or to resell them for fund drives, and do not allow content specifically designed to work only with their games for a profit either.

Do people have a right to make a living?
Yes.

Do people have a right to make a living selling content they are not legally allowed to make a commercial profit from?
No.

Isn't the booty illegal?
No.

Are the items in the booty "stolen"?
No. They have been paid for.

Is filesharing booty items illegal?
No. According to EA, FREE filesharing is okay. It is a big part of what makes the Sims enjoyable for their customers.

What has EA said about the paysite versus freesite issue?
In addition to their EULA, which clearly states you can modify the game with custom content as long as you do so in a NON-COMMERCIAL manner (which should have been the end of the debate right there), EA has sent several letters to concerned Sims 2 community members clearly stating:

* that they are okay with paysites.mustbedestroyed.org
* that selling content is not okay
* that their legal department is looking into how to approach the issue.

Note that EA has also intervened on behalf of pro-freesite creators and forced sites such as TSR to release those creators' content.

EA is not against creators, EA is clearly against creators making a buck off the community by selling custom content illegally.

What about that bandwidth loophole we enjoyed during Sims 1?
That loophole is gone.

Why?
MAXIS used to take care of Sims community issues, and MAXIS issued the bandwidth loophole statement. This was years ago, when bandwidth was costly. Now MAXIS is only very tangentially involved. EA has taken back all control of their intellectual property. MAXIS rules no longer apply at all.

What if I really need to recoup the costs of my server/bandwidth?
There are many legal ways to do this without selling content.

* You can talk to several people at this site about hosting.
* You can put a donation button on your site and make sure that no content is exchanged for donations.
* You can post your creations to free sites (MTS2, SFV, et cetera) or the Exchange and let them host your work.
* You can work with sites that are grouped together and host your work on a site network. S2Chost and Wicked Sims are both options.
* You can use file hosts like 4shared to host your work.
* You can use Yahoo Groups to host your work.
* You can e-mail your files to interested parties using mailers like gmail.
* You can make products for sale at CafePress, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, et cetera, as long as they do not break EA's copyrights. In other words, selling items with the official Sims logos or art is out, but selling items with your own logo, art, or creative designs are okay.

How can I get rich and make a profit in the Sims 2 community and not break the law?
You can't. To attempt to do so is to break the law. Why is it right for you to make a dollar off of EA Games? You didn't make the game, you didn't make the file formats, you didn't make the tools, you didn't write the code, you are not paid by EA, thus you need to make a buck in another way.

I don't like your attitude, you are surly pirates.
Too fucking bad. We don't like YOUR attitude, nor do we like you stealing from the community and feeling self-righteous and above the law.

If you were nicer, I might join your cause.
If you need candy and flowers to do the right thing, then you are in need of more help than we can offer. Most people do the right thing without expectation of reward or a pat on the head.

If paysites are outlawed, what will happen to all the good content?
First of all, most paysite items are not great quality and you can find similar or superior quality items for free.
Paysites do not typically refund your money if the item breaks your game.
Paysites do not typically issue refunds if the scale of the items are wrong and bleed through walls or Sims.
Paysites do not typically bother to let you know if their items are high-polygon, and thus lag-inducing.
Paysites typically do not reveal that their meshes are ripped off from Poser and other mesh sites. Poser artists are less than sanguine about their work being stolen.
Paysites which specialize in hair typically do not show you the gaps in the Sims' necks or poor animations or hair cutting through Sims; in fact, many paysites show their hair meshes on Photoshopped images.
Paysites typically do not bother to do currency conversions, so some people pay more than others for the same item they legally should not be buying in the first place.
Paysites occasionally refuse to release content when creators choose not to sell their work anymore, and hold it hostage until threatened by EA.
Paysites do not typically process subscription requests in a timely manner, so if you pay for a month, you may get two weeks or fewer.
Paysites make you pay to download their goodies, and some have punished subscribers from downloading "too much" or using download accelerator programs.
Paysites often use copyrighted images and brand names to make their pay items more appealing, which is breaking the copyright of those companies, the professional photographers who took the images, the designers of clothing used in the photos, et cetera.

If I only have one pay item, and another site has 50,000 pay items, are we equally wrong?
The scope of your wrong-doing is smaller, but you are still wrong.

If I am usually a free creator and have only one donation item, does that make my site a paysite?
Yes.

But I need to feed my chillunz / can't work a "normal" job / have an illness / am agoraphobic / need to be compensated for my talents and time!
Then you need to find a legal alternative to earn money.
Your talents as applied to Sims 2 game content can not legally be sold.
Apply your talents legally to make money, and use your talents within the Sims 2 community to share your hobby for free.

But I wouldn't create anything for the Sims 2 if I didn't make money!
Then you need to stop playing Sims 2 and find another outlet for your skills, because clearly being part of the fan community is not important to you.

But I have come up with something so new and special that it deservesd to be rewarded with cash!
Submit it to EA, then, if it is truly so new and special, and see if they are willing to hire you.
Do not think that your item(s) is/are so special that you and you alone are allowed to break the law.
Also, it is likely that someone else has already made that new and special item, and you simply have not found it yet.
And they are probably offering it for free.

But if I call something a donation, it's a donation!
You can call it a purple unicorn, but it doesn't make it so.

Too bad we can't lock this thread for members, because they may try to fix that loophole.

(P.S. Brava!)

I don't know.

Any content that can not be downloaded without paying someone at a site money = pay content, no matter what description is used.

Any site with content that is pay is a paysite.

Pretty simple!

Agreed!

Good for you, Inge.

But then you don't get to try A Modest Proposal Roast with barbeque!

I suspect that the custom content made by freesites is more than enough to help encourage interest in the Sims games.

I never paid for content while playing Sims 1, and have confessed to buying ONE donation set from 11dots, when what I would have far preferred to donate to her instead. I had no option to donate to show appreciation, and did not know about PMBD at the time. Of course, I found it four days later! (ARRRRR!!!! of annoyance goes here)

The custom content issue seems so cut and dried. As mando said, in what way are we misinterpreting the "non-commercial use" portion of the EULA?

All attempts to weasel out of that one are simply specious. I'm sorry, but if there is content that cannot be accessed without money exchanging hands, it is pay content, and commercial by definition, and no matter how weasely one is about trying to claim it is for bandwidth (there are free alternatives) or is a "donation" to support the site (a donation is something give without expectation of a gift in return; once donation money nets a donator an item no one else can have without donating, it is a sale), taking any money, in any amount, for Sims 2 game content is not allowed by EA's EULA.

I want to kick MAXIS in the seat of the pants for letting the camel stick his nose in the tent in the first place, because without that little caveat back in the days of Sims 1 that a small donation fee would be okay to defray bandwidth costs, paysite owners would not even have that much to point to in an attempt to justify their illegal financial screwing of the community as a whole.

Obviously, even the most expensive servers and bandwidth costs are more than covered by the amount of dosh sites like Peggy's, TSR, Rose and others rake in from the fans who don't know any better.

Why people do not read legal documents when presented with the opportunity to do so just amazes me. For god's sake, EA could have claimed a right to your first born, and you didn't even bother to check that out? And you compound the error by refusing to go email EA or read the EULA yourself?

I note that paysites have had as much opportunity to write EA as we have had, and whereas pro-freesite people have posted several emails from EA that make their feelings clear, I have yet to see one pro-paysite person produce a verifiable letter from EA that excuses their activities that are in defiance of the EULA.

In fact, we have seen paysite owners try to claim that the EA letters were Photoshopped (and other such crazy nonsense) rather than accepting THEY ARE WRONG. I think that amazes me most of all. They would rather pretend that someone went to all the trouble to mock up a letter from EA than acknowledge that THEY ARE WRONG.

How deluded does a person need to be, to come up with that?

The "my chilluns must be fed!" argument is my second-most favourite stupid pro-paysite argument. I fail to see why engaging in illegal activities is the best solution for adequately taking care of one's kids. Hopefully one would not sell drugs, or pirated software, to feed and clothe the chilluns. What values does that teach kids? Do as I say, not as I do? There are so many legal ways to make money from home, be it AVON or Tupperware, or being a professional bridal planner, organizer, personal assistant, babysitter, music teacher, proofreader, editor, et cetera, et cetera.

The whole pirate schtick is a joke that clearly flew right over your pointy little noggin.

Everyone else got it, I'm not sure what your problem might be.

The fact is, we are not "pirates" per se, because we do not steal that which is not legally ours. Nor do we distribute EA's property in a way that defies their EULA. EA knows about the booty, and have no complaints.

Once someone buys the pixels, they own the pixels, and can share them freely with friends. Sharing, of course, is something that is encouraged by the EULA. The fact that they had to buy the pixels in the first place is what is NOT okay with EA.

What one can NOT do, according to the EULA, is make content that only functions properly if tools specific to The Sims 2 are used, and SELL IT. If you need the .package format to make it work, or if the item in question needs the game in order to have any perceived value, it belongs to EA, legally, and EA was gracious enough to allow us to mod our games in this fashion, even going so far as to provide some tools to help us do so.

Some paysites try to get around this by saying, hey, we use Photoshop, and Maya, and those aren't EA tools. No, they aren't. But in order to convert your Photoshopped texture or Maya mesh to the game, you must make it conform to game code using tools specifically designed to work in concert with the game engine. As HystericalParoxysm once pointed out, it would be okay to make textures and sell them (though, frankly, a professional artist who has not bought the full version of Photoshop is constrained in many ways from doing this, something that was not touched upon.)

Once you create content using BodyShop, or by using other Sims 2 specific tools, and package it for the game, it is not supposed to be sold. EA is the only entity that should make money off of their intellectual property.

Especially when you get into the issue of how some content is created in the first place. Photoskinning designer logos or images of some fashion designer's work, using corporate logos without the corporation (e.g., H&M, Coca-Cola, Ford) allowing it, stealing meshes from Poser creators and concerting them, ripping off someone's photography to add detail to hair, skins, accessories, or using a brand name to sell your custom content are all rather reprehensible once you try to make a buck off of things. Be it Starbuck's, Disney, the estate of A A Milne, SubWay, McDonald's, Varga, Gucci, Chanel, Emorio Armani, Joe Boxer, Calvin Klein, Garnier, L'Oreal, Maybelline or whoever, there's a fine line between paying tribute (something some of these corporations dislike anyway) and trying to make your content more appealing by piggybacking on the hard work the corporation has done to bring their product to the public's attention in the first place.

Creators should get credit for their unique interpretations and ideas, but not for items created using brand names, nor should they insist on being financially compensated once they use Sims 2 specific tools, or make an item usable for the game.

What we do here is not piracy. That's the joke that you failed to grasp.

Now, if the EULA did not specifically and clearly state that all commercial benefit to anyone other than EA was forbidden, then MAYBE you'd have a point, but even then, no one has HAXXORED a paysite and/or stolen any content. Everything in the booty has been paid for. Again, once you buy something, you can do pretty much anything you like with it if you do not then try to repackage and resell it as your own original item. No one is being uncredited (all the better, because that will make it even easier for EA to track down those who have made the most illegal profit in defiance of the EULA).

There are several creators for paysites that we are particularly sad to see creating for pay, because their work is above the usual shit standards of the average pay item, and several of those creators have been approached and offered assistance so they can go free. We are not anti-creator. We are anti-thief.

Also, in your example about computer code, you are mostly wrong. If a case ever went so far as to be challenged in court, the copyright holder of the game the code was written to work for would win the suit by virtue of the fact that the format of the code would have to work specifically with their game engine. Sims 2 modders and hackers occasionally write hacks and mods that require tinkering with the same bits and bytes and do the same thing, but the code they are tinkering with is still EAxian. The hacker or modder who shares her or his work with the community first should get any credit due for successfully writing game code alterations that do not bork but instead enhance annoyances the game is shipped with, but when a hack changes only a few minor things, it can be difficult to track down who came up with the idea to tweak it first. Fortunately, that is not one of the major issues at hand, especially since, again, those hacks and mods typically do not work with anything other than the Sims 2 games. They thus cannot be legally sold.

The "you just want free shit" argument is specious at best, because there are some people on here who have NO paysite content in their games at all. It's usually of lesser quality than freesite work, which is typically done out of a sense of community spirit.

Not only are paysites illegally profiting in defiance of the EULA, very few of them offer any technical support. Many people have reported poor or non-existent customer service. Many people have reported deceptive marketing (images of hair meshes, for instance, that pointedly do not show the neck gaps or crappy animations or Sim-body-impaling that occur when the hair meshes are used). Many of the wealthiest paysite folks do not actually play the game.

Also, when you get down to it, our behavior, aside from some frustration, some snarky pirates indulging their inner angry 12-ness, and a few angry outbursts, has been overall far more ethical and community-spirited. For example:

* No pro-freesite people have initiated campaigns to vilify or defame other community members for activites unrelated to the community.
* No pro-freesite people have initiated (or threatened) DDOS attacks or Black Hat server hacking.
* No pro-freesite people have shared sensitive personal and financial information on a forum.
* No pro-freesite people have snuck onto other sites and tried to lure away custom content creators who create for everyone in order to make them create only for those who can pay for content.
* No pro-freesite people have refused to release creator content once the creator wishes to remove it.

Then there's the annoyance factors involved with the paysite / freesite schism in the community.

* We hate the hide-and-seek game we have to play, chasing down meshes hither and yon because some content won't work without them, and illegal paysites are holding them hostage for money.
* Some pay content has been known to actually break your game, be it temporarily or not.
* There's the issue of charging for (typically vile) recolours of EAxian meshes. What gall.
* There's the issue of paysites that make high-poly items that lag or bork your game, and which refuse to acknowledge this may be an issue.
* Or items that do not sit properly within the grid constraints of the game, and instead go through walls or Sims, or are out of scale.

Those are lesser complaints, but the so-called pirates here are fed up with them just as much. We are not only backing EA's legal rights as defined by the EULA everyone who legally bought the game in the first place was told to read thoroughly and agree with, but we are also campaigning for better content which should be free and available to everyone.

The real pirates, as far as plundering and theft go, are paysites who are stealing not only from the community, but from EA, without which there would be no cash cow teats for them to milk in the first place.

Don't like that? Then, please, by all means, find a legal outlet for your talents and skills that does not involve breaking the EULA. Good luck finding another game community to suck off of, though, as the Sims community is one of the very, very few that have tolerated, to ANY extent, the level of greed and money-grubbing the Sims community has. As a very old story would have put it, MAXIS stupidly allowed the camel to put his nose inside the tent on a cold night by allowing Sims 1 sites to recoup bandwidth costs, long before they knew what a huge success the game would be, and now that the camel has nearly evicted the camel driver, EA has a fight on its hands to reverse the situation. (Moral of the story? Keep the camel out of the tent in the first place.) With so many alternatives available these days for hosting, there is no longer any excuse for pretending that these fees are going towards bandwidth.

Need help reducing site costs? Need suggestions? Another fine service offered here at PMBD! Ask for advice, and ye shall receive. There is really no reason to pay through the nose to host Sims 2 content.

Lastly? Don't want to be our friend and share what we have graciously paid for (even though it legally should not have been sold in the first place) and offer to you? No one is holding a cutlass to your head. Please leave.

You can raid the booty or not, it is your choice, and EA is well aware of PMBD and have issued letters of approval for what we do here, and have issued letters clearly stating that any commercial profit off EA goodies is illegal, and a pack of rabid attack lawyers are probably sitting by eagerly sharpening their teeth, just waiting to be sicced on the worst offenders.

MAXIS looked the other way. MAXIS is no longer calling the shots in any significant way. EA is definitely not feeling as benign about the matter, and we don't blame them.

You may choose to share the fun, the rum, and the shared booty, or you can go take a long walk off a short plank. It's your choice.

I'm on dialup, using FFox, and I have had ZERO problems getting into PMBD or MATY. SFV, I haven't tried.

Clear history, clear cache, use FireFox, try again.

I enjoy the rewrite.



Oh 4chan, you rascals, you.

Also? Splongcat says hello.

They theorized that it was due to Russians protesting the mentions of DPNI.



For more on what that is, GoogWikiHoo for you.

If you care, of course.

Alek Wek is indeed a lovely human. Not so lovely as a Sim. And bruno's Trout Pout lipstick does not help.

(I maintain bruno did those as a joke.)

From 32A to 36C in less than a year, here.

Was not too unhappy about that, though I missed the cute little bras.

Finally, a newbie who Got It Right!

We welcome you, and offer rum and gruff but sincere pirate handshakes. (Mind the hooks, some of us have a a bit of bad luck in the past while freeing the booty.)