Is this a rip?
Wednesday, July 18, 2001 by treetog | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
http://www.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentId=61331
I really don't know how to proceed, since the person gave the credits in the skin's description, but never asked for my persmission and also changed my original graphics (erasing the skins real name of the titlebar).
I remember that last year, someone made a rip's list at skinz org and all the ripped skins were banished from the damn winamp.com site.
It seems that this kind of sucking things will never ands there.

Reply #102 Saturday, July 21, 2001 9:36 PM
>"all you do is sit in front of your computers creating little pretty little pictures,like 5 year olds did at school""How many of you have downloaded mp3's off Napster etc,knowingly doing so without the full consent of the copyright holder?You are all such a bunch of fucking hypocrites."<
I doubt you will find many people here that have used napster. I myself (as a musician) would rather buy the music and give something back to the artist!
...give up that attitude you have.....why are you being so offensive, when it is YOU that is in the wrong?....or maybe that's why!....you already know that you have done the wrong thing!!!
Reply #103 Saturday, July 21, 2001 11:31 PM

Reply #104 Saturday, July 21, 2001 11:49 PM
Reply #105 Sunday, July 22, 2001 12:59 AM
you wouldn't happen to have a leak of that information would you???
Reply #106 Sunday, July 22, 2001 8:15 AM
Reply #108 Sunday, July 22, 2001 3:55 PM
Winamp.com has an update schedule that we refer to as a “push” which happens once every week. We all have our changes for the week committed and ready to go live on every Tuesday afternoon. Then we have a QA (Quality Assurance) period which we review all the changed we made and hope they don’t break anything when the site goes live. Thursday morning, the changes are pushed onto the live servers and the site goes live.
The first that I heard of this mess was on 7/18/2001. That was a Wednesday, which means that the artwork and everything for the site update was already submitted for that coming week and was being examined by QA before going live. Basically, at that point, we can not go in and change anything. All those featured skins, plug-ins, and music are hard coded so it meant that whatever changes were made we not to be touched until the following week. At the point that I contacted Treetog, I was not aware that the Spunkit skin was going to be featured on the site, so I had given him the choice of having the skin removed from our archives. Unfortunately, once I was told that the skin was being featured, I was told that we can’t remove the skin until the next update.
At that point, I informed Treetog of the situation. I was definitely not happy about it but there’s not much that I can do. We usually deal with rips of skins and plug-ins rather swiftly (the moment we find out about it, we remove it within a few hours) but in this case, it proved to be a rather large problem for us.
So what happens next? Thursday, the next site update will go live, I’m hoping that Treetog has submitted the correct skin because I would like to update it the feature to point to the correct authors work. We will also remove the ripped skin and I will have the person’s account terminated off our site.
I am not sure what else we can personally do to make up for it.
So how will we stop this kind of thing happening in the future? At the moment, our publishing system on our site has been pretty broken. We’ve only been able to have one skin reviewer review skins at one time and this person wasn’t even someone involved in the community. This has proven to be a huge problem for us. In the past several months, Kyle, Denny, Daniel, and I have all been working on developing a system where we can appoint moderators for each category of skins and plug-ins in our database and they would be responsible for reviewing new skins and removing ripped ones from our database. I hope to get our 40,000 skin archive slimmed down to a lean *original* collection of skins that people feel they can submit work to and be proud to have on our site.
We are a rather small team and have a LOT of work in front of us. There’s only so much we can do, but I promise, we’re working on it.
-s
Reply #109 Sunday, July 22, 2001 6:13 PM
It is most unfortunate that your site management/architecture enables stolen work to be un-removable for a week, giving free reign to the degradation of an Artist's reputation.
It is also 'unfortunate' that a skin can be featured and publicised even when it appears to have been obvious that it was not the work of the person who submitted it.
So, one day next week, the skin will be deleted, the account of a person who has claimed no interest in skinning and just posted a rip out of boredom will be deleted.
Life will go on.
But this will not be forgotten.
Until there is in place a capacity for instant rectification of 'anomalies of database', I for one, shall continue never to post my work on your site.
Paul Martin
Jafo.
Reply #110 Sunday, July 22, 2001 6:41 PM
FYI I've already uploaded these two works of "art" to Winamp,they should appear anytime soon,I've uploaded them under the name Jafo,we wouldn't want to steal yor glory would we,I've left out your original transparencies as you can tell,we'll let people make their own mind up about your talents.
Now I've got to go have a look through the other skins at Wincustomize.com,see which others I can "RIP".
Seeya!!!!
This is the rippers latest email to me...with attachment, which I am loathe to open.
Steve, this changes the game somewhat.
You are here-by given notice, prior to your database being 'updated' that any, and all submissions under the name 'Jafo' are stolen, and are of malicious intent.
So...
BEFORE they have a chance to appear on your site, they shall be removed.
If not, I will be forced to delete any and all Winamp skins from any and all skin sites on which they are posted.
In that way, my reputation will not be sullied any further by another's incapacity to protect it.
The one or two people out there that have appreciated my Transparent WinAMP skins will be able to enjoy their rarity.
Never mind, though, Steve, I'm only one.....squillions of PPL out there have the capacity to use a photoskin proggy so you will always have works of 'quality'.
Paul Martin
JAFO
Reply #111 Sunday, July 22, 2001 6:50 PM
Reply #112 Sunday, July 22, 2001 9:23 PM
Reply #113 Sunday, July 22, 2001 10:02 PM
Article based on this issue at WinAmp.com
Just thought I'd pass along the link.
Reply #114 Sunday, July 22, 2001 10:06 PM
Reply #115 Sunday, July 22, 2001 10:36 PM
LineOne is a London based ISP. I checked:
www.BT.com
www.UKPhonebook.com
There are two A Alan listings....Hmm
Closing in on you baby!
Bill
Reply #116 Sunday, July 22, 2001 11:53 PM
Microsoft did it! Look at the use of color in the apple logo, then look at the MS-Windows logo. hmmmm... Apple has always been a step ahead of MS in style and art. Hell look at the cases. Damn, did it get way off topic or what???

mad_cat
Reply #117 Monday, July 23, 2001 12:25 AM
It appears that all is good in the land of skin, once more.
Angela Alan has removed the Spunkit skin from Winamp.
She has apologised to me by email, and has said she has done likewise to treetog.
As of now, I am hoping that this is now history.
I believe there are movements afoot to resolve this sort of thing, and preventing it from happening in the future at Winamp's web-site.
Promises to be a good result....

Reply #118 Monday, July 23, 2001 12:45 AM
I read it slowly.
Oh how i wish i woudl have read soemthing like: "No part of this work may be altered for redistibution without the prior consent of the artist. © Renato..."
i didn'd find it tho...this woudl be a whole different story if i had!
Perhaps we should have a lawyer from some successfull company (ahem) tell us what should be in a "readme file" to protect artists rights and to correct things liek this.......something that coudl be "templated" or published soemwhere for copy-paste...hmmmmmmmm
Reply #119 Monday, July 23, 2001 3:53 AM
"Copy this and the Winged Daemon of the Night will hunt you and your family down and cast you into the Pit of Oblivion" (something along these lines came with ancient version of WinAmp if I'm not mistaken)
Reply #120 Monday, July 23, 2001 7:17 AM
May it be that winamp.com and the Nullsoft team protect the 'true' artists of this community with valour and courage into the future and against those that sought to make shadows of the light.

----
Seriously though, i hope it all works out for the best..
& btw, i'd like to add here, that i've always been rather amazed and impressed by the magnitute to which the 'real' skinning community (mainly veterans of skinz.org) make it their seemingly endless duty to erradicate ripping - It's not an easy task to continuesly try to quell such unruly rippers like the little upstart spoken of through-out this thread.
---
ps. Treetog, like Frogboy said, you did the right thing posting to the ripper and to Nullsoft without getting overly p!$$ed off and instead, using persuasion and a normal "if you would kidly..." tone to your emails.

pss. It almost scares me to think that i read through this entire thread from start to finish, eek, i'll be having nightmares about skinning and ripping tonight.

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Reply #101 Saturday, July 21, 2001 9:25 PM
If our work is like that of a five year old's, at what maturity level would you have to be to copy it?