people suck

yes, many do >.<

specially noob furries

will the real Greywolf Blacksock please stand up?

lol, this amused me XD



...even though im not a big fan of eminem >.>

Figured I had to make such a joke considering I went to get my hair cut a couple of days ago... got asked something I had NEVER been asked before, didn't know how to answer, and ended up getting practically all my hair chopped off so that now I look like Eminem... not what I wanted...

That exact thing happened to me about 6 months ago!

When I usually go into the barber shop, I ask for a "three on the sides and a trim on the top", but that time I just said "Gimme a three all around".

The barber kept asking me "are you sure!?" and I kept saying yes without thinking.

So I ended up getting my head almost completely shaven. It was embarrassing XD

Mine was a four. And the girl didn't ask if I was sure or try to explain how it would look.

Now I know what not to say.

Hey! Your character is hot! Why not?

well, flattery is one thing, but using my character's image for their crazy fantasies?


...kinda wierd >.>

We're furries! We're ALL weird.

this is true XD

*shifts into looking just like you*

XD You might be surprised at how many people have tried stuff like that with me in the past *pokes*

heh, yeah but how many were Shapeshifter's that could get you copied down to your genetics

I actually saw someone on there using my character images and trying to claim said cruxies. Suffice to say, we had words.

(First 'Lynx' on Flist motherluver)

lol

yeah, that would drive me nuts if someone tried to claim my character as their own >.<

there is a verification process you can go through with the admins on F-list to verify you own that character.

which is what your doing.. XD

yep. XD

Why should I have to go to every single porn site known to man (Which means finding every single porn site) and having to tell them that I own x, y, and z characters, dispute it, file a claim argument, and go through that process for every single website?
Not to mention, keep an eye on every single entry to make sure that not a single one of my characters doesn't pop up?

I suppose it goes back to the saying: "Everything is legal so long as you don't get caught."
Of course, that essentially reflects everything that is wrong with people in today's society. There is no morality. And people believe that anything and everything is rightfully theirs.


Sorry, Grey, I guess you'd better start bolting and nailing your characters down.

why the heck are you replying to my post?

Why are you posting on here if you don't want other people to reply to it? If it was just for Grey, there's an option private messages.

because your comment was meant for grey and not me. that's why I was asking why did you reply to my comment

My comment is relevant because of your comment, and was a follow up off of your comment. Just because it was meant for Grey does not mean that it was not meant for you or anyone else.

Yay now i know your kinks.

Actually, I think my kinks got erased somehow. When i checked the page, it was all empty.

...which is weird cause I KNOW i filled out the kinks page.

Aww

Thanks for posting this journal. You should encourage others that you know (especially ones who suffer from frequent character theft) to post similar journals. I use F-List frequently and advocate for stricter rules about art and character theft to the admins over there. One of the things I was encouraging them to do is allow take down requests from people who are not the actual character owner -if- the character owner has expressed that they do not wish to have their character used by anyone else for any manner of role playing or reference purposes.

http://wiki.f-list.net/index.php/Rules
"10. We will remove images and other copyrighted material as swiftly as possible if requested by the copyright owner, or if it's from a source that has publicly indicated that they don't want it distributed." (bolding mine)

So journals like this or a post on your FA user front page (see my page for an example) enhances the ability of the community to self-police with out making the character owners have to personally issue every take down request. It's a sad fact of the internet that unscrupulous and uncreative folks will steal characters and claim them as their own. It's also common for people to use someone else's art and then just note "only as reference, will take down if the owner wants" which is... less bad, but not good either.

Yeah, the commonness of this issue is really disturbing.

If someone wanted to create a char that looked just like mine, then so be it (i might shake a fist at them or something) but if they got art of their own char, then that's their business. The thing that ticks me off the most is when they jack my character.

Anyways, I've made a request to f-list to remove the image in question.

I know the feeling, popular furs will often be the targets of copycats without imagination. Been slapping a goodly number of impersonators and art thieves in various places myself.

Though I ended making a disclaimer on my front page to let people know where I am and where Im not.

I think a disclaimer might be a good idea. I never really considered myself known enough to warrant having to do stuff like that in the past @.@

Have you attempted contacting Varka, the 'owner' of e621, and pulling the pictures down?

Nope- e621 specifically says "if you are not the artist, then too bad: you cannot have the art taken down"

If I wanted to get the art on e621 taken down, I would have to go to each individual artist and ask them to message e621, and fill out the paperwork and whatnot. That would be a hassle. >.<

Gha! :(....
Sorry to hear this is getting to be such a pain for you. :(

Each artist should reference who the art is commissioned by. In that case, the comissioner should have just as much right to the art as the artist in filing a dispute (if not moreso). If e621 is not willing to look at the source of the art, accept that it is a commissioned case, and abide by that, then they are doing something morally wrong.

I know ur plight, grey. I deal with it all the time.

If ur character has tits it will be nabbed and violated....


Id buy ya a drink to ease the pain if I lived locally. :3

lol, a true statement.

And thanks :p

Np. Sadly the reason missy exists, was for publicity, but at the sacrifice of people creeping on me/her... 0. O

Maybe if im ever in the area, ill pop in and have u suggest a good place. :D

I know this is probably the pot calling the kettle black, but it drives me insane whenever I see someone using artwork of a recognizable, named character and saying it represents them in some way. I understand not everybody can commission artwork of their own characters, but in my opinion, it's better to be without a picture than basically stealing someone else's creativity.

...yes I realize I am a guilmon that is not the point I am making here. ._.

<.<

>.>

well, you might be pissing someone off at the digimon headquarters (I can't remember who makes digimon)

...but I agree with you that it's always better to make up your own character instead of taking someone else's identity.

At least guilmon are a species, rather like a fox or a wolf, but my character is independent of THE Guilmon featured in the show, or anyone else's guilmon. Not to mention, "guilmon" is not something that someone came up with and paid an artist commission money to represent as a unique character. :(

Ah- well i dunno anything about digimon (though I had an actual digimon back in middle school, I never watched the shows).

I do not agree with or understand this sentiment at all. Characters like Sonic are routinely slutted up, fucked, raped, and worse on this site continually, and SEGA doesn't come gripe at all. I'm sure those characters are being roleplayed on F-List as well. Step back and realize that people find your character designs and/or personalities intriguing, and take it as the compliment that it is. These people like your creations enough to want to immerse themselves in them. It doesn't make you own the character any less, and if you're truly concerned about that, you can always watermark the images.

well, the issue at hand isn't quite like that one.

What people are doing is taking a picture from my page, then putting it up on their page and saying something like... "this is my character Samantha. She likes long watches on the beach, loves cars and spicy foods, and has the following fetishes: bondage, watersports, scat, and spanking."

In essence, they take a picture that I paid for( of my character), then call it their own character, giving my image a new (and potentially really nasty) background.

There isn't any 'immersion' here. The people are quite frankly saying "I thought this character was hot so I want to be them... and I will just use a different name."

If someone wanted to RP as my char, I would be... a little wierded out, but not really angry. Which is what SEGA execs might be doing in regards to all the sonic porn around here. Or... they just might not care. Legally, SEGA could come in here and raise a lot of hell about their characters being used without permission, but we have been lucky to have experienced otherwise. The rights are theirs in the first place.

While my rights to these pics are not quite as ironclad and legal as SEGA would have to their characters, I still feel violated when someone takes my character and image, and twists it to whatever they please, then go around advertising on F-List with images that I might not like.

Case in point: The latest violater has a thing for underage sex RPs, and was advertising for it on Flist. I don't want my character and image associated with sexing little kids.

"This ones a girl, next!"

"This is a boy, next!"

"This one has no genitals at all, send it back, it's not done cooking yet!"

Oh wait, different kind of sexing.

You crack me up

From the top few points it sound like you're somehow worried a person on f-list will 'steal' the character out from under your feet. It reads like you're worried the internet will only know a character through f-list thing. You have 3000+ watchers! A person on f-list can't compete with that!

You aren't the only one this happens to either, see here: http://www.f-list.net/c/urta

As for legality, I doubt SEGA has any legal ability to do anything about fanart or fan RPs using their characters in an unflattering light. I'm no legal expert but generally if you aren't poised to make a profit off it there's usually not much they can do.

well, I suppose you have a point. I have never really factored in any sort of popularity or 'being known' before. I never really considered myself 'popular' in any way @.@

I am just worried about my character being associated with things that I don't like. And I just get a little irked in general when someone uses my stuff for their public fantasies. >.<

As to the sega thing... well, if the picture in question was a commission, then an artist would be paid money for a picture of a trademarked character. I'm no legal expert either (actually, I don't hardly know anything) but If Sega doesn't get a cut of the profit for their trademarked character, they might be able to do something. I dunno for sure.

I'm pretty sure paying someone to draw a character wouldn't run afoul of the law - you're paying for their labor. Now if you were to turn around and sell it on tshirts or coffee-cups or fleshlights or something... you could sue someone to death :P

I definitely understand your concern though, but it's just one of the negative sides of being popular - it's not something you can prevent or control.

I hope you didn't think I was coming off harsh or anything on this, I just see a LOT of this in the furry fandom and I hate seeing time wasted dwelling on the negative. I guess I just did that with these posts though >.< I'm done commenting on it.

That doesn't make it any less wrong.
That statement is essentially the same thing as saying that I can go around and mug old people because they can't fight back. Or rape young children because they can't fight back.
Large companies would actually end up LOSING more business if they went and fought this sort of thing because, let's face it - if it goes on the news that there is Sonic the Hedgehog or My Little Pony porn or the like, there are going to be a bunch of parents that refuse to let their children watch the show anymore. The same thing keeps happening everytime that there is some sort of study that shows that video games promote violence.
Remember the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games for NES? Yeah, my mom took those away because they were 'too violent'. Not that they didn't promote teamwork or looking after your friends or anything of the like.

But that's just the same sort of thing. RP'ing and whatnot is great. But when the media gets ahold of child porn aspects of it, they contribute everything related to child porn and the like. That has been a growing problem for furs in Europe. It has been a problem for Second Life in Europe as well. I hope that you have some respect for it, because if your game(s) or platform or whatever it is that you are working on gets big enough, you could be publically sodomized (slandered) and sued (because it is legal for the media to do this - they do it all the time). All it would take is for someone to use your setting as a basis to do some illegal act and for someone whom doesn't deserve the authority, but unfortunately has it, to decide that you are to blame.
And don't think that you can't be for what you have done so far - the best defense that you have currently is that you have competitors building the same type of game, and that they could get blamed for it instead of you. Safety in numbers, right?

So, I'm totally glad that you support that concept of yours, because to me, it makes no sense morally or for your self interests.

I just want to point out that you're equating imaginary fun-times with child rape. Apples and Oranges friend.

The whole reason I felt compelled to post is because I see this stuff pop up artist journals here, and I feel the furry subculture is a little out of touch with reality in this regard. Just because you drew/commissioned a picture does not mean you have absolute control over how it is used posted, or that you have any kind of legal power to control that stuff. You don't.

As for my game, I specifically block all child-related content from being added to the game and have avoided adding anything that modifies PC age for just that reason. It's why my site has an 18+ age gate. And if/when I find out that anything I've added to my game is illegal, I'll remove it. I do not fear the law because I am not doing anything illegal or unethical. It also helps that all the sex in the game is reviewed by me - unlike second life I get rubber stamp and approve sex scenes, all players can do is change what they look like within the limits of my game.

TL;DR: I couldn't disagree more.

Just because you drew/commissioned a picture does not mean you have absolute control over how it is used posted, or that you have any kind of legal power to control that stuff. You don't.

I'm pretty sure you absolutely do have a copyright on the artwork you draw yourself and can probably get stuff taken down if you really push for it.

Good point. You do technically have rights to that pic, but once you post it publicly, keeping it from being posted on places like e621 or 4chan is a lost cause. It still doesn't mean you have the power to stop people from roleplaying as that character.

I've gotten pictures taken off of e621 before. Don't give up so easily. :)

But yeah, no such luck with 4chan. And there's little you can do to stop RP'ers aside from briefly eliminating their "advertising" by getting their stuff taken off of F-List.

That's the thing. You don't have control over other people. You would still be potentially legally liable regardless of what you did - including the act of taking it all down.

Also, 'imaginary fun-times' online that include pretend child rape still are illegal in some instances. In the case of them happening in the setting of Second Life, Second Life (the huge fiasco where they threatened to crack down on a lot of RP stuff and ended up changing their maturity ratings for sims) was initially started because someone used the setting of Second Life to act out online 'imaginary fun-times' child porn. You don't get to choose who uses your setting - your game is public.

PS: 18+ gate? How many of us didn't bypass those things when we were under age?

I thought of going on F-List.
Not sure I want my bunny stolen though... I like my bunny

The only reason I made one in the first place was because of a scare about people posing as other people. Someone I was watching put up a big journal about how someone basically stole their character and identity, and was trying to RP as them.

It made me really scared that someone might try to do that to me, so I went and made an account on flist and a couple other places, even though I don't really use them.

I've seen this happen all too often...

yeah... this and similar stuff >.<

it scares me >.<

I know the feeling! It's one thing to have a crush on another's 'sona... but to slowly take on them... just... *shivers*

I see so many stolen images on f-list it's sickening. Is it really that hard to go and get some freebies of your char? :x

or just a written description, too! but yeah, people just take whatever they want without asking these days...

Why pay $5 to get a sketch when you can rip off someone else's? After all, they save you the problem of having to make a character that isn't butt-ugly.

See? That's the solution to your problem, Grey! Make all your characters butt ugly! And by that, I mean, giant, walking, talking butts!

To misquote Apple: "There's a fetish for that."

Ewwwww.

Well sir, you make some very good points. I did consider the whole 'the greatest form of flattery is imitation' thing. I guess I'm a bit paranoid about identity theft, or idea theft and my own character's image.

I also never thought about the whole 'people seeking me out' thing. I never really viewed myself as popular or desirable in this 'fandom' so I never even thought about that sort of stuff.

Either way, Thank you

How good is the f-list roleplaying community? I use IRC, and it's pretty decent, a few gems, some diamonds in the rough, but it's been a bit stale lately >.>

I dunno actually. I have a lot of friends who browse F-list a lot, and it's they who tell me about image grabs like that. I never really use the site- I only created my character there in response to a really nasty identity theft journal I saw on here a while back >.<

Ah, cool beans. Where do you generally romp around? I've seen a few really great logs between you and Hellkat over the years :3

Ah, cool beans. Where do you generally romp around? I've seen a few really great logs between you and Hellkat over the years :3

double post!

and I actually don't really romp around anywhere. I used to do SL, but that got stale pretty quickly.

And I haven't RPed with Hellkat in a long time. I will have to clobber him with some sort of variety of wet noodle if he has posted our logs without telling me.

Pffft, they were ancient logs from years ago XD Anyway, you totally should roleplay more and post eet, your style was one of the first I read when I was getting into expanding my sexy imagination!

This has happened to me a multitude of times. Sadly, little can be done but to alert F-List when someone's stealing your character. I do wish people would ask. I literally have let somebody roleplay as one of my characters after they asked me permission first.

You know, I'm the same way. I'm... 98% sure that I would give someone permission to use my character image if they just asked.

Oh noes, kinks list is blank!

Grey no longer has any smexy smexy.

yah, it got deleted somehow. I know i filled that damn thing out a while ago. Flist must have done some sort of wipe or something.

Oh, by the way? They're still advertising with your image.

Note goin' your way.

Possessiveness is an interesting quality of humanity, known in the business circles as Loss Aversion.
To have the idea of Loss Aversion better explained, listen to it defined for the first 1:52 of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hup_.....el&list=UL