Just a warning

[aderangedhyena.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone,

Just dropping a warning into the art community in general. For your own sake, do not get involved with doing work -- commissioned or no -- for the RPG site Metal Machine Music. I have nothing against the site itself or game -- it's all excellent. I've been there for a long time and enjoyed it. However the site's owner, Don McGunigale, has zero respect for artists and a very twisted view on the legalities of works-ownership and rights.

I've done a number of small commissions for players on the site and never had a problem. Don attempted to commission me last year and long-story-short, it didn't work out. At all. I've done other non-commissioned work for the site out of love for the game, but have spent the last few days being walked all over for that work. Work that I did as a favor.

As Don McGunigale doesn't respond to reason and elevated a ridiculously simple request into a bunch of tl;dr nonsense, I feel something ought be said. I'm currently engaged in the legal side of trying to get my work down (right now mostly dealing with CafePress to stop my stuff from being sold).

I'll gladly elaborate or provide backing to any of these assertations, but I'd rather just post the warning in brief so everyone is made aware. Forewarned is fore-armed and such. I simply don't want any other artist having to go through what I've just gone through.

Thanks for your time.

Comments

[thaily.livejournal.com]

Yikes, could we get a link to or a screenshot of this cafepress store that he(?) started up with your work?

[aderangedhyena.livejournal.com]

This is the store. http://www.cafepress.com/mmmstore2006

The black-and-white battle image that's on the majority of the items is mine. Understand that I made this work for the site awhile back (most of the administration with which I'm good friends with.) But it's the site-owner who's making money from the store, and his recent practices/behaviour have bid me to not want to associate with him any longer (aka money is not to be made for him via my work). I politely asked that he remove the work, and was rudely denied, then insulted.

CafePress already pulled the images, but [I can only assume] he's put them back up. Second time should (unfortunately) get the whole store pulled.

I had other work on the site itself that I also requested taken down (and was also denied), but my friends [admin] went around him and pulled those items. They were suspended and derided for doing so.

It's a rather ugly situation. Hence wanting to keep others from possibly engaging into anything that'd lead them to a similar mess.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

If you never explicitly consented they make money off it then he's selling your work illegally, a DMCA notice to cafepress should take care of it.

On the site itself, don't contact the site owner, contact the ISP hosting the site and tell them that the site owner is illegally redistributing your copyrighted material. They'll either tell the site owner to remove it because he's in breach of their TOS or remove it themselves.

ISP:
OrgName: Ecommerce Corporation
OrgID: ECOMM-5
Address: 247 Mitch Lane
City: Hopkinsville
StateProv: KY
PostalCode: 42240
Country: US

NetRange: 76.162.0.0 - 76.163.255.255
CIDR: 76.162.0.0/15
NetName: ECOMMERCE-HOSTING
NetHandle: NET-76-162-0-0-1
Parent: NET-76-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.OPENTRANSFER.COM
NameServer: NS2.OPENTRANSFER.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2006-11-09
Updated: 2007-04-02

RAbuseHandle: ABUSE875-ARIN
RAbuseName: Abuse Contact
RAbusePhone: +(270) 707-2040
RAbuseEmail: abuse@ecommerce.com

[aderangedhyena.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[snapesgirl34.livejournal.com]

Is it the one that looks like a cat and some other creature fighting entitled "zoid battle"? Because if so, when you click on any of the items with your image it takes you to a page that says "CafePress.com Product Not Found"