well togtree!...no we haven't "contributed to world peace,abolished famine etc", but we at least do the work that we call our own!....unlike yourself.

>"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!!!

I deleted the little geek's post. If he continues to behave in this way, we'll have to contact his ISP. I don't think the kid realizes how much data a web message board receives when one posts.

Aha, so that's why these last post seem so incoherent.

I’d like to take the time and write to all of you in regards to this huge mess that’s been generated by the Sputnik skin and try to get everyone to understand why it’s still on our site and when it will come down.

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

Just thought I'd give you a sneak preview of my next submissions to Winamp.com.All that bullshit you gave about the "Skinners code of honour",if these two skins are an example of your "talents" then God help the rest of you.
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

Wow, long thread, this will probably never get read, but it looks like our friend has done the right thing and pulled the skin, either that or the good folks over at winamp.com did it for them. I ran into a similar issue some months back - I am a website designer/developer, and I did a site for a friend, partly as a favour. Within 2 weeks someone sent me a link to another site that had ripped the entire thing, even the graphics, and just changed the text. At first I was pretty mad, but I sent them a letter exaggerating the amount of time I spent on it (it was a favour, it wasn't exactly the pinnacle of my design skills), and a nice little invoice for $6000, with request for payment or an immediate cease and decist of using my material. I spoke to a lawyer, who said that I could sue them, but it would probably cost me far more in legal fees than I could ever get out of them, and it would be pretty much an exercise in futility. As much as I would've loved that kind of money for a single day's work, they did remove it within a week. What does this have to do with anything? Well, people can just be assholes sometimes, and the only things on your side are faith in human nature and the threat of legal action.

Or go here http://www.winamp.com/ and read the "Keep your skin to yourself" article...

Everyone who does something new or does things better will eventually be copied. The trick is to use what you have seen to fuel your creative fire, and not to make changes to art that is some else's.

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

i have been looking at the Readme file from Treetogs Sputnik skins.
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

It is my hope that this thread has started in motion events that should and could resolve problems such as this at winamp.com for ever-more.

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.

This is going to be my last word on the (Spunkit) subject, I was the one who uploaded the skin to Winamp.com & at the time I did it I didn't realize that in skinning circles this was considered to be the ultimate crime.To a person like me who has no interest in these kind of things and also in my naivity (or complete ignorance) I thought as long as as I give the original Skinner (treetog) complete credit for his work then that was all there was to it,how wrong I was.
Bear in mind I posted this skin in May,it is now July & to be honest I'd completely forgotten about it.Then a few days ago I started receiving emails telling me I'm the scum of the earth,how my mother was a whore,if she wasn't dead yet then she soon would be,fucking cunt this fucking that etc etc,& various other threats & obscenities,& of course telling me to take down the offending skin.
Now I'm a reasonable person,but like most people (I Hope) I do not respond to these kind of threats,not all of these emails were threats by the way, there were some reasonable ones,but to me the damage was done,my back was up.
My one regret is that I let these people get to me and sank down to their level with my obscene & childish postings to various sites slagging off all skinners as kids with nothing better to do,being free with my own obscenities,and so on.My main regret is that I behaved in a disgusting manner towards treetog,when all he wanted was for me to remove his skin,as I said the damage was already done.Still that's no excuse for treating him like I have done & also for stealing his skin in the first place,I've already emailed him my apologies,but again I do apologise.
That just leaves Paul Martin aka jafo,I've also emailed Paul apologising for my behaviour towards him,again Paul I apologise.
Lastly,to all dedicated & genuine skinners,I apologise,to the people who sent me threats & abuse "Fuck You"


Angela

I've posted an article in response to this situation on our website, I'd like you all to read it. It's our full side of the story. Thanks...

-s

http://www.winamp.com/news.jhtml?articleid=9093