PixelSurgeon: final chapter?
So here’s the recap. My name and a website I helped pull together (by subbing it out to another friend) get acusssed as being a rip of PixelSurgeon. I get hundreds of flame mails (because they posted this claim to a bunch of forums before contacting me about it.) My company site gets targeted. So do the sites of companies where I am on the advisory board. I get mad. Some folks agree with me. Web terrorism is never justified. I push back. So ultimately I get this email from PixelSurgeon this morning. It is intact except for a part about his family getting email threats. I left that out because a) I don’t support it and b) I don’t think I know anyone personally who would say such things.
The apology is nice and I appreciate it.
Next time someone has an issue with me, I’d also really appreciate it if you’d take it up with me directly. Trying to use the web against me makes me really, really, really angry.
Peace out.
—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Arber {Pixelsurgeon} [mailto:jason@pixelsurgeon.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 8:27 AM
To: Kelly E. Smith
Subject: Re: 2nd Avenue Partners and Pixelsurgeon
Well, this whole situation has brought out the best in people. I find
myself on the receiving end of a long line of a string of hate
emails. It appears we both have a classy set of friends.
I regret my actions, which were done rashly, and apologise for the
pain in the ass caused. I’m not normally a vindictive person, but
another example of a site ripping off my design was the straw the
broke the camel’s back. However, this situation has turned extremely
ugly and have left an extremely unpleasant taste in my mouth. But as
I can’t turn back time, I thought the least I could do was offer my
apologies. Whether or not you accept, or even care one way or the
other is down to you.
And in response to your blog, Pixelsurgeon recently celebrated its
5th birthday (you can examine news posts, reviews and interviews
going back that far) and predates the 2nd Avenue site by three years.
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5 Responses to “PixelSurgeon: final chapter?”
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Rainbows
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Vanishing America
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Old stamps
Kelly - frankly you are being too nice. These guys are such hypocrits. For years Jason bin Ladin has been using these kinds of “web terror†(to use your term) tactics on 13 year old kids just trying to freakin figure out how to use photoshop. His policy of “open shame†is certainly an adolescent way to solve problems but its also complete crap.
Who do you think really does all the stealing in this industry? Tech elitists like Jason and his friends over at sites like humhum steal more MP3’s from hardworking artists than any regular joe. These kinds of guys trade and download thousands of tracks because they don’t want to buy CDs and they can’t get caught. And guess who’s using all the cracked copies of Adobe and Dreamweaver? It’s the little bitches on these types of sites and we all know it! Add up all the stolen music and software on Jason’s server and I’d say it’s a safe bet that it’s worth a hell of a lot more than his simple style sheet.
And they want to talk about theft? Ok “open shame†boy…now tell the whole world how many thousands of dollars of music you’ve got that you haven’t paid for. Openess is your policy isn’t it? Or, is stealing from musical artists and Adobe different than stealing from pixel pushers? You can be sure that at least half these glorified spammers don’t actually pay for the software they rip from developers.
I am glad that this has reached a conclusion, but I do have an issue with the post that someone called BullCrap has posted.
I for one am a member of Humhum and I saw everything, and it was too rash but perhaps because we believe in copyright for the right reason and I fully think humhum as a whole went about tackling the issue unfairly. We are not kids but the issue hit a certain note about copyright where we feel that we are getting a bad deal.
To say we steal is not to understand who the people are and very wrong, and the common thread of members of humhum is that we create things whether it be music, graphics, tv, websites, software or illustrations. we get annoyed with people ripping our own and it got out of hand, very out of hand.
I also think that accusing Jason of the above is completely unfair as his business revolves around the identity of Pixelsurgeon, he certainly wouldn’t support theft and he is an advocate of the creative industries.
I for one have worked on software with Adobe, I have been involved in copyright for imagery because I was involved in that area, and I have GPL, GNU & licensed software on my computers (I even have a policy of only running Debian and OpenBSD instead of other version of Linux in case they have owned code on board) But this doesn’t matter, just stop accusing people of things you don’t know about and if you are really willing to talk please use your own name.
This surely has been some interesting reading. You ever consider suing these guys? I mean, they went after your business, your business partners and clients. How much business did this disrupt? Sounds like you’ve got to have some connections. Talk to your lawyer.
Ok gang. I’ve allowed the first three comments. They are interesting, but this is going to go on all day. Let’s drop it.
Actually, I did almost forget to mention one important fact. SecondAve never paid for the site. I did it as a favor. But, actually I PAID a bit out of my own pocket to the rentacoder.com guy who cranked it out for me.
They have just asked me to do a new site for them because they had known the whole story. Again, I’ll probably do it for free. What are friends for?
Now, if only I can find the time in between my day job…