I'm honoured, no really!

[Sar]

Well as some of you know, I play quite a bit of City of Heroes (still at it, a year or more later). I play with the people from www.theoldergamers.com, and if you go to the forums, you'll see images I knocked together for exclusive use there, such as:

And so on.


So I found out that the people running a TOG knockoff at www.theuglybuggers.com are using those graphics as well, for topic icons on their main newspage!

I emailed the admin for TUBs website, and so far he's being a bit arsey over it - I assume there's little I can do seeing as how the main portion of the graphics are derived works from Dev's artwork?


PS: The TUB admin tried to worm his way out of it by stating:

A) A member found them in his browser cache and didn't know where they came from - obviously lies.

B) Said they were covered by the PHP GPL code - duh?


Both of which I corrected him on...

 

[Whipped]

I'm sure between all of us we could DOS their website

Seriously though, I think you're right. As you're using copyrighted images in your images then you have as many legs to stand on as ..... as .... um ..... a man with no legs?

*shrugs*

 

[Sar]

I thought artwork developed for games was covered by Fair Use licences for fansites etc, as long as the person using them wasn't passing them off as his/her own 100% exclusive creations?

 

[Dukat]

Weather its legal or not, its still lame

I say we declare war on them and spam thier boards!

or something.

Where's Coim when you need him! I seem to remember that he was good at this war thing.

 

[TdC]

erm iirc legally there's not alot you can do, but morally it's naff that they didn't ask nicely.

 

[DaGaffer]

I think if they were commercially exploiting the images you'd have some leverage, but they're not, so you don't really have any avenues worth going for that aren't going to cost you time and heartache. We used to get this with BW all the time (I can't tell you how many times the smiley was ripped off...), but because we were using the image for commercial use, we could jump on people pretty hard, and even then we sometimes had problems (one online sexshop in particular). We even found the logo ripped in classifieds in the back of PC Gamer for some LAN cafe once, which as about as blatant 'passing off' as you can get.

 

[Sar]

A SEX SHOP?

Lol

 

[DaGaffer]

A SEX SHOP?

Lol

Oh yeah. You remember that version of the smiley that had horns on it? This sex-shop had pinched it, used a red filter on it and had it all over their site (apparently they were even using it on wrapping paper!) We had to send all kinds of threatening letters and were still having a pop at them when BW/Game.net closed, making it all a wee bit irrelevant

 

[Rubber Bullets]

It is certainly pretty naff. You made a very nice job of those images, and as you allude to whoever decided to nick them obviously thought so too, and he thought he wouldn't get caught!

I have to say that they seem to have tried to modify the icons a bit and have made them look a bit naff. By taking the shadow off and adding a kind of halo they have completely ruined the 3D effect you got so well.

RB

 

[babs]

*right-clicks*

*saves image as*

*uploads*

 

[Sar]

It is certainly pretty naff. You made a very nice job of those images, and as you allude to whoever decided to nick them obviously thought so too, and he thought he wouldn't get caught!

I have to say that they seem to have tried to modify the icons a bit and have made them look a bit naff. By taking the shadow off and adding a kind of halo they have completely ruined the 3D effect you got so well.

RB

Aye, they've been fiddling with them over the past few hours, but they're still recognisably "mine" though. And yeah, they do look a lot naffer now than the originals.