Art Thieving

I'm sorry you guys are going through this. Clearly you are not dealing with an adult. His "real job" I'm sure consists of pushing buggies in, or asking someone if they want their meal super sized.

*snarls a bit and shakes head* Btw, that board isn't the only place she's "offering her wares". http://demonic.eq2guilds.org/ Her new guild on EQ2 apparently, and if you go to the public forum she has a sig thread there too, tho the last post was back in June. Who knows, maybe she's bounced to WoW or something now.

I just don't understand how someone could stomach the -idea- of continuing to use a sig that was clearly ill-gotten. Particuarly after being asked politely not to. Or am I confused? Are these images still in use?

I can't post on that stupid board. Every time I try to go there, it takes me back to the log in screen. I can't send her a PM either.

Was her email posted on the ezboard?

Yeah my original idea was to send her a pm and ask her to take it down because it was a gift but I don't pay for EZboard so no inbox or whatever.

That's the doll in question.. that's in her sig, and not that it matters because altering it is still stealing it.. but she didn't alter it either.

Base by Angychan, I believe.

Well...not that this is relevant...but that IS a really cute doll Mai ;)



Yeah this is what bothered me too. When I first read the posts I thought "well, maybe it just never occured to her that people would be upset by it" but the fact that there is no apology is rather upsetting.

She posted saying she was sorry, and she didn't mean to cause trouble. She didn't feel it was stealing because it was a small private board.

Posted still using the sig with Mai's doll in it.

Next post by her:

Hun that guild is no more and those boards are no more, once again sorry to have caused such grief, my 14 yr old daughter does alot of surfing for pictures on the net, and then I turn them into friends sigs.....what more can I say...8( I am really sorry it was never my intention to insult anyone rather show awesome pictures...and I know you are going to say why not put the artist's names down....but with my daughter doing the surfing I really dont know where most of the pic's come from and didn't see it as a problem as it was only HERE in our private forum that they were seen 8(

/end quote

She took the sig off that time. Who is the one that keeps spamming their boards though? As much as I hate theiving and arseholes, not sure the spamming of their board is cool.

Not I. I didn't want anyone blaming TAC or NS for their boards getting posted on excessively, so I just kept camping this thread to be sure someone said something to her :)

Heh yeah, I was wondering who the 2 people spamming the board were. lol. Anywho, I'm cross posting my message on this board too since I know there are some people who don't visit NS anymore for... whatever reasons :). Basically, while our rights as creators are all equal whether we register or not, the damages and penalties that get put on the infringer are different based on registration. Kind of a useful thing to know in the even that a lawsuit happens.

Well, the people who run the baord obviously don't know what they're talking about and obviously lashed out. The thing is, I think this was amatter better handled via priavte messages and emails. More often than not, the people who swipe work don't know copyrights. When attacked, they can get defensive.. or as is most often the case, their friends come to their defense when they view a bunch of outsiders attacking their friends. In my opinion, I've never seen any good accomplished from jumping all over the person on their message boards. However, I've had a 100% success ratio when contacting them privately.


Regarding lawsuits. While it is true that all our works are copyright the minute we finish them. If we wanted to punich them to the full extent of the law a registration would be required. Without a registration, we could take them to court but we'd be entitled to our damages and the infringer's profits. Now, with a registration, the copyright owner can get all the good stuff like statutory damages (which last checked is between 500-20,000 decided by the court), costs, and/or attorneys' fees.

So.... if you plan to take someone to court register the work before you do. Otherwise, it may end up costing more to take them to court.

Both cases however, if won, will still give the copyright owner to put a stop to the illegal usage of their work.

Well at least she apologized, as for that Telk guy or whatever /shrug. As for the people spamming, I was pissed enough to want to post as well but as much as I like drama, stopping now would be a good idea.

I dont know who that Gypsee person is, but they posted their guild board. Crimson Tempest? Who on NS is in that guild, it's familiar.

I was going to throw e-poo at them, but I didnt feel like taking the time to register. /shrug. I'm glad she appologized. At least SHE, unlike the board op, was woman enough to step up to the plate and take responsibility. Someone should let her know if she wants to continue to make sigs, that there are a lot of people that will help her do what we do, without her ganking art to edit.

Well, she didn't really take responsibility, she blamed it on her kid :P But she was honest and apologized. *shrug*

Yeah you're right she didn't take responsibility. :( Well she did step up to the plate and throw her kid under the bus, and said sorry about that. :) That's gotta count for something, right?

I'm happy she finally took the images out of her sig. Will be interesting to see if she retracts her offer on the EQ2 boards too.

The guys spamming the board are not from NS or here, thankfully. One of the guys is a boyfriend of a NS member. I don't feel it is appropriate to disclose their name. He took it upon himself after hearing that her artwork got stolen to ask a bunch of buddies to help him spam this forum.

I have exchanged PMs with him and advices him to cease. It's true that the TKS mod guy is a dick, but fighting fire with fire will not solve anything.

I also sent a PM to the chick who mucked up everyone's art. She sounds genuinely sorry for what she did. I don't think she's bright enough to understand fully what she did wrong, nor to be aware of how to fix it (i.e. remove ALL offending images and contact all persons who might be using them).

Erin regulated, yo!

That Relk guy went thru and deleted all the flaming spam and only left her apology. Interesting.