Let's talk Copyright infringement Gaia. (Tektek Hypocrisy)

[recceleas]

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

Blackberry Heartilly

I'm so pissed about this.
Tektek has NEVER been an issue so wtf happened?

This is a neutral topic on it that'll give you all the information you need. (:

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

[BuckyKattLove]

I have to say, the word "hypocrite" ran through my mind when I saw the notice. I hope they change their mind.

EDIT: A lot of people (and I do seem to remember reading this in the staff notice) seem to think that it is because of advertisements for "recolor.me". The thing that I don't understand about this is that I remember tektek used to advertise other avatar sites (such as Roliana and tinierme) and Gaia didn't have an issue with it. Why now all of a sudden?

[Prism Stryder Kaede]

BuckyKattLove

I have to say, the word "hypocrite" ran through my mind when I saw the notice. I hope they change their mind.

EDIT: A lot of people (and I do seem to remember reading this in the staff notice) seem to think that it is because of advertisements for "recolor.me". The thing that I don't understand about this is that I remember tektek used to advertise other avatar sites (such as Roliana and tinierme) and Gaia didn't have an issue with it. Why now all of a sudden?

the difference there is that tekton owned recolor.me. unlike the previous mentioned ads which were generated using google's ad generator tekton posted the ads for his site himself and then from there on those were the only ads available.

He essentially was using a gaia fan site to direct traffic to his own website and then when gaia said enough was enough he tore down tektek instead of negotiating and posted the letters. as for the Gaia should buy tektek argument there's the whole issue of tekton still not talking or cooperating in anyway so they can't even strike that kind of deal.

[xx I met my fate xx]

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

Blackberry Heartilly

I'm so pissed about this.
Tektek has NEVER been an issue so wtf happened?

This is a neutral topic on it that'll give you all the information you need. (:

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

[recceleas]

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

Blackberry Heartilly

I'm so pissed about this.
Tektek has NEVER been an issue so wtf happened?

This is a neutral topic on it that'll give you all the information you need. (:

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

Again, I’m not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not, especially not someone who thinks everything Gaia does is wrong. That topic is neutral, whether you like it or not. It presents both sides and allows the user to come to their own conclusion.

[xx I met my fate xx]

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

Blackberry Heartilly

I'm so pissed about this.
Tektek has NEVER been an issue so wtf happened?

This is a neutral topic on it that'll give you all the information you need. (:

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

Again, I’m not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not, especially not someone who thinks everything Gaia does is wrong. That topic is neutral, whether you like it or not. It presents both sides and allows the user to come to their own conclusion.

I don't think everything they do is wrong, in fact they had been improving quite a bit. I'm just not stupid enough to blindly believe everything they say when it's been proven they can and will lie to us.

[Chibi Halo]

loveradke

Even after tektek got the letter, Gaia was adding Umbeon and Espeon items from Pokemon >.<

I know Gaia has a reasonable explanation as to why they would want TekTek taken down, But I feel that TekTek has a right to stay up sense Gaia is sort of ripping off shows and other games with their items like the Sailor Moon stuff and other things like MLP, Naruto, Adventure Time, etc.

I just hope that TekTek can find someway to bypass the issue .-.

First off, Adventure Time and MLP are sponsor items (as is Walking Dead, FMA, Black Butler, Tsubasa Chronicles, etc) so that is not infringing on anything and is a huge difference when Cartoon Netwok, AMC, Hasbro, and Funimation are giving them money to make items to advertise their shows. Gaia is not going around ripping off shows. Second, all Tekton has to do is pull the recolor.me ads and talk to Gaia and this whole mess could be avoided. Instead he sat on the letter for two weeks (it was emailed and sent overnight USPS/UPS/FedEX, which I'm sure they made him sign for) let the servers "crash" and then decided to post the letter on his site as an intentional way to start trouble here and get even more users to his site. He's distanced himself from Gaia and the volunteers he had for TekTek for the last ten months. He's done with this site and the way he's been letting TekTek slide and crash shows it. I bet you didn't know recolor.me was owned by him outright. He was solely advertising his own competing website on a Gaia fansite so he was using Gaia images to get traffic to his ste. Not Kosher.

Now before you, or anyone else, come back with "But Gaia advertises competing sites all the time" I'm going to explain what's going on there and what Tekton did. Gaia, in their non in house advertising, uses Google ad packets. Those ad packets use IP locations and your cookies to generate ads for you based on where you live and what sites you visit. If you spend a lot of time on Gaia and also go to Crunchyroll you'll get ads for things like Funimation and MMOs. If you check out Target, the Gap, J Crew, etc. you'll get ads for clothing, shoes, and the typical things sold at Target (ie you could see a drugstore.com ad or two). This is one of the ways Gaia makes some of their operating costs back. Tekton used to do the same thing on TekTek and Gaia was fine with it because you have no controll as a website owner over Google Ad packets, they're random based solely on user history and location.

However, once he started looking for artists and other people to volunteer (they don't get paid at all) for his new site, that I do believe he said would be similar in style to Gaia because he wanted people who could draw the Gaia style, the Google Ad packets came down and every page had a static ad for his new site recolor.me. Even before the site went live he was using images he says at the bottom of each page are the property of Gaia to begin with to get a staff for his new site. Then after it opened he went right on using it as a billboard for recolor.me. Tekton is not innocent in all of this by a long shot. The ball's in his court now. Gaia is waiting to hear back from him as two staff members have said on separate occasions. They don't want TekTek to shut down but it seems Tekton does and is being very immature about this because you don't leak legal proceedings while the issue is still ongoing.

[recceleas]

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

Again, I’m not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not, especially not someone who thinks everything Gaia does is wrong. That topic is neutral, whether you like it or not. It presents both sides and allows the user to come to their own conclusion.

I don't think everything they do is wrong, in fact they had been improving quite a bit. I'm just not stupid enough to blindly believe everything they say when it's been proven they can and will lie to us.

Well, with all the information presented, I’m inclined to believe Gaia isn’t lying in this case. Gaia isn’t always lying or out to get you, they’re not the boogeyman. xd What it really boils down to is; Tekton did something he wasn’t supposed to – it’s a business no-no, there’s no way around what he did was wrong. He was then called out by Gaia, never responded, and then went onto closing tektek and publically posting a private legal document for all to see. These are facts.

What does Gaia gain from tektek closing? Nothing. In fact, we all know that they had a good relationship since forever. I now want you to think what the state of tektek was these last few months. Hell, maybe even year. Then look at Tekton's actions. Isn't it plausible that Gaia is not lying? I think your anger may be misplaced. (:

[xx I met my fate xx]

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

That topic is in no way neutral. It believes the stupid excuse that Gaia gave even though it doesn't match at all with what they said in their letter to Tekton. That topic is just trying to feed misinformation and placate those who are rightfully upset.

Yeah, it is. Just because you think it's a "stupid excuse", doesn't mean it is. I can bet you're not a lawyer as well, so I'm not going to put much faith on what you think the entirety of the letter holds. There is no misinformation presented in that first post and I'm not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not. neutral

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

Again, I’m not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not, especially not someone who thinks everything Gaia does is wrong. That topic is neutral, whether you like it or not. It presents both sides and allows the user to come to their own conclusion.

I don't think everything they do is wrong, in fact they had been improving quite a bit. I'm just not stupid enough to blindly believe everything they say when it's been proven they can and will lie to us.

Well, with all the information presented, I’m inclined to believe Gaia isn’t lying in this case. Gaia isn’t always lying or out to get you, they’re not the boogeyman. xd What it really boils down to is; Tekton did something he wasn’t supposed to – it’s a business no-no, there’s no way around what he did was wrong. He was then called out by Gaia, never responded, and then went onto closing tektek and publically posting a private legal document for all to see. These are facts.

What does Gaia gain from tektek closing? Nothing. In fact, we all know that they had a good relationship since forever. I now want you to think what the state of tektek was these last few months. Hell, maybe even year. Then look at Tekton's actions. Isn't it plausible that Gaia is not lying? I think your anger may be misplaced. (:

Except that the contents of the legal document posted (whether it was a good idea to post it or not, it was posted.) don't match up with what they told us at all. That to me says that they are lying to us. I'd be more inclined to be honest in a legal document than I would in an announcement to users.

Also, while it's in bad form to advertise your services using the IP of another, it's not illegal. Plenty of places do it whether or not it's a good idea. Gaia has been aware of this for almost a year and taken no action until they realized how their own practices had driven their members away. It wasn't until the recent floods of people quitting that Gaia gave any second thought towards considering recolor a threat.

That doesn't even bring into question the fact that it's Tekton's site, he has the right to advertise whatever he wishes, especially given that his site provides such a valuable service to Gaia users at no cost and has done so for over a decade. Because of Tektek Gaia never had to make their own system comparable or the slightest bit useful. They've been piggybacking off of his work all this time and now they're getting angry that he chose to advertise his own site on his other site.

Is Tekton completely in the right? Absolutely not. It's kind of a scummy thing to advertise a competitor on a site made as a peripheral to another site. However Gaia is telling two stories here and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that one of them isn't completely true. In the meantime their jealousy has led them to stripping users of a valuable resource that has been instrumental in the Gaia experience for a decade. No, they didn't make the decision to take down TekTek but they knew what would happen when they issued that letter. They could have chosen instead to request that he take down the ads.

Tekton for his part I'm sure isn't guiltless. It's obvious that he's been overstretched between Recolor.Me and Tektek. With Gaia releasing multiple items every single day it's hard for a few unpaid volunteers to keep the database working correctly and the server crashes have not helped. Therefore it's understable if unfortunate that he likely isn't putting up that much resistance to closing down tektek. It's probably something of a relief to him. For his part the most logical and kind thing to do would be to bequeath the site and coding to someone else who would then take up the ownership along with responsibilities and domain payments. At that point the new owner could choose to return to the google based ad system, thereby satisfying Gaia and relieving Tekton of the extra stress.

[xx I met my fate xx]

Chibi Halo

loveradke

Even after tektek got the letter, Gaia was adding Umbeon and Espeon items from Pokemon >.<

I know Gaia has a reasonable explanation as to why they would want TekTek taken down, But I feel that TekTek has a right to stay up sense Gaia is sort of ripping off shows and other games with their items like the Sailor Moon stuff and other things like MLP, Naruto, Adventure Time, etc.

I just hope that TekTek can find someway to bypass the issue .-.

l

First off, Adventure Time and MLP are sponsor items (as is Walking Dead, FMA, Black Butler, Tsubasa Chronicles, etc) so that is not infringing on anything and is a huge difference when Cartoon Netwok, AMC, Hasbro, and Funimation are giving them money to make items to advertise their shows. Gaia is not going around ripping off shows. Second, all Tekton has to do is pull the recolor.me ads and talk to Gaia and this whole mess could be avoided. Instead he sat on the letter for two weeks (it was emailed and sent overnight USPS/UPS/FedEX, which I'm sure they made him sign for) let the servers "crash" and then decided to post the letter on his site as an intentional way to start trouble here and get even more users to his site. He's distanced himself from Gaia and the volunteers he had for TekTek for the last ten months. He's done with this site and the way he's been letting TekTek slide and crash shows it. I bet you didn't know recolor.me was owned by him outright. He was solely advertising his own competing website on a Gaia fansite so he was using Gaia images to get traffic to his ste. Not Kosher.

Now before you, or anyone else, come back with "But Gaia advertises competing sites all the time" I'm going to explain what's going on there and what Tekton did. Gaia, in their non in house advertising, uses Google ad packets. Those ad packets use IP locations and your cookies to generate ads for you based on where you live and what sites you visit. If you spend a lot of time on Gaia and also go to Crunchyroll you'll get ads for things like Funimation and MMOs. If you check out Target, the Gap, J Crew, etc. you'll get ads for clothing, shoes, and the typical things sold at Target (ie you could see a drugstore.com ad or two). This is one of the ways Gaia makes some of their operating costs back. Tekton used to do the same thing on TekTek and Gaia was fine with it because you have no controll as a website owner over Google Ad packets, they're random based solely on user history and location.

However, once he started looking for artists and other people to volunteer (they don't get paid at all) for his new site, that I do believe he said would be similar in style to Gaia because he wanted people who could draw the Gaia style, the Google Ad packets came down and every page had a static ad for his new site recolor.me. Even before the site went live he was using images he says at the bottom of each page are the property of Gaia to begin with to get a staff for his new site. Then after it opened he went right on using it as a billboard for recolor.me. Tekton is not innocent in all of this by a long shot. The ball's in his court now. Gaia is waiting to hear back from him as two staff members have said on separate occasions. They don't want TekTek to shut down but it seems Tekton does and is being very immature about this because you don't leak legal proceedings while the issue is still ongoing.

I'm an artist on Recolor. He DOES pay us and he actually asks for artists to be as different from gaia's style as possible. This is why he chose an art base instead of a pixel base in the first place. He doesn't WANT to be the new Gaia. He purposefully makes sure that he doesn't add some features that Gaia has and adds others that it doesn't. There is no user-driven market for example. In the end I enjoy Gaia more but I do feel that Recolor has a much more user-friendly site. He benifitted from learning what NOT to do from Gaia's greedmongering.

Also that legal document posted just so happens to be completely different from what Gaia told us so I guess it's a good thing that he leaked it. Now we know that they are giving him different reasons than they gave us.

[Chibi Halo]

xx I met my fate xx

Chibi Halo

loveradke

Even after tektek got the letter, Gaia was adding Umbeon and Espeon items from Pokemon >.<

I know Gaia has a reasonable explanation as to why they would want TekTek taken down, But I feel that TekTek has a right to stay up sense Gaia is sort of ripping off shows and other games with their items like the Sailor Moon stuff and other things like MLP, Naruto, Adventure Time, etc.

I just hope that TekTek can find someway to bypass the issue .-.

l

First off, Adventure Time and MLP are sponsor items (as is Walking Dead, FMA, Black Butler, Tsubasa Chronicles, etc) so that is not infringing on anything and is a huge difference when Cartoon Netwok, AMC, Hasbro, and Funimation are giving them money to make items to advertise their shows. Gaia is not going around ripping off shows. Second, all Tekton has to do is pull the recolor.me ads and talk to Gaia and this whole mess could be avoided. Instead he sat on the letter for two weeks (it was emailed and sent overnight USPS/UPS/FedEX, which I'm sure they made him sign for) let the servers "crash" and then decided to post the letter on his site as an intentional way to start trouble here and get even more users to his site. He's distanced himself from Gaia and the volunteers he had for TekTek for the last ten months. He's done with this site and the way he's been letting TekTek slide and crash shows it. I bet you didn't know recolor.me was owned by him outright. He was solely advertising his own competing website on a Gaia fansite so he was using Gaia images to get traffic to his ste. Not Kosher.

Now before you, or anyone else, come back with "But Gaia advertises competing sites all the time" I'm going to explain what's going on there and what Tekton did. Gaia, in their non in house advertising, uses Google ad packets. Those ad packets use IP locations and your cookies to generate ads for you based on where you live and what sites you visit. If you spend a lot of time on Gaia and also go to Crunchyroll you'll get ads for things like Funimation and MMOs. If you check out Target, the Gap, J Crew, etc. you'll get ads for clothing, shoes, and the typical things sold at Target (ie you could see a drugstore.com ad or two). This is one of the ways Gaia makes some of their operating costs back. Tekton used to do the same thing on TekTek and Gaia was fine with it because you have no controll as a website owner over Google Ad packets, they're random based solely on user history and location.

However, once he started looking for artists and other people to volunteer (they don't get paid at all) for his new site, that I do believe he said would be similar in style to Gaia because he wanted people who could draw the Gaia style, the Google Ad packets came down and every page had a static ad for his new site recolor.me. Even before the site went live he was using images he says at the bottom of each page are the property of Gaia to begin with to get a staff for his new site. Then after it opened he went right on using it as a billboard for recolor.me. Tekton is not innocent in all of this by a long shot. The ball's in his court now. Gaia is waiting to hear back from him as two staff members have said on separate occasions. They don't want TekTek to shut down but it seems Tekton does and is being very immature about this because you don't leak legal proceedings while the issue is still ongoing.

I'm an artist on Recolor. He DOES pay us and he actually asks for artists to be as different from gaia's style as possible. This is why he chose an art base instead of a pixel base in the first place. He doesn't WANT to be the new Gaia. He purposefully makes sure that he doesn't add some features that Gaia has and adds others that it doesn't. There is no user-driven market for example. In the end I enjoy Gaia more but I do feel that Recolor has a much more user-friendly site. He benifitted from learning what NOT to do from Gaia's greedmongering.

Also that legal document posted just so happens to be completely different from what Gaia told us so I guess it's a good thing that he leaked it. Now we know that they are giving him different reasons than they gave us.

And I see the blinders are on and the wool is firmly over your eyes. The letter is written by someone in the legal field. The staff alert is written so we the users understand what is going on. You have been so quick to defend him (I've seen you in other topics on this) because you work for him that it's really sad. True or not I've heard people say people "working" for him don't get an actual paycheck just stuff for the site. He still wanted people familiar with the Gaia style when he advertised. He's still using Gaia owned images to advertise his site. If you can't see what's legally wrong with that then I'm sorry that you'll never see just how at fault he is and how you and everyone else blindly defending him are being used to get him more members for the site. ThIs is not kosher in any way shape or form.

[recceleas]

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

That whole topic screams "Hey, listen to everything Gaia has to say without even bothering to consider that they could be lying!!" That's not neutral. That's just another case of people somehow still believing Gaia can do no wrong.

Again, I’m not going to trust anyone with as much bias against Gaia as yourself to judge if something is neutral or not, especially not someone who thinks everything Gaia does is wrong. That topic is neutral, whether you like it or not. It presents both sides and allows the user to come to their own conclusion.

I don't think everything they do is wrong, in fact they had been improving quite a bit. I'm just not stupid enough to blindly believe everything they say when it's been proven they can and will lie to us.

Well, with all the information presented, I’m inclined to believe Gaia isn’t lying in this case. Gaia isn’t always lying or out to get you, they’re not the boogeyman. xd What it really boils down to is; Tekton did something he wasn’t supposed to – it’s a business no-no, there’s no way around what he did was wrong. He was then called out by Gaia, never responded, and then went onto closing tektek and publically posting a private legal document for all to see. These are facts.

What does Gaia gain from tektek closing? Nothing. In fact, we all know that they had a good relationship since forever. I now want you to think what the state of tektek was these last few months. Hell, maybe even year. Then look at Tekton's actions. Isn't it plausible that Gaia is not lying? I think your anger may be misplaced. (:

Except that the contents of the legal document posted (whether it was a good idea to post it or not, it was posted.) don't match up with what they told us at all. That to me says that they are lying to us. I'd be more inclined to be honest in a legal document than I would in an announcement to users.

Also, while it's in bad form to advertise your services using the IP of another, it's not illegal. Plenty of places do it whether or not it's a good idea. Gaia has been aware of this for almost a year and taken no action until they realized how their own practices had driven their members away. It wasn't until the recent floods of people quitting that Gaia gave any second thought towards considering recolor a threat.

That doesn't even bring into question the fact that it's Tekton's site, he has the right to advertise whatever he wishes, especially given that his site provides such a valuable service to Gaia users at no cost and has done so for over a decade. Because of Tektek Gaia never had to make their own system comparable or the slightest bit useful. They've been piggybacking off of his work all this time and now they're getting angry that he chose to advertise his own site on his other site.

Is Tekton completely in the right? Absolutely not. It's kind of a scummy thing to advertise a competitor on a site made as a peripheral to another site. However Gaia is telling two stories here and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that one of them isn't completely true. In the meantime their jealousy has led them to stripping users of a valuable resource that has been instrumental in the Gaia experience for a decade. No, they didn't make the decision to take down TekTek but they knew what would happen when they issued that letter. They could have chosen instead to request that he take down the ads.

Tekton for his part I'm sure isn't guiltless. It's obvious that he's been overstretched between Recolor.Me and Tektek. With Gaia releasing multiple items every single day it's hard for a few unpaid volunteers to keep the database working correctly and the server crashes have not helped. Therefore it's understable if unfortunate that he likely isn't putting up that much resistance to closing down tektek. It's probably something of a relief to him. For his part the most logical and kind thing to do would be to bequeath the site and coding to someone else who would then take up the ownership along with responsibilities and domain payments. At that point the new owner could choose to return to the google based ad system, thereby satisfying Gaia and relieving Tekton of the extra stress.

Then, I’m inclined to say you’re blindly believing and following Tekton. It's odd that you're also so quick to give him excuses. No, he doesn’t. He is using Gaia’s IP to advertise his own site, which is not ok. All you are giving me are your own speculations with no facts to back them up. I believe Chibi Halo has already said everything I was going to in regards to the legal document, no point in me re-hashing it to you.

[D3monicWolv3s]

recceleas

edit:
You also realize there’s numerous homages and parodies to media in other media, and there was no issues, right? For instance, Fiona from Adventure Time was wearing Sailor Moon’s dress for an episode. In a show called Drawn Together, there’s this. South Park also does things like that – for example, Princess Kenny and there's that Pokemon episode in one of the first seasons. Hell, they even got away with showing Mickey Mouse. Family Guy and Simpsons also do similar things, as I know for a fact they parodied Sailor Moon. I’m not even going to mention all the Sailor Moon sightings in other anime not owned by the company. Hell, the creator of Sailor Moon herself used outside materials for some of the images in her artbooks which I’m sure she didn’t have permission for. Basically, you’re wasting your time. And they were way more blatant than Gaia in their references.

Making a homage/parody in media isn't the same. Gaia is making these homages/ripoffs and selling them with the intent of fans of those franchises/properties will buy them.

A lot of them, I can see getting away with it, but the pokemon ones blatantly look like the pokemon. They take the ears and slap them on a hood. The slyveon ribbons aren't different at all, and they could have easily avoided it looking so similar, but they didn't.

But in the end it doesn't really matter if we think gaia infringed or not, it matters if the right owners think gaia crossed a line, and want to take action.

[xx I met my fate xx]

Chibi Halo

xx I met my fate xx

Chibi Halo

loveradke

Even after tektek got the letter, Gaia was adding Umbeon and Espeon items from Pokemon >.<

I know Gaia has a reasonable explanation as to why they would want TekTek taken down, But I feel that TekTek has a right to stay up sense Gaia is sort of ripping off shows and other games with their items like the Sailor Moon stuff and other things like MLP, Naruto, Adventure Time, etc.

I just hope that TekTek can find someway to bypass the issue .-.

l

First off, Adventure Time and MLP are sponsor items (as is Walking Dead, FMA, Black Butler, Tsubasa Chronicles, etc) so that is not infringing on anything and is a huge difference when Cartoon Netwok, AMC, Hasbro, and Funimation are giving them money to make items to advertise their shows. Gaia is not going around ripping off shows. Second, all Tekton has to do is pull the recolor.me ads and talk to Gaia and this whole mess could be avoided. Instead he sat on the letter for two weeks (it was emailed and sent overnight USPS/UPS/FedEX, which I'm sure they made him sign for) let the servers "crash" and then decided to post the letter on his site as an intentional way to start trouble here and get even more users to his site. He's distanced himself from Gaia and the volunteers he had for TekTek for the last ten months. He's done with this site and the way he's been letting TekTek slide and crash shows it. I bet you didn't know recolor.me was owned by him outright. He was solely advertising his own competing website on a Gaia fansite so he was using Gaia images to get traffic to his ste. Not Kosher.

Now before you, or anyone else, come back with "But Gaia advertises competing sites all the time" I'm going to explain what's going on there and what Tekton did. Gaia, in their non in house advertising, uses Google ad packets. Those ad packets use IP locations and your cookies to generate ads for you based on where you live and what sites you visit. If you spend a lot of time on Gaia and also go to Crunchyroll you'll get ads for things like Funimation and MMOs. If you check out Target, the Gap, J Crew, etc. you'll get ads for clothing, shoes, and the typical things sold at Target (ie you could see a drugstore.com ad or two). This is one of the ways Gaia makes some of their operating costs back. Tekton used to do the same thing on TekTek and Gaia was fine with it because you have no controll as a website owner over Google Ad packets, they're random based solely on user history and location.

However, once he started looking for artists and other people to volunteer (they don't get paid at all) for his new site, that I do believe he said would be similar in style to Gaia because he wanted people who could draw the Gaia style, the Google Ad packets came down and every page had a static ad for his new site recolor.me. Even before the site went live he was using images he says at the bottom of each page are the property of Gaia to begin with to get a staff for his new site. Then after it opened he went right on using it as a billboard for recolor.me. Tekton is not innocent in all of this by a long shot. The ball's in his court now. Gaia is waiting to hear back from him as two staff members have said on separate occasions. They don't want TekTek to shut down but it seems Tekton does and is being very immature about this because you don't leak legal proceedings while the issue is still ongoing.

I'm an artist on Recolor. He DOES pay us and he actually asks for artists to be as different from gaia's style as possible. This is why he chose an art base instead of a pixel base in the first place. He doesn't WANT to be the new Gaia. He purposefully makes sure that he doesn't add some features that Gaia has and adds others that it doesn't. There is no user-driven market for example. In the end I enjoy Gaia more but I do feel that Recolor has a much more user-friendly site. He benifitted from learning what NOT to do from Gaia's greedmongering.

Also that legal document posted just so happens to be completely different from what Gaia told us so I guess it's a good thing that he leaked it. Now we know that they are giving him different reasons than they gave us.

And I see the blinders are on and the wool is firmly over your eyes. The letter is written by someone in the legal field. The staff alert is written so we the users understand what is going on. You have been so quick to defend him (I've seen you in other topics on this) because you work for him that it's really sad. True or not I've heard people say people "working" for him don't get an actual paycheck just stuff for the site. He still wanted people familiar with the Gaia style when he advertised. He's still using Gaia owned images to advertise his site. If you can't see what's legally wrong with that then I'm sorry that you'll never see just how at fault he is and how you and everyone else blindly defending him are being used to get him more members for the site. ThIs is not kosher in any way shape or form.

I'm not that quick to defend him. I acknowledge that he did something wrong. However the letter was not written by someone in the legal field. It was written by the Gaia community manager and has her signature on it. The same person who made the staff alert.

[recceleas]

D3monicWolv3s

recceleas

edit:
You also realize there’s numerous homages and parodies to media in other media, and there was no issues, right? For instance, Fiona from Adventure Time was wearing Sailor Moon’s dress for an episode. In a show called Drawn Together, there’s this. South Park also does things like that – for example, Princess Kenny and there's that Pokemon episode in one of the first seasons. Hell, they even got away with showing Mickey Mouse. Family Guy and Simpsons also do similar things, as I know for a fact they parodied Sailor Moon. I’m not even going to mention all the Sailor Moon sightings in other anime not owned by the company. Hell, the creator of Sailor Moon herself used outside materials for some of the images in her artbooks which I’m sure she didn’t have permission for. Basically, you’re wasting your time. And they were way more blatant than Gaia in their references.

Making a homage/parody in media isn't the same. Gaia is making these homages/ripoffs and selling them with the intent of fans of those franchises/properties will buy them.

A lot of them, I can see getting away with it, but the pokemon ones blatantly look like the pokemon. They take the ears and slap them on a hood. The slyveon ribbons aren't different at all, and they could have easily avoided it looking so similar, but they didn't.

But in the end it doesn't really matter if we think gaia infringed or not, it matters if the right owners think gaia crossed a line, and want to take action.

Yeah it is, they're still profiting from it. But, have at it on your reporting spree - only time will tell.