Community Help: Protecting copyright

[daraknor]

Every industry faces some form of piracy, and that is normal. Open source efforts normally don't face many issues from theft of their work, but it does happen. Open Source ExpertAgents and Indicators suffer horrible abuses of piracy where unscrupulous people take hard work and sell it as their own.

vykhukholev was one such person who joined our community with the intent to sell work of others. There are many more. Based on some community feedback, I'd like to collaborate on finding some of these thieves and reporting them for copyright violation. I hope to collect additional information on the violations, and provide the information to the copyright holders if they wish to pursue their legal rights. Copyright holders could approach us asking for help gathering information and/or protecting their copyright. This is a way for users of community developed software to give something back to that community.

Searching for "Forex" yielded 258 results. I would be amazed if 120 of those sellers actually owns the copyright to their material. 36 products had "Buy it now" options for under $5. I seriously doubt these people own the rights to the materials.

This person lists information about copyright, likely that the ebook is in the public domain. http://cgi.ebay.com/Insiders-Secrets...QQcmdZViewItem
On the other hand, http://cgi.ebay.com/A-Massive-Manual...QQcmdZViewItem
by http://www.masterforex.co.uk/ looks a little suspect. A 107 page book sold by a website that is filled with adsense links to other places. No copyright information listed. Even the tips look stolen :/ The same Ebay seller has books for sex tips, a giant collection of Dreamweaver ebooks for under $5, and an acne solution. They are also using copyrighted images as if they own the image.

I can see a few ways to proceed here. The first step is to identify people who sell ebooks, indicators and EA on Ebay like the person above. The second is ask who wrote the book/indicator/EA. This may sound like a common request, since someone buying a book or code would want to know who wrote it. If the answer is something other than "I wrote it" or "it was written by X and is in public domain/licensed" we submit a complaint to Ebay. If the seller claims to write it, we google for paragraphs, phrases that may be direct quotes. We may do the same thing for images on images.google.com, but a simple complaint may work.

I am not a lawyer, but I personally believe the burden of providing documentation that copyright has been respected is up to the distributor. We may send an additional message to the seller before filing a complaint on ebay, letting the seller know that they must provide copyright info or we will issue complaints to ebay in an attempt to get them banned, for the good of the copyright holder.

This is intended to have 2 primary effects. #1 a lot of the theft and distribution on Ebay will stop. #2 The really low prices will reflect really low quality, and copyright owners who do wish to distribute their software/ebook commercially will have a more stable market.

If we want to carry this further, we could ask for Ebay to provide additional information to us, like a history of sales in order to assess damages preparing for litigation. Since Ebay is the *ultimate* distributor, they are legally required to assist us or they might be named as a party to the violation. Technically, a copyright holder can sue Ebay directly, but I don't think that would be worth it at this time. If the law was changed as a result, I don't think it would be a positive change.

Shall we make a list of the worst culprits on Ebay by username?
esales2007 is on the list so far.

[Oidunno]

Ok D,

I'm a newbee to fx Only one year.
I hear what you are saying and you are right.
I'm one of those people that "hover" over threads, endlesly test and look for EAs that might be successful without directly contributing to their development. But I do it to try to learn. I'm not a programmer though I have 15 years experience in PC computing technlogy and at this stage at least I must admit to be a piss poor trader. But I'm learning and in time I will too, be able to give back. In the last few months, in discovering this forum, I am indebted as are many others, to a very few very generous individuals who have helped us learn the business through this forem. My debt to those people who I've never met or spoken to is already huge. You know who I'm talking about so I won't mention names. We are naked amateurs in probably the biggest, most ruthless and and most manipulative business in the world. And yet a few talented and diciplined amateurs survive in this shark pond and through their genious and ideas occasionally confound the professionals.. My Dad used to tell me when I was a kid.. Son .. the people who are doing it aren't talking about it.
Thats surely true of the professionals.
Well here in TSD thats not wholly true.

So If I can help in preventing the generosity and achievements of those few who contribute so much,from being exploited by the slime that occasionally crawl out of the woodwork - count me in.

If it encourages other "old hands" to come forward and contribute their wisdom, knowing that their contributions are valued and protected by this forum, and its members, then - Yes I will help police the integrity of their contributions.
I'm NOT by sentiment a "policeman" - far from it - but I will help in any way I can with your proposal on the basis that what you are suggesting is fair and just.

I await your further advice...

Cliff

[FX_Sniper]

Daraknor,

I admire your efforts. This is a topic that I have addressed quite a few times already myself and is also the second reason why I do not share indicators both open source and compiled with any forum or person anymore. Unfortunately your effort does not sound very convincing or detailed even, so allow me to present some more depth to this cause.

Before that, let’s just get one thing straight. An indicator/EA can be either, a brand new original invention, or it can be a translation from an already existing one but from another programming format different to the platform it is translated for or it could be a little bit of both resulting in a new hybrid creation. No matter the case may be, whoever does this translation or develops the new original idea, is using his/her own intellect, experience and skills to construct these tools.

This in its own right gives birth to intellectual property (the indicator/EA). This developer/translator can choose to dispose of this intellectual property in anyway they please, either for free or for a fee. Because it is their intellectual property or IP for short from now on, they also have the right to protect it by distributing it under either an open source license, or protecting it by distributing it in a compiled version and copyright laws etc. Both these options are exploited and violated on forums like this one as I will discuss in a moment.

Just before I get into that, another technical detail with regards to translations: It is one thing taking an open source indicator/EA for say Tradestation and then translating the code logic to run in Metatrader, but it is a different thing, taking protected commercial code logic from say Tradestation and translating it to run under Metatrader for example.

The threats to indicators and EA’s:

• The most obvious threat is that when I post an indicator in open source, it will be stolen, renamed and compiled to hide the code logic in order to disguise its origin. This is done to fool and trick the lazy (the intentionally uninformed) and the newbie’s (legitimately uninformed) out of money.
• The second threat in posting open source code logic is that someone with inferior programming skills learns from certain algorithms which they then transplant into new commercial creations to be sold without recognizing or giving credit or asking permission to use the intellectual property of the original contribution.
• Alternatively, I can post the compiled version of the indicators or EA’s. There are services offered both for free and for a fee by certain unscrupulous criminals visiting this forum and others, who offer to decompile, reverse engineer or break open the code and expose the intentionally protected code logic. They advertise their service via facilities made available to them by this and other forums.

In short, forums like these have become the free feeding place for many unscrupulous criminals who leech off open source and protected intellectual property.

Although your intentions are correct and honorable, I would like to disagree with your proposed solution to all of this. You seem to propose a pursuit of the people who are steeling IP from this and other forums. This will be a total waste of time and the most inefficient way to deal with the problem. Allow me to explain.

First of all, you will have to deal with the fact that not all countries view copyright protection in the same light, there are even countries that do NOT adhere to any copyright laws at all, try to shut down a plagiarist in one of those countries and you have my respect! Secondly the simple administration and costs etc. to even find and shut down one such criminal is very deterring to say the least. I would be greatly surprised if any person who has placed an indicator on a forum for free is going to have the finances and/or motivation to REALLY pursue such an attempt. To be quite honest, these thieves know all this and these and other facts are what gives them an almost “illegal edge” if one can call it that.

My solution until proven otherwise is more practical and probably more efficient. My solution is based mostly on prevention rather than cure. In order to structure proper prevention of the discussed problems, lets focus a bit on some of the resources that are allowing thieves to get away with this, only by doing this, can we identify practical solutions to start cutting off their “life support”.

TSD has a character limitation of 10000 per post, so I was forced to split this over a few posts, I continue in the next one...

[FX_Sniper]

Forums:

Well what can I say, those who have read many of my latest rantings, probably know I have mixed to negative feelings about them or at least my own experiences on them over the past few years and do not think they have any value to add to a beginner trader who is serious about real trading. Unfortunately it is these beginners that are lured to these forums for all sorts of reasons and eventually just end up becoming the perfect forum junky and the perfect pray. One common theme though is that all of them are apparently in pursuit of becoming skilled traders. Now imagine this picture. You have a big swimming pool, as big as two football fields. In this pool are many people gathering who are learning to swim, now go ask your local hungry piranha which would it prefer, drifting around in a almost dried up pool of water hoping for a small animal to stray into it’s pond, or moving to this big pool with a crap load of pray who are not even skilled swimmers yet, never mind being in water completely out of their depth.

So problem number one, forum owners are creating these killing fields in pursuit of their own objectives. I would thus suggest that forum owners at the very least be made part of the solution. I am quite sure forums like TSD, Moneytec, SBFX etc. are not running without creating some form of revenue from all the free giving souls who are members to these forums. They rock up here, setup the bulletin board on some server, start getting members, eventually the total memberships reach a level where the visits and/or contributions have commercial value to sponsors/other members and then it starts to make money for them. This is done with total disregard to the criminal activities their business is abiding in and facilitating.

Others again have no sponsors perhaps but bargain on specialist contributions by free giving souls which are placed in so called “elite sections” which are accessible for a fee. Either way, these types of forums generate revenue, and the owners should be made more responsible for the content they allow on their forums. Simply hiding behind a silly little disclaimer stating in short that they are not responsible for the opinions etc. of the members is one thing, I am quite sure they can not hide behind that and deny responsibility for facilitating, or assisting in facilitating plagiaristic crime by supplying an uncontrolled distribution/collection platform for these criminals. Any involvement in crime in this manor renders any legal rights null and void. Think of it like this, I contract you to murder my wife, I pay you $50,000-00 upfront when we make the deal. You decide to rather take the money and run, not completing our “deal”. I have no legal right to take you to court for breach of contract, because the bases of the contract is based on a crime – that is the law forum owners, go check it out yourselves!!!

So what can you as a forum owner do? I propose the following:

• Revise your moderator policies to a new level of serious attempts to remove any posts containing OR referring to plagiaristic material.
• Revise your membership policy to make provisions such as: Downloads are unavailable to non-members. In order to download files, members need to have made an “x” amount of post (“contributions”) to forums, say they need 50 post, then only can they start downloading files, this will force newbie’s to first start discussing stuff and contributing before they just fly off downloading left and right stuff they do not even comprehend and it will also force members to actually contribute to the growth of the forum AND leechers will be filtered out more efficiently.
  
  What the hell is this crap about rocking up here and giving no contribution yet expect to gain access to all the hard work and intellectual property we have built up over time? Bull Shit !!! Make this requirement figure high enough to give moderators the opportunity to monitor posts properly and locate fake posts and ban members.
• Perhaps have a policy of suspending membership if a member does not make a “y” amount of post over say an “x” amount of months.
• I notice that all these big forums have a commercial section where people can advertise there commercial systems etc. Well, simply create a policy that stipulates that if a person wished to advertise the commercial system, they at least present proof of permission from the original developers of the indicators used in these systems.

These are just 4 easy solutions that can be put in place by forum owners. I am sure you can see the benefit for all from just these 4 suggestions. What’s the point of having 50,000 members and only 100 rotating active members and 20 regular active members???

Ok, so forum owners really have the most power to prevent plagiaristic crime and are responsible to assist in this cause and after careful legal research, they might just be shocked at “how” responsible they really can be held. You simply can not just build a lawless and responsibility-less facility and expect the rest of the world to rush over and fuel your bank accounts while you are actually in return fueling the bank accounts of criminals.

We as members to these forums creates it commercial value to the owners, simply standing together to force down legal reform is within our power, or at least the power of the members who actually add value by sharing intellectual property although we are in the minority – and this EXCLUDES dumb asses who are on some info-overload trip and getting all creative with their crazy system compilations which are in most cases one or two brush strokes away from looking like world class Picasso.

TSD has a character limitation of 10000 per post, so I was forced to split this over a few posts, I continue in the next one...

[FX_Sniper]

The second series of solutions address more proactive action from members and 3rd party developers.

• I suggest that when we discover a commercial system which contains for example indicators which we recognize and know comes from our forums, we simply expose the systems right here on the forums by discussing the system rule set, describing it’s indicators and finally revealing the true names and locations of the freeware indicators that has been taken from us, renamed and are now being exploited. I would not see this as illegal as the indicators belong to us all and we can discuss them as much as we like.
• If this vendor had any innocent intentions with the said system, he/she would not rename freeware indicators and recompile them to hide their real identity. He/she would also have permission from the original developers/translators and would of had no problem in giving credit in the system documentation to the original developers/translators of the indicators and hence will have a really hard time proving innocent intentions if he/she did so.
• Here is a nice new $500-00 system to start you off with, go look at the charts and tell me how many of those “renamed” indicators you recognize. The advertisement starts off here on TSD: http://www.forex-tsd.com/commercial-trading-systems-indicators/3937-new-strategic-forex-system-descriptive-pictures-inside.html in the commercial section. I rest my case!

The third series of solutions address the developers of the charting software itself and is probably a bit more difficult to apply.

• I would recon that if a software vendor like Metaquotes wishes to distribute a software platform with capabilities to support customized systems and indicators, they should be supplying the 3rd party developers like myself with a secure method to protect our intellectual property.

Metatrader for example has the compiled mt4 format which has now apparently been breeched by unscrupulous criminals who will decompile them for free of for a fee.

It is thus obvious that this protection scheme has been defeated; this renders any protection useless and the 3rd party vendor powerless. I for one would really like a detailed response to this particular situation from the Metatrader people.

So suppose the Metatrader developers will respond as I suspect they would by simply doing nothing, what else can we as 3rd party developers do to protect our intellectual property.

• Well, with reference to Metatrader and others like Amibroker etc which can access external 3rd party DLL (direct link library) files compiled in Microsoft C++ for example, we can program our solutions in this more functional and stronger language. Doing this gives us access to better protection schemes like encryption and various excellent code obfuscation techniques which could be applied to our source code with the click of a button or two. In fact, about 4 months ago I started porting many of my own inventions over to C++ in order to bypass programming limitations in Metatrader Language and also to become proficient in creating more secure indicators for distribution to some people I share with on a regular basis.
• I would also recon that any person, who is serious about his /her intellectual property and the protection of it, would acquire the proper skills to, from their side, do everything possible to secure their work. Simply posting it in open source format on forums like this, knowing the dangers, is really nothing more than plain stupid if they want to complain afterwards about their work being abused. I was like this myself, until I questioned my own efforts to protect my work and saw that I did not do everything I could.

My final suggestions address the rest of the thousands who flock to forums and have this belief it is the place where their greatness as hot shot traders will kick off.

Stop fooling yourselves, these places are dangerous. When you start out with anything new in life, you are at your most impressionable and vulnerable. Your lack of experience and the aforementioned conditions makes you not only the perfect pray for these criminals and all their schemes, but also contribute greatly to how you start building your foundations as a new aspiring trader. If these foundations are built wrong, no matter what you discover in the future, it will come back a break you again and again.

Trading is not something you buy in a box, it is not a product it is a skill and skills take time and effort to learn. Forums do not provide you with time, forums do not replace personal effort and most of all forums will never help you bridge the most important pathway in your trading career, which is learning to know yourself in order to succeed. If you only aspire to be a “black box trader” well, ask yourself one question, taking something someone else made and running it on your computer, what exactly does that make you? a trader ? There is absolutely NO sin in being a black box trader, my point is that if you build your own black box, obviously you will need to have some experience which is called skill which took time to learn etc. etc. and all that justifies your ends and you are a trader, but not having any trading experience, any skill, nothing, and taking a black box that someone else made, does NOT make you a trader at all, but this is a topic for another day.

In summary then:

• Aspiring new traders: You are trying to learn to swim in a pool of sharks – good luck !
• Forum owners: It’s time you start understanding your role in plagiaristic crimes and your responsibilities towards the members and their intellectual property who are actually the people who are creating your income.
• Finally to all you thugs out there stealing source code from forums and selling them as part of your so called systems, for one, you will never steal anything from me again and secondly, you are insignificant to life it self as life means to prosper, you have chosen to go the other way

THE END.

[FX_Sniper]

Hi Newdigital,

Thank for your PM, hope you do not mind me answering you back here again and not in PM as I think this reply is once more a broader look at the problems and revision of some of the proposed solutions and will do no harm in public view.

First off, I understand that you really have a tuff job

The main problem here that I was discussing is the fact that on the one side you have people like me, who naturally like to help others, we are creative and we like to share. In a different corner you have most of the rest of the members, they do not have coding skills, they are not lateral thinking people and can thus not invent new things, they are new to trading or are thinking about trading and so on, they rely heavily on the sharing done by people like me, who else is going to help them? So far so good, BUT now in another corner you get these thieves who just lurk around here, take all the stuff we create out of our kindness and generosity to help less fortunate and/or able people and then go and commercialize our efforts without our consent and without reward.
Keep in mind, we share for free, our intention is to help, not to gain financially. It is a crime that these people are committing here. And this is the issues and solution I was discussing.

My solutions to get moderators and forum owners involved basically implies that you simply restrict new members until they have somehow proven there sincerity by at least also contributing to the forum by placing a certain minimum amount of post. A leecher will not do this.
Also when you allow people to advertise commercial systems like this Emersond for example, simply ask for proof of ownership. I mean if you have a car and I lend it for the weekend, during the weekend a meet up with another friend and sell your car to him, he just gives me the money and off he goes with your car, next moment the police stops him for stealing your car, he never new it was your car, he thought it was mine, it was his responsibility to make sure that I was the real owner.

My suggestions in my post was exactly this, if someone wants to use your forum to advertise their services/products, at least make them prove that they are really the owners and that they are not selling stolen goods or are infringing on certain people’s copy protection etc, this is good for your business and good for your reputation plus it is the legal thing to do.
Like I said, what is the point in having 50,000 members with only a handful really contributing, what are the rest doing then? They do not contribute and some of them are even stealing. I listed some simple solutions to get rid of this dead weight from a forum owner/moderator’s perspective. I also listed a very simple solution for us coders to protect our Metatrader code and still be able to help others.

Just a note to other developers like me, you should not be bothered by people who place posts here implying that having compiled indicators are useless because they can not see the source code. First of all, if they want to learn to code, they should do so with simple examples like we all did, not by complex code algorithms. If they could not build it on their own, they should learn to do so, not by being given the algorithms but by studying the programming language and learning lateral thinking abilities to solve problems programmatically. None of these skills will be transferred to any person by viewing the code source. As said, we share for free to help those who do not have our talents, if your intention is to provide a person with and indicator that does something he/she requested, then that person should expect only that, a indicator, in what form it is, is irrelevant. If your intention is to train people to program, then providing sour code examples with your explanations is quite in order and to be expected.

People just rock up here and place selfish requests straight off the bat like: “I read about this, make me the indicator”, who the hell does this person think he/she is? They have not made any contributions to the forums value, they also show NO interest in doing so in the future, yet they come here and place orders as if we are running a damn pizza shop. There is a definite line between selfish demand and mutual assistance and asking for help. How can we be sure this person does not have a secret plan to use our talents to build his/her system components instead of hiring professional programmers and paying them. We are being abused for cheap/free labor, we are being exploited.

So developers, a friendly tip, do not fall pray to these so called members who will try their best to make you feel bad because you are not sharing your source code, 10 to 1 it is some scamster trying to abuse your kind heartedness or even worse perhaps, it is some crazed info-overloaded wannabe trader-coder who ends up keeping you busy for months due to their imaginations running wild with trading fever. I’m not sure yet which is worse.

The bottom line, the solution to this abuse lies with two parties, one, the forum owners who should streamline their membership by only allowing positive contributing active members access to downloadable information and check the integrity of commercial advertisers and the other solution lies with us developers, who should protect our work better as I suggested in my previous post and not be deterred by nagging demands to reveal source code.

And to all the rest of you who make requests and demands, know that you can not simply just barge through the door with an empty hand and walk out with a full basket of tools. There is no free ride here, you are mistaking greatly if you think so. You have no right to demand source code and the honest truth if you have not yet discovered this is that source code does not make you the $$$ if you are a trader, a gazillion indicators will be of no value to you if you have not adapted to the unstructured world of trading where you need to re-invent your thoughts with regards to self-discipline and market structure.

I have said this before and say it again, there has been a clear change in the attitude of new members to all forums similar to this one, it is time you newbie’s realize your position in this chain and get you’re your attitudes in order.

Look what has happened over at SBFX, that used to be a busy hive of activity, now when you go there you find old topics of last year still on the front page, all the better contributors and helpers have moved on, the same will happen here and everywhere else, we as free giving helping people will only tolerate so much crap and abuse.

Only with help from forum owners and moderators can we all work together to build a more efficient online community which holds real value to visitors. I for one will not contribute any of my work to any forum until it becomes evident that the owners are doing real work to promote good quality information and attempt protect visitors, members and developers from commercial exploitation. I urge all developers to take the same course of action. Refrain from posting indicators in any form. We are the collective power that draws the crowds, we can stop the show if we wanted to, there is no reason to expose ourselves to this kind of abuse and exploitation.

It is also NOT unfair of us to request forum owners/moderators to assists us for a change seeing that we draw the crowds that pay them.

So in closing then to Newdigital, I have no problem with how you people make your revenue, I do however ask that you realize there are side effects here that needs your attention.

I spent a lot of time and effort today here to describe the issues in a clear way for all to understand and see, I can not force anyone to take notice of this or to attempt to fix it. For now I have thus done my part, and will not spend more time and effort on this unless there is clear evidence of real action.

Best wishes to all of you

FX Sniper

[pip-gandalf]

I was wondering when you will pay us a visit again.

Just to recall :

Mr Sniper started a thred a while back in which he flashed his Sidewinder and CZI and gained the following of quite a few members...............Until Mr Sniper started to notice that some of "his" ideas actually work, and when that happened Mr.Sniper immediately removed "his" indicators and yammered about thieves and scoundrals.........

Unfortunately Mr.Sniper forgot to mention that he himself replicated tradestation indicators based on Woodies principles...................

And now when Mr Sniper is back again to give us a lecture about copyright and Lateral thinking.................

In my book, you are counterproductive to this community, and you need to let moderators keep an open forum and not scrutinize every person about originality of his ideas, since if they had done this to you , you would not have passed the Woodies club originality test.

[newdigital]

Originally Posted by FX_Sniper

Hi Newdigital,

Thank for your PM, hope you do not mind me answering you back here again and not in PM as I think this reply is once more a broader look at the problems and revision of some of the proposed solutions and will do no harm in public view.

First off, I understand that you really have a tuff job

The main problem here that I was discussing is the fact that on the one side you have people like me, who naturally like to help others, we are creative and we like to share. In a different corner you have most of the rest of the members, they do not have coding skills, they are not lateral thinking people and can thus not invent new things, they are new to trading or are thinking about trading and so on, they rely heavily on the sharing done by people like me, who else is going to help them? So far so good, BUT now in another corner you get these thieves who just lurk around here, take all the stuff we create out of our kindness and generosity to help less fortunate and/or able people and then go and commercialize our efforts without our consent and without reward.
Keep in mind, we share for free, our intention is to help, not to gain financially. It is a crime that these people are committing here. And this is the issues and solution I was discussing.

My solutions to get moderators and forum owners involved basically implies that you simply restrict new members until they have somehow proven there sincerity by at least also contributing to the forum by placing a certain minimum amount of post. A leecher will not do this.

It is good idea when new members may download something on this forum if they did some amount of posts.

Originally Posted by FX_Sniper

Also when you allow people to advertise commercial systems like this Emersond for example, simply ask for proof of ownership. I mean if you have a car and I lend it for the weekend, during the weekend a meet up with another friend and sell your car to him, he just gives me the money and off he goes with your car, next moment the police stops him for stealing your car, he never new it was your car, he thought it was mine, it was his responsibility to make sure that I was the real owner.

My suggestions in my post was exactly this, if someone wants to use your forum to advertise their services/products, at least make them prove that they are really the owners and that they are not selling stolen goods or are infringing on certain people’s copy protection etc, this is good for your business and good for your reputation plus it is the legal thing to do.
Like I said, what is the point in having 50,000 members with only a handful really contributing, what are the rest doing then? They do not contribute and some of them are even stealing. I listed some simple solutions to get rid of this dead weight from a forum owner/moderator’s perspective. I also listed a very simple solution for us coders to protect our Metatrader code and still be able to help others.

It was exactly I want to do. You may read this thread Section moderated
I even created the poll and the results will be in 11th of November:

View Poll Results: Do admins should have all the info (incl mql4) from sellers:
- to protect buyers from scams and to give some evaluation 31 48.44% 
- to protect sellers from scams and copywrite violation on the forum 3 4.69% 
- Yes but not mql4 codes 22 34.38% 
- Not at all 1 1.56% 
- I don't care 5 7.81% 
- others (please specify by posting) 2 3.13%

Do you see how many people voted (64) and the results?
In 11th of November, if this voting results will not be changed, so I will accept commercial threads with very limited quantity and only if I am sure that it is ok.

But there is the other problems. I can not know everything. The members should help in this case. I am not connected with any seller commercially so it is not difficult to catch and to discover commercial lies. It is difficult if I am alone. And it is not difficult if we all are together against it. And everybody is having the rights to stop any commercial threads in commercial section, or to stop any plagiaristic things.

In some cases the authors may send pm to me and I will delete bad commercial thread. Or just post directly on the seller's thread everything.
But it may be problem in this case also: I had one case when two guy said that they are authors of some EA. One person posted "his EA", the other person claimed that it is really "his EA" but renamed. Nobody could prove. Who is real author? I deleted the whole thread ...

Most of the coders and developers know each other so it is not difficult to create any rules for commercial section. May be, we do not need to accept any commercial threads from very new members.

As to my opinion so I expressed it already: I think the commercial section may be deleted completely. Or it should be accepted to post for well-known authors only.

Originally Posted by FX_Sniper

Just a note to other developers like me, you should not be bothered by people who place posts here implying that having compiled indicators are useless because they can not see the source code. First of all, if they want to learn to code, they should do so with simple examples like we all did, not by complex code algorithms. If they could not build it on their own, they should learn to do so, not by being given the algorithms but by studying the programming language and learning lateral thinking abilities to solve problems programmatically. None of these skills will be transferred to any person by viewing the code source. As said, we share for free to help those who do not have our talents, if your intention is to provide a person with and indicator that does something he/she requested, then that person should expect only that, a indicator, in what form it is, is irrelevant. If your intention is to train people to program, then providing sour code examples with your explanations is quite in order and to be expected.

People just rock up here and place selfish requests straight off the bat like: “I read about this, make me the indicator”, who the hell does this person think he/she is? They have not made any contributions to the forums value, they also show NO interest in doing so in the future, yet they come here and place orders as if we are running a damn pizza shop. There is a definite line between selfish demand and mutual assistance and asking for help. How can we be sure this person does not have a secret plan to use our talents to build his/her system components instead of hiring professional programmers and paying them. We are being abused for cheap/free labor, we are being exploited.

At least they are telling the true. They are asking: "Please help me to make an indicator". They are not talking about trading systems or other members. They need help personally and they are talking about it and do not care about anything else. That's true, you are right. There are a lot of requests like this. They are majority. They will not be changed to change for the better.

Originally Posted by FX_Sniper

So developers, a friendly tip, do not fall pray to these so called members who will try their best to make you feel bad because you are not sharing your source code, 10 to 1 it is some scamster trying to abuse your kind heartedness or even worse perhaps, it is some crazed info-overloaded wannabe trader-coder who ends up keeping you busy for months due to their imaginations running wild with trading fever. I’m not sure yet which is worse.

The bottom line, the solution to this abuse lies with two parties, one, the forum owners who should streamline their membership by only allowing positive contributing active members access to downloadable information and check the integrity of commercial advertisers and the other solution lies with us developers, who should protect our work better as I suggested in my previous post and not be deterred by nagging demands to reveal source code.

I am fully agree with this. But I think that it is difficult "to check the integrity of commercial advertisers and the other solution lies with us developers" without posting. We all can do it. Because I said many times already: no owners of this forum and no any administrators (including me) and no any moderators are involved in commercial section posting concerning commercial subject. No one and nothing. So everybody may stop any commercial thread having my opinion that I do not like this commercial section at all.

Besides I may say more: no one owner/admin/moderator is promoting anything here. No any personal promoting. And no any personality who is promoting or who is promoted.
And it is very easy way for experienced developers/coders to re-act on anything as community because of that. If I accepted some commercial thread which is not good so it is my mistake. Just correct me.

We did not have any commercial sections and sellers on this forum from the beginning and it was very easy to be in the forum in that time. It was very good time.

[newdigital]

And I forgot to say about some other subject. Everybody may look at the commercial threads. About who is selling ... Just few good members which are well-known. Other members are very new to this forum.

I understand that many people are just sharing. Seems that many programmers/developers are coming here just to share ... And where they are selling (if not here)? And why not here? Nothing to sell? Don't believe.
This forum is not for sharing only.

[FX_Sniper]

Originally Posted by pip-gandalf

I was wondering when you will pay us a visit again.

Just to recall :

Mr Sniper started a thred a while back in which he flashed his Sidewinder and CZI and gained the following of quite a few members...............Until Mr Sniper started to notice that some of "his" ideas actually work, and when that happened Mr.Sniper immediately removed "his" indicators and yammered about thieves and scoundrals.........

Unfortunately Mr.Sniper forgot to mention that he himself replicated tradestation indicators based on Woodies principles...................

And now when Mr Sniper is back again to give us a lecture about copyright and Lateral thinking.................

In my book, you are counterproductive to this community, and you need to let moderators keep an open forum and not scrutinize every person about originality of his ideas, since if they had done this to you , you would not have passed the Woodies club originality test.

Aha, was wondering when some dumb-ass would rock up here

I really do have to try my best to contain myself and prevent myself from insulting you in the most hideous ways.

The so called Woodies indicators I made available in MT4 format I did with the explicit permission of Ken Wood himself which he himself confirmed via email and also forwarded to me the necessary code logic to complete the indicators. It was also his request that I distribute them in compiled format in order to protect them from being commercialized which I also did.

Further, they where never ever removed you dumb Fu#%, they are still at post 24 on the original thread I started. I had the thread locked to prevent morons like you from Fu@$ing it up as your type always end up doing because your are so damn stupid and ignorant and lazy that you never read or think before you open your traps like you very recent post in this thread is clear evidence of.

Further you moron, it was not my system, my indicator and I do not trade it as I also explained in meticulous detail on some of the post, get you damn facts in order or piss off.

you would not have passed the Woodies club originality test.

WTF, are you insane? I can categorically prove that it does not work on Forex and besides I am a logical, lateral thinking person who can figure things out for myself and do my own thing, I am not so weak and helpless so as to surrender my freedom of thought to some trading occult, that’s your job !!!

It is people like you whose heads should role if forum owners someday decide to keep the trash in the ally where it belongs. Until then, people like you will add to the list of reasons why people like me stop helping.

So long sucker, you deserve to be on the receiving side of scamsters – that is the normal reward for idiots

FX Sniper