How long have the rips been up there?

All of you talk the wise words. Maybe we really need to be more patient? I have no answer for this question...

But I know two things:
1.The theft is unacceptably.
2. The thief must be publicly punished (if he did not timely repents).
As I see MRKacau have no desire to repent...

By the way I found the other his "works":
Apple Logon (by bad smart baby): WWW Link
Vista ScreenShot (by adni18): WWW Link

WOW! No shame with this bugger! What to do?

reports rips trough the "report button" on the deviation, contact helpdesk, send a email to copyright team, follow Jafo, Fuzzy, and Zubaz councils...

What we shouldn't do?

Spam his page or deviation comments, send harassing messages/PM/emails, insult him, ... well you know

This is what I get for not keeping an eye on the forums over the weekend.

To start off with, I am pretty disappointed with the reaction and behavior I've seen on this thread, and on DeviantArt regarding this particular ripper.  This is the sort of behavior that is never called for, never acceptable in any way shape or form.  You know why?

The WinCustomize community is better than that.  Period.  End of story.

I know everyone here takes ripping very seriously and very personally.  I do too, and believe me I'm never happy when I find someone ripping someone else's work.  But at no point will a situation be made better by an angry mob.  In fact, it might make it worse.

Just like at WinCustomize, rips should be reported and handled through official channels.  And those channels must be given time to work.  This was reported on these forums late Friday night, and the chaos ensued shortly thereafter.  dA never had a chance to adequately deal with the complaint before they were forced to deal with multiple users flooding the comments and boards.

When you report a rip, you must give the site staff time to react, just like here at WC, and remember that dA is much larger, so it may take a bit longer.  Also remember DeviantArt is a business, so most of its staff likely works regular business hours.  So weekends are likely their "off" time.

But above all, always act with civility and politeness.  Always.  It is very likely that what happened did far more harm than good.

I am not happy to of been part of the mob but really what are we supposed to do when the Admin at DA give us the finger? That is what happened when they started deleting not responding to kind requests and locking threads. They were not away for the weekend. There was always someone there to lock the threads. Granted, they want time to sort out rips but the whole Stardock Design thing should have gotten him removed immediately.



Keep in mind that things were civil until Mr ahole started hiding comments and several kind requests through the proper channels went ignored. It is very to easy to paint us as the bad guys...AFTER THE FACT!

Yes, a mob formed but that's what happens. As individuals, humans are extremely intelligent. As groups we are neanderthals.   

  

I concurr with Night Train here..
Am I proud of my actions.. not really, but you know what.. I'm going to stick by them and boycott DA.
Craig is quite correct in all he said.
Don't be so quick to paint us as the bad guys..

I would imagine, that at dA, just like here, different moderators have different powers.  I know that some volunteer mods here can hide a spam post but cannot change the status of a user (make them a visitor, exile, or ban them).

So what if the same is true at dA?  The post abuse was handled as best it could by the staff available.  Other (full-time) staff might have been needed to ban the user or remove the work.  And research likely has to be done.  I would not want WC to pull my stuff just because it was reported as a rip.  I'd want them to do some checking and that checking takes time.

This incident has brought to light a communication gap that will be tried to be filled.  Any further action of the mob can only hinder that.

But we (and yes, I say "we" even though I wasn't part of the mob, I am part of WC) are the ones that look bad and that could have been prevented.

Good. . . and good.

I think we all agree on that now.   

If your sitting on DA's side of the fence, yes.

I  think we all need to remember that DA has been around a long time so I'am sure they have had ample time to hone their moderator duties, to beable to take swift action and so forth.  So a few days to fix something as obvious as this (same name as the team here) shouldn't take a whole lot of investagating.  So if the skins were just removed till further investigation , so be it.  But to dog the people reporting the problem and to drag feet, isn't what I call in the best interest of all.  Hence the mob gathering, figuring that was the only way to get something done, be it right or wrong.  Now, I'am not condoning the actions, just pointing out some things.  So maybe we should slow down before we jump down those that jumped down.....

Most of us took Mrkaka's bait.. hook line and sinker.

WOW! We are the international mob! Cool!  

To Zoomba:

You are absolutely right. But if the people want hear you...

The first message about rip was 5 days 6 hours ago and it was no weekend. Any normal person would apologized and quietly removed all stolen works from his gallery.

Instead of this our "friend" MRKacau has posted two other works: Solarion (by Stardock Design) and Nuage Redux (by essorant).

Each of us tried to talk with him and(or) to send messages for DA Moderators. But it was only the silence in the responses... What we can (or should) do in this case?

Hopefully, in the near future, you could contact a WC moderator who will contact a dA moderator and resolve the issue quietly. 

In the meantime i would:

1. Alert the author of the skin so they can:

1. Report the rip using the button
2. Post a note to the devient letting them know that they own the skin and post the original link
   
3. PM a moderator here at WC to  assist if needed and possible
4. Wait
   

Regardless of reason, cause, or internal justification, the comments I can still see on that page aren't justifiable.  If I saw anyone posting anything of that sort, ever, on a skin here, even if it was a blatant rip of Stardock's own works, you would find yourself on a site vacation.

What he did is wrong.  It is copyright infringement, taking credit for work that isn't his.  He's a first-class ass.  No question and he has no place on dA or any site that hosts the work of artists period.

But I have never in my life encountered a situation where a bad or wrong action was made better by more cursing, yelling and anger.  What good did the mob do in the end?  I still see several of the ripped skins still there.  His account hasn't been closed.

Your cause was just, your heart generally in the right place, but the actions were wrong.  And it gives our community as a whole a bad name.  WinCustomize has a bad rep in the skinning world, and it's something we've been doing well to clean up, but it's cases like this that wipe out a lot of that effort.

Okay Friends. I fully agree with you! But you need also understand our feeling.

Yesterday I tried to find my SD Desktop 4.01 on the Yandex.ru - this is popular Russian searching engine. As a result I found more than 161 sites where my gadget was stolen or ripped...

This is normal for East Europe or Asia. And this is the reason why I'm here and why I love Wincustomize. But why I must be tolerate the same phenomenon on DA? This is the shame for any civilized place where people respects the Copyright Law!

Zoomba,
I appreciate the moderate spanking (thank you sir may I have another)   

This was nothing more than typical human nature. Mobs have been around for centuries in any civilized or un-civilized culture. Diplomacy only goes so far, and that avenue WAS pursued first. When diplomacy is thrown back in your face then one is left with minimal alternatives.
Next time, we'll try diplomacy round 2 before we break out the ropes and torches, but I would wager that the result will be the same as this, especially when dealing with DA. I don't care how old or how large a company is, the artists are the customers and the source of their revenue.

There is currently a thread [my instigation] on Devart [seniors] relating to each and all of these..... it's currently several pages long.....and is quite verbose.  Dialogue is principally between myself and Reality Squared....the DA Admin responsible for violation handling.

It's in a semi-public forum [where it's more likely to have sensible intercourse].

It is hoped that a mechanism can be put in place where specific inter-site issues can be resolved more speedily...

Yes, that's correct.  Those handling spam posts on the forums, etc are not charged with the powers of exile, etc. so there will be a perception of delay or even 'odd'/selective handling.

I agree totally with Zoomba's comment/s.

Deviantart.com is 'just another skinning site in "our" community' ...it's not us-and-them ....we're all in skinning/graphic art together....many members here belong to both/all skinning sites.

What we do as individuals offsite can often reflect poorly on any site we're perceived as being 'from'.

This particular/specific issue of ripping is really quite insignificant in the real world of skin/rip/violations.

I can think of numerous more 'drastic' instances over the years ....however I for one had hoped we all as a Community had matured/moved on from the knee-jerk reactionary spamming of others.  More often than not it achieves nothing other than embarassment for the spammer.

My assumption is that R Squared has a significant work-load on Devart with violation reports [we all do].  At last count there 'should' be around maybe a dozen for this person alone.

For anyone who has 'senior' status on Devart...this should be accessible... [posted 2 days ago]

http://forum.deviantart.com/devart/senior/981960/?offset=50#comments 

It's not a flame...it's a discussion about how things/methodology can be fundamentally flawed.

The basis is.....

"Copyright theft/abuse is much like Grafitti ....the longer it is left 'public' the more it attracts.
People who clearly persist in abusing the rights of others need to be removed promptly.

An example....
[link]
First Violation report was several days ago....but since there has been spammed comment, etc....only adding to the perception of negativity/animosity within DA.

It is important [for any site] that situations requiring admin intervention be handled promptly......"

I apologize if my attempts to help end the situation, has hindered and or stagnated the process...

Over the years I have become accustomed to the Quick and professional handling of these types of problems here at WC, and just assumed it would be the same at DA..

I admit that I spammed the ripper's comment area in a moment of uncontrolled anger, and I regret that my actions may have tarnished the WC community in the eyes of others: that it may not have been unproductive in resolving this issue.

It is not something I would normally do, and I'll not use my insomnia or depression as an excuse, I should have exercised greater restraint sooner than I did and now wish that I had. Lowering myself to the standards of the ripper and those protecting him does not make me feel good about myself, particularly when the despicable little shite devolved it into a far worse shit-fight by posting derogatory pictures of mrs starkers and others.

However, in keeping with those who say being polite to this ripper simply doesn't work, earlier I merely posted once: "Do you think the longer you keep these stolen works up, the more they will become yours? Not in your lifetime!", and it was removed inside 5 minutes. mrs starkers then proceeded to post something similar and found that she had already been blocked/had a derogatory picture posted in his gallery. Strangely enough, I was not blocked and, as far as I know, am still not, though I shall not be going back to DA to check.

The point is, the cease and desist/removal requests began civilly enough, as did all the (non-weekend) rip reports identifying the stolen works, yet nothing was done to resolve the situation. The ripper kept rubbing our noses in it by removing comments and posting yet another stolen work...but just as relevant, probably more to the point for the 'ripped' artists, there was no acknowledgment from DA staff with regard to those rip inquiries.

Given that this was during a normal working week, and surely ample time prior to the weekend to at least investigate and acknowledge those inquiries, it's understandable that those more passionate will find the situation as totally unacceptable and feel a need to express their dissatisfaction. The spamming of the ripper's comment area was one way of venting that unanswered anger, and hopefully there will be no condemnation of those who sincerely felt that need.

As an update....to this particular person....he has 5 objects currently still up on DA.

One is a screenshot...one is that 'quaint' image of MrsStarkers and the remaining 3 have definitely been reported as policy violations [by me]...the last was the 'Apple Logon' about 15 minutes ago.

He himself has the capacity to 'hide' spammed comments [and clearly has done so - several times].

I expect that once the DA staff are back on duty [office hours] the remaining reported works will be removed...

Mrs starkers just logged back in, in response to an email she received, and it now seems that his entire gallery has been taken down...all he has up now are his favorites and friends lists.

Oh, and many thanks for your help and input, Jafo, it is much appreciated.

Yes, currently all are gone.

Now, if he has enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame it is likely he will re-offend.

Let's all not do likewise ....