[Dakuu]

Grah. I'm a newbie, Haha. Like dur. Okays, you people may already know about this and whatnot but I'm gonna let you know anyway.

Just thought I'd let you know..gamespy.com and their avatar inc. page has been chopping up artists' work and using it as avvies. I found some of the webmaster's art.

http://www.gamespy.com/avatars/avatars.asp?genre=FA&start=7009&page=33

3rd avvie in the 5th row. I'm pretty sure it's his but whatever!

None of you may care, and this is probably in the wrong place, and all of you may already know but I'm posting this anyways! if you wanna flame me for it then my AIM is NekojoDakuu. =)

[AndyT]

That's the one by Dhabih I think.
http://www.gamespy.com/avatars/av/FA/fa1932.gif

And this one is done by ceenda ... right?
http://www.gamespy.com/avatars/av/MA/ma965.gif

Maybe they know about that and it is ok?
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http://www.conceptworld.org

[ceenda]

Yes, that's mine.

Also, it's not just lamespy (sic), halflife2.net have been stealing artwork, things like Aaron's (brasshorsekiller) bunchie concepts.

[Ian Jones]

It's pretty incredible to think that a company such as Gamespy could be so damn stupid as to do this. I hope they crash and burn for it.

So what are you guys gonna do?

These also look Sijun familiar to me:














Far out... looking through all that lot, they are sure holding a lot of copyrighted works.

[Jezebel]

Someone directed me to a couple of my pictures as well:






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My Art.
My Photography.

[Ian Jones]

Jez, will you be taking any action?

[Ragnarok]

I'd send an email and see if they are reasonable about it, don't you think?
Originally all the avatars gamespy offered where drawed inhouse by one of the artists of penny arcade if I'm not mistaken... looks like they went the wrong way.
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"Ever forward, my darling wind." -Master Yuppa
Seigetsu

[thewinterpeople]

It's a shame how prevalent this is, and I am very disappointed that a high traffic professional game coverage site would do this. Being a small team game designer myself, I have seen this sort of thing happen all the time among freeware game authors. A vast majority of amateur, and even allegedly aspiring professional game design teams and single authors commit and rationalize serial art and music plagiarism with no abandon. We try as much as possible to alert plagiarized artists and musicians when we find out such cases, but unfortunately do not have time to track and monitor the entire internet.

It probably goes without saying, but I strongly suggest that any skilled artist who posts their work on the internet obtain legal rights to it. Art theft goes a lot deeper than just ripping avatars, and is occurring on a frighteningly large-scale basis.

Beware the lower tier of amateur game design.

[ceenda]

[Ian Jones]

Hey Ceenda, you missed one of Dhab's. See if you can pick it out.

[Ian Jones]

"obtain legal rights to it"

Luckily in most countries you don't have to obtain anything, as the right is yours as soon as you put pen to paper (so to speak).

[Tinusch]

Is the last one Lono's? And I remember seeing that Hulk photomanip a looong time ago...

[Tinusch]

Liquid/JoeMad

[Mari]

Why would a company like gamespy do such a thing???
What a shame...
I can't believe they haven't been sued for that yet.




On the other hand, I am glad I'm not well-known, have not posted my art in here since I only registered yesterday, and just can't draw as well as you people... Heh

[Mari]

I also believe that if you drew it, it's yours. No stealing unless giving credit and Gamespy should know that!

What a shame...

Yes I said that already. Just that I reread Ian Jones' post about copyright. If you made it, it's yours. Even when it's fanart, it's just that the characters aren't yours, but the art REMAINS yours.

Bad bad bad. *pokes Gamespy with a fork*

[Dakuu]

My friend from Devart found a LOT of her pictures there and emailed them asking them to remove it. They did so, then posted a topic on the message board asking why they wouldn't ask permission before posting work, and the person who replied said(with more description of course..)

"Artists who want credit want their names on the page if they respond to emails asking for permission in big letters, or there's never contact info on the page, or the artist never replies at all."

She asked why they would post it if they had no reply from the artists. I didn't see if the responded or not.

Also~I let several people on devart know about their art being on there.
I forgot about contacting Enayla though..maybe I'll do that if she doesn't already know.

[bearsclover]

Wow, I was pretty shocked and irritated by that thread. And the woeful ignorance of copyright law.

<takes a deep breath> Well, I've cooled off now. But I did write a stern post with a cite from copyright law. Some of these people are clueless.

Edited to add: Wow, these people aren't only clueless, some of them flagrantly don't care about whether or not they violate copyright. They say, "What's the big deal. I don't know why you're being so oversensitive."

Man. Amazing.
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[hamilton]

guys. it's fair use. dictated by how much of the image is used and how big it is. they use less than 20% of any of the images.

this is all totally legal.

and why would anyone get in a huff about avatars? this is hardly anything to concern yourselves with.
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-={hamilton.likes.to.draw...}=-

[eyewoo]

agreed...
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HonePie.com
tumblr blog
digtal art

[bearsclover]

No, actually, I've done some research on it and "thumbnails" are not necessarily fair use. Even small portions of a picture are not fair use when the "heart" of the image is used (which is often the case here). Fair use usually requires some sort of educational or informational aspect to it. But not in this case.
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[Sublimo]

If any of you are from belgium, I can give you detailed legal advice.
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[ColdKodiak]

If you see your work and don't like that, ask them to take it down. Otherwise I don't really see it as a big deal, I don't think they're making money off of the work being used :/
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http://kontinue.com/coldkodiak/

[bearsclover]

FTR, none of my work is being stolen (that I know of) so I don't have a huge personal stake in this ordeal. But I think the thing that is ticking many people off is the attitude taken by the mods of the message board. They truly don't see what the big deal is. Yet, links and cites on copyright have been given to them, indicating that legally, they may very well be breaking the law. ("Fair use" is such a vague thing anyway sometimes, but it looks to me that they are not leaning more towards "fair use" in this case.)

If it were just a matter of them being clueless and then going "Oops! We meant no harm! We didn't know it was against the law!" then I don't think some of the artists there would be getting so pissed off.

Also, the fact that this is a big gaming site. It gets millions of visitors a month (so they say). The avatars are used to help attract visitors and keep them coming back to the "gaming community" that is on that site, and the fact that the site is riddled with very obvious ads, and the fact that the site sells services--well, while I would not say that the stolen art itself is bringing them money, it certainly is aiding in keeping people coming back, viewing the ads, and possibly buying the company's services. This does not fit the idea of strictly "not for profit" for me.

There's a big difference between that and a site which is showing the art to discuss fantasy art, or some "fan's" page which shows off work of their favorite artists. I think most people would consider that fair use in some cases. But this ain't that, not by a long shot.

When people have published (ripped off, whatever) my art, (which happens often), I don't usually get my knickers in a bunch if they attribute the work to me and my site. That to me is "fair use." But when they steal something of mine, just to make some pissy avatar from it (and they steal my bandwidth to do it)? The hell with that. I can fix that problem pretty fast. I know they do it out of ignorance though--so my ire only lasts so long. But in this case, the artists are pretty ticked off because the theft is being done willingly and they seem to think that it's the artist's job to track down stolen art and ask to have it removed. That's just clueless--and their attitude is quite arrogant on top of that.
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[Edix]

Ok I have to addmit I am a bit of a weak drawer and enjoy the digital reformation of pics so I have been knicking some skeches i like, but all i do is colour them and allwase give credit to original artist (I know its not a lot)

But a large company doing this just seems down and dirty to me
Is there anything we can do?

[bearsclover]

Edix, it looks like they are going to start removing the avatars. One of the staff members seems to be more contrite about the whole thing. The other mods/staff are still blustering and arrogant, saying things like, "What do you expect when you put art on the Internet?"

That's chilling, IMO. They seriously think that if you put your artwork on a website, you have no cause to complain when people steal it.
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[fukifino]

There's no law that says "you can't steal other peoples property...unless they don't protect it, then you can take it if you want." I lock the doors on my car BECAUSE people don't obey the law, not because it's only illegal to steal stuff from my car when the doors are locked.

Just because someone puts a picture on a website, and it's as easy as right click->save as to steal it, doesn't make it right, or legal. And this is NOT fair use. It's uncredited, without permission, and modified. It's not educational. It's purely for monetary reasons. (As Bearsclover said...they may not be making money directly from the avatars, but it is part of their "service" and the only reason they're doing it is to attract people to their site either to pay for the service or to get more Ad hits.)

This isn't the first time I've seen Gamespy pull some shady shit, and it probably won't be the last. Grrr.

[Chris Noeth]

Bearsclover is right!

Why don't you guys go to your lawyers? I think they can write a 'nice' letter to those people and they will understand whats wrong with their arrogant thefts afterwards.

[MadSamoan]

Fair use is for educational and govenment purposes and these avatars wouldn't qualify under 'fair use'. Also, cropping doesn't suddenly make it available for use either. This issue is beaten to death over and over in the art magazines on the newstands. Basically when it boils down to it, you can't use someone else's art without their permission. If they never replied back, tough shit, it's not available for use. And if an artwork is cropped in an attempt to justify it being used, it'll come down to a jury to decide if the 'spirit' of the artwork is being exploited if it comes to court. Too bad noone has the patience or interest in pursuing this legally, I met a copyright lawyer walking his dog once while I was plein air painting last summer. We had a looong conversation and this guy would have companies like Gamespy finding themselves on the floor and wishing someone would make the spinning in the room stop. Companies are making money off of advertisements and subscriptions based on the services they offer and your work is not in the public domain. (unless any of you have been dead for over 75 years or so)

[Wren]

Well all the pages have been removed but the images themselves are still on the net. I suppose it may take a little extra time to delete the 11,000 images they stole.

As for lawsuits, they had a good number of licensed characters on there too. i know of at least one artist that contacted Disney about it and i have a strong feeling Warner Bros, Fox and Paramount were informed as well. So there may indeed be a lawsuit happening and we just don't know about it.
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SASart Studios

[Ian Jones]

burn bastards burn

I hope they get slaughtered.