Although “vaporware for over ten years” is definitely hyperbolic.
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Cool, and what does that have to do with a sprite preservation repository where nothing is F2U or F2E? I don’t recall saying anything like ‘let’s dig up old sprites so people can use them’; quite the opposite. You’re making arguments toward positions that don’t exist.
Not that any of this arguing matters. I’ve had one of these on my pc for a few months now and I’m going to keep adding to it. You can say “You’re not allowed to do that we decided” but that isn’t going to stop me, especially when the arguments against it are hypocritical and/or paper thin.
https://i.imgur.com/gUJeuZr.png
But, just to be clear, according to the people in this topic:
- People who post art on forums and have their art shared on discords later without their knowledge? A-Ok. That doesn’t count as ‘using’ a sprite.
- People who post art on forums and have their art shared on a sprite archive without their knowledge? Not A-Ok, very bad, literally the devil. This definitely counts as ‘using’ a sprite, even if it’s only there for viewing.
I really dislike intellectual dishonesty. It should be pretty obvious to anyone what ‘using’ a sprite entails.
- Putting a sprite inside a romhack or project
- Claiming a sprite as your own when it isn’t
- Posting the sprite somewhere without explicitly stating you didn’t make it, or, when people gush over how great you are for making it, you don’t correct them (The Chrobin defense)
- If you want to be really extreme, using someone’s sprite as your PFP/Avatar might also be considered ‘art theft’, certainly if you don’t correct people when they think you made it
Things that do not constitute ‘using’ a sprite:
- Looking at a sprite on a forum
- Looking at a sprite on a discord server
- Looking at a sprite in a sprite archive
Coincidentally, that’s what I’m doing, is putting them in an archive so we don’t lose them.
There’s nothing wrong with this aside from maybe some weird squeamish feeling that makes you feel icky inside for lord knows what reason. I cannot fathom the reason, since if you’re able to tolerate the first two non-uses of a sprite, the third is no different.
But yeah, good talk. Feel free to DM me any collections worth saving, make sure to include credits, and so on.
it was kind of buried, but man, it’s literally the line above what you quoted
EDIT:
And, to address
here are some quotes from this very thread:
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If there is one point I have to agree with, it’s Klokinator’s idea of archiving artwork that is not f2u/f2e. While I do understand the idea of the “do not repost” rule that internet artists put out, please hear me out. what you’re arguing against is the preservation of good works that could go towards teaching others how to become better at their own craft.
People such as @GenericPretsel have made an active effort to create huge reference sheets for the benefit of aspiring artists.
It’s one thing to repost with the original artist losing traction from their own respective forum and/or social media platform of choice, but it’s another to try upholding some code of honor at the cost of not being able to foster what could be a wonderful archive to study and learn from.
Yes, I get it, you came to terms with letting something fade away into the sands of time, but many people came to regret that as the years went by. That does make me wonder, however, if that’s how a lot of great works just vanished with little to no trace, from similar arguments such as this.
In other words, I’m pro-archive, it’s about time someone starts caring about the future over finite sensibilities. Let them stay as something to study and not to cut, copy, and paste from if that’s what it takes. I’m sorry if you disagree with that.
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Yeah, this is one of the things I was thinking about. I actually started making my Historical Archives when I discovered a huge number of TBA’s incredible sprites have died to the passage of time. These sprites were once so good that they inspired many people to try their hands at spriting. They literally inspired people to become FE artists, and maybe even pixel artists in general. It’s a shame to lose them.
Which is why I don’t care about an argument like this. You’re cool with them disappearing? That’s fine. I’m not. Many people are not.
A relevant video:
It might be about video game preservation, but it applies to all forms of art lost to time.
I don’t know who ‘we’ is here, but it doesn’t include me.
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It’s not for you to decide; you are not the creator.
The forum staff. Clearly.
What you seem to be missing is this is still about people’s own personal art being reposted and archived when you have no idea if they want it like that in the first place. There are plenty of reasons this could be the case. It doesn’t matter what your own reasons for trying to preserve in this instance are; your comparison to video games makes very little sense in this context.
In my opinion as an artist, any artwork that has been stated by the creator that non-F2U and non-F2E should not be touched by any means, the same with those artworks whose creator has been disappeared for a long time or the creator didn’t make any statement that if those artwork are F2U and F2E or not, they should not be touched too.
But, I like the idea of @Klokinator for a kind of museum for artwork. They let the new one know the history, know what the old one has done for the hacking community, how this community has grown and evolved. Also, the museum can be used as a list of non-F2U and non-F2E artwork. If a guy wants to make sure his newfound artwork is useable or not, he just has to check the list. The list could be a great idea to check if a project is having a non-permission artwork or not.
In the past, when I was making the demo of Tale of the Golden Knight, I had used a non-F2U artwork without knowing because the artist didn’t make any statement. But when she contacts me, I removed the artwork that I shouldn’t use immediately. What happened to me in the past still makes me thinking until today. We do need that kind of list and rule so no one would jump into the situation like me.
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Honestly this topic is very complicated due to the entire nature of this content.
If we don’t preserve the past then we’ll inevitably forget it completely, granted the whole issue stems from compliance to a potentially non-existing 3rd party.
Personally I’d only consider any asset made by a confirmed dead or completely unreachable artist should be free use if not stated otherwise.
Yet if stated non-useable then atleast storing the sprite sheets somewhere for reference should be fine. I mean there are some sprites that should be forgotten like most of Tekun from TLP’s attacking sprites were hilarious and shouldn’t be reused under most circumstances, but we should still have some place to see them.
At the end of the day the whole issue is difficult to enforce any kind of real rules onto due to its overwhelming complexity, i mean its why fair use is so difficult to defend with anyhow.
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Well, this topic has been hot.
It’s good to see so many opinions about it.
The Antragsdelikt idea is great. It’s like that Law of organ donations where you donate wherever you die, unless you state it otherwise. Many lives has been saved because of that.
I’m seeing some heavy and old names against any kind of “being disrespectful with the author” , and that’s very understandable.
But the “Antragsdelikt” idea and the “Preservation Museum” idea seems to attract some support.
Well, I’ve never seen something similar before. I doubt any FE community has seen something like an “artist museum” before.
I can bet that almost anyone who make some kind of art and share it to be seen in the first place, whatever for attention, admiration or anything, prefers some kind of preservation and admiration than a complete oblivion, only because the didn’t state if his/her art, while no FEU in ROMs, is “Free to be admired in a Museum” explicitly (because, well, that concept didn’t exist at all)
I mean, if you don’t want your art to be seen by anyone, you don’t upload it, in the first place.
And, if the artist shows and state otherwise, will be taken down right there.
In the end, do we (the community) have a voice? Can we (the community) decide a course of action about this matter through democracy, votes? Or only the Staff can decide what can be or not be done?
I don’t want to be disrespectful with anything or anyone. I’m just asking how this forum works.
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The community doesn’t really have as much of a voice as we’d like since CT057 owns this place. Its really up to him and even if 90% of us for some reason unanimously decided to accept the idea, if he says no, then then its no.
From what little I’ve seen in a few different threads he’s commented on he’s usually reasonable but has some difficulties with communication of some things, can be a bit stubborn and is a bit too willing to play the “well i own the site” card when he looks like he doesn’t think something is up for debate regarding a ban or something involving the policy of this place (granted i’ve only seen it once) otherwise he seems like he’s a decent enough guy.
Granted i haven’t been apart of this website for very long (3-4 months) so i doesn’t really know a lot about the power dynamics, I’m just using a bit of what I’ve seen/heard.
Edit: at the same time though its not that he could stop us from making an archive of this stuff, but he can stop any threads supporting it or linking to it on this website.
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i wasn’t planning to say anything more in this thread, but if you’re going to call me out in a personal attack based off hearsay, you’d better be prepared to back it up
I have pulled out the “It’s my site and I’m the person you have to convince” exactly three times in the five years that I’ve been running this place, all of which in regards to enforcing rules and punishments of trouble users that a vocal minority of people disagreed with. I have also stated, twice, that I don’t really care if you want to make an archive.
At this point, if you really think that “90% of the community” hates my guts because I’m a tyrant who just enforces rules arbitrarily without listening to reason, I’d suggest that you try to do better – I’m sure that, with such a large following of people who don’t agree with me, that they’d be willing to migrate to some free forum in the meantime. Hell, I’ll even help you out if that’s something that people want to do.
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You should probably read that again. There was no “personal attack,” just an observation made by an onlooker.
Edit: I’ll take back the part about it not being an attack at all, but I stand by every other point. The actions made were on full display.
Not “hate your guts,” but disagree at times. Even then,
This refers to your power, and the reality of the situation. Not your entire character. They even implied as much here:
You can do as such if you wish to do so, and that’s just a fact.
In any case, let’s not do this here. It’s off topic.
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This is an attack on my character, regardless of how hedged in “oh well i’m just making an observation i and some people say that he’s actually a decent guy” it is, to the point that if it were directed towards a non-staff member, I’d ask them to edit that part out. This is especially so considering that there are things that are misleading (for example, I have walked back unpopular decisions before) or straight up wrong (like the suggestion that I apparently go around swinging my dick around as site owner all the time). I didn’t ask to be called out in public, and the thing that was edited in later to make it relevant to the conversation topic
is something that I do not care about, which I have said, three times now (four, if you include this one).
EDIT:
At any rate, I am going to allow @jackofblades1991 one more response in this thread if he so chooses, and ask everyone else to get back on topic. If you have any concerns or questions, my DMs are always open.
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I don’t an issue with archiving assets that may risk being “lost to time” so long as it is clear that they’re archived for reference or historical purposes. It is stinky when old stuff is lost because a site goes down, so I am generally pro-archival for reference purposes.
I do think the discussion around “when does old stuff become F2U?” is interesting, but for our purposes, I think we should always operate on “not F2U until proven F2U” for simplicity’s sake. I don’t think it’s FEU’s job to govern “copyright” for assets people make for their fangames and establish limitations for that (ie once TLP is 20 years old, all of its assets are available for you to use).
If the creator says or last said it wasn’t F2U, then it isn’t imo.
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This is pretty much it. In my opinion, FEU doesn’t have the right as a website to arbitrarily declare that assets become F2U after a certain period of time passes and overrule the original creators. How long is “long enough”? Not seeing the person for 2 years? 5 years? What kind of objective standard is that measurement of time actually based on? How do you determine whether someone has truly left the community? We’ve seen old-timers stick around as lurkers or return to being active. Does anything that is ever posted become F2U X years after its posting date? What impact would any kind of forced F2U status have on artists’ willingness to share their creative works? This whole concept just feels like a can of worms that we shouldn’t really open.
Archive? Cool. It’s like a community museum! But the contents of that archive should be for display and preservation purposes only unless the creator specifically states that they are F2U assets. Unfortunately, I’m certain that some people will just decide to just use archived non-F2U assets anyways and feign ignorance (or make some kind of ideological argument as to why their use is justified, exactly like what’s going on in this thread right now). So that is also something that we should be cognizant of. An archive will invite that type of behavior, whether it’s intentional or not.
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Er, it wasn’t intended to be an attack nor was it intended to call you out.
Though if curious the only time I’ve seen what seems like something getting blown out of proportion was a dispute a monthish back between you and klokinator when dealing with the thread lock message on… I think it was tambo’s stuff.
Otherwise i don’t have any real problems with you or how you run things.
As per why i edited that previous bit in wasn’t just to tie it back into the topic since it was a direct response to the above comment (sometimes I hit the wrong reply button, curses of using a tablet). It was to state an objective truth.
Since it ultimately is your decision if regardless of whether the community wants to make a storage repository of non-f2u content for references to have it be linked to this website. Kinda like how even though this place no longer affiliates with mangs he still links the hacks he plays to here.
Now, to continue the actual topic, i’d say properly categorizing the assets would also be a major hurdel since sometimes the hacks in question had those sprites made by unknowns that haven’t done anything since. it really is a difficult prospect to get permission from someone who may just be an alias for somebody completely different who doesn’t respond to the attempts to contact them. Sometimes the only way to actually get permission is to use something without permission. Ita kinda screwy that way.
Small edit: i’ve always had an issue with saying things in a way that comes off as a dick when i didn’t intend to.
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Yeah, well, that’s mostly on me because I’m an asshole 
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