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

[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 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.

Did you NOT read my post at all? I don't blindly believe or follow Tekton. I do however believe in actually thinking for myself. It's clear to me that you are the one who blindly follows and believes everything Gaia says. As for Chibi Halo I long ago lost respect for them when I realized that no matter what Gaia did they would defend them endlessly and act as though nothing was wrong.

[recceleas]

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

recceleas

xx I met my fate xx

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.

Did you NOT read my post at all? I don't blindly believe or follow Tekton. I do however believe in actually thinking for myself. It's clear to me that you are the one who blindly follows and believes everything Gaia says. As for Chibi Halo I long ago lost respect for them when I realized that no matter what Gaia did they would defend them endlessly and act as though nothing was wrong.

There's nothing in my posts that suggests I blindly follow or believe anyone. However, there's evidence in yours that you do.

[Byzantine]

Anyone happen to have a link to that story of the person who got sued for selling the Bulbasaur plant holders? I think that it may be worth putting it in the first post. Also the first post has a section for Sherlock items which is blank, wouldn't the Griefstache and Detectiving Consultant items go there since they both have a pose which gives your avi a Benedict Cumberbatch face, or do they not count because they were freebies?

[Anakha the Silver]

All Tekton has to do is remove his Recolor.ME ads from TekTek and it'll be fine, JESUS CHRIST.

[Doctor Faust The 8th]

Congratulations Gaia for far surpassing sites like Facebook in pissing off and chasing away formerly loyal users with your money-grubbing attitudes, dysfunctional half-assed programming, barely there morals and hypocritical bullshit!~<3
Maybe if you'd clean up your act you wouldn't have to be so damn afraid of users leaving you for other underdeveloped forum/avatar sites!
(ﾉ⊙‿⊙)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧.

[josiv]

Tekton did the right thing. Tektek was a service he made for Gaia free of charge and honestly Gaia has become very jaded the past two years. Gaia doesn't deserve Tektek anymore if you ask me. He provided that to us free of charge, because he wanted to yknow. Yes he did ******** up using their stuff to advertise recolor, but him taking the site down was in my eyes him saying... "I'm done with Gaia" He like many other users is probably tired of Gaia's BS on all kinds of different issues. Then they came after him for some s**t they could have pinned him for the past YEAR. No, they wait until probably a dramatic effect was seen in user count and then go and pull some perfectly legal, but very... just... desperate s**t. I'm really really disappointed in Gaia. This is all ultimately on them, if they didn't keep shitting on the users, things like this wouldn't come up. They've lied and pulled some borderline illegal s**t, then they wanna go and act like what tekton did was so big of a deal. Gaia is guilty of much worse if you ask me. We've seen what they can pull, and they get away with it, brushing s**t under the rug.

[Camp Blood]

+over9000

[loveradke]

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.

WOW, before I didn't really understand exactly what was going on, so thank you for explaining. So all Tekton had to do was get rid of his recolor.me add at the bottom of his page and Gaia would've been a little more lenient?

[Chibi Halo]

loveradke

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.

WOW, before I didn't really understand exactly what was going on, so thank you for explaining. So all Tekton had to do was get rid of his recolor.me add at the bottom of his page and Gaia would've been a little more lenient?

As far as I understand it that's all he really had to do.

[RavishingRuby]

xx I met my fate xx

.

And I'm sure in 26 pages it's been mentioned..but Sailor Moon too! >:{

[xx I met my fate xx]

loveradke

Except that if Tekton is to be believed all Gaia did was send that letter. Nowhere in that letter does it mention his recolor.me ads or ask him to remove them. He can't know to do something when they never asked for it. They gave him a bogus reason in their letter instead of coming to him with the honest truth of it. They're threatened and they didn't want him advertising their competition on a site that caters to their users. That's understandable but instead of TELLING him that and requesting he change the ads they send him a C&D claiming that by displaying their items on the site they've known about for 11 years he's breaking copyright.

[Janine Melnitz]

xx I met my fate xx

loveradke

Except that if Tekton is to be believed all Gaia did was send that letter. Nowhere in that letter does it mention his recolor.me ads or ask him to remove them. He can't know to do something when they never asked for it. They gave him a bogus reason in their letter instead of coming to him with the honest truth of it. They're threatened and they didn't want him advertising their competition on a site that caters to their users. That's understandable but instead of TELLING him that and requesting he change the ads they send him a C&D claiming that by displaying their items on the site they've known about for 11 years he's breaking copyright.

This assuming that that letter was the only thing Gaia sent Tekton or if it was the first. It's not like he is communicating with anybody anymore. I'll wait until he makes a legitimate response aside from the obvious site closure. I'll give him that much. I don't like it if only one side is talkin G, but I also don't like it if the other side has nothing to offer. I would think even an explanation is in order to explain his actions. I think I've calmed down enough to give him that courtesy.

[Steady Ride]

xx I met my fate xx

loveradke

Except that if Tekton is to be believed all Gaia did was send that letter. Nowhere in that letter does it mention his recolor.me ads or ask him to remove them. He can't know to do something when they never asked for it. They gave him a bogus reason in their letter instead of coming to him with the honest truth of it. They're threatened and they didn't want him advertising their competition on a site that caters to their users. That's understandable but instead of TELLING him that and requesting he change the ads they send him a C&D claiming that by displaying their items on the site they've known about for 11 years he's breaking copyright.

There's a lot of misconceptions going on about this issue, so I hope I can explain what's up here.

As a business move, it is essential for Gaia to enforce copyright violations in situations where someone else is profiting/gaining market share off of their IP, because if they do not police it, Gaia stands to lose all their trademarks.
For a little over 10 years, Tektek has been running the dream avatar creator, and for 10 years, Gaia has been okay with this because it was just a fan site, no funny business. That changed when Tekton went ahead and started taking advantage of Gaia's IPs to advertise his own site and gain leverage on his market share (ie more business for his competing site)

It's like how sites like, say, bulbapedia and serebii can survive despite ripping game resources directly from the pokemon games to use on their site. They aren't marketing their own products with the resources, they're simply makijg detailed guides. You can bet that if Serebii.net started advertising a pokemon knock-off game that they were developing, Game Freak would be on them like flies on a carcass.

So Gaia's deal was that if Tekton wanted to keep going with the dream avatar creator and being allowed to use trademarked Gaia logo and art anywhere else on his site, he'd have to stop advertising his own site. So why didn't it say that in the big legal notice letter?
Well, it's simpler than you might think. As you've said yourself, Tekton has every right to run whatever ad he wants to on his site. Gaia has no legal authority to tell Tekton to pull an advertisement from his site.
The only thing they DO have the legal authority to do is to force him to stop using their trademarked stuff.
So there you go, a C&D letter. In this case C&D doesn't mean "That's it, we've arbitrarily decided you're done forever", it means "We're taking the legally required steps necessary to protect our property here, and laying down some terms until we can negotiate the terms of you being allowed to continue using our stuff."
And as we know, despite bluealris and other staff publicly stating that they were open for negotiation of terms, this is where Tekton instead decided to.shut down without any further discussion.

[Mistress Kitn]

mokimoki5

Anyone happen to have a link to that story of the person who got sued for selling the Bulbasaur plant holders? I think that it may be worth putting it in the first post.

Here ya go.

[RavishingRuby]

Mistress Kitn

Here ya go.

Aww i want one!