When is 8-Bit Theatre going to start...
 

...suing people using Final Fantasty 1 Avatars in forums? They are his umm art...

Wait never mind.

Anyone see this craziness going on between Penny Arcade and A Modest Destiny? And want to explain it to me?

The Squidi guy is out of his gourd. His interpretation of copyright law and when to act on his right to control distribution of his images is so absurdly draconian it makes Disney look like open source animation.

I like how he's redirecting PA's links to that Gator computer company. This guy is hilarious (in that "not hilarious" sort of way)

thats his gator hosting company, not the evil gator spyware (just so no one gets confused, like I initially did)

theres a locked thread about it over on buzzcomix.net, and eftor seems to be siding with him 100%.

here is a post in the pa thread that tried to diagnose him.

I want to see this guy try to take this to court, and get smashed down. I like his comic, but dear god is this guy for real? I can understand him shutting down the comics that use his art as thier own, we all can get insane when stuff like that happens, but no avatars allowed? And people can't copy his style? Jesus christ.

Then again, now I wonder how badly these sites 'copied' his work. Perhaps the hairstyles were vaugly similar.

Actually, someone had taken my art and drawn over it to create avatars for his fellow forum members and was taking credit for it. People are plenty allowed to use avatars and create in a similar style, but taking credit for my work and distributing it under your name is NOT allowed.

The reason why the links redirect to my hosting company was because they asked for it. My site was wanged, but they allowed me to keep just the comics available so I could continue to update and provide the rest of the comics for the few people coming from Penny Arcade not hell bent on skull raping me. Since they had been so good and asked politely, I gave the link to them.

Okay, so someone imitated your style. You can't prove that it was any more or less than that. You still have no case. This type of thing happens to every comic that gets some degree of popularity. Just ask Brian, he's had to deal with people ripping off his entire website design, the plotlines and jokes, and all sorts of other things from his comic.

The best thing to do is to just forget about little instances like this. Yes, this is little. If it had not been made such a big deal, most of the people probably woulda stopped using those avatars after a couple of weeks anyway. It's just the normal cycle of things on the internet. Fighting it is futile, kinda like trying to defeat an entire army of Super Cyborg Orcs armed with nothing but a thimble and some peppermint scented soap.

I'm sure Brian has had to deal with all sorts of things, just like I am. However, having his art stolen isn't one of them.

I can prove that my work was copied and modified. Were it merely in the same style, I would not care. And this was entirely done with before Gabe decided to be an ass about the whole thing and misread my email to him. His little rant has done more to damage my ability to protect my work than should be humanly possible. Alas, this is not over yet.

If imitating styles were illegal, the comic book industry wouldn't have made it past Superman. You couldn't possibly tell me that 80% of the super heros after Supermen weren't more or less imitations of him. Was the notion of a superhuman guy in tights fighting crime and evil really such a commonplace concept that hundreds upon hundreds of people spontaneously came up with that idea? Every five year old has traced a slightly altered Batman and wrote "Ravenman" or something underneath it without the courts being inundated with lawsuites against the tots.

Considering that the estate of Osamu Tzuka couldn't sue Disney for turning "Kimba the Lion" in "The Lion King", I sincerly think it would be laughable for the courts to consider anything as piddly as a forum avater.

Actually, I've had a great number of my wholly original Photoshop effects and techniques stolen and passed on as the work of others. But that's not art, is it. It's not like it takes any talent to make eye catching, interesting effects in Photoshop. It's not as if Photoshop has ever added something to an image. Oh, wait, yes it is. Huh. What'dya know.

I've also had my characters' personalities stolen by hundreds of people. I've had my gags stolen by all of them too. I've had my exact scripts stolen, line for line, word for word, at least five times. I even had two different people take my comics, put their names on them in place of mine, and post them on their sites.

So, yeah, don't give me your hollier than thou attitude. You've had a handful of children, who do not yet possess the intellectual capacity to fully create on their own, borrow and imitate your work in their first steps toward creating their own works and becoming artists themselves. You claim to be some kind of artist. You cannot tell me that as a child you didn't trace pictures from artists you thoroughly enjoyed. Hell, AMD characters remind me strongly of a Master System game.

You have had it easy and the amount of fuss you've kicked up over it makes you look like a child. This is why everyone, especially those of us with valid complaints about being "ripped off", is treating you like one.

If you're going to throw a tantrum every time something as trivial as this happens, then I sincerely hope you don't have to put up with actually being ripped off, because your head will explode. You can either settle down, have your juice, and rethink how you want to approach situations like this, or you can quit. Since we both know you thrive on the attention from AMD, the latter isn't really an option.