Yep. I've seen these around so I decided to make one of my own. Heh, don't bottle up your emotions, let them out. I doubt anyone will take the time to read these, but meh. At least they'll provide blackmail material for all my friends. Joy.
After the rant, there will be a book to sign your comments. It's called a guestbook. If you haven't signed it already, please sign it. Hehehe :)
July 3, 2000- The first rant! This one's about copyrights.
If you don't know already, the Cybersix community is very protective of their stuff. When I first got introduced to it, I thought everyone was being overly paranoid and anal.
It's very hard to sympathize, and this is my way of trying to explain. I once saw a site where it was like "Do not touch anything. Do not touch these pictures. If I see a site with three words together that are the same as mine, I will hunt you down." Blah blah blah.
In my head I see two roads: one of people who want to protect their stuff and eventually leads to ulcers and paranoia, and one of "Who does it hurt? It's the internet!" which eventually leads to dishonor and thievery. Neither roads are good in extreme, but both are important to a certain degree.
Needless to say, I was on the "Who does it hurt?" road in the beginning. I'm not a very empathetic person. All that I saw were people having a cow over a slipped word or a drawing that looked like someone else's. People were being very rigid and intolerant and I didn't understand why. I'm not saying they were right to throw a spaz, but eventually you'll find they have a very good reason to.
Anyway, now I've learned and I'm starting to lean with the side of "Do not touch my stuff or I will shoot you." Not totally there, but I'm getting there. In front of me, I can see my friends jogging at top speed, hurtling down the cliff, and I can see someone already at the point of no return. It's sad, but it's completely understandable and as you keep reading, I hope you can understand as well. It's saddening, but I don't think I'm that anal yet. For example, I let people take the Cybersix pictures off of the Image Gallery, even though some don't; because in the bigger communities, there are so many fan pages that eventually you forget who you took it off of and they really don't care. But Cybersix is a small community, so people are paranoid.
BTW, should you take any pictures off, and display them on your webpage, you have to add a line saying that they are property of Telecom. Just because I say that I don't care doesn't mean that you can say that you drew them, for example. But no one's stupid enough to do that... (Yes, I'm being sarcastic here. There had been an incident where someone took a picture- this one and tried to pass it off as her drawing)
When people are paranoid of other people copying them- their stories, their webpages, their art, their characters, whatever- it does sound egotistic. You might think, "Oh, who the hell would copy off of YOU?" That's what I thought. And I also thought that it wouldn't happen to me. I mean, come on, my art isn't that great, my character's mediocre, and my fanfics are meh. But it did happen to me. Somehow, there was a character who just happened to die and come back with Resurrection. (That's changed since then, I think)
Oh man, I went totally ballistic. And it stayed with me afterwards. It's like a person who was robbed. Afterwards they may buy a gun and they're less trusting. After two or three incidents, they see everything as a potential plagarism.
And it hurts just as if someone stole from you. Suppose you had something that you valued. You came up with it on your own and it was special and unique. You don't want anything to ever happen to it and make it lose it's specialness. Suppose someone decided that they were too lazy or ignorant to come up with their own material and they take yours- that special, unique thing that you value. It's a stretch of the imagination and empathy, but it feels downright rotten and frustrating.
After at least two incidents, you'll become completely intolerant, and, if I may admit, downright difficult to get along with. Nothing is completely foolproof, especially on the Internet, and it is unbelievably easy to right-click, take something and claim it as your own (BTW, don't do that, that's wrong).
While I think that hording Cybersix images is silly, because Cybersix is relatively unknown and images are hard to come by, I do think that people should at least give credit to other people's work. Like drawings. That isn't an image, it's somebody's hard work and if you don't give credit, people can easily think that you drew it (whether or not you intend them to). Would it kill you to add a line that says "This was drawn by so-and-so"? Are people taht unbelievably lazy? If one is too lazy and ignorant to email a person and ask him or her to display their work, one should at least say who it's by, and, if you want to be totally courteous, make a link back to that person's site. Personally, I just want people to give me credit for a drawing, in the rare case that someone wants to use one of my drawings. A lot of hard work went into them. Of course, to be on the safe side, I now have to be annoying and prevent taking of pics at all, so you have to email me.
I felt horribly rotten and mom-ish adding the prevention of right-clicking to several of the pages, but there are people out there who take stuff without asking, and it's those people who ruin it for everyone else. No right-clicking will get annoying eventually, even for me, but it's the only way I know of right now to prevent it. The majority of people are nice, and they even email me to tell me I have a great site, but there's the occasional bad apple. If you see one of them, kick them in the ass for ruining it for everyone. ( 25, 25, 25, 25)
If you ever stop by the message board, you'll find me and a heck of a lot of Cybersix fans. I've found some really nice and talented people there, and it pisses me off why anyone would hurt them. As I have said before, Cybersix is relatively small, so the message board is the equivolent of a small town- everyone knows everyone else's name. So no, pretending to be two people is not a good idea ( 25, 25, 25, 25 ) because all the regulars can call you on that.
This issue is literally driving people insane, and it isn't more trivial just because it's on the internet. Copyrights are there for a good reason, and people should honor them. It isn't too much effort to ask someone before using their work, and it doesn't take too much skill to write who it's by.
So ends Nightflower's first rant. Hehehe.
