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Hi everyone!

So you may all remember a recent announcement posted about character and art theft, and the general theft of stuff from inside Rosentale. As one of the people we caught doing this, has chosen to continue, we decided to make the situation public. This member is still in the guild, currently, and will hopefully see this thread. No names will be used. No hints will be given. But if you read this, hopefully you feel ashamed. A little investigation of your post history shows that you dislike theft and have requested people not to steal your post styles in your test thread. The hypocrisy of you turning around to copy characters and, in fact, this entire guild, is a little staggering.

No one hates anyone but know that your image has been damaged beyond repair in the eyes of the crew of this guild. But this thread is not to point fingers at you so much as show everyone else what's been done and let them all know this is NOT okay. Especially because this isn't the first case of someone deciding it's okay to borrow from other members of the guild.

For the record, it is not okay to take things from this guild and use them elsewhere--not post styles, not characters, not artwork, and certainly not the entire guild and set up. People work hard on these things and to simply take them because you lack the creativity to come up with your own things is rude, disrespectful, unethical, in some cases illegal, and it reflects poorly on you as an individual. Anything posted in this guild belongs to it's original poster (with the exception of second hand artwork for characters, rather than original artwork).

Please do not take any original material from this guild and use elsewhere without permission from its owner.

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For those of you who want to know what is going on, here is the story. Please learn from this person's mistakes and don't repeat them.

A while back, the crew of Rosentale became aware that one of our members had set up a guild very, very similar to Rosentale. And when I say very similar, I mean this was clearly an attempt to recreate the guild. It was copied down to some of the more unusual threads (like PE being held in the pool room, or the fact a boiler room even exists, or a pub for people over 21), it copied the color of the banner and even the rules and guild polices--some of which were directly copied and pasted.

After seeing a couple of suspicious characters mentioned in thread descriptions, we were a little concerned about the possibility of characters from Rosentale popping up in this guild. And sure enough, one did. Not only was this character copied right down to the post style, but much of the information on the profile was taken from the same users other characters.

We made the guild announcement in Rosentale about theft and noticed the culprit began making small changes to the character--changing the name, the color of the post style and minor things like that. But when the Rosentale user became aware of the theft and that the culprit was hotlinking the photo to her photobucket, she altered the picture--this alerted the culprit that she was found out and she quickly removed the character.

We assumed this would be the end of it, but kept a watch on this person just in case.

We found that in addition to the first character, this person also borrowed a second character from the same user, and posted it in a separate guild--though those posts were somewhat old and it seemed the character was posted but never used. However, I found that the first character cropped up again in a Barton town RP within the past couple of days. Though she has a different history and skill set, the same picture, color and name are used. In addition, the character has the same brash, talkative, outgoing personality. By themselves, none of these are major flags. But we KNOW it is this character, as this is the second time this same person has used her.

We decided this level of theft--especially since she's still trying to get away with it by making it less blatant--needed to be made public so we could let everyone know that this kind of thing is something the crew feels very, very strongly about.

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In short, I won't say that if you copy or "steal" from this guild you will definitely be caught. I will say that we are a pretty vigilant bunch and we do check up on members occasionally so if you choose to take or copy anything from here, the chances of your being caught and called out for it, are fairly high.

We're nice people and we really hate drama. Hence why we try to take round about ways to poke people and let them know we're onto them--like sending vague guild announcements instead of accusatory PMs. However, repeated abuse of this kindness, and repeat attempts to use someone elses characters will definitely result in something like this.

We try to ignore small infractions and not make a fuss--which is why we said nothing about this copy guild, despite being aware of its existence. But if there comes a point we have to stand up and tell someone to stop what they're doing, we will. PLEASE do not make us do this. It's unpleasant for everyone involved and it makes EVERYONE feel bad.

Respect the people in this guild and please keep all the following in mind:

1. We are glad some of you think Rosentale is amazing guild. We do too! But that doesn't mean you can copy it--right down to the welcome note we give to people when we accept their character--just because you may not like how we do certain things. A lot of time and effort went into making this guild. It's a giant puzzle pieced together based on the creativity and needs of a lot of people. First of all, taking it is just outright rude.

Second of all, if you take bits and pieces you will get a poorly cobbled together mess that doesn't compare to the original. It should be obvious, but don't run off and make a Rosentale Academy clone guild, okay?

2. Some of the more intricate post styles in this guild took a great deal of time and effort from their creators. They were made for specific characters for this specific guild. Stealing them just smacks of a lack of creativity. Come up with your own post styles and let others have their unique designs, okay?

3. I cannot stress enough how very NOT okay it is to take someone's original character. Look, some of us have had these characters for YEARS. We haven't just put a few minutes or hours on them, but literally years and years have been spent fine tuning them. It's awesome that you may like a certain character but that doesn't mean you can just go off and start using them as if they're yours. It is rude and it is flat out wrong. It's dishonest, unoriginal and it's an out right disgusting thing to do.

These characters are the intellectual property of their respective owners. You do not take them and use them elsewhere. End of story.

My Reaction

I can't believe someone would do that! I'm so sorry you guys had something like this happen... Hopefully they'll take a hint and not do it again!

People like that really irritate me. It's like they have no creativity and for some reason need to resort to theft, or are lazy, or have some weird kind of obsession with the person(s) who made the character(s) and want to be like them as much as they can.

Also, here's me letting you know I read it!

Why would someone do that? thats just wrong... Even I who is wuite bad at making characters has never resorted to that.. Its just messed up everyone in this guild put so much tjought into creating a character.. Stealing someine character is like stealing a baby from someone... That was a bad comparision...
Well I read it...,i jope this doesent happen again.

Wow. I mean stealing rules and such is one thing, but going and taking a character?! What does that achieve, it just shows their lack of knowlegde and respect for the person who has created the character!! D:

Okay. I’ve been trying my best to avoid all the ranting and what not, but I’m at my breaking point. Don’t worry. I’ll be short and simple with this. I’m not very good with expressing how I feel about this matter since my words tend to go all over the place, so I’ll try to be as direct as possible. To whoever said that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” in my opinion, that’s bull. Excuse my language, but I have to let slip a few rage words to keep my anger content.

Even though I try to laugh it off and joke around about the theft issue, I. Am. Pissed. I believe anyone would be if something they’ve put so much effort into making ends up being stolen right from underneath their noses. This doesn’t only apply to my characters, but the whole guild. While a lot of members might not know about it, time and dedication has been poured into Rosentale to make it as organized and awesome as possible. Even now, the crew continues to keep doing that. Well, I’m not sure if I can speak for everybody in the crew, but I’m pretty sure we share the same pride. We love Rosentale. It’s our baby that we’ve had to raise through a lot of trial and error, but we got this far. To see someone try to rip us off..... I’m speechless. Sure, there’s plenty of school-based guilds, but must you copy from us? I understand that guilds could be influenced for the better from snooping around, but that does not give anybody the right to directly/indirectly copy from anybody else.

Now, as I’m sure everyone here already knows, I’m the victim here when it comes to the character copying, and like I said before, I am raging hard. For those who have just heard about the character theft, there’s a bit of a backstory that goes with it, and that definitely has to do with my whole “RAWR” thing. I’m going to assume that most people know about the hiatus that I announced. If not, well, I announced one that was very sappy and dramatic, and it should still be around if you snoop enough. That being said, the day after I announced it, I received news from a friend in RL, who is also a crew member in Rosentale, that there was a copycat of Kasie in the copy guild of Rosentale. Immediately, my reaction was a blank “wut.” After all, I had only just said that I wasn’t going to be online anymore, and I hear about this? And so, using my friend’s phone, I snooped and saw the profile. Same picture. Same name. Same personality. Same skdnfgisbrtisbh! Awh, man, I was flipping desks here. All that effort I put into my characters was null and void now since they were that easy to rip off.

The crappiest part at that point was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to do anything since I wouldn’t be able to go online. Well, guess what? That wasn’t going to stop me. I made sure to sneak back into Gaia and talk with the crew about this. Sure, we sent out an announcement, but it wasn’t enough to make the copier take down the profile. Instead, there was a slight edit, and that was just the name. Since this copier hotlinked Kasie’s picture, I made sure to troll hard, and this was enough to make this copier take down the profile. However, what really peeves me is that this copier never owned up to it and simply apologized. I would have liked one, and this matter would have just been put aside. Well, I did my best to put it behind me, but after hearing that my characters were being stolen again from the same person, I must rage once more. I honestly thought that they’d be at least embarrassed and guilty from doing so after seeing all the announcements and how people feel about theft, but no, this is continuing.

I’m creeped out, hurt, confused, and most of all, frustrated. I really don’t want to believe that this is actually happening to me, but it is. To see my characters that I’ve had to shake and strangle out of sueness for over seven years being copied like so makes me want to cry. So much for a short and simple blurb right?