Your Ugliest Paysite Creation Find: Round Two.

[Devilfish]

Of course free sites shouldn't be doing it either.

But yeah, I get your point.

[nixy]

I got someone trying to start a fight in the comments to the "Ugly Dolls" posted on my site because I was violating copyright. Technically, I am/was violating copyright and trademark (the former for the name, the latter for the shape, the entirety representing the "character"). I actually informed the company of my violation myself because I thought someone there might find it amusing and the chances that they would do anything about it are incredibly minuscule. My intentions were good - a tribute to cute things that might even encourage people to spend money. Disney and the Harry Potter franchise have money to burn, so they might well go after free sites violating their copyrights, trademarks, etc., but most companies won't bother unless you're charging or you're devaluing their property. That's why the RetailSims Krispy Kreme set, Sasilia's Subway set, Sims Connection's Starbucks set, and several of Shino and KCR's name-brand furniture sets were either pulled or made free - all because they were charging, and some of them because they were total crap. The Harry Potter set at MTS2 is probably something that JK Rowling's people are aware of, but since it's not Harry/Draco torture porn, it's not harmful to her brand.

Even though I'm definitely violating the Ugly Doll people's ownership rights, I give appropriate attribution, I'm not charging, I haven't placed the download in the midst of porn ads, nor did I make them look so crappy that people would get a bad impression of what the actual things look like. No false claims, no financial gain, no devaluation. If they took me to court, it's likely that a judge would be annoyed with them for whining about free advertising. If they complained and asked me to take them down, I could change the name to Lumpy Dolls and change the character names and they'd have basically no case - trademark is harder to defend than copyright, and nudging a poly here and there would probably alter them enough to take them out of trademark territory anyway.

I'm not an IP lawyer, but I do know one who likes to talk about her work - and all the grey areas - and I did a ton of IP research when I was offered a contract that seemed...suspicious. Turns out they're all suspicious. Anyway, it's far less likely that free sites would be hassled for using copyrighted material unless there are serious taste and quality issues that are momentous enough to possibly affect brand value. It's not worth the court costs and the bad PR for companies to go through with it.

[SoggyFox]

A lot I think depends on whether the company's legal department has anything resembling sense.

An example.  They put out a Pern game about 10 years ago or so.  To encourage people to buy the -graphical- game, the agents/lawyers involved told Anne she needed to prevent any more Pern games from popping up - the fact that the text based games were not going to prevent people from playing a graphical game [had it been good, it wasn't], didn't matter.  She herself was old enough to be convinced by stupid people who don't understand the MU* culture.  the good thing is, she did insist that -existing- pern mushes pbm and other fan text games could remain alive.

The point is, most of the people who crack down on this don't understand the value of free fan advertising - its not a part of the old idiom, its all new to them.  It confuses them so they squash, rather than understanding -most- fans won't try to make money off of other people's properties.

[nixy]

A lot I think depends on whether the company's legal department has anything resembling sense.

An example.  They put out a Pern game about 10 years ago or so.... < snip>  The point is, most of the people who crack down on this don't understand the value of free fan advertising - its not a part of the old idiom, its all new to them. 

Well, sure...but you did say this was 10 years ago   Over the last ~decade, intellectual property law (in the US, which is the only arena in which I have any knowledge) has come under scrutiny, especially in terms of online and digital application of laws that were written with the presumption that books are made of paper and music is scratched onto wax cylinders. I would think that most lawyers working in IP would be pretty up to date and would tend to discourage clients from going after small fry, especially if they're obviously fans of a product or brand and aren't making any money off the usage. Fans usually don't have any money to pay damages, and even if they did, it's difficult to prove any damage has occurred in most situations. I used to write fanfiction - this was about 5-6 years ago, so not all that recently - and never ran into any issues personally, nor did any of hundreds and hundreds of people of my acquaintance who did the same thing - and most of us included sexually explicit material that would definitely cause people to view a given brand differently if they were stupid enough to believe the work was officially tied to the show or book or whatever. It's not as if people writing fanfiction are hard to contact - you always make sure your email is prominent so that people can write to you to let you know how much they loved your trashy story - so if anyone had wished to make legal threats, it wouldn't have been difficult to do.

The only people I've ever heard of getting C&D letters were people writing Harry Potter porn - the argument from the HP side being that it's a series written for children, marketed to children, and if children getting online to search out some bit of Harry Potter trivia instead find some story where Harry is a ladyboy and Draco serves as his human ashtray, they are going to be confused, their parents are going to be pissed, and JK Rowling's brand will be devalued by the sleaze connection. As much as I hate it when people whine about how the internet should be regulated to "protect the children," I do see the point with the HP stuff. I haven't followed what's happened in fanfiction land since I stopped participating, but I do know that a lot of Harry Potter sites had to become members-only and/or ask for age verification to appease the HP legals at that time...but there are still hundreds of fanfiction sites and pages and pages of dubious wizard smut out there, and very little (if any) litigation taking place.

[SnarkyShark]

If we drag Disney into it, and force them to see what is happening,  they'll most likely just go after everyone that has any of their images.  Yes, we can tell them, "Only go after the paysites, they're the ones making money from your images!" but Disney isn't going to be that finicky.  Their opinion will be to just slam every site using any of their images.  They aren't going to play a gaime of, "Well, this site is free, that site isn't, this site has a donation button, that side doesn't," so on and so forth. 

I understand your point, but if it meant shutting down TSR and forcing the scammers to get real jobs I'd say it would be well worth it to sacrifice all Disney related content across the board. In fact, in my dream scenario Disney's legal team assesses the situation, quickly realizes that EA's unwillingness to enforce their own eula makes them just as culpable, and then starts raining enchanted fire down on Redwood, CA. In other words, I'd love to see Mickey tear them a new hole (not that they don't have enough of them working there already).

[Darqstar]

I understand your point, but if it meant shutting down TSR and forcing the scammers to get real jobs I'd say it would be well worth it to sacrifice all Disney related content across the board. In fact, in my dream scenario Disney's legal team assesses the situation, quickly realizes that EA's unwillingness to enforce their own eula makes them just as culpable, and then starts raining enchanted fire down on Redwood, CA. In other words, I'd love to see Mickey tear them a new hole (not that they don't have enough of them working there already).

Hey, I don't think it's a great idea, but if people want to try it, I won't stop anyone.  The only thing though, is that if they decide to make an example of someone, just to show they've got the balls, they probably won't go after TSR, because TSR is huge and have enough money to hirer lawyers.  They will go after a smaller site, crucify them, and then say, "We are the MIGHTY Disney.  Look Upon what We Have Done and  Tremble With Fear!  For We Have Scourged The Internet From Illegal Pictures of Cute Little Mermaids and Talking Crabs!" <---- deliberate joke is deliberate

If Disney decides to be "nice" they'll send out a cease and desist letter. If TSR is smart, they will remove any stuff bearing the Disney logo and they'll be fine.  Oh, sure, it may cause some kerfluffing over there as people rush to find all the Disney stuff and delete it, but that's what will happen.  Who is more likely to get hurt in that senario is a smaller site owner who doesn't get a copy of the cease and desist.  Yes, Disney can still go after someone, even if they never got a cease and desist.  C&D's are merely polite things that companies do, in order not to appear too evil.  However, they are under no obligation to send them out, and even if they do, if someone hasn't given them a way to contact them easily, they won't even bother. 

It is something to consider, however, keep in mind if you go ahead with it, that there is the potential for it to all blow up in our faces, and it turns out that TSR gets out of it unscathed and some freesite is forced to pay the price.


EDIT: Changed wording.
Got rid of a double post I'd made. 

[Scurvy Cat]

And it's always so easy to say, "I'm willing to allow someone else to be sacrificed to my principals."

And, uglyass house buying not withstanding, I doubt TSR has anything like deep enough pockets to defend themselves from Disney's army of lawyers.   

[SoggyFox]

Yes but corporate lawyers tend to go after what they see is the weakest target - its why Worlds.com is suing NCSoft for patent violations, because they patented an interface that is like 99% of all mmo interfaces - after CoH was out.  But they won't go after a company like sony or blizzard, they go after weak first and if a precedent is set, than they can hit bigger targets.

So, even if Disney did go after tsr, they would hit smaller places first.

[Darqstar]

So, even if Disney did go after tsr, they would hit smaller places first.

Exactly.  They'll go after a smaller site, and TSR will just remove all their Disney stuff and be unscathed. 

Again, if someone wants to report them, I won't stop them.  But I don't want to be a part of it. I don't think risking sacrificing a free site is worth it. 

We all do realize that if Disney goes after any Sims2 site now, we will be blamed for it.  It's clearly written here that we're talking about it.  If it blows up, and some freesite has to pay?  Then a lot of people will be justifiably pissed at us, and we'll likely tip some sitters to the other side of the fence, put some on our side, onto the fence and possibly push a few on our side over the fence. 

Also, it irritates me that TSR seems to be coated with teflon.  Isn't the sharing of personal information against Paypal's TOS?  Yet, they are getting away with it.  They are trying to be an illegal monopoly and instead of being irritated, EA rewards them with all expense paid trips to play their video game. 

Disney would go after a smaller site first.  TSR may not have mighty lawyers like Disney, but they at least can afford  lawyers, a small freesite cannot.

Remember the little girl who was caught downloading a few pop songs and some nursery rhymes?  Well, in a move they really thought was the essence of generosity, the RIAA dropped the charges, in favor of making a single mother living in the housing projects pay 2000 dollars

Think of Disney as the RIAA. 

[SoggyFox]

The RIAA is full of shit and have wrongly brought charges on people for downloading music in an effort to make the rest of us scared.  They also trap the various download sites, so you need to really know what you are doing.

And I hate the RiAA worse than anything - greedy fucks - musicians get pennies per sale, and they rake in the huge profits.  They were trying to squash resale of cds and the like, they turned Napster into the biggest sell out in the 21st century, and ... needless to say, I rarely buy music at all, except for gifts, and I try to stick with indie labels.  Also, if the RIAA stops treating me like a crook, I'll be more willing to give them my money again - I used to spend 100 a month on music easy.

[siberiansunset]

IMO I doubt TSR would get the butthurt they deserve. I agree it's the small fish they'll attempt to fry first, and by that time TSR would have removed things to save their ass. I'm not gonna mess with it bc I don't want freesites hurt! If we could find something (oh the plethora;) ) that TSR is Exclusively doing wrong-then I say we turn them in. Hmmm isn't putting trojans in packages illegal?? Known intent to do harm/damage and NO notifying "customers".  And of course the ever illusive personal info sharing! Now that's where we prolly should concentrate if we want to BURN tsr.

[rum nate]

I agree with Darqstar. After seeing everything that has been said, I don't want to see the freesites suffer, just to wait 5 years for them to get to TSR.

And yes Darqstar, sharing personal info is aginst PayPal's TOS, along with some other things that TSR is doing. I posted one several pages back in the thread about TSR, but that one got shot down. But more then likely the reason that TSR is getting away with it is because no one is reporting them, and if they are, and PayPal goes to the site to look, they wouldn't find anything.

[simsrocks]

There's a thread about the personal info sharing, Coconuts blog has screenshots of it, we do have proof, so why can't we report them?

I hate how TSR is involved with the sims 3, since when did they deserve it?
Why wasn't Delphy invited to the creators camp, he's done more for the community then TSR has, modthesims2 is actually helpful and the downloads are a much better quality then TSR.[/rant]

Sorry if I'm being naive or anything.

[Silver Arrows]

Also, it irritates me that TSR seems to be coated with teflon.

Mind, Sony did force T$R to take down Blackgarden's playstation stuff. well, at least change the name (and made her pee her pants enough to change some of her other consoles too). AFAIK $ony haven't started picking on any freesites because of it.

Still I suppose it's a risky business.

[rum nate]

There's a thread about the personal info sharing, Coconuts blog has screenshots of it, we do have proof, so why can't we report them?

I hate how TSR is involved with the sims 3, since when did they deserve it?
Why wasn't Delphy invited to the creators camp, he's done more for the community then TSR has, modthesims2 is actually helpful and the downloads are a much better quality then TSR.[/rant]

Sorry if I'm being naive or anything.

We do have the info, but it is on a third party blog. Can PayPal go to TSR themselves and see the info for their selves? No, not really. That is more then likely why reporting them to PayPal won't do a damn thing.

And I'm pretty sure Delphy said he could care less if he was invited to the creator's camp.