Copyright violators?!

Now that´s very clever, moshi, and ofcourse fully true. Ok, with the good guys safe, I´d say remove all the jaguar, longhorn, aqua, .net, whatever thingies :) - just don´t bring Abba to its Waterloo...

I´ll do anything to clean up this site, because it "will" help on bandwidth too........ I don´t think any one took this thread the wrong way at all BruB..... any way I cleaned up mine that were under 100 downloads, except the skinbase sutie skins, and maybe some more later :-) I feel doing this along with any "RIP" will help this site, you have to start some where :-)

clears throat........ sometimes you have to practice what you preach, I´m not trying to be a smart-ass here, but I did go through a lot of trouble to get links for some one who asked for them, if it doesn´t have permission in it ´remove&quot; it, no matter who the person is...... <br />Posted by chichigirl46 <br /> <br /> <br />The links you speak of led me to numerous WinStyles suites. Unfornuately WinStyles don&acute;t actually require permission, as they are nothing more than links to the original works. <br />Credit should stated in the description, but I couldn&acute;t remove the uploads, simply because of the uploader had no manners. <br />( I learned a while later than this person, wasn&acute;t doing the uploading at all, but had someone uploading all his stuff to all the sites for him.) <br />I did remove one upload out of those links, emailed the offender, and never received a reply. I&acute;ll admit I never made it through all of them, I have trouble getting pages to load here most of the time, and when they do load it takes too long.... so I eventually gave up. <br /> <br /> <br />OFF TOPIC <br />btw.... lately I have trouble posting any comments on the site. I try to type in the text box, and the page scrolls up or down. I have to type it out in a note pad, then copy and paste. <br />very aggravating it is........ <br />

http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?id=3161 <br />http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?id=2663 <br /> <br />Dunno, just picked two, recalled moshi did some (os) porting. Hey, I agree, a skin site not permitting this kinda &quot;rip&quot; would be a unique idea/thing, but don&acute;t let your annoyance about the XP thing, and the latest longhorn ports overshadow the fact there&acute;s some good porting done. You know, like appreciate a kinda look, take it over, with full mention of what it is, and then it&acute;s done. That it also opens the door to a busload of shit variations of a theme that&acute;s popular at the moment (XP thing was done before whole OS was released...), well, I dunno. Rather live with it than prohibit a decent attempt... <br />

It&acute;s not just Windows ports (without permission - read: &quot;ALL&quot;) we&acute;re going to remove, plastic. Any Apple/BeOS + others will be removed as well - and it&acute;s got nothing to do with &quot;annoyance&quot; of any sort, other than the annoyance of rips; regardless who made them or when!! :)

What about my LiteSTEP version of a CBM64? <br /> <br />You &acute;might&acute; call it a &acute;port&acute; but there are no graphics used in it at all....only colours and freely available fonts. <br /> <br />Tricky one, that....;p

God...all that crap in those links....from puerile to infantile....definitely time for a clean-out....;p <br /> <br />Some of those were submitted to Wincustomize....they didn&acute;t make it. <br />Some of them I&acute;ve seen on Devart....but I don&acute;t think they&acute;re there any more...;p

....and unless someone brings a permission into the &quot;picture&quot; (:grin:), they won&acute;t be here by midnight Sunday. <br /> <br />And you said the magic words Jafo; <b>freely available</b>! :) <br />But then again.... you &quot;nailed&quot; the look and feel of an OS without permission (where ever you would have to get one from to use the C64 stuff beats me anyways....) <br />Yeah that is a tough one....

hehe, don´t forget KDE and WindowMaker are released under LGPL. that´s a different situation than MacOS and Windows. btw: Be Inc. (of BeOS) clearly sated they allow ports months ago. ;)

Thank you for that info moshi!!! :)

Removing skins based on their download count is not an option I agree with. The coolest thing about Skinbase is that it has categories for every skinnable application we know of. I have a couple of skins here that are far from popular, but I still get downloads every now and then on things like my CustomEyes skin. If a person finds an application here that they never knew existed, they need to be able to also find skins. No matter how old. <br /> <br />I recently discovered a skinnable media player that Skinbase has had skins for for a very long time. I now love the application and was lucky enough to find some cool skins here. If they&acute;d been removed because of their download count, I&acute;d have no skins.

The weekly poll now reflects the topic of this thread. It will be interesting to see how the results end up....

Ok, scarebear I didn&acute;t think of that, but what about programs and others like yahoo messenger or ICQ skins that the program/software has been updated so much that it makes a lot of the skins out dated and can not be used unless the skin is updated? I understand about programs that are just that, out dated program and is never updated to keep their skins, no matter how old the skin or program is :-) just a suggestion to be organized on the base here :-)

Some of you guys are taking this thread the wrong way. I will not comment in this thread again, Afraid of putting my feet in my mouth and say stuff I will regret!

The only OS Co that has had an &acute;issue&acute; with &acute;Ports&acute; is Apple....and they should really be the only ones to be removed. <br />If you get all PC and pedantic then you&acute;ll have to look very, very closely at EVERY icon in every collection and/or shell theme....eg, my Nijikon Fetchi WinAMP skin [not uploaded] uses the red/yellow &acute;icon&acute; from WinAMP as the graphic for the link at bottom-right of the main window. <br /> <br />THAT a no-no?...or is it actually simply part of the Program itself? <br />It IS FOR WinAMP, afterall...;p

With the close association between Stardock and Microsoft, it is quite reasonable to assume that the latter is well aware of the skinning community&acute;s creation and distribution of various &acute;ports&acute; or works which include graphics or derivations of graphics which originated with their OS. <br />There has been no back-lash of men-in-black, [as there was with Apple], demanding chemical castration of all those who &acute;port&acute;. <br /> <br />This is the &acute;justification&acute; for the seemingly hyprocritical stance taken at Wincustomize. <br />If &acute;they&acute; are not complaining then why should we be excluding? <br /> <br />Some of the subsequent whinging about &acute;ports&acute; is when two separate people do one and blame each other for &acute;copying&acute;...therefore all ports MUST be bad. <br /> <br />As you all are well aware, I&acute;m the first one to come down on artists stealing from others...but &acute;ports&acute; ARE different. <br />We are working WITH an OS GUI...ergo we are obliged to use that GUI&acute;s icons and conceptual interface. <br /> <br />Here&acute;s one for you.....you create a &acute;partial&acute; WB skin, omitting the start bar, etc, so when a person uses YOUR skin, he gets the default start bar, and not your graphics at all. Does that mean your skin has ripped MS by using the MS images? <br /> <br />Try and get a handle on the concept of working &acute;within&acute; the OS. Skinners are providing a symbiotic interface for the public to interact with the OS. <br />It is not a disparate entity. <br /> <br />God...you can almost look upon us as freebie, unpaid promoters/supporters/enhancers of the Microsoft product. <br />THEY &acute;should&acute; be grateful/appreciative of our aesthetic enhancement to their Fisher-Price OS....;p

So you made a short story long and claim that it&acute;s OK to rip MS but not Apple because MS don&acute;t hunt down the rippers?! <br /> <br />As a skinner/collector/skinfreak I couldn&acute;t care less if a rip is posted on <b>any site</b> - but as Skinbase admin I say </b>burn the assholes</b>. <br /> <br />:snow (my skitzofrenic condition keeps me from going insane) :grin:

Madam Snow...my recent attempt to beach an Agave worm in a bottle of Mezcal prevents me from a lucid, coherent retort...but I will say you will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if you adhere religiously to that line. <br /> <br />Delete ALL references to EVERYTHING even closely related to an OS or an OS related icon/image and don&acute;t become a quasi hypocrite as well. <br /> <br />You know DAMN well that I am not a &acute;ripper, nor do I promote &acute;genuine ripping&acute; of any sort. <br /> <br />Do not be a prat and consider my comments anything other than an attempt to provide some semblance of reason to a complicated subject that affects us all as skinners. <br /> <br />I really don&acute;t think I deserved your comment, nor was I expecting it. <br />If I were just now sober enough to give you a more coherent response, I would, but I&acute;m not, so I cannot. Instead I will assume you are equally addled by drugs to accuse me of rip promotion. <br /> <br />Even as pissed as a fart, I will get my point across, so there!...;)

Lay low on the mind expansion stuff, J-man, it twists the vision. <br /> <br />Same goes for Bérubé. You know what site this is, you know the crowd that reads this and participates and thus you should know that you should never be afraid to say what you think. <br /> <br />The partial skin example is flawed. If you don&acute;t skin the taskbar, you do not skin the taskbar. That&acute;s all. If it were up to me, every port would be torched on the spot. Originality is key. <br /> <br />On the other hand, lots and lots of people enjoy ports. Could be related to lack of taste, general unawareness of the goodness that lies beyond ports or they *gasp* *horror* might actually like the look of OS A (np, not X). <br /> <br />Perhaps my main grub with ports is that there are so many identical ones. We don&acute;t need sixty XP and Aqua ports that all look the same. Limit the number of identical ports and that should clear up the air a lot already.

Hmm, this thread looks like a potential flame. /me goes grab some food and wait for the fireworks to happen

Crae...the &acute;first&acute; person to port XP over to Win 3.11 via Calmira was probably lauded as a hero....and number two was seen as a wanker. <br />I&acute;m not saying that &acute;ports&acute; are thrilling and wonderful....my stuff is generally SO unique that no-one likes it....but there IS a place for a 9x user to be able to make his box appear like an XP or something...and that should not be dismissed out of hand by localised beaurocracy [ignore my spelling...cannot focus on a dictionary...LOL]...;) <br /> <br />How about the good old days of Community Skin? <br />Are the LiteSTEP themes not ports of the original WB skins? <br />Should we indulge in auto castration and flagellation for doing them? <br /> <br />Where does the &acute;ports-r-bad-, m&acute;kay&acute; brigade draw the line? <br /> <br />Point of note, here....this is not for my personal benefit...I do my OWN [grey] thing...but I do worry about those whose be all and end all is to create the greatest imitation Windows 2.0 for StylesXP or whatever. <br /> <br />Is it that unimaginative, or uncreative to be capable of replicating an alternate OS? <br /> <br />Have the detractors even tried it? <br /> <br /> <br />Oh, I&acute;ll probably sober up tomorrow...and wonder why I bothered. <br />Who gives a crap, anyway?....I&acute;ll just stick to kicking ten shades of poo out of those who try to rip you and me....the ones I &acute;DO&acute; have an influence over...;p

ups... sowwy Jafo.... I forgot a ;) in my post, it was ment as a joke kinda reply - and I do know that you&acute;re no ripper or promoter of the same!! :) <br /> <br />/me gets down on his knees in front of Jafo, chanting: <b>I&acute;m not worthy - I&acute;m not worthy</b> :grin: :grin:

Christ... the day Jafo starts ripping other folks stuff or ports an OS, I&acute;ll hang up my mouse, burn any gfxprog disc I have along side my skins and quietly call it a day! <br /> <br />in other words... never ;)

I know, Snow...did I mention I was enjoying a glass of Mezcal or three?...;)

Personally, I don&acute;t care for &acute;ports&acute;...but as someone involved with skinning and themeing for so long I&acute;ve seen a lot of people &acute;wanting&acute; to do them...and up to date, only, I repeat, ONLY Apple has had an issue with their creation/use...and that was back in skinz.org [mk.1] days. <br />It&acute;s comparatively a non-issue. <br />Better use of peoples &acute;anti-ripping efforts&acute; would be spent policing the fringe-dwellers of our society...the lesser-known sites whose only claim to fame is their ability to suddenly hit the limelight by being found to host &acute;our&acute; works without permision, etc. <br /> <br />While I&acute;m at it, could someone fluent in Ruski get back to me so I can strangle a bunch who continue to thieve and sell our skins.... <br />My demands that their &acute;Hovercraft were full of jellied eels&acute; probably didn&acute;t make a lot of sense to them....I know I was flummoxed...;p

OK, matter taken care of. <br /> <br />If anyone thinks their piece have been wrongfully removed, please contact me. You can find my email listed either on the Staff page (if grave got around to change it) or in my profile. <br /> <br />End of case. (hopefully)

I think a fine line as been crossed here. Why a picture from a porn site is rip and a OS port is not. Taking the picture of car on a site is rip and taking an icon from a software is not. <br /> <br />That&acute;s a never answered question on all of the skin site and I don&acute;t think we&acute;ll reach an answer with this here. I guess it&acute;s a question of logic and who&acute;s logic is spoken first. <br /> <br />Anyway, what im trying to say is, this is going to be a very very long thread.

Don&acute;t remove this: http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?id=1677 - chicketita you and I knooooow...

well plastic.... no permission - no upload! <br />Yeah I know, we all have our memories of ABBA but you know.... copyright :/

How about deleting all OS ports too? No one has permission for those, and I don&acute;t but into the &quot;gray area&quot; BS. <br />btw.......Snow, did you create your icon? ;)

No, my icon was &quot;extracted&quot; from a free-to-use-in-any-way-you-see-fit image I got from a very good friend! ;)

Deleteing all the OS ports you say.... well... I don&acute;t know, let&acute;s see what everybody else have to say about that, k?! :) <br />(Too much hard work digging them out, but yeah in essence they are rips)

You know how long that would take me to go through just the list you&acute;ve provided here!?! you just did this to show me once again how fast you can surf the net ;) <br /> <br />I remember one of those entries from when Skinbase had an &acute;adult&acute; wallpaper section :O

I didn&acute;t know Snowman was a cop... ;)

Man o man - wait &acute;till I tell DaVinci about this! <br />He&acute;s gonna be P.O.ed... <br />{:p <br /> <br />http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?id=2747

Actually, I think that FM wrote for permission on this one, but hasn&acute;t recieved a reply just yet. <br />I think we should give it some more time - I hear the original artist doesn&acute;t mind &quot;homage&quot; work... <br /> <br />http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php?id=1191 <br /> <br />{:p

Oh, and one more thing. When you get done with the walls, Snow, you should move on to the Icons section. I see a LOT of pics from copyrighted programs there that I&acute;m sure don&acute;t have the permission from the software authors... <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />(Am I a sarcastic bastard, or what?) <br /> <br />{:p

Scarebear: psst.. use the admin section, way faster! ;) <br />(And yeah I figured you&acute;de remember <b>that</b> particular wp) :p <br /> <br />iTM: There&acute;s <b>alot</b> you do&acute;t kbow about me, matey! <br /> <br />Elwin: <br />1) Yeah Leo would go balistic if he knew his art was desecrated like that :/ <br />2) From my experience, if you don&acute;t get any reply for permission after like a couple of month or so, you&acute;re more than likely <b>not</b> getting it. The wallpaper in question (if you posted the correct link of course) was uploaded over a year ago....... <br />3) :snow kicks {:p &acute;s ass across the street.... (yeah I&acute;ll get to the other sections soon) <br /> <br />Anyone got any thoughts to what we&acute;re going to do with the OS ports, as Koasati mentioned?! Should they stay or should the go?!... I mean all the &quot;other sites&quot; got&acute;em....

hmm... <b>while I remember it</b>..... how about putting it up for question to the uses what to do with the OS ports?! As in making a poll on Saturday! :) <br />Polls <b>can</b> be usefull from time to time.. 🌙 <br />LOL

gRAVE should be BANNED from this site :p But great work snow!

Well, logic tells me........... a rip is a rip is a rip......... doesn&acute;t matter what the majority wants, graphics used without permission = graphics used without permission. <br />OS ports and the like are popular, but that doesn&acute;t change the fact that no one even asks for permission.. ( coz they know they&acute;re not likely to get it).........<sarcasm> no, it&acute;s their gawd-given right to use those graphics! </sarcasm> <br /> <br />But, hey.... I&acute;ve been beat over the head with the &quot;it&acute;s a gray area&quot; , &quot;it&acute;s a matter of trade dress, not copyright&quot;, it&acute;s &acute;Fan Art&acute;, and such utter mumbo jumbo, that I almost don&acute;t care anymore. Yeah, I keep telling myself, to hell with it, shouldn&acute;t let it bother me, but it does bother me............... it confuses the ripping argument, to say &acute;this&acute; is ripping, and &acute;that&acute; is too, but we&acute;ll just wink at it, and pretend it&acute;s not. <br /> <br />Please feel free to ignore me on this................. I&acute;m used to it. =&#222;

I think Koasati is right. I don&acute;t think it&acute;s a grey area at all. It&acute;s just a rip. The difference is that as a lot of people seem to download these, people just let them be. I say remove them. <br /> <br />Snow can because he&acute;s an internet speed freak ;)

/me clears throat........ sometimes you have to practice what you preach, I&acute;m not trying to be a smart-ass here, but I did go through a lot of trouble to get links for some one who asked for them, if it doesn&acute;t have permission in it &acute;remove&quot; it, no matter who the person is...... also when there is rules, there is &quot;No walking both sides of the fence&quot; If an administrator does his job :-) he will NOT be popular LOL Better to follow through with the rules, then a site&acute;s bandwidth going under to be a nice guy :-)

/me chuckling @ gRAVE :-)

I also have a suggestion, to help clean up the site.... what about us removing skins with little downloads?

OK that settles it then - the OS &quot;ports&quot; goes! :) <br />(:snow bangs the head at the desk - another three days searching through the database) <br /> <br />Chichi: Define &quot;little downloads&quot;.... under 200 or under 100 or even less?!?! <br />I don&acute;t think that&acute;s a very good idea starting to remove uploads just because they don&acute;t have alot of downloads, most of the SS&acute;s will have to go then!! <br />But then again, it will clear up a heck of alot of space on the server! :)

/me thinks we should ban gRAVE and snowman. Damn rippers!

uh huh... IF you can find anything that I have ripped ;)

Looking at my work as a whole, I find that I may be one of the biggest offenders here - Certainly as an admin I should set an example, so... <br />:) <br />poof! <br />They&acute;re gone! <br />{:p

Im &quot;cleaning out my closet&quot; too (just some screenshots though)