Major Rip Violation! Please Look!

I must admit He asked, and received permission to use some of my Icons, and has consistently asked permission since, I He only includes a few in his packs and has included a link to my page so I am OK with it. I don't use .MSSTYLES but I have no objection to this site.
Thats just me though. Considering how much effort he has gone through to ask permission from me, I will be quite surprised if he did not ask the other artist noted.

He didn't ask starone

He's also selling "his" work. I think it is good that he is selling his work. I think it isn't good that apparently he's also selling other people's work even when he does give them credit.

He has my wallpapers on there too, without my permission,and on some he didn't even bother to change the name of the image!!
I have mailed him to ask him to remove my work or suffer the consequences.

Where's Jafo when you need him?

To...webmaster...[whatever]
[forgive me...I have the flu and a sore head...so was a bit slow to respond to this one]...


Hi,
JAFO here.....
Nice site, BTW..neatly laid out and easy to get around..

2 Possible problems, however.

It is not entirely clear whether you have actual permissions to display/host images/icons/themes, etc that are not your own.
It is not sufficient just to show 'credits' to these works, you are legally required to seek and obtain specific individual permissions for each from each artist/author concerned.
Nothing to do with protocol, merely with the laws [International] of Copyright.

I'm aware that one or two people haven't granted permission at this stage so It'd be wise to rectify matters accordingly.

Secondly, I 'assume' the works you are expecting to charge a fee for are entirely your own work and/or you have entered specific agreements with authors of any included work/s.

The following is a standard email found quite appropriate on many similar occasions in the past.
Please take note, and respond appropriately.

Cheers,
Paul Martin
JAFO
Admin, Wincustomize.com

It appears that you are displaying numerous wallpaper images on your site originally created by authors other than yourself.
Although images are freely available for download on the Internet, they are EXPRESSLY for personal use, which does not include the reproduction and redistribution of them via another site such as yours.
The modification, and/or re-distribution of an artist's images without his/her express permission is in violation of the Artist's Copyright, and is pursuable in law.

Whether these images link to the original artist's site or not, or whether the Original artist is credited or not, without prior permission to display such, you are in violation of inherent and/or expressed copyright.

I strongly suggest you remove any such images for which you do not have permission to display, and minimize the potential for litigation against you and subsequent claims for loss.

I await your favourable response.

Paul Martin
Jafo
[Admin...Wincustomize.com]
[Admin...Pixtudio.com]
[Senior Member...Deviantart.com]

hehe, that was much nicer than my mail Paul!

Thank You jafo

I like how jafo politely gets to the point

Thank you everyone. Things have been settled on my part. As far as I'm concerned the issue is closed.

Seems like all will be well...

My last communication....

Thomas...
Thanks for getting back to me so promptly.

Many guys 'in the game' rely on me to help out when 'problems' arise....apparently because I explain the situation so well....[some do not have English as a first language, and often call for my help.

If only everyone was as considerate as yourself....
So often I get people arguing that it's all 'free' so who cares, etc....but the fact is that the artist 'needs' to keep control of where his work ends up being displayed/associated....it could end up on a 'skin' site of the flesh 'variety'...which might not be 'desirable'...

The guys concerned will likely have got in touch with you, eg. Bryan [BoXXi], etc...and I'm glad you're going to keep a tight control on things.

Best way to prevent further 'questioning' would be to perhaps link to a text file of appropriate permission emails, whatever, or do as is usually done in zipped files...include the permission.txt with the zip...

Anyway,
Thanks again,
Cheers,
Paul.
JAFO

This guy asked for my permission too, and i said 'yes'. BTW there's credits to me. For my works, there's no rips and no problems.
Anyway, if there's some icons/wallpaper uploaded on their site without permission, it must be stopped.

LightStar has a permission from me too, this time it is not a ripping question


Thank you Lavant for your info

I wish someone would ask me for permission to use my art... Oh wait... I'm not an artist, I just cut and paste and edit.
Damn! Maybe if I practice.
Just joking guys. Jafo, nice work.


Damn those Rippers!!!! >

Power To The People !


Right On.

Hello again Folks

Recently there have been some heavy issues regarding Authors rights. People stealing, ripping, Borrowing with out the proper permission.

In the past, a case such as this, people would often preconceive the situation, and tempers would arise leading arguments and nasty comments(Me included), and before long the thread runs out of control leaving people with a bad taste in their mouth.

Well Folks I am beaming with Pride for our 'neck of the woods" because this Thread ended ia a positive fashion.

I have received an E-Mail from Thomas at LightStar.com, and i wish to share it with everyone to show (In conjunction with jafo's E-Mails) how these things can end in professional an positive way. I have learned something from this and i hope that others may too.



I wish to personally apologize for the copyright infringements that
were
pointed out to me on my site. When I first started in Visual Styles, I
probably was not aware of copyright laws, and as such I had made a few
indiscretions that were overlooked until now. I have completely
destroyed
the wallpapers by Boxxi, and apologized to him, and straightened out
the
confusion with StarOne, and apologized to her as I had thought I
contacted
her. I had lost all of my permissions in a system crash a few weeks
ago and
had to rebuild my OS. All of the other authors had given their
permission,
but in trying to conserve diskspace, I extremely limited the amount of
text
in at my site by only including credits. I will be including a
permssions
statement on all releases as soon as possible. The statement about my
doing
custom work for a fee on my site has been removed, I had only put it
there
the day before, and I would never have used other authors works with
any of
my work unless I had obtained permission prior. I have never made any
money
off of any of my work, at any requests I have fulfilled have been FREE,
and
mostly done for children. I will be revamping my site to insure there
are
no other problems like this as soon as possible.

Thomas H. Reichert

A.K.A. - LightStar

LightStar Technologies
http://www.lightstar1.com/

elvee....yes, I said Thomas was one of the 'good guys'...

Wow, Thomas H. Reichert a.k.a LightStar is a rare one. Too bad others aren't like him.

I must say he has good taste in skins

Very refreshing...