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Flash Piracy in General
Ebaumsworld did dirty things, people called it. The site shifted gears towards paying for content. His employees contact me to pay me UP FRONT for hosting content, without even modifying it in any way. I talked to Matt from the site, and he discussed him policies towards hosting content... and he was very up front and clear how they operate. I have to admit, it felt like the site shifted several gears to provide content that was legally theirs to display and perform. People will continue to harp on Ebaums, because its the fun thing to do... regardless of the fact that people's flash are getting sold on Ebay or that reverse engineering is going on to get a high score system in and your logos out. But we still have time to bash Eric Bauman... because its something we can identify with.

But that's the blind eye our community likes. We have this inept ability to build a single synedoche and run with it in order to feel competent about our understanding of the "enemy" and to compensate for our anger in stolen content; then we won't let go of our target until there is new flesh to jump on. Yeah what Mr. Bauman did was terrible, and as was the actions of Site A, Site B, Site C, Site D, and so on. I am not trying to alleviate Bauman from his fallacies, but I am just asking people to see the breadth of the issue.

As discussed in a previous thread, over 55% of Flash developers on Newgrounds take absolutely no precautions in protecting their files on the web. There are free resources and tools available for your disposal, and people opt not to use them. Then when files get stolen, they get up in arms, kicking and screaming until even more people begin to kick and scream. Yeah, it shouldn't have to be your obligation to protect yourselves from steal, but that is is the way it is in the Flash community.

I just hope that some people will soon realize the irony of the situation. The analogy I like to think of when looking at the Flash community is the stolen bike. If your bike gets stolen from your front yard, you do not just leave the next one you get out there too. You lock it up, find ways to protect it. I see the Flash community leaving thousands of bikes in their front yards, as the thieves continue to choose their favorites from the bunch and ride them all the way home.

Good metaphor (metafor? matiphor? I'm not sure how to spell it...) jmtb02. I noticed that too. It's simple to protect your flashes yet barely anyone does it. My first few flashes didn't have it but I protect all of mine know even though I doubt poeple would steal them.
Anyway I noticed they got a link to .swf protect on the submit flash page now. All we can hope for is that poeple notice that.

lol I can't even ride a bike IRL. :P

kenney and sponsoring
what happened to kenney, i mean i know he got booted from armor studios, but he still can be sponsored by armor games right?
Is it because he stole code?

At 8/5/07 01:30 PM, hashbrown wrote: kenney and sponsoring
what happened to kenney, i mean i know he got booted from armor studios, but he still can be sponsored by armor games right?
Is it because he stole code?

Where did you find this?! Source or anything? I wanna find outtttt.

At 8/5/07 01:30 PM, hashbrown wrote: kenney and sponsoring
what happened to kenney, i mean i know he got booted from armor studios, but he still can be sponsored by armor games right?
Is it because he stole code?

Your the one who works for them now, why dont you ask?

At 8/5/07 01:30 PM, hashbrown wrote: kenney and sponsoring
what happened to kenney, i mean i know he got booted from armor studios, but he still can be sponsored by armor games right?
Is it because he stole code?

Ya what happend to him... and he got booted and stole code ???/ Realy?

At 8/5/07 12:12 PM, Paranoia wrote: How d'you work that out? Does the fact that he's making money automatically mean that he's got to be a cynical bastard out to exploit users for all they're worth?

First, I love Tom and Newgrounds.

Every flash host site out there wants you to submit content to their site so they can make a profit from it. I'm just so fed up with these Newgrounds fan boys who only submit flash content to Newgrounds and then bitch about some random site stealing their content. If some random flash host site stole your content then it means it's good. Take advantage from this.

Since almost every flash author out there is after money, chicks and fame, they should spread their flash content over the Internet, even on eBaumsworld, to establish a fan base that can visit your own flash host site.

Also I even think that you can persuade your sponsor to give you more $$$ for spreading your flash content over the web.

At 8/5/07 01:59 PM, Pezboy440 wrote: Ya what happend to him... and he got booted and stole code ???/ Realy?

According to this, Armor studios seperated with Armor Games, then Gab kicked Kenney out for some reason.

At 8/5/07 02:16 PM, Barbeq wrote:

At 8/5/07 12:12 PM, Paranoia wrote: How d'you work that out? Does the fact that he's making money automatically mean that he's got to be a cynical bastard out to exploit users for all they're worth?

First, I love Tom and Newgrounds.

Every flash host site out there wants you to submit content to their site so they can make a profit from it. I'm just so fed up with these Newgrounds fan boys who only submit flash content to Newgrounds and then bitch about some random site stealing their content.

Its not that people dont want their shit spread over the net its the fact that if you have any self respect you'd atleast TELL the author your stealing it... its an ethics issue.. i dont care that ebaums steals my shit.. i care that he doesnt even have the decency to say HAI Im using your shit fyi.

If little bobby wants to steal my shit and host it on his freewebs fine.. but if there are legitamite businesses and moguls out there clearly making a buck off of you dont you think its atleast semi respectable to atleast tell people you are jackin their shit ATLEAST TELL THEM. you can steal it.. atleast tell me your raping me. dont stick your cock up my ass and wait till i notice.

It would take him all of two mins to send out a prefabricated email.

RE: Flash Piracy in General

Well, the eBaums issue has kinda just been brought forward to 2007, because regardless of his site's current policy he is now effectively just taking a big pile of money and running, proving once and for all that years of stealing and generally being an asshole pays off.

I do think it's really pointless using the site as a scapegoat, though. It made sense back when they were at the top of their game and by far the biggest example of large scale profit from stolen content, but now they've changed site policy it doesn't make much sense to continue protesting as if there's still something we can get them to change. Nowadays there are plenty of much worse offenders around, and it's only because we don't have one unifying image or site like with eBaumsworld to target that people don't seem to care too much.

As for the whole protection thing, the main problem is that there's very little one individual to do. I could protect my games or demand them withdrawn from content stealing sites, but then what? They move onto the next developer to fill their 'ten new games a day' quota. They still get the content, and the only one really losing out is me by gimping the performance of my games in taking a stand that most other developers won't bother with.

In an ideal world sites which make money from hosting content without permission wouldn't be able to continue existing while generating money from ridiculous numbers of ads. But it's going to take a lot more than a load of scattered developers making their own stands to achieve that. Nothing short of either a mass boycott or campaign to raise awareness of actual viewers will make much of a dent on the machine. So, until someone arranges something like that, developers everywhere are going to continue allowing people to take their work, and the losers are as always the naive authors who don't understand the system enough to track or place links in their work, and the general morality of the world.

Anyways...

Change of subject

How's this for an intro scene for a new game?. Apart from the filter whoring and temporary sound effects, anyway.

The only problem is how I'm going to manage to get the whole thing finished by halloween, especially with it long enough to justify the lengthy intro :P I got a tonne of ideas; it's just a matter of getting them down in time.

well according to gabs, they didnt really like kenney, since he liked kicked out one of the guys and he was really bossy and stuff. (he also kicked me out ):, but that was before i knew him), but according to him kenney stole code. im not sure if i should believe him cause i think he hasngt liked kenney for a long time so it might be false, but if he made marios time attack when he was 14, why would he have to porrow pyromaniacs code to make a platformer (the cave man one). i dont hink he was booted for stealing code, i think that gabriel had a grudge against him for kicking out wiet since he didnt do anything (gabriel and wiet were long time friends). personally id like to still have kenney in armor studios, cause he was cool and hes the reason why they are so popular. in my book kenney i still cool, since i have no reason to hate him, since he hasnt done anything to me since ive known him.

heres a pic of gabriel ranting about how kenney stole code its from the backgorund of the redesign.

Gabs redirected kenneys old site to lemonparty
I mean, if shit has happened you've still got to stay proffesional, it makes you wonder whos telling the truth, the person who redirected someones site to lemonparty or w/e

paranoia
Your intro is very nice, the text at the start goes on for a bit long but the rest is cool.

\

heres a pic of gabriel ranting about how kenney stole code its from the backgorund of the redesign.

wow strong stuff.

At 8/5/07 02:58 PM, fuzz wrote: Gabs redirected kenneys old site to lemonparty

yeah i have to agree, thats terrible

Welcome back, fuzz!

Paranoia's intro

Its ok, but definatly make a skip intro button.

Btw - I dislike most intos.

At 8/5/07 02:33 PM, Luis wrote: It would take him all of two mins to send out a prefabricated email.

You're absolutely right Luis and as you said it's an ethical problem. But aren't you a little happy that your work is spreading around the net without your permission?

The first time watched some of your stuff wasn't from Newgrounds and I don't think you wouldn't have been that big today if it wasn't for people who submit your stuff to other sites.

RPG Puzzle Games

how do you guys feel about RPG puzzle games, like puzzle quest. i personally find them really wierd so i dont play them.

RPG Puzzle Games

Anything that makes me have to think I stay away from. AS, Puzzles, Word Searches, Find Waldo, it all gives me a headach. But yeah, RPG Puzzles are hard. Like the ones in the XenoSaga series... I got stuck so many times. I didn't find them fun but I was celibrating once I figured out one that toke me 2 months,

At 8/4/07 05:51 PM, Paranoia wrote:

At 8/4/07 05:42 PM, Toast wrote:

At 8/4/07 05:27 PM, azwsxdcrfv wrote: Maybe he went back to.... REAL LIFE!

Please god no!

Ye cause I totally had no life when I posted 50 messages the last 2 weeks. There's nothing to do on these forums anymore.

Toast! Young man! You SHALL stay, or by gum I'll... Well, I'll have a bloody good word with you is what I'll do!

ok i stay. But half of my posts get deleted 'cause they're "whine posts" or "posts about the old 2005 bbs" :(

this was not a whine post, it was an informative post.

At 8/5/07 03:23 PM, Barbeq wrote:

At 8/5/07 02:33 PM, Luis wrote: It would take him all of two mins to send out a prefabricated email.

You're absolutely right Luis and as you said it's an ethical problem. But aren't you a little happy that your work is spreading around the net without your permission?

Well all i have to say is if peoples work has made ebaums so wealthy you'd think the least he could do is tell you when hes 'featuring' you... i mean atleast let me have the satisfaction of TELLING people hey my animation has been featured on major sites like ebaums/newgrounds/bla bla bla ... let me also benefit from it you know what im saying? By just helping himself he really shows a lack of respect for the hard work you put into it. Does it make me happy for people to rip my work (despite that I would have given to them anyway), plug it on their site, have whole collections of just my work and never bother to tell me that they are 'helping' me? no doesnt make me happy.

I think people side with newgrounds because ng has always been a site that is heavily against just taking things and uploading it to the site. They have whistles and other measures to encourage people that just taking something and uploading it to newgrounds is not how they want to make money. Ebaums on the other hand has no problem with that.

At 8/5/07 04:23 PM, Luis wrote: eBaum's bad.

Why are people still argueing this? Everyones argueing for the same point: Stealing's bad, NG's good.

Kenney

Lets go ahead and move on from talking about kenney... theres something wrong about going through other peoples issues... dont take shit that you find on the internet so seriously, obviously if Gabs and Kenney arent getting along, just taking Gab's story is going to paint a worse picture of Kenney than someone unbiased. Same thing with taking a story told by Kenney. Its a lose-lose- situation, you'll never really find the real truth of the matter and you probably have no business in it anyway.

Working with others in the flash scene is similar to having a band.. as your fame grows it becomes harder and harder to work together, at some point you decide hey i could probably be just as succesful or more so going solo, and so people do, theres bitter breakups etc etc.

I just think its fucked up to be talking really lengthy discussions about speculations of another user on this site.

Lets change subjects K?

In an effort to put the ebaums vs. ng / kenney vs. gabs discussion to rest, lets try some new topic.

Do your flash interests trace back within your bloodlines at all?

For example, if youre an animator, does your daddy, or mommy do something art related careerwise? Was your grandad some famous painter or architect, how does the art thing fit into your bloodline or was it some fluke that you panned out this way?

If youre a coder, does your brother or dad or whomever have backgrounds in programming?

Sometimes its interesting to hear how ones environments or upbringings have shaped a person.

At 8/5/07 03:07 PM, trig1 wrote: Paranoia's intro

Its ok, but definatly make a skip intro button.

Btw - I dislike most intos.

Done and done.

Different topic

hay luis hows that new movie of yours commin along..... and we see a preview?

At 8/5/07 04:41 PM, Pezboy440 wrote: Different topic

hay luis hows that new movie of yours commin along..... and we see a preview?

he could, but then hed have to kill you

Artistic/Coding Upbringing

As far as I know, neither of my parents are artistic, and I know they don't program stuff. My brother is a decent artist, but doesn't draw hardly at all. In my extended family, I have a cousin who is an amazing artist, but I'm lucky to see him once every few years. I can't find his site at the moment, but if I do, I'll link it.

At 8/5/07 04:44 PM, hashbrown wrote:

At 8/5/07 04:41 PM, Pezboy440 wrote: Different topic

hay luis hows that new movie of yours commin along..... and we see a preview?

he could, but then hed have to kill you

oh..... ok... that suckz. :P

At 8/5/07 04:37 PM, Luis wrote: For example, if youre an animator, does your daddy, or mommy do something art related careerwise? Was your grandad some famous painter or architect, how does the art thing fit into your bloodline or was it some fluke that you panned out this way?

My dad and my grandpa are architects, my grandma does some painting, my uncle is a photographer, and my other uncle is a movie script writer for tv... well, not a direct form of art but they work with movies/photographs etc.

If youre a coder, does your brother or dad or whomever have backgrounds in programming?

No. I'm the only programmer within my family and my RL friends.

did anyone see the X games? i dont like them too much but the tickets were free for me so i went, i only saw the BMX cometition and the Motorcycle stuff on friday. the BMX cometition was CRAZY, lots of tricks and air. this guy kevin robinson got first place again. what surprised me is Matt Hoffman, the BMX legend, ended up in 6th place, and did no tricks whatsoever, and he fell a couple of times. some say its bevcause he wasnt even supossed to go to that, that he just went to chill out or something... weird, i tought it was time for him to retire or something haha.