Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Ship Images and Copyright

This is topic Ship Images and Copyright in forum Officers' Lounge at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://flare.solareclipse.net/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/1148.html

Posted by Laz1701 on :

I'm posting this because this is the umpteenth time I have visited a link provided in one of this forum's threads only to discover that yet another Trek website uses images from my site without permission.

The latest offender is the Ares Expanse SOTF website, a site I like very much and find very informative. But the fact I like it and find it informative doesn't quell my outrage at its use of many of the drawings created by me and by John T. Moltz. I am not even talking of kitbashes made with the ship kits that include components from my drawings and the drawings of John T. Moltz. I am talking about images lifted straight from my site - including images of ships I invented and designed, such as the Perseus, Odysseus, and Icarus classes. Then I looked at the collection of links at the site, and of course, there's no link to mine included... even though the webmaster visited it to obtain the images.

The copyright notice on my site is very explicit and very simple. It states I have no objection to my images being used on other sites - as long as permission is asked, credit is given, and a link to my site is provided. I have yet to deny permission to anyone who's bothered to request it and fulfill the terms of my notice, and I don't intend to. Those terms don't seem like much to ask, but many webmasters seem to think they are, apparently. When I wanted to include Fabrux's Molson class on my site because I liked it very much, I asked him for permission to include his kitbash - a kitbash made with components I had drawn. Yet webmasters of starship sites can't even be bothered to ask for permission to use my images, or to meet the requests of my copyright notice.

When Paramount started cracking down on Trek sites, I thought they were being anal, and I still do. But I am not a billion-dollar corporation jumping on fans or other individuals. *I* am one of those fans and individuals myself, and I find this kind of behavior by other fans and individuals discourteous and offensive in the extreme. But I have no other recourse than to notify the offenders and ask for simple courtesy, to post something like this here... and in the end, perhaps, remove my site from the web so that it cannot be pilfered any longer.

------------------
The Starship Encyclopedia

Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

I don't exactly see why this is here. Why not Officers Lounge or Flameboard?

------------------
"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey

The 359 Webpage

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

You can email whoever is hosting the sites, also. They can usually take care of the problem.

------------------
Frank's Home Page
"So, anyways, this is the 24th century. Starfleet officers have injections once a month or so so that they don't go getting each other pregnant. How would it be a problem for my character and Joral to be rocking the casbah?" - Fabrux

Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

To be honest, when I first started posting your images on my site, I had thought of crediting you, but I saw that so many sites out there didn't, and for some reason I thought I didn't have to either. But then you contacted me and asked me to credit you. I now credit you and every time this comes up I apologize for not crediting you in the first place. So, once again, I'm sorry for not crediting you in the past

------------------
Star Trek: Leeds
Creator, Producer, Only Writer

Posted by bonecrusher on :

Shut up, email the guy that did, we dont care, people take stuff from my site and I dont bitch about it!

------------------
"I Got two words for you.. S*uck it!"-DeGeneration X
Oh Hell Ya there back!

Bonecrusher
http://members.xoom.com/smartiee

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Well, just because you don't doesn't mean that everyone shouldn't.

Posted by Vacuum robot lady from Spaceballs (Member # 239) on :

bonecrusher: There's nothing on your site that anybody would want to steal anyway.

Laz: E-mail the guy. Make him give you credit or a link or whatnot, or tell his provider and get them to shut him down.

------------------
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-Mark Twain

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

What ever happened to the coalition that the BG was gogin to form to crack down on this stuff after UP1 got ripped off by the "Antaries" site? I'm thinking this is something that needs to be resurrected.

And Starships really is the wrong Forum for this. Probably the OL is the best place for it. *moves it there*

------------------
"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"

Posted by Laz1701 on :

I emailed the webmaster before I started this thread. I don't know if it'll do any good, because the last time I emailed a webmaster who'd done the same thing, I never heard from him, and he didn't correct the situation.

As for posting this in the starship forum, sorry about that, I didn't even think of posting it here, as I hardly ever visit this forum. I visited the SOTF site through a link in one of the threads in the starship forum and automatically posted there.

Fabrux: Don't worry about it. You don't need to keep apologizing. Once is enough.

TSN: Perhaps a coalition is necessary. I know that WWII sites have a coalition for protecting their images and other files. Maybe there needs to be a similar coalition for Trek sites. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, and I know I'm not the only person whose images are used without permission or even stolen. Like I said before, I don't mind people using my images. It's flattering, really. But to do so without even asking is just plain wrong. If a guy stops me on the street and asks for a quarter, I'll give it to him... but it's quite another thing if he sneaks up behind me and picks my pocket.

Bonecrusher: Maybe you don't care about people stealing your work, but *I* care about people stealing *my* work. And other people whose work is also stolen care when it happens to *them*. People work very hard on the images they create, and sharing them on the web shouldn't mean they're open targets for theft. Are you saying we don't have the right to complain or "bitch" about it? We should just put up with it and shut up? Who is going to make me shut up? You and what army?

------------------
The Starship Encyclopedia

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Some sort of confederation of our sites, eh? Some sort of...I don't know...call it...call it an alliance, if you will. Yes. That has a nice ring to it. Alliance. Somebody should really get cracking on that. They should do it right away, before I sneak into their room at night and brain them with a very dusty lamp. Yes...that's it. Wait, what's that? Hey, how did you get in--ow!

------------------
"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :

Laz, could ya drop me a mail at [email protected]? I'd like to talk to you about this in private, including details on how you can not only (mostly) prevent it from happening again, but on how you can get the bastard's site killed.
Trust me, after a year of shutting down UPI copycats, you get the hang of it...

The Trek copyright protection society sorta fizzled when noone got involved. *L* I suppose it can get started again.

------------------
"You shot him! You shot him dead!!"
"Well, he was attacking me with a banana!"

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Sol: Actually, I was referring to the anti-infringement team that never really formed. I knew that the Alliance, to some extent, happened. 'Course, I wonder at the fact that Goffy "just" announced the closing of the STZ. I wouldn't have called a year "just", but okay... :-)

------------------
"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"

Posted by Trip Tucker (Member # 297) on :

Hi everyone. I agree with Laz about people pirating his stuff. It's so rude! They could at least give you the courtesy to ask! I think, though, that there's an HTML code out there for images that let's you block people from saving your stuff. But you shouldn't have to use it anyway! When I'm in a website, I always check to see if they have a message concerning images. I e-mail them, they answer. Done. It's people that are too lazy to write e-mail that do this.
You should put a message at your site reading:
NO pirating! This means you, you f**cker!

----------------------
It is offensive. Fortunately taste is irrelevant.
-Seven of Nine

Posted by Laz1701 on :

When somebody lifts images from my site, they're not only lifting my images, they're also lifting the images of John T. Moltz. John started the encyclopedia way back when with his original drawings of the five Enterprises, and while many of the images on my site are my own drawn completely from scratch, many others are based on his original components. I don't even know where John is these days. I lost touch with him quite a while ago and have no current email address for him, but I've taken great pains to indicate on my site that a lot of the work is his, and to protect that work along with my own.

------------------
The Starship Encyclopedia

Posted by Dane Simri (Member # 272) on :

Um, bonecrusher, that looks like it stings. You might want to put some Bactine on there or something.

------------------
Dane

"Mathematicians have long held that a million monkeys banging on a million keyboards would eventually reproduce the collected wisdom of the human race. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Silensky

Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

Well, they have also taken a few images from my site. Maybe those people actually think that my Enclopedia-like images are actually done by Doug Drexler?

Laz: Unfortunately there are far too many sites one the web that already use your images. When I was new to the web four years ago, I found them virtually everywhere, and, naive as I was in those days, I thought they were sort of "Freeware". Quite the opposite applies to Jim Stevenson's SSD. Everyone knows the images are from his site, although he did only a small part of them himself. So he mostly gets credit.

I guess if you kindly remind people of giving you credit, they will do so in 80% of all cases. I have only one very bad experience with a guy who copied my whole starship list, pretending that it was "Paramount copyright", and stuff from three other websites likewise. When I reminded him again (the third time) and told the other webmasters, he started uttering mean insults against me...

------------------
"Species 5618, human. Warp-capable, origin grid 325, physiology inefficient, below average cranium capacity, minimum redundant systems, limited regenerative abilities."
Ex Astris Scientia

Posted by Laz1701 on :

The SOTF webmaster has replied to my email and agreed to provide credit and a link, so that situation has been resolved. I do wish, however, that people would read the copyright notice on my site and ask permission before using images, eliminating the need to have to email them after the fact and straighten things out.

As for Jim's SSD site, I noticed that someone submitted many of my designs for conjectural starships, using images from my site that have been cropped and converted to black-and-white. I've emailed Jim and asked him to identify the Starship Encyclopedia as the source of these designs instead of the name of the person who submitted them.

------------------
The Starship Encyclopedia