Forget the huge amount of e-mail the vendor would have to deal with. A quick google reveals a thousand and one ways to crack password protected files.

Yeah, I thought of that myself, but I remembered an earlier thread where Vaio_Con_Dios suggested jumping through all sorts of hoops to get to his freebies. I never thought it was practical. Personally, while I detest the abuse of intellectual or digital property, I think it's as simple as this: people are gonna do it. You cannot protect your product when you offer it for free and make it freely available. The honor system only works with honorable people. What lies at the bottom of this thread is the issue of how to deal with them here, on our turf.

Lets play a game shall we? Game on: I'm a warez kiddie. I come in here looking for freebies and read gothgurl's message. I say to myself: "uh oh, I hope they don't ban together and actually do something that will stop my free software from flowing". Then I notice that people are jumping on gothgurl for telling too many specifics about the problem. Making her look guilty. Ah ha! (I say to myself). These people can't hurt me. They can't even organize themselves without turning on eachother. GAME OVER: Warez users 1 Anti-warez users 0 ScottA

... which is great, Scott, but what do you recommend? Everything that's been suggested thus far is riddled with holes, either logically or practically. And I don't think anyone was really jumping on gothgirl over this -- we've seen this thread over and over, on this forum and C&D, so nothing here is that new. Frankly, I have no idea how best to control this stuff. Maybe something that automatically sends a message via the web to the creator on installation, but what if you're not connected to the web when you put this stuff into your Poser? What if the creator has changed e-mails and doesn't get the message? I think Hiram's right: the honour system only works with honourable people. And the warez kids aren't exactly high on the list when it comes to integrity. HOWEVER, I do believe it would do this place an enormous service to (1) immediately delete any requests for warez that appear in the forum board threads and (2) ban the asker. If you simply lock the thread, which has been policy for the moment, you still have the possibility that someone somewhere is gonna IM this child all the info he/she can eat. With it deleted, you lower the chances of that happening. And banishment from the site... well, that should be a given IMHO.

What do I recommend? I recommend when someone comes here trying to be helpful. That we don't jump on them for that. Even if the way they do that is done in the wrong manner. This was intended as a positive thread. And of course the first thing that we did was lynch her. I'm sure she will not post a message here again. Thanks to the warm welcome that was shown to her. I'm not very proud of that. ScottA

VirtualSite, I state it again, it's not a Virus. Just a nifty tool which i don't want to explain what it can do and does. But it's for shure not a virus. And the operating system could but was never planned to affect. So to describe what would going on when just a few would "share" their files. It would work like a piramyd-system, as short as one has downloaded it he would share it with the next, and so on. In a relativ short period a lot of "users" would have and share the file. And i'm shure, as soon as the first will check what's going on he would inform all of his "friends" and post a message into the chat-room. And then i would say a lot of people will become fear to download poser-files from those sites. I had think more then once what can be done, because i wanted to act against this and not to react when my stuff is pirated. I see this as my personal war against piracy, and it would take me not much time. I just have to start the P2P-Programs while staying anyway on the net. It's not my character to stay aside and complain and whine, i'm more the one who wants to control the bridle. SHARKEY

First, as I said before, I wasn't trying to harm anyone or tell other people how to get free stuff, that was never my intentions. It was an honest concern for how easy things are to come across, especially if you ARE an unknowing person such as myself. There is no real way to tell if stuff is legal or illegal without being around a community and reading things. Some people just do not know. Frankly, without being around here, I would have never known that some Renderosity files were illegal to share. File sharing programs or download sites ARE misleading in that respect if you don't know. One of my teachers asked me if in fact the files WERE illegal because she had never heard of Renderosity. And frankly I do have to agree with ScottA, I'm not sure I want to post messages, or anything else for that matter for fear of getting slammed even when the comments, ideas, concerns, etc are helpful or to look out for someone else's work. I don't blame you ScottA for the concern you have, it is a valid issue. It seems to me people have a tendency to jump on ones ass for well meant attempts. I also don't hold you responsible for other's actions here. The only final comment I have is this: Ban me if you wish to, since that's what seems to be the most common of wishes here. I'm sure there are other places to learn and grow, especially as this is just a hobby for me since I'm going to school for Psychology. But for god's sake, grow up. Arguing and bickering will not solve problems, coming together to find a solution is the only real way to stop something like this. I was hoping that more people would see this, but aparently as someone pointed out in an earlier post, "They can't even organize themselves without turning on eachother." Not only does this hurt the community in general, but is a total lack of respect for emotions and feelings. I have spent the past 24 hours looking back, re-reading stuff...and FEELING GUILTY for something I didn't even do.

Actually, something just hit me, How would you feel if YOUR work was being given away freely and no one thought to tell you becuase they were afraid that you would think, say or do something to punish rather than reward their looking out for you? People who are looking out for other people look at this thread, see what the outcome of this is and say "Ya know what, she got jumped on for a good deed, F**K this I am NOT getting myself in trouble." You don't just hurt the good people, but also yourself. Sure, you can look for yourself and try to get the people doing it but you can't be everywhere all the time. Just think about that the next time you see your work on Morpheus or similar programs.

I went up and looked at this thread. Two people sorta-kinda jumped on Gorthgurl when she started it. Two. Maybe that constitutes a lynch mob mentality to some, but the rest of this thread seems more an intent discussion on warez than any slam on gothgurl. So let's put all of this back into something that sorta kinda vaguely represents perspective, huh? And Robert, I applaud you for trying to "control the bridle"; don't misunderstand. As I've stated over and over in almost every thread on warez that has poked its nasty little head up around here, something should definitely be done. But the solutions I've seen to date have come across as less than effective, sorry. Now if you or someone else has something new that can help with all this, I say go for it. But don't be surprised when someone finds a way to hack around it. There are people out there who live for that kind of thrill.

Thanks for the discourse guys. I'll make one more observation.... Outside the artist community, as in sporting goods retailing where I am, we understand that on a new product you'll make your mark-up in the beginning, then after awhile...it gets cheap. On sale..whatever...in this case..I guess it gets free. You guys are right..pointless to argue about it. I'm sorry I contributed to this carrying on, other than to return to my original thought, which was instead of telling them they're thieves, tell them they can't download it, and why. The old saying here is that locks are for honest people, they don't keep thieves out. Thanks for listening to me, and I'll try to pick less controversial threads from now on 'till I know some of you. Oh...and there wasn't anything wrong with anything gothgurl said...:) Beav

It's true. She came here with the best of intent. Although I made no direct criticism of gothgurl6669, I for one would like to apologize for my less constructive comments and welcome her to the community, "wherein no contention should exist but that noble contention, or rather emulation, of who can best work and best agree." (it's a Masonic thing)

VirtualSite, No problem about those who decide to hack my posted "stuff". The only thing they ends up with is loosing time for less then nothing. SHARKEY

I think the problem is that if you spend more than 2 months at this site, you see this issue come up in this and other forums sometimes up to three times a week. What may be a well-known fact to some members is a total surprise to others. I had no issue with gothgurl's post, other than the fact that I have read the same post by other people a good 30 times now. ;) It doesn't take a genius to get warez, so the illustrative quality of the post doesn't bother me as it does others.

On the other hand, I DO take issue with the fact that SO MANY people in this community feel that downloading music and movies is ok, but trading Poser files isn't. I personally don't worry too much about MP3s and the like, since I think many of the music companies are corrupt, but really, how can you say "OMG Morpheus is evil because you can get warez, but I do like to download MP3s from there.." in one breath? It makes no sense. I personally don't get all up in arms about the warez issue or the MP3s or the bootleg movies, but hypocrisy irritates me. People who wear angel wings and halos on the warez issue while sorting a multigigabyte MP3 collection just boggle my mind.

So, if I offended anyone I am sorry. I didn't mean to demean gothgurl or anyone else in this thread with my comments. Hopefully I have explained myself a bit. I tend to be short when I type and I can come off all snarky when it isn't my intention. =)

People who wear angel wings and halos on the warez issue while sorting a multigigabyte MP3 collection just boggle my mind. IMHO, I think the difference is: we know the people who develop this stuff. We chat with kupa and PhilC and robert.sharkey, and we feel protective towards them. They're family. And we tend to get a little nasty towards anyone stealing from them. But try as I might, I just can't see Twisted Sister as family. Not in even the most vague of senses... =) (Now, Toby Keith? Hmm. That's different, y'know? Nobody messes with Toby... )

The people here are awesome. Since I started posting and such, I have had people go out of their way to help me out. When I couldn't download some dress textures from creed3d, nikitacreed e-mailed me the things I needed. When I didn't win the room texture contest, a merchant here gave me something as a "consolation prize." When I did win the story contest, one of the sponsors gave me more than was promised in the prize description. I couldn't imagine stealing from people here, so I can understand the defensive/protective stance. I personally see warez as an issue of greys. I do not condone it, but at the same time I don't feel the need to say, chase warez people down and send them nasty IMs and such. I just make my art and have fun with the products I have. =)

Have to agrre with Kieraw about the opinion with the mp3's. I know those P2P-Programs because someone told me that my stuff was their. I never have searched for it, means i hadn't know such programs exist while i like to hear music at my book-library before i buy it there. So there's no need for MP3-files. What can be sayd in general about those P2P-shared files is the fact that most of the files their, whether it's MP3 Videos or images, all of them where pirated while violating copyrights. I think the only legal ones are the images which where created from somebody itself and then shared. SHARKEY

Thank you Hiram. Gothgurl, Please don't tell people to "grow up". It's my job to point out when people are being treated badly. And remind them that we are here to help eachother. It doesn't help me when you toss a comment like that back to them. This is how it works: 1.) someone posts a message 2.) a few people take it personally and get pissed about it 3.) I jump in and say "hold on folks" this is not nice 4.) They answer me with "Sorry. Didn't mean to offend anyone" 5.)I say "Good for you for saying that" 6.)The person who posted the original message says. Thanks for not getting pissed at me. I like it here. You people are great. 7.)Everyone goes to the next thread. Happy that they signed up to be a Renderosity member. No one gets warned. No one gets banned. It not a perfect system. But it works out ok if everyone keeps to this format. I hope you will feel safe enough to post here again with any Poser questions you may need answered. ScottA