I ran across the worst ripping site yet. It has thousands of ripped artworks, many of which are incorporated into wallpapers. Despite the fact that they are blatant rips, the people are claiming the works to be their own. We should really contact biri and get her to talk to the admin of the site. All of the stolen work must be deleted as soon as possible. Let's all join their forums and bash them.
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Disclaimer:
Please excuse the satire above, it was necessary to get your attention. No doubt I'm going to step on a few toes with what follows, however, I believe that it is necessary to create serious discussion and get people to think outside the box. I've sat in the shadows too long out of fear of being banned for speaking outside the MT paradigm. Let it be clear that I do not endorse ripping or other unauthorized copying of wallpapers; my comments here are mainly about how MT users (should) react to it.
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MT needs a clear and consistent policy when it comes to copyrighted works. The policy states: "It is forbidden to submit any material that is unlawful, false, misleading, harmful, insulting, threatening, abusive, invasive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, hateful, racially or otherwise objectionable, including without limitation material of any kind or nature that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, provincial, national, or international law or regulation." As stated later in the policy: "...scans, in which in most cases the member did not have permission to redistribute the material". This is clearly copyright infringement and violates official MT policy.
One might try to make the fansub argument and claim that they don't mind MT distributing the copyrighted material because it gives them advertising. I must admit that I know nothing of them either supporting or condemning these acts. However, I find it very hard to believe that they would condone distributing high quality scans of art books, pencil boards, posters, magazine images, etc. which are designed to generate revenue.
And if an inconsistent policy isn't bad enough, everybody condemns the very behavior they participate in. Distributing these illegal scans of artbooks and other materials is no different from distributing wallpapers without permission. In both cases copyright infringement is taking place even if no one claims to own the works. However, one might make the argument that wallpaper creators are even worse because they usually claim ownership of the wallpapers even though they contain illegal artwork. Two wrongs don't make a right, and that's doubly wrong. Deviantart realized this and hence doesn't allow anime wallpapers unless you have drawn the entire thing yourself. However, let's be realistic here. MT would die a quick death if it really held up to the high moral standards that people think it does. All the scans and wallpapers made from them would have go. Given that doesn't sound like a feasible option, I would suggest amending the policy to be more realistic and consistent with itself.
The line has to be drawn somewhere; even Nuriko said "Question to biri: If we're going to be submitting ripped wall links to user-uploaded pages, what about places like Hongfire? Do we draw the line someplace?"
I think that the term ripping has become far too broad and over used. It is used to describe both very benign redistribution of work and outright punks who remove signatures and claim the work as their own. Any time the work ‘rip' is used, it's a signal for the lynch mob on MT to pounce and destroy anything in its way.
Rip - Unauthorized altering of a work or otherwise claiming ownership of it. This includes removing / covering signatures, using parts of the work as an avatar / signature or another work such as a wallpaper. It does not cover resizing the original work.
Distro - Distribution of unaltered works, except resizing, without claiming credit for the work(s). Examples posting wallpapers to image boards, forum galleries, irc packages, torrents, or other non-art communities for which this is within their policy. Distros are trademarked by their lack of malicious intent towards the artists and the service they provide to fans.
I would suggest drawing the line between rips and distros. The only reason I have come to know that MT is so anti-leecher is purely bandwith limitations. Even the first line in the policy states that "Minitokyo strives to be a free, open community". The way I see it is that MT is a victim of its own popularity and restrictions have built up to keep the riff-raff out and out of pure necessity. If MT doesn't want to serve the lecchers who don't want to contribute, let someone else serve that role. Almost every wall is made with ripped images anyway, so I fail to see how it can be that devastating to have your wall on a more open site so long as no one takes credit for it.
The complaints in ripping threads are extremely out of control. People resort to flaming, bashing, threatening personal injury, making allusions to preparing weapons to smite them with, etc. Yes I'm looking at you eunasahng, exentric, Criox, Vinitachi, GintheTwilightswords, Aa-chan, breadcrust, streamside, Anjeile, Teryon, Odysseus, white-zero, satan123, stellar, kuroimisa, diamarrr, wuschel, and many others. It's not just contained to the threads either people are advocating going to the offending websites and bashing / flaming the users / admins there. Have you no dignity and self control? You look like a bunch of winy little brats trying to form a lynch mob. Not to mention posting comments like "man, can't anyone do something about this" do absolutely nothing to help, but rather just add clutter and take up space. Why not listen to Biri and act with a bit of dignity?
People go absolutely crazy when wallpapers are posted on other sites intact and with no credit claimed. The entire purpose of a signature on the wallpaper is to let people know who the creator is and hopefully provide a link to the originating website. People claim that this is extremely bad since no one visits the creator's website. However, I claim the opposite is true. I can not even begin to list all the websites that I have discovered through signatures on wallpapers. Especially when I was not familiar with the wallpaper creating community the easiest way to quality work is to see a nice wallpaper on a mass distribution site and then visit the creator's website.
The purpose of a signature is to indicate who created the wallpaper and provide a link their website. However, it seems that some people have decided to write editorials about the evils of ripping and make personal threats in them. Signatures should blend into the wall and not stick out like a sore thumb. Many of us use non-standard desktop layouts or multiple screens that do not hide the signatures. It's very sad when someone makes a really nice wall that I can't use simply because of their huge, ugly "DIE RIPPERZ!!!1" signature.
What should be done:
The best way to fight any problem is to go for the source. The primary motivation to upload wallpapers to these distro
sites is because MT is so locked down. I propose creating an AD supported mirror of MT that is for unregistered users.
It would contain the wallpapers and possibly greatly reduced quality scans that are free for any visitor to get. It
isn't hard to have a website that is completely ad supported, especially if more annoying and higher paying ads are
displayed. This would have absolutely no effect on normal members who have registered.
This system would give the leechers all they want and leave no reason for anyone to go to other sites for walls. MT is perhaps the largest wallpaper archive on the net with the most quality submissions. It seems uniquely poised to dominate the anime wallpaper scene. All that is needed is to serve the leecher segment. I believe this would greatly reduce the frequency of walls posted to other websites and would generally make everyone happy. However, this suggestion will get ignored because they always do.
