Stealing routes???

[joefremont]

I just got a couple of support requests I am not sure how to handle. I will not name names but a group of pilots left a VA that had taken with them a copy of the airline’s routes and used it to setup the routes for their new airline.

Now the support requests accuse them of stealing and are expecting me to do something about it, but I am not sure what would be the appropriate response from me.

Does anyone have advice on this?

[Mesquaki]

As a VA owner myself (albeit very small), all I can suggest is "owner beware". While I can certainly understand the sting behind having pilots joining my VA and then suddenly a group of pilots leave and establish their own VA using the same routes we have established, I also have to look at the bigger picture. This is a virtual economy world to a flight sim, not a real world business. If these pilots have the same identical routes established, does it affect the offended VA in any way? Meaning are they loosing out on passengers/cargo for their flights and loosing potential virtual income? If yes, then I can understand to a degree how the offended VA would feel. If it had happened to me, I would look more at the fact of I must be doing something right if some group of pilots join us, then leave and decide to "mirror" my routes.

It boils down to morals and ethics, which is something that sometimes is not carried over between real world and game world. This is a game world- a virtual economy world where we can run our own VA and/or fly in a VA as if we were doing so in the real world. I have seen similar situations occur in other virtual game world groups- from trucking to farming to flying. It sucks for those that work hard to establish a structure in their own group only to have a few come in and "take/steal/help themselves" to similar ideas with little effort or hard work. Again, I say morals and ethics.

I refer back to the Terms and Conditions we read when joining...

You may not use FSAirlines in any manner which could damage, disable, overburden, or impair FSAirlines or interfere with any other party's use and enjoyment of FSAirlines.

The first part of the above quote is very straight forward. The part with "interfere with any other party's use and enjoyment of FSAirlines" is the catch.. Does the FSA board/staff/admin feel that the actions of these group of pilots fall under this line and therefore warrants admin action? If it does, then they suffer the decision of the admin- no dispute required. If not, then I think it would be a bit unfair to expect the FSA admin to enact some form of justice on a situation that really is out of their control. We cannot expect admin to constantly police the virtual world economy of FSA making sure everyone is playing nice.

[joefremont]

This is unchartered territory for me, we have never stated that it was not allowed to copy another airlines routes, and an airlines routes have never been secret, anyone could go look at them.

As far as I can tell the 'new' airline has not done any material damage to the original, no aircraft or other assets were taken/damaged, the original airlines routes were not altered in any way, they just took an unauthorized copy of it to create there own routes. But members of the original are quite offended that there routes were copied.

Since there is no stated rule the strongest thing I could really do is send them a message asking them to please not use the copy the other airlines routes but as it turns out, the new airline has already deleted them without me saying anything to them.

Even when we have had messy separations within airlines and a faction has split off to form a new airline has anyone complained because the new airline copied the routes.

[Mesquaki]

If the offended VA was not able to use the routes (meaning group B took a copy and flew the routes draining the pax/cargo so VA could earn nothing or do nothing) then it may be a choice to amend the ToS to outline behavior such as this is not tolerated and the party doing this will risk a ban from the system. At least it gives you a step to stand on in the event something like this happens again. Or, you can amend the ToS to outline this type of situation and place responsibility on the VA Owners to point out it is their responsibility to know or manage their VA and as such if someone leaves and pulls a similar action, there is nothing that can be done and they (the VA owner) assume the risk.

I sympathize with you. Hard to have a virtual economy world running and try to cover all the blind spots/grey areas that some people will try to exploit or get around. Your time is then taken from coding/maintenance to policing and arbitration. I believe the choice is simple. We as VA owners **have** to accept the fact that a situation like this could happen, and as such it is what I said earlier- VA owner beware. I would not expect you to hunt down a party that took my routes and level justice- it is not practical given this is a virtual world economy and you cannot control everyone. All one can hope for is that pilots that join have some morals and ethics that carry from real world into virtual world.

It boils down to morals and ethics. We are guests to this world and as such we should be expected to follow some decorum and behavior. If expectations are spelt out in the ToS and people breach it, then yes I agree they deserve the consequences from the admin without debate.

[joefremont]

To be honest I think there is more going on under the surface that just coping their routes, but that is just speculation on my part. They actually want me to delete the new VA, which even if the allegations were true would not be justified.

[Mesquaki]

Based on that info, I would agree with you. I also think it unfair to put you in the middle of something that A) is a VA owner issue; B) something that could happen at anytime to anyone and forces you away from important things to sort out fighting in the sandbox. Honestly, you can't be asked to fix something that really could have been avoided without your involvement. Always 3 sides to a story - the offended, the offender, and the facts. Just my opinion on the outside looking in.

Violate the ToS, I can see you involved. Infighting within a VA- unless you want to spend countless hours trying to sort out the facts from fiction should not even be dropped on you. Unless the infighting somehow spreads and affects the rest of us which then refers to the line in the ToS I referred to earlier.

Simple solution... it is what it is. New day.

[Cat]

Based on that info, I would agree with you. I also think it unfair to put you in the middle of something that A) is a VA owner issue; B) something that could happen at anytime to anyone and forces you away from important things to sort out fighting in the sandbox. Honestly, you can't be asked to fix something that really could have been avoided without your involvement. Always 3 sides to a story - the offended, the offender, and the facts. Just my opinion on the outside looking in.

Violate the ToS, I can see you involved. Infighting within a VA- unless you want to spend countless hours trying to sort out the facts from fiction should not even be dropped on you. Unless the infighting somehow spreads and affects the rest of us which then refers to the line in the ToS I referred to earlier.

Simple solution... it is what it is. New day.

Totally agree. I've been at this now for more years than I sometimes like to think about ( ) and the bottom line is FSA is essentially an online "video game" and with that said you will have those who bicker and fight and can't play nice because of some ego somewhere. Airlines really do not compete with each other in this world, every VA could have the same routes and the only thing affected would be who snatches the package cargo first, there are plenty of passengers and generic cargo for everyone.

I've seen VA's in here seriously damaged by disgruntled members with too many permissions: scrapping aircraft, tipping pilots outrageous sums of money costing the VA millions (or billions) and of course completely deleting their route system as they stepped out the door in their scorched earth childish temper trantrum. The smart VA owner/operator will only give VA admin permissions to TRUSTED MEMBERS and always always (and I say this again because it is so important) ALWAYS back up the route system with a download of the entire master file on a regular basis.

There was an example years ago where a splinter faction of a fairly large VA attempted a "hostile takeover" of the airline by redirecting the airline's website link to their own website announcing they were now in control. It is just amazing how low some people will go over something that is supposed to be enjoyable for all. And as is usually the case, when such individuals are banned from here, they go to other places (like FSE) to wreak more havoc and vice versa (we sometimes get em after they have been banned elsewhere).

Thankfully this problem is usually fairly rare here.

[joefremont]

Thanks, for the support. This saga has one last turn to it. The CEO of the original VA 'informed' me that the new VA had again uploaded there routes and I should delete there VA, I checked, they had not, they had actually uploaded the routes of a different larger VA who had given them an authorized copy, they now had more than 5x the routes of the original and the number of departure/arrival combinations was less than 30% from the original VA. I informed them of that and they suggested I was being tricked by minor updates. At that point I lost it, dropped my normal polite diplomatic tone, asked if they though I was a fool and suggested that there 'knowingly false accusation' was a far worse offense than anything they accused the new VA had doing, and that I was done.

I suspect the real reason they are upset is that a number of there pilots had quit to join the new VA. As far as I can tell, no other damage had been done to the original VA.

[Mesquaki]

"Tricked by minor updates". LOL Are you kidding me? The person that knows the system code inside/out?

There goes time wasted you could have spent on your own list of items you wanted to do.

[Zissiz Zekapten]

This is fair competition and FSAirlines should not be involved in internal VA dramas.

The only thing that "could" be stolen would be the name and, perhaps, the ethos of this new airlines. If it is a copy-paste to suck out pilots from the first one, it can be questionnable. But even then, no FSAIrlines rules would have been violated.