🦊 Furry FurAffinity Sold: Shitstorm Inevitable

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Sigyn said:
I'm just fascinated. How has no one tried to report IMVU to whatever govt. sect. looks into shady businesses? If they're doing this so blatanly, there's a hell of a lot more that they're doing behind the scenes
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IMVU can just hide behind the same defense as YouTube when it comes to DMCA violations. "Oh, we can't control what users upload... but if someone reports it to us then we can take it down." It's pretty shitty and it's extremely unethical that they are making money off of this as well.

This case is a bit different than YouTube however, because in this case all the content is behind a giant pay wall, so there is a likely chance that a class action suit could be organized against IMVU if the proper steps were taken.
 
I have had today off, and am planning on going to surgery. As such, I've been doing nothing but reading these threads.

My question has become: Where did the pressure go on Dragoneer? Seriously, he seems like someone who needs an ass-kicking. Three months past, donation money gone to who knows where (likely personal debts), non-transparency in the deal.

I get that the artists really don't have a say in where the site goes to.
 
Orthodox Chrischanity said:
I have had today off, and am planning on going to surgery. As such, I've been doing nothing but reading these threads.

My question has become: Where did the pressure go on Dragoneer? Seriously, he seems like someone who needs an ass-kicking. Three months past, donation money gone to who knows where (likely personal debts), non-transparency in the deal.

I get that the artists really don't have a say in where the site goes to.
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Dragoneer has never had any sort of responsibility or accountability until now. He has been able to do anything and get away with anything because FA had too much momentum going for people to leave. I don't doubt for a second that FA donations have financed his own personal expenses at some point or another. Putting pressure on Dragoneer just causes him to go hide for a while and fuck up some more.

To understand Dragoneer, you need to know his history. He was disliked by the people running Anthrocon, which I don't doubt is the reason why he's fought so hard to become "somebody" in the fandom, despite the fact still nobody really likes him. He stopped going to conventions a couple of years ago around the same time many convention's demographics started shifting younger and you got a lot more "normal" people showing up. People that didn't kiss his ass and think he's cool just for running FA.

FA's own convention is nothing more than an ego boosting party he throws for his friends and he and other people pay for. He also gets to parade around and pretend to be Uncle Kage (The guy who runs Anthrocon) and give his friends positions that make them feel important. I've always figured that, at some point, Kage told him he wasn't fit for staffing a convention and Dragoneer is just trying to prove Kage wrong. Unfortunately for him, FA: United has a history of being poorly run (hours-long Registration waits, not delivering on Supersponsor gifts, shit-tier security that allows laptops to be stolen out of main events in the middle of the night, etc). FA: U's main attraction seems to be food, I think last year they scheduled the "Pool Party" with free food about an hour after the Supersponsor luncheon. I guess he couldn't go more than an hour without gorging himself on free food.

There are, unfortunately, a lot of idiot furries out there who will shower him with praise for any reason, and give him passes any time he fucks something up. He could sell the site to Mitt Romney and get it promptly shut down and people will still go "thank u dragoneer for ur service to furraffinity and furries ^..^ ;3 <3 too bad that mean troll shut down FA"
 
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Orthodox Chrischanity said:
My question has become: Where did the pressure go on Dragoneer? Seriously, he seems like someone who needs an ass-kicking. Three months past, donation money gone to who knows where (likely personal debts), non-transparency in the deal.
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He knows that furries have no long term attention span and that they'll go back to being spineless placaters within a week, which they have done yet again. He basically flat out says this here:

d87ec9bf2e.png


I mean, most people won't bring up that he owes commissions and art trades from around a decade ago. He also recently did a gofundme for a, I think, $2200 cintiq tablet or something like that? I think that was about 6 months ago or so now. And he hasn't done any of the prize artwork for that either.
 
Super Collie said:
IMVU can just hide behind the same defense as YouTube when it comes to DMCA violations. "Oh, we can't control what users upload... but if someone reports it to us then we can take it down." It's pretty shitty and it's extremely unethical that they are making money off of this as well.

This case is a bit different than YouTube however, because in this case all the content is behind a giant pay wall, so there is a likely chance that a class action suit could be organized against IMVU if the proper steps were taken.
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Youtube runs on the "Safe harbor" rule. Which is a rule that basically means because Youtube isn't the one violating the law they can't be taken down as a result. It's not a bulletproof defense however.

Youtube was sued by Viacom in 2007 and that lead to a great deal of the more draconian rules that it has in place for preventing copywrite infringement (Such as Content ID matching where if a specific audio track is played that's in their system it gets muted or taken down entirely). However Youtube gets away with a lot of this by how they only make money off advertising and don't charge users.

IMVU charges users based on artwork that other users upload. And their DMCA system is severely flawed because you must own a paid account to even see most of the products they have available. The Safe Harbor defense here is very hard to prove in court once it gets into the subject of charging users for artwork you didn't get permission to sell. The only defense they could possibly use in court is incompetence or ignorance "Well we didn't know people were uploading that specific artwork because we didn't oversee uploads. But we still collected money off it because why not?". Bare in mind I'm not a lawyer so I'm not completely in the know about how copywrite law works but I'm certain IMVU's case would be much harder to defend in court.

I have a feeling a big reason why IMVU put it in their terms for the sale that they could sell any artwork they wanted on Fur Affinity was specifically because they predicted a shitstorm revolving around it. And would rather leave the problem as-is than fix it. I doubt it'd hold in in court (especially since it wasn't in the terms and conditions when the majority of people registered and uploaded their artwork) but it's still a thing and Dragoneer now can't defend it.

I'm just going to state flat out the biggest reason why IMVU gets away with this is because they're small and nobody cares about them. Valve for instance heavily regulates what items are allowed in their games. And I believe the entire reason why is because they're more likely to get sued because they have money and are well known. It's unlikely IMVU has a lot of money and the drawn out nature of the court proceedings would deter a lot of people from suing them.

It won't last forever though. Eventually they'll piss enough people off that something will eventually give. Only time will tell for sure though.

Sigyn said:
I'm just fascinated. How has no one tried to report IMVU to whatever govt. sect. looks into shady businesses? If they're doing this so blatanly, there's a hell of a lot more that they're doing behind the scenes
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It was in IMVU's terms of sale for FurAffinity that they're allowed to do whatever they want with artwork that's already on the site. If they haven't redone FA's terms of use they've likely done so to reflect this.

It's still not particularly legal but it's the case now.
 
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Cuddlebug said:
"Well we didn't know people were uploading that specific artwork because we didn't oversee uploads. But we still collected money off it because why not?". Bare in mind I'm not a lawyer so I'm not completely in the know about how copywrite law works but I'm certain IMVU's case would be much harder to defend in court.
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Not to mention all the copyrighted characters that people upload "fan-porn" of; by selling those photos, they're literally selling another company's intellectual property.

If any of them took a glance at IMVU and decided they wanted their money, they could and would crush them in court.
 
MarvinTheParanoidAndroid said:
Not to mention all the copyrighted characters that people upload "fan-porn" of; by selling those photos, they're literally selling another company's intellectual property.
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Oh wow that's a good point, a lot of furry art is fanart. That could get IMVU in trouble with selling fan-art without permission.
 
Cuddlebug said:
Oh wow that's a good point, a lot of furry art is fanart. That could get IMVU in trouble with selling fan-art without permission.
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Something tells me that they may be a little more careful than that, but still be able to claim ignorance.

I don't know. I've gone all one-track mind, but I don't see IMVU as big an offender as the 'Neer. Especially with all the information you guys threw at me.
 
Cuddlebug said:
Someone created an imgur archive of stolen Furry art
View attachment 21480
[MEDIA=imgur]oAtuI[/MEDIA]
tl;dr there are 32 pages in this one archive alone. And all of these require an "Access pass" you must pay money for simply to view. There are even more that don't require one.
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How many there do you think are from paysites like Clubstripes or Sexyfur? Because those essentially have a copyright warning watermark about redistribution. I'm sure having to pay to view them on IMVU would create grounds for legal action.
 
Kingofmoe said:
Somewhat unrelated question how is IMVU still around?
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I actually had no idea that they were that big, or still around. They just felt like another second life fly-by-night clone to me (not that I used second life at all anyway)

That being said it has been so long since I bothered to check anything out about furry drama it's almost like I forgot it existed. I remember Dragoneer being a douche, but this is really pushing it too far.
 
fartknocker said:
He knows that furries have no long term attention span and that they'll go back to being spineless placaters within a week, which they have done yet again. He basically flat out says this here:

d87ec9bf2e.png


I mean, most people won't bring up that he owes commissions and art trades from around a decade ago. He also recently did a gofundme for a, I think, $2200 cintiq tablet or something like that? I think that was about 6 months ago or so now. And he hasn't done any of the prize artwork for that either.
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As both you and he predicted, things are calming down. I peeked on the forums this morning. The folks posting there seem to have been overcome by a malaise that reminds me of my time in Nigeria. People there always got pissed off at the government, but then helplessly sigh and mutter "can't do anything about it." An unfair comparison, considering Nigeria's current political situation, but still, the casual attitude is there.

You know what I want? I want IMVU to drastically improve things. I want them to come in with their plastic magical fairy wand and grant all the wishes of the people wishing for such features on FA. I would love it if they did it with their own staff, and all the improvements come in the vein of a cable installer indicating that the problem was simply the TV being unplugged. I want to see them make the FA staff look even more incompetent than they already do.

Nothing like a hideously shady company doing what a lazy cult leader wouldn't.
 
Cuddlebug said:
View attachment 21786
You don't hire 120 full time employees unless you have a lot of money.
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Someone somewhere mentioned IMVU's yearly income last year was like $55 million? No idea how true that is or not, there was like no proof of that.

Orthodox Chrischanity said:
As both you and he predicted, things are calming down. I peeked on the forums this morning. The folks posting there seem to have been overcome by a malaise that reminds me of my time in Nigeria. People there always got pissed off at the government, but then helplessly sigh and mutter "can't do anything about it." An unfair comparison, considering Nigeria's current political situation, but still, the casual attitude is there.
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It's what happens literally every time. It doesn't matter what scenario happens:
  • FA goes down for a period of time anywhere between 1 week to 1 month?
  • FA rakes in a ton of donations and isn't transparent about what the money is being spent on?
  • FA hires an alleged rapist to re-do the entire sites coding in a coding language he's never even used?
  • FA hires a black-hat hacker under a sockpuppet account, who has a history of dumping people's personal data and destroying projects?
  • FA gets sold to IMVU and isn't reported about until 2 months later?
The result is always the same:
  • People are outraged, they go to a different site(s) for a short time, and then within a few days everyone calms down and comes back.
  • Those who go the long-haul and stay on another site for a while usually end up coming back to FA at some point with their tail between their legs (not literally) and go on a blocking spree, throwing people on their block list that mention "I thought you left forever in a big huff?".

Honestly this is the longest I've seen people get angry for, this is also the longest I've seen the accompanying FA Forum thread to still be alive. It usually gets closed within a day or two and more people banned/suspended.
 
The herd will probably move to inkbunny now. Personally I actually like inkbunnys site design. I'm not a fan of the content or quality standards though.

Orthodox Chrischanity said:
Not a furry, but I do know some artists. They refuse to go to Inkbunny because of its reputation for protecting pedophilia art. Or "Cub Porn".

So long as they don't mention "cub porn" anywhere in the descriptions or titles, and doesn't involve any humans, it's A-OK there.
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This. I think literally every fucking time I refresh the front page with the adult content filter off theres at least one or two shitty cub porn images.
 
ShavedSheep said:
The herd will probably move to inkbunny now. Personally I actually like inkbunnys site design. I'm not a fan of the content or quality standards though.
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Most people are heading off to Weasyl since it's the closest to FA in content and rules. Also quite a few people going to Tumblr.

A lot of people won't even touch Inkbunny due to it allowing cub stuff. That said, Sofurry also allows cub smut so eh.
 
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