This site does not support copyright violation!

[Winny]

Wouldent it be so much simpler if we could eat the people breaking the rules and law.

[r0nniel0ng]

Well, with that policy, on this site, you'd have more people breaking the rules around here just to be eaten. Nice thought though.

[Omen]

we need more people like eka in the world.

[Shetira]

Very nice to see so positive a stance on the issue. I feel more comfortable here already.

[Removeduser2161]

well yeah if some newb took my art (though I can't draw at all) that I said not to be re-distributed in any way shape or form, I'd be rather pissed and order it of by right of law.

[Surge]

Wouldn't this mean we have to remove every picture of any licensed character being used? There goes FT's and my gallery. (Stop applauding!)

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Surge: I assume that your gallery contains art you created yourself which parodies existing characters. This would be fair use then, which is exempt from copyright.

Deathworks

[Ridley]

There you go a little Force never hurts.

[Jimbo8250]

I seem to recall something about similar issues when I was researching copyright for some things I was trying to get published. As I recall, if the violation and the original creator are in the same country, then it's covered under the laws of that country. However, if it crosses national boundaries, then it falls under the Berne Convention (which, as I recall covers every country in the UN).

http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html

I haven't read the thing in a while, but as I recall it was fairly readable legalese.

Don't take this as exactly correct, but it would be worth looking into (and I don't have the time for it right now).

[Komsomol]

Is admitted use of illegal material also prohibited?

I mean, on the other forum I once got banned for accidently saying that I "got a pirated copy of some game", even though I didn't post anything copyrighted.

[Rat_Guy]

Is admitted use of illegal material also prohibited?

I mean, on the other forum I once got banned for accidently saying that I "got a pirated copy of some game", even though I didn't post anything copyrighted.

BAN!!! no just joking

[Duamutef]

Hi!

Please allow me to shortly digress from the legal discussion and reply to some of the social/hypothetical arguments.

To be honest, for me the copyright issue is actually more a tool rather than a purpose in itself. I am worried mostly about the damage it has already done to the communities and it is continuously doing. Thus, my main focus in this entire affair are drawings/artwork and games that are made by members of our or neighboring communities.

In this context, I wanted to mention something interesting in response to Sorgens' argument about popularizing through underground activity:

Actually, Kitaraf/I-Raf-You's goal/main purpose is the proliferation of macrophile content into the main stream. For that purpose, he keeps creating macro material and selling it via DLSite.com in order to show people that there is a customer base for such products. He hopes that his example would inspire others, both inside and outside the communities, to create more fetish content.

His plan has validity indeed, because download shops like DLSite.com have usually a ranking system based on current sales. In addition, DLSite.com also has several quality rating and review systems. So, if macrophile or voraphile stuff is really successful (at least for a short time), there is actually a chance that some other person not usually involved in it may take notice and say "Hey, it's so weird, why not give it a try?"

Now, having Mimoza distributed via peer to peer clearly undermined his efforts, as those who got it that way clearly would not even dream of paying for it at a download shop, so sales numbers would not increase.

In addition, Giantess Garden (IIRC) successfully scared HIK out of selling his colaborative macrophile manga via download shops, again decreasing the positive public attention the communities could have gotten.

Not to mention that the English translation of HIK's manga was cancelled, as well as I-Raf-You deciding against making the English translation of Mimoza a patch.

There's a serious problem with this--you're assuming that the removal of infringement would increase the market significantly enough to justify continuing with works. In the situation of artists like us that simply isn't true. There isn't enough of a genuine customer base to support commercial production of vore/GTS material except under a narrow set of circumstances (such as the film studios that have the equipment and staff to kick out ten fetish videos in a week, and those don't tend to be terribly good).

Artists who go into this thinking there is going to be money in it are just wrong. Those who blame copyright infringement are likewise wrong. I've bought everything Camel has ever made and I'm still pretty sure he hasn't made squat altogether. There's a reason I have yet to ever ask for money for any of my works, despite the fact that they took years to produce, and it's that vore isn't the only market I make things for, and in other markets I do release my works commercially. Customer bases a hundred times this big still don't provide enough profit to justify the time and effort--in fact, they tend not to generate any profit at all. I've gotten decent exposure and some rave reviews, but I make bugger all from everything I produce.

Business and art are drastically different things, and frankly, artists are not good businessmen. (If you're a good businessman, you get the hell out of art--it's one of the worst markets there is.) The only forms of art that make money have multi-million dollar marketing machines behind them. In fact, with many movies and video games, more money goes into marketing than every other expense combined.

I may ask for dough for one of my games in the future if it totally rocks the hizzy, but I still don't expect I would make much money from it. The moral question just doesn't exist; yes, all of these people stopped because nobody bought their stuff, but they would have stopped anyway, because people still wouldn't have bought their stuff--at least, not enough of it. Even if everybody who was interested and could afford it bought their products, it still usually wouldn't be enough to merit putting in enough work for a sequel. I've seen better projects than mine crash and burn even though the asking price was pathetically low, and I've seen total crap skyrocket to success. The difference isn't copyright infringement; the difference is business model, identifying a profitable target market, and properly getting that market's attention. Vores are not a good target market--we're all poor and we're all net-savvy, which means anything we can't pirate we just have to do without.

Insofar as respecting the artists, that also isn't as straightforward as it sounds. I don't want people defending me and attacking people who post my stuff on other forums. I want people to see it. Sure, people who get it straight off of my site will probably see the "post this wherever the hell you want" disclaimer, but if they get it anywhere else (including here), they won't know that.

In my experience, some artists are just extremely sensitive and have a nervous breakdown when they feel that people are disrespecting their "right" to control their work. Most other artists, on the other hand, are either ambivalent or just don't care. Then on the opposite side are people like me who think the whole situation is essentially an exercize in insanity; the original and only intent in copyright was to encourage the creation of works that would benefit the public. Nobody in congress ever said anything about protecting the fragile inner child inside each sensitive artist. Copyright as it is intended doesn't give a frack about what an artist wants. It's a matter of enticing them with potential profit which, as I said, is simply not going to materialize.

I've been in the business of trying to make money off of homebrewed stuff for over a decade. My commercial works are considerably superior to my vore works (with the possible exception of Shells; it's probably similar), and they still don't make dick.

All that being said, the fact that the rules don't care about the artist's feelings and the cruel world of commerce cares even less doesn't mean there shouldn't be any etiquette at all; I'm just saying it should not be based on copyright law or commercial factors because neither really apply. It should be something we as a community come up with.

The problem with going off of the artist alone is it is simply impractical. It takes thirty seconds to post a picture. Conversely, it can take days to track down the artist, e-mail them, get a reply, and then post the picture with proper credits on it. Assuming it's possible, which it almost never is. When it is possible, very few people would be willing to take that much time on every single picture--in fact, it would be rare to even find someone who had that kind of time to burn in the first place.

I choose the "ask forgiveness, not permission" route because it's the only route that actually works. Otherwise you've got a million different artists with a million different webpages that nobody visits because nobody has heard of them and doesn't want to wade through a link-farm in the hopes that one of the ten thousand sites will have something they like. Nobody wants to keep track of all of them and nobody wants to try to beg permission to all million of them to put them somewhere centralized. Nobody wins. Not the artist, not the community, not even the lawyers. The artist may think they would be winning, but thats simply a delusion that only lasts until they start checking their page hits. One person telling another about a neat new vore site will get a trickle of visitors. A post on a huge site will get a lot more, both in visitors to your site and in people who see your work.

In my experience the best way to show appreciation for someone's work is just that--show appreciation for it. Likewise, the best way to contribute to the community is just that--contribute to the community. Not everyone is an artist, writer, or computer programmer, but anyone can give encouragement. If you can make an artist feel like a king with a few well-chosen words, that will make them want to keep making new pictures a lot more than five or ten dollars in profit will (in fact, in my experience making money off of stuff is outright demoralizing because it's usually so little).

If somebody says "Don't distribute this," great. If they don't, I figure it's up to the conscience of whomever is doing it. I don't bother to post other people's work, but I appreciate it when others do. 98% of it I simply never would have seen otherwise, and what kind of good does that do to the original artist? Sure, they kept control of their work--and in the process they made it so their work may as well have never even existed. Either they're offended by the mere idea of me seeing their work or they're not quite on the same page as me as far as how things work on the internet. Saying "Do not redistribute" does not bring people to your site; it just means anyone who doesn't go to your site will never see your work. If they take the five seconds to write those three little words, I'll respect their wishes no matter how dumb I think they are. If they don't spend those five seconds, they may well be on the fence about it and the greater public good is served not by letting them keep their copyrights but by letting people post them around. And that's the actual intent of copyright in the first place.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, art may not be the best business and I would be the last to advocate adapting art to market interests; but then I do believe you are underestimating the market we have. Let's take an example from real life:

Despair Game II by Camel, a graphics collection for voraphiles with only limited appeal to other people (okay, many girls in it are kind of nude, but I think most people would be freaked out anyway.

It is sold at DLSite.com Maniacs, DLSite.com English, and Dejipare. Unfortunately, I do not have information on Dejipare sales as they don't show them, but DLSite.com offers all relevant information.

The price of the product is 840 Yen which, according to the calculation table of DLSite.com means that Camel receives 400 Yen for every copy sold (store price is 800 Yen + 40 Yen taxes).

According to DLSite.com Maniax, the collection has been sold 389 times. At DLSite.com English, the sales were 92 times (one problem being that all the text in it is in Japanese and it Maniax offered it for a longer period of time). Thus, we have 481 sales, which result in 192,400 Yen, which at the current exchange rate would be about 1,800 US Dollar according to Yahoo!.

Of course, not all the sales were made during the first month (the version at Maniax has been available for nearly 4 years now), still this does sound like some money.

Also, remember that the sales at Dejipare are missing from that calculation, so I think we can assume that he received all in all something over 2,000 Dollar. This would mean that people paid 4,200 Dollar for his graphics collection.

I chose this example also, because we can easily see that there are no additional expenses involved. The entire investment on Camel's part is his time and the electricity for the computer. He did not hire other artists or hire voice actresses (the latter factor being the reason why I do not use I-Raf-You, as I have no idea about the impact of the additional expenses).

Just for completeness' sake, the work includes 11 full fledged CGs (+ 4 variations), 7 color images and 6 sketches, as well as 6 short short stories. 2 of the CGs have been animated using a filter and a few sound effects have been added.

Another number for the non-existant market: Towa mo Nakaba wo Sugite by I-Raf-You is clearly aiming at the shrinker part of the macrophile community. Again, I only have the sales figures at DLSite.com, but they amount to 103 at the English section and 342 at the Japanese section (It is also sold at Tora no Ana, Grep - I don't know whether that's the download or CD version there, Melonbooks, and Dejiketto). The store price at DLSite.com is 2,940 Yen (meaning 2,100 Yen per copy going to I-Raf-You) with a total of 445 sales meaning people paid 1,308,300 Yen (12,500 US Dollar) only at DLSite.com for that game. I have no idea about the sales at the other download stores.

Certainly, these figures can not compete with SimCity 4 or anything, but it is simply not true that there is no market. It may be small and you probably can't live on it, but it is sufficient, I believe.

Deathworks

Edit: You are right, of course, that we as a community should come up with an etiquette and a moral code, but alas, there are too many people who either do not care enough for the artists or who even outright wish to live in an anarchic limbo. Using legal issues as an argument, you can get at least the indifferent ones to note that there is a problem - even if they don't care about the artists, they care about preserving the place where they can get their wank-stuff. As I said, I am not in love with the legal stuff, but it serves me as a good tool to campaign for moral values for the community I consider important.

[Duamutef]

Also, remember that the sales at Dejipare are missing from that calculation, so I think we can assume that he received all in all something over 2,000 Dollar. This would mean that people paid 4,200 Dollar for his graphics collection.

That is considerably more than I would have expected...maybe I should turn into a sellout after all!

Of course, that would require I fix all the bugs and stuff in my games...I never seem to manage to do that. I fiddle with them too much.

Hell, as we speak I'm in the process of adding a new gameplay type to Cartovore 2 (something to take the place of the multiplayer I never got to work) in addition to the graphics conversion and possibly overhauling the rules to go from faction-based to archtype-based (So instead of having separate decks for every single clan, fane, tribe etc. it would have decks for Humans, Monsters, Demons, Angels, and Fae). I can only imagine how many bugs I'm introducing in the process.

[Eka]

Wouldn't this mean we have to remove every picture of any licensed character being used? There goes FT's and my gallery. (Stop applauding!)

copyrighted characters are useable under fair use. However modification to official arts are not.

[Kiala_Tiagra]

agreed. if the artist does not want his/her work to be viewed anywhere else I say follow what they want *raises paw*

[BlackBlossoms]

By all means, let the violation end. Good call, Eka.

[justsomebody]

I have always believed that if people do not wish for there stuff to be stolen then they should not make it available to the public if it is then it's fair game for all but that is just my opinion.

now if it is hosted on a totaly (private) web host that requires a invite and password etc then thats a all togeather different.

[blergle]

I don't believe public access means something is fair game to be stolen. That would make public libraries no more than a giant free book giveaway and that isn't how it works and everyone knows it. Honest people don't steal things that aren't nailed down.

[Abraxa]

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