This initiative has been created to help simsites visitors… during this year (2007) several initiatives have started to awaken public opinion on the free/paysite issue, above all Inge Jones’ and Federation of free sites initiative http://www.federation-of-free-sims-sites.org/. Our aim is not to create an alternative federation, nor another community, but just a little ad that will help making things cleared for our visitors, who often don’t speak much English.
What does EA say about paysites? That’s a long and complicated topic, if you want to know more about it go and read our Note 2.
After this boring but necessary introduction, let’s make a fundamental distinction.
WHAT IS A FREESITE AND WHAT IS A PAYSITE
Freesite: it’s a site that offers free content. You don’t have to pay anything to download files, read articles or use any other type of content that site offers.
Paysite: it’s a site in which to access content you have to pay a certain fee decided by the site owner.
Since the distinction isn’t always clear, let’s get more into details.
We’re talking about simsites, of course. Everything in this page refers only to those.
If a site is pay, it doesn’t mean you’ll pay just for browsing its pages… it doesn’t work this way.
To access content in a pay site, that means to download it to use in your game, you’ll usually need a subscription. In fact, if you click on Download and you’re not subscribed, you’re taken to a page which shows how to subscribe. To subscribe you have to pay a certain amount of money, usually through Paypal. Paypal is a safe way to send money on-line. Everybody can create a free account and assign a credit card to it and the details will be hidden for the seller. Only Paypal will know them. Typically, pre-paid cards are used for on-line purchases.
Not every site manages subscriptions the same way, some let you choose how much will your subscription last (PeggySims2, for example), others make you pay per item or set (Rosesims and Reflexsims, for example), others again use recurring subscriptions, subscriptions automatically renewed each month until you unsubscribe through Paypal (Note 1: how to unsubscribe ).
Many sites have both free and pay content. Others hide the fact they’re pay behind so called “donation Gifts”, sent to the donator to thank them. These are paysites as well, since they provide an exchange money-good, where the good is the gift they give you. Don’t be afraid, usually pay items are separated from free ones, anyway, always remember that before paying for anything you will be asked for your Paypal or credit card details. If you stumble in this you just have to go back without confirming.
Some sites are free, but require you to register in order to download. To be sure registration is free always keep in mind what we said previously: unless you’re asked for your Paypal or credit card details it’s completely free. Some sites that work this way are Modthesims2, Insimenator…
Sometimes visitors e-mail us to ask if they have to pay anything, sometimes they’re unsure whether a site is pay or free… we want to clear this confusion up using a banner that says all of our contents are FREE!!!
Often, though, some people believe that since it’s FREE I can do whatever I want. That’s far from true. The Sims community has definite rules about file-sharing and redistribution of files, each site has its own policy. Generally, permission to recolor or include stuff in uploaded sims or lots by somebody else is granted, but ABSOLUTELY NOT PERMISSION TO REDISTRIBUTE IT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION ON CDS, MAGAZINES, ONLINE AUCTIONS ON EBAY OR ANY OTHER SITES AND IT’S NOT ALLOWED TO HOTLINK (note 3) FILES, IMAGES AND VIDEOS. So, if you want to use a site’s images or files check the FAQ’s or POLICY, and if you can’t find the information you need drop the webmaster/mistress an e-mail.
This initiative is supported by the EISSC and all its members, but you don’t need to be one to join it, nor to be an Italian site. Anyone who’s got a freesite can take one of these banners and put it on their site with a link to this page. We won’t make a list of the sites that join this initiative because we just want it to be free, just a sort of help for users.
However, we do ask who wants to use our banners to tell us thorugh an e-mail to this address,
Indirizzo e-mail protetto dal bots spam , deve abilitare Javascript per vederlo
Indirizzo e-mail protetto dal bots spam , deve abilitare Javascript per vederlo , and to use them ONLY if they’re site doesn’t have any pay content! Remember, the banner has to link back to this page!!
Summing up, here are the conditions your site has to comply in order to use our banners:
- Be a completely FREEsite: no pay content is allowed, no subscription areas, no “Donation Gifts” or any other kind of content available only to the ones who make a donation.
- You can have a “Donate” button linked to a service like Paypal, but only to pay for site costs and without giving anything back to donators.
- Send us an e-mail at
Indirizzo e-mail protetto dal bots spam , deve abilitare Javascript per vederlo
Indirizzo e-mail protetto dal bots spam , deve abilitare Javascript per vederlo , telling us you’re joining our initiative. Only paysites will be asked to remove the banner, any other site will be welcome.
- The banner must be visible both on the home page and the download page of the site and has to link back to this page.
- Any material on the site must be made by the site’s staff (it can’t be taken from some other site and claimed as your creation) and contents have to respect other sites policies (mesh credits, mesh redistribution only if allowed, credits for content and models used, etc…)
- Use one of our banners (Note 4), should you need other colours or sizes send us an e-mail-
(Note 1: how to cancel a recurring subscription)
Log into your Paypal account
Enter Chronology.
Select “Show” and form the menu select “Subscriptions”. As a starting date, use last year or when you subscribes to a certain site.
Click “Search” to get your results.
Look for the subscription you want to cancel and click on Details on its line.
At the bottom of the page you’ll see a button which says “Cancel subscription”, click on it and confirm. Afterwards, you’ll receive an e-mail confirming your operation.
(Note 2: at the attention of webmasters/mistresses who want to create donation content)
According to the EULA you’ve accepted when you installed the game, you can create and share custom content for The Sims 2 without profit only.
Here’s the license anyone who uses a tool for The Sims 2 accepts:
EA owns all of the rights, title and interest in the Tools & Materials. You may not alter any of EA’s trademarks or logos, or alter or remove any of EA’s trademark or copyright notices included in or with the Tools & Materials or EA’s products. Your right to use Tools & Materials is limited to the license grant above, and you may not otherwise copy, display, distribute, perform, publish, modify, create works from, or use any of the Tools & Materials. Without limiting the preceding sentence, you may not modify, reverse engineer, disassemble, license, transfer, distribute, create works from, or sell the Tool, or use the Tools & Materials to further any commercial purpose. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Tools & Materials to promote another product or business, or on any site that operates or promotes a server emulator. You may include materials created with the Tools & Materials on your personal noncommercial website for the noncommercial benefit of the fan community for EA’s products and provided that if you do so.
(Note 3: Hotlinking)
Many claim not to know what hotlinking means, but the truth is many ‘smart’ people do know it.
What does it mean? It means that a site, which should generally host its content (of any kind) on its own space or a space owned by the webmaster/mistress, uses some other, external and not linked site’s space and bandwidth.
Usually images and files are “stolen” the most, even though the word “stolen” may not be completely correct, since they’re absorbed by the parasite site.
Let’s pretend I had the site www.parasitesite.com. I visit www.originalsite.com and see an image I like, so I take that image’s link and put it on my site like this link <img xsrc="http://www.originalsite.com/image.jpg" />.
Now my (parasite) site is not only stealing an image from another site without asking for permission, but it’s also increase the bandwidth usage of the original site, and sites often have limited bandwidth and they pay for it.
Bandwidth is measured on the size of files, for example loading a HTML page you increase bandwidth for the size of the page (usually under 50kb), plus the sizes of each object it contains (for example, if there’s three images respectively of a 45kb, a 60 kb and a 150kb size) the total traffic of the page will be 255kb plus the size of the page.
Site owner pay for the bandwidth they use.
