[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Lillium

If he had the money to fight back he would have won the lawsuit, that's the stupid part of all this. The way US copyright law works is that a company has to actively guard their copyright or they lose it.

Like how an MLP fan made a "Fighting is Magic" game that one time and Hasbro sent the maker a DMCA letter telling them to "stop or we'll sue you". Despite it being a free game that drove interest to the source material, Hasbro HAD to protect the My Little Pony brand or they would have lost the copyright.

Gaia is doing the same thing here, BUT since Tektek had been going for so long without Gaia doing anything he could have fought it.

My thought exactly. After what has happened with Gaia in the past years they deserved to be fought in court by Tektek and lose. But even then, it will be the users who will have to pay the price. :/
(And I wonder if he could sue and have Gaia pay his court fees after they lose. If not I'm sure a donations page on the Tektek site to go towards the court case would work as well.)

Tektek has been around since 2004, and has been fully integrated by Gaia's community while being a wildly known presence by Gaia's staff for ever since. And only now 11 years later they are enforcing their copyright? Yeah, no. Nope. Na-da, I want to see Gaia lose everything because of how they are operating as a company for the past couple of years.

Come on Tektron... SUE SUE SUE!

[Coda]

Unfortunately, there's some confusion going on between copyright law and trademark law.

The "defend it or lose it" thing is for trademarks. That's why, for example, you had the whole Zenimax vs. Mojang thing -- if you don't defend your trademark, you lose the protections on it.

Copyright is a little different. You don't lose the protections on your copyrighted material if someone copies your stuff and you don't sue them. There is, however, a five year statute of limitations for criminal copyright charges and a three year limit on civil copyright claims. (That is, if someone made money on selling a thousand copies of your CD six years ago, you can neither press charges nor sue for damages. But if they're STILL selling copied CDs, you can still sue/press charges, even if they've been doing it for years.) However, it's been ruled that every time an infringing website is accessed, it counts as a new instance of copyright infringement.

If Tekton had taken down the website three years ago, Gaia wouldn't be able to sue and say "you copied our stuff way back then". But since a new instance of infringement happened every time someone accessed the site, Gaia is within their legal rights to file a takedown claim, and to sue (or possibly press charges) if the takedown were to be ignored.

Tekton might be able to mount a legal defense by asserting that Gaia was aware of his website for many years and didn't challenge it, thus constituting some form of consent. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but if I understand things correctly, even if this defense WORKED -- that is, if the court accepted the idea of implicit consent -- it would only protect him from criminal charges or civil damages. It wouldn't give him the right to keep using Gaia's copyrighted materials.

EDIT: It would be an interesting legal experiment for Tekton to sue Gaia for interfering with his business after they had knowingly permitted him to operate it for so long, but it would be highly unlikely to work and I would imagine most lawyers wouldn't want to take the risk of trying it.

[Yokuutsu]

That's what bothers me, 11 years after Tekton started this....Gaia now throws a fit?

After Tekton has had to pay server fees because the ads weren't enough to keep stuff Gaia should have had made itself going for users? He attracted users to Gaia with or without the recolor ad. Now, while Gaia has the legal right, that doesn't make it moral. It's because of the recolor ad, but guess what? Say if I had adblock off and he had google ads....I could be seeing competitors every single time I go there...Gaia should've acted sooner and gave him more options than just shutting it all down (he could've left the ad and gradient text generator...who would pay money for that? Move it to angelfire so no one will ever look at it)

Anyway, it's done and over with, tektek.org has been shut down now...pretty much.

[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Yokuutsu

That's what bothers me, 11 years after Tekton started this....Gaia now throws a fit?

After Tekton has had to pay server fees because the ads weren't enough to keep stuff Gaia should have had made itself going for users? He attracted users to Gaia with or without the recolor ad. Now, while Gaia has the legal right, that doesn't make it moral. It's because of the recolor ad, but guess what? Say if I had adblock off and he had google ads....I could be seeing competitors every single time I go there...Gaia should've acted sooner and gave him more options than just shutting it all down (he could've left the ad and gradient text generator...who would pay money for that? Move it to angelfire so no one will ever look at it)

Anyway, it's done and over with, tektek.org has been shut down now...pretty much.

The recolor ad was an avatar site he made and was advertising. The advertisement was directly coded into the site and was the only thing he was advertising.

Tektron has made a lot of comments in recent years on how he dislikes the state of where Gaia is now at. He is refusing to talk negotiate or talk to Gaia about the situation, and the letter to him was pretty much his last straw with the people. He WAS advertising his own avatar site anyways.

Gaia wants to negotiate but they are asking him to run the site without the advertisement for his site. Which I disagree, the man should be allowed to advertise his own website. If Gaia truly felt threaten by his advertisement of a site, then that's truly pathetic.

[Yokuutsu]

And? He's still advertising Gaia a hell of a lot more...and guess what? Now that advertisement is gone that Gaia had for free for 11 years.

11 years of free advertisement and their first move is to tell him to shut it all down immediately? Tekton deserves more than that. Like I said, Gaia has the legal right, but it isn't necessarily moral. Any money taken away from Gaia is 5 or 7 dollars a user, which if a user cannot spend more than that a month, Gaia doesn't care about them to begin with....that's not enough money for them. And you don't have to spend that 5 or 7 at all on recolor to get those items. So Gaia still gets all their money UNLESS they've pissed off their users enough to leave. And for some, this tektek thing is the last straw. Because of this, on top of everything else, even if Gaia learned the error of their ways and changed, they wouldn't even get a penny from me.

Also, let us not forget they told him to shut down without a Gaia-made replacement for the dream avatar makes and other things. Gaia is hurting itself more by forcing tektek to shut down than they would be if they left it alone. I mean if gaia thinks recolor is such a threat apparently....some people will check it out just for that alone. (And personally, I don't know anyone who isn't a member of more than one avatar website, though they may be more active on some than others)

[ml1201]

Sounds interesting, what's it like over there?

Edit:
On Recolor I mean. XD

[Yokuutsu]

I like it there, it's a bit more active there where I look at it (compared to trisphee. I love Trisphee. But it isn't as active. That's all)

[ml1201]

Then I know what site to check out if another site kicks the bucket. It's almost as quiet there as here.

[Yokuutsu]

Note: I do not go into every section of the website or anything XD

[Lawtan]

Forgive me, but the situation reminded me of this:

"A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain."

[Illusion]

This will probably be another good time to try and attract users away from Gaia to join Trisphee. Just saiyan. badum pssss.

[Karastorm]

*giigels* personally I like how quite tris is, it may not be the most active of places but it suits me. Every one seems so freindly and for a people shy person thats pretty neat. I also like how our staff are genuanly hapoey to talk to us users of the place. Had a lookinto recolor its a bit...erh..busy for my liking.

[Espy]

Wow, uh. I used to love messing around on TekTek. This really blows.

[Kenome MoMoshima]

Wow really?
Tektek has been around for ages and Gaia is just now getting but hurt about that?
How dumb.
I love making random avatars on there.
I've even thought up of some amazing characters through Tektek.

[Dorian Pavus]

I use to use it a lot even when I wasn't on Gaia a lot.
/sighs/

We lost something great that day.

[Kenome MoMoshima]

Oh man me to.
I'd be bored and just randomly go to it.