Emoticons

I've been meaning to replace our emoticons with a Sonic theme, and now I have.

Oh really? Well I'll be! Very nice! 8)

Awesome!
Although I think the old ones should be kept as a secondary set..

I like this idea, Zez. It's gone very well! :( XD

It is still quite hard to tell the expressions, though.

Sonic approves.

Hmm...these look awfully familiar. Sonic Blast, perhaps?

Pianta wrote:Hmm...these look awfully familiar. Sonic Blast, perhaps?

No, Sonic Online.

Screenshot from Sonic Blast
https://2img.net/h/i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa371/EeveeEverlasting/Untitled.png?t=1293700314

Please refrain from stealing from our site, thank you.

Black Gatomon wrote:Screenshot from Sonic Blast
https://2img.net/h/i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa371/EeveeEverlasting/Untitled.png?t=1293700314

Please refrain from stealing from our site, thank you.

They're from Sonic online. I don't see how the emoticons are stolen.

Black Gatomon wrote:Screenshot from Sonic Blast
https://2img.net/h/i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa371/EeveeEverlasting/Untitled.png?t=1293700314

Please refrain from stealing from our site, thank you.

Did your site create those emoticons? If not then Zezima has all the right to use them.
Zezima said he got them from Sonic Online.
Not to mention that some of the emoticons TSC is currently using ( Oops :D lol ) don't match the smilies seen on Sonic Blast.
1. More than one site is using the emoticons... according to Zezima's testimony.
2. Some of the emoticons don't match.

This leads me to believe that the emoticons were created by a third party and were simply used on your forum.
You could argue that the you HAD those missing smilies Zezima is now using on TSC, and that Sonic Online copied your smilies aswell (rendering my two points... well, pointless), but Zezima only installed the smilies recently. I've check Sonic Blast and there were no recent announcements about the removal of smilies.
I doubt you removed any of the smilies without raising any public awareness. I also doubt Zezima planned to download your smilies and wait until you removed some only to upload them months later onto his site. That's just ridiculous, and for something as trivial as smilies.

Now, if the smilies AREN'T infact the creation of Sonic Blast staff and/or it's members;
(if it is a member that created the smily you also have to be sure he licensed it to your site and your site alone as he/she could've posted the smilies onto more than just your site)
Zezima DOES have the right to use them as they are publicly available for use and only the creator can claim ownership.


Of course I maybe wrong,
In which case, I give you my most humble and abject apologies.

karkooshy just owned the topic.

karkooshy wrote:

Black Gatomon wrote:Screenshot from Sonic Blast
https://2img.net/h/i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa371/EeveeEverlasting/Untitled.png?t=1293700314

Please refrain from stealing from our site, thank you.

Did your site create those emoticons? If not then Zezima has all the right to use them.
Zezima said he got them from Sonic Online.
Not to mention that some of the emoticons TSC is currently using ( Oops :D lol ) don't match the smilies seen on Sonic Blast.
1. More than one site is using the emoticons... according to Zezima's testimony.
2. Some of the emoticons don't match.

This leads me to believe that the emoticons were created by a third party and were simply used on your forum.
You could argue that the you HAD those missing smilies Zezima is now using on TSC, and that Sonic Online copied your smilies aswell (rendering my two points... well, pointless), but Zezima only installed the smilies recently. I've check Sonic Blast and there were no recent announcements about the removal of smilies.
I doubt you removed any of the smilies without raising any public awareness. I also doubt Zezima planned to download your smilies and wait until you removed some only to upload them months later onto his site. That's just ridiculous, and for something as trivial as smilies.

Now, if the smilies AREN'T infact the creation of Sonic Blast staff and/or it's members;
(if it is a member that created the smily you also have to be sure he licensed it to your site and your site alone as he/she could've posted the smilies onto more than just your site)
Zezima DOES have the right to use them as they are publicly available for use and only the creator can claim ownership.


Of course I maybe wrong,
In which case, I give you my most humble and abject apologies.

All of that is well and good when the emoticons are not in fact made by said site. These emoticons were created by Head Admin, Neo Metallix and our GFX Army. I am one of two Co-Administrators and it was brought to our attention that, once again this website has been using our content as its own.

We're all for you guys wanting to be successful and such, and seeing as how =SB= is one of the top 2-5 largest Sonic communities on the internet, we have had our fair share of copycats, in fact this isn't the first time that this particular site has used content of ours, we do keep tabs on the community as a whole since we are a hot target to clone. Last time we dealt with you guys we didn't sink our teeth in and get you shut down because we want smaller sites to be able to succeed, just not with our content.

Remove the emoticons that were copied from our forum and we will leave you alone, but be warned that this is strike two. Failure to comply with these orders OR stealing content from us again WILL result in genuine effort going towards getting this community shut down, and we have shut down problem sites before, so ignore the demands at your own risk.

Good Day,
Bowie - Sonic Blast Co-Administrator

P.S. Love how posts=rings here too. =P

If you want to talk about it, let's kindly take it outside.

Okay, Mr. Bowie, I understand you feel cheated. However, you're not paying attention. Zezima himself verified the sprites came from Sonic Online. And karkooshy verified that several emoticons are exclusive to the site Sonic Online. So, it is quite possible they took from you and claimed the emoticons were free use. So this does not put us at fault, and thus you are attacking us for something that we had no control over.

This is offensive that you would claim we are thieves. Maybe they are your sprites, but, if they are, you can't claim we're thieves when we've clearly pointed out the source. Threatening to shut us down over emoticons is also quite immature, I hope you realize.

Being a spriter, I know the heinous crime of sprite theft, and thus I understand why you and your fellow associates are hurt over the action. However, I'm guessing you didn't do any research into the matter, for if you did, you'd see we were merely caught in a circumstance, and you threatening to take action against us is wrong.

Now, if you can prove you were the creators of these emoticons, and if you can prove Sonic Online unfairly stole and offered them illegally, then perhaps we can work with this situation to the benefit of both sites.

No need to get emotional over this.


Dang that was bad.

How rude.
You register an account, you accuse Zezima of being a thief and yet you have the audacity to threaten to shut TSC down?
And in public.
You should have the manners to contact Zezima privately and talk about it via PM.
Take it outside as Zezima said.

Oh it is being taken outside. Please, do not think of this as an attack. I highly respect this forum(aside from the stealing that has happened multiple times in the past) but I do not wish to have anything shut down. As for this "Sonic Online" forum would someone kindly give me a link as it seems they have stolen from us as well. The only Sonic Online I know of does not even use these emoticons.

As one loser said on the Forumotion support board,

"What's wrong? Don't like the competition? Deal with it!."

That is completely untrue. I don't even view this as competition just another Sonic forum. The more Sonic forums, the better! As it seems they are dying out.

First off, what theft are you speaking of? I don't recall any encounters between the two of us before. Especially since this is the first time the three of you joined.
Second off, while Mr. Rocker92 was rude, calling him a loser isn't something you should do either. Regardless of how rude he was, he does bring up a good point. Neither of you made them. Now, if all those posters who made those emoticons declared only Sonic Blast had the right to use them, you'd be better off. But, it's very possible these creators took these emoticons to Sonic Online and let them be public use.
Third off, for all the effort you put into immediately going after us, you didn't try as hard to find Sonic Online. Now, you've at least proven that your forum has made emoticons. The next step is to prove you were the creators. I'm assuming you don't have the files, so your next best bet is to introduce us to the very first topic that used your emoticons; the ones from 2006 apparently.
Lastly, our goal should be to find Sonic Online and see what is the situation. Because in the light of what Mr. Rocker92 pointed out, I'm still not sure of all this. As I'm third in command of the site, I'd suggest rereading my post and also the post of karkooshy, as we both made very valid points you need to address.

Freedom Fighter: I've actually had an account here left over since the last offense. It partially surprised me but I did, you can check the date it was created to verify that unless it resets for inactivity.

Secondly, Karkooshy, you just reposted everything you said here "outside" and didn't read anything and then posted a screenshot showing the image comes off our servers..



You like to call us rude, I call stealing of content rude. And sure we're forward about it, but it happens to us ALL THE TIME, which I'm sure would tick you off too if say your community worked real hard on this skin here and some other site just became a carbon copy of you, that's happened to us before too, more than once.

Truth be told, this isn't the first time "Zez" has taken content from us, so while overall site closure may have taken it a little far as a threat (I was irritated) the fact remains that no matter how you obtained these emotes, whether they were through us or this Sonic Online site (which we would still very much like a link to) they were still made for us by our members with the intent in mind that they were for us and our members... right now we could take all of these emotes down ourselves because they are still hosted on our server, and we could just sort of take them down and re-upload them and you would all of a sudden have no emoticons.

HOWEVER, I'm not sure how my counterparts would feel.. but if credit for our site is put up somewhere, not necessarily in an in-your-face style.. we will most likely back off. Otherwise, the emotes/smilies will go poof.

Browie, incorrect. The smilies were rehosted. They are not on your servers. this will be explained further down.
I repeated what I said on the support forums (and I clearly mentioned I did) because I wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page.
If you read the remainder of my post you'd find that there was more content added to it.
And yes it is rude to come to a site to specifically humiliate someone publicly accusing him for stealing from somewhere he has not been on for atleast a year.
(and since Zezima was not logged into Sonic blast for over a year, they'd be no way for him to get to the smilies since they are not visible to guests).

Moving right along...

There's this issue with the missing smilies (the ones on TSC but not on Sonic Blast).
Were they removed from Sonic Blast recently?
Because Zezima only installed these smilies 4 days ago.
There'd be no way Zezima could have gotten the smilies you removed months ago.... unless he found them somewhere else on the internet. i.e Sonic Online.

Infact, there's also the issue with the smilies in Sonic Blast and not on TSC!
If Zezima did take the smilies from Sonic Blast, he might as well have taken ALL of your smilies. They do look pretty.
If I were trying to take the smilies from Sonic blast, I would have taken the good looking ones, or all of them, as I've already pointed out.
Well, since Zezima didn't, I'm assuming he was only exposed to a portion of the set- i.e the set used on Sonic Online.

One more thing,
When the smilies were first introduced, they had this horrendous transparent gapping around the emoticon.
Zezima had to EDIT the smilies to remove the large gap around them (that is why they were re-hosted). This gap is clearly not visible on the smilies back at Sonic Blast. Suggesting that the original smilies used on TSC weren't from Sonic Blast, but from somewhere else.

Karkooshy- This site started out as basically a duplicate of our website in 2009, the history is already there as far as what Zez has done and is very likely doing again, and it's easy enough to create any sort of account that isn't your original one, pop on, and take whatever... However your site maintains that the emoticons came from Sonic Online.. okay, show us where Sonic Online is and we can go "bother" them.

The emotes were removed partially because animated smilies are distracting and partially because we want our site optimized for any sort of net connection, animations do a little bit to slow websites down so we decided to go with 1 framers in everything.. beyond that, there has never been a gapping problem with our emoticons ever since they were made by our members... any problems created were made as a distraction to try and hold up a shaky case of innocence or created by said third party.. which we would appreciate a link to.


I have had an account on here, like I said, since the last offense in 2009, meaning that I didn't just create this thing to come over and accuse you of baseless bs, this site already has stolen from us before and the last time we were here we got things changed in a fast and nice way.

Sonic Blast has had these emoticons for over 4 years now, no other Sonic Forum has them (if they were free for public access more probably would) outside of yours, 4 days ago, and whatever this Sonic Online place is.. still waiting for that link.

Kark, I know you mean well in wanting to stand up for your site and admin and continue to relentlessly defend no matter the case even if clearly guilty of stealing or playing the "fence" role (receiving stolen property through a proxy, Sonic Online) and I commend your efforts, but the fact that this whole set was made for us over 4 years ago along with the fact that Zez has already stolen from us before should be more than enough to get the point across.

Sorry for sounding offensive, (I don't intend to)
but your response did not answer any of my points. Nor any of the points in my previous posts, or the ones made by The Freedom Fighter.

And yes, you're right, I am doing this to defend a site I simply love... but I believe that we have done no wrong. I'm not wasting my time writing 300 word responses to protect a site that I believe is lying, and I wont.
TSC is not guilty. Perhaps misunderstood, but not guilty.
Like I said, I believe that TSC has done no wrong. Until you prove me otherwise I won't shut up.

Happy new year. xD

Cough.

Blizshadow already posted the topic where the emoticons were originally made and further advanced by our members "outside" if Freedom Fighters goes to that page.

Furthermore that Sonic Online website doesn't use our emoticons the member there hinted at "helping another site" and then allowing Sonic Online to use said files around the said timeframe at which point it looks like they didn't because they aren't now.. and it remains to be seen as to whether or not that member was actually even involved in the creative process (Bacon Stein). Furthermore, said member didn't even publicly release them anyway, only expanded the usage possibilities to Sonic Online, in which case the emoticons are still not yours.

And Kark I've been addressing your points, I stated that anyone could just create another account to get in and look like they haven't logged on, I've stated my account has been on here since April in 2009 (the first offense that you weren't even a member here to see at the time) and beyond that you didn't even really make a 'point' at least not one that needed responding to.

Happy New Year to you too.

Zez wrote:Cough.

Justice served.
The post was made EARLY 2005, a year before you claim the smilies were hosted on Sonic Blast (you said they were hosted 2006).
Read down the comments.

Flame the hedgehog said:
Nice
can i use them for my board



Dr.BaconStein- genuine creator of the smilies responded:
Use 'em however ya want, just don't claim 'em as yer own.


End of story, I suppose?