The legal issues can be quite interesting, especially with respect to conflict of laws. Generally a court will apply the local law, making the choice of the forum fairly important. However, most well drafted contracts also have a choice of law and a choice of forum clause. That being said, the courts of one nation do not have to honor the decisions from a court of another nation. So if TSR were to sue you in Sweden and get a judgment against you, but you live in the U.S., a U.S. court might or might not honor that judgment. In any case, TSR would be required to file two lawsuits: the original one in Sweden and a second one in the users home country to enforce that judgment. Or they could just hire a lawyer in your home jurisdiction and litigate there.

Plus, there are a host of other issues. For example, in the U.S., under the Statute of Frauds, a contract which will last over a year, requires a signature, except when it does not. The rules for goods are different. But are digital goods, "goods" within the meaning the Uniform Commercial Code. Maybe yes, maybe no. Does this involve the "sale" of goods within the meaning of the UCC (which has been adopted in 49 states)? Perhaps yes, probably no. If it does not fall within the UCC, what are the common law rules governing the transaction, assuming you are in a common law country (generally, the English speaking world)?

Is clicking a box stating you agree a signature within the meaning of the Statute of Frauds? Maybe yes, probably no. Has there been an adequate consideration paid for the agreement? Maybe yes, maybe no. If you bought your game at Walmart, is there any privity of contract between you and EA which would create a contract between you? Maybe yes, probably no.

What if the consumer happens to be a minor who save up his allowance, lawn mowing money and babysitting money to buy the Sims game? Minors cannot legally enter into contracts, and any contract made by a minor is voidable. Similarly, what if the game was received as a gift? If it was a gift, there was no contract.

Needless to say, this could all be very very expensive. It is hard to conduct any serious litigation anymore for less than $100,000 in attorneys fees -- and that's for a pretty straightforward piece of litigation without unusual complications, like choice of law issues. A dispute over virtual chair, which no one is going to make much money off of anyway, does not justify the expenditure of such money. While the issues are interesting, most people don't want to pay for that type of litigation.

The truth of the matter is that in our economy, compliance with most agreements is largely voluntary. Yes, there are mechanisms like takedown notices, but these can be circumvented. People abide by the terms of EA's EULA and TSR's Terms and Conditions because they feel obligated to do so. It is not because of any enforcement action by EA or TSR. As far as I know, neither EA not TSR has sued anyone. If they had, I suspect Pescado would have been the first on their list. But Pescado knows that it's all hot air and threats.

I heard a rumor that ea/maxis filed a law suit against them for charging people for the mods that's what ive heard

I'm still not going there. Not since I learned about the cursed doll.

what curse doll is this then

The "curse doll" was a buggy bit of content put out by some poor user who messed up the code, which allowed the doll to attach itself to every Sim3Pack So if you somehow got the doll, and built say, a house, which you uploaded somewhere, like TSR or even the official forums, that doll would hitch a ride in that S3P and be spread to folks who downloaded that house.

Other than slightly cluttering up your neatly arranged buy menu, the doll caused no damage to your game. While annoying, and a bear to stamp out (all those creators had to go back and clean their uploads), it was not some evil plot to sabotage the game. The original creator of the doll was burned at the stake by the Sims community, even though she didn't do it on purpose, and there was no evidence of any harm coming to anyone, other than having the freaking doll sneak back into your buy menu if you downloaded a S3P with it in there.

TSR was not at fault. There was no evil conspiracy (I don't think). It got cleaned up. Everyone learned an important lesson about checking out S3P's before blindly installing them. There are some decent content makers on TSR (and lots of not so decent ones too). Now that TSR is "free" for all their content (other than watching some ads) folks around here are willing to get stuff from there. My suggestion is to browse TSR, and be selective. Just because you CAN get stuff doesn't mean you SHOULD grab it all. They are as safe to use as any other internet site for sim content.

Ahhhhh, I can finally get some more eyeliners. No offense to the MTS community, you content-creators are great; there just isn't enough eyeliner for me here.


There is never enough eyeliner.

Actually it turned out it was bug or a bit of poor design by EA which meant that having a particular resource with an ID of 0x0 would do that. There was no good reason for it, and it got fixed in a patch once TSR reported it to them. At the time there were not many people doing that type of work, which is why that brave person who did try something new got caught out like this. It was similar to the blue-lotting, which was an EA design change that caught us out. In neither case was user stupidity to blame, simply the inevitable inability to comprehend EA's surprising design decisions.

Ah, I didn't remember that delicious detail. Still, that poor girl got painted as the Devil for that little bit of drama. So she got publicly shamed, flogged, and burned, all because of an EA design "bug". That's something I would have thought only Kafka could have imagined.

It's not that surprising, really. Lots of people in the sims community seem to have this rather hysterical fear that bad CC can and will blow up your game, burn down your house and kick your dog. In fact, I can count the items of CC which could do irreparable damage to someone's game on one hand. But nonetheless, when there's a suggestion that an item of CC has a bug - especially one which makes it behave in a way which has the vaguest similarity to Bogeyman Virus - it's very common for creators to be vilified, even when there's really no way they could even have known about the problem.

Still, I think the fate of the creator is quite tragic and sad.

WOW! Really? LOL. Whatever....

I never liked TSR's history, but some of the creators are respectful and talented. My favorite creators are Alesso, Cazy, Skysims, Nightcrawler (even though I usually get retextures of their hairs), Pralinesims and Gosik. But no one ever forced anyone to make custom content! So anyone who runs a paysite doesn't have a innocent excuse to have one. Just what I think.

TSR is raging at me for using Adblock!

The downside to stuff being free :/

I wouldn't mind ads if theirs weren't so damn obnoxious. The site has become 80% ads, 10% sims content, and 10% sims content worth downloading.

I've used my Adblock to block that particular red banner. Problem solved!

I tried turning off AdBlock, if nothing else as a gesture of thanks for going free, but even after turning it and NoScript and Flashblock, I couldn’t see any ads and they still prolonged my downloads for “using ad blocking”. So I said, “Screw it!” And I turned AdBlock, NoScript, and Flashblock back on.

I don’t know if it’s just me or the site. Obnoxious ads or no, if I could/knew how I’d turn off ad blocking in thankfulness… for one day, at least!

^Funny, all I do is click on the Adblock icon in my browser so the menu pops up then scroll down and select "Don't run on this page." The page then refreshes itself sans AdBlock and I'm good to go.

I use Adblock because when I watch series online I can't stand getting up about 6 pop-up ads for each episode I watch.
Therefore I refuse to delete Adblock just because TSR wants me to. I'd rather wait for 30 seconds than to delete it.

When I find something on TSR that I want, I just copy the link and paste it on a new page, then I click download and during those 30 seconds I go back to the original page and keep browsing for downloads.

I do the same thing, 30 seconds isn't that long to wait and I'd rather leave my Adblock on, I don't trust ads on any website. And I don't download from TSR that often anyway so I care about it even less than most probably. :P

I think I tried that with AdBlock, Flashblock, and NoScript before turning all three off completely. Needless to say, it didn't work for me, hence trying turning them off.

Maybe it is just me!

Yeah. I saw someone was stealing Lifesimmer's girly girl and shamrock godess sims.

Worst hijacker I ever had hit my computer was from a TSR popup ad. Took 4 days for my husband, who does computer security at a major University to get it off. For a while it looked like we were just going to have to wipe the drive clean and start over. Never going to leave myself open for that again .

Once I was on TSR and it put some installer on my computer. It didn't seem to have malware inside of it but I deleted it right when it gave it to me. The site would be better if they didn't pollute it with ads.

That's wonderful!! Thanks!