I tag from time to time when I have the chance. While editing I came across a couple two kinds comics/images.

There was this one though...

post #395558

What would this be tagged? This looks nearly identical to Flora from the comic. The only difference I can find is the color of the eyes.

Does the color of eyes make a character "original"? Does the different eye color warrant a different name of character, or an omittance of the name tag?

If that is the case, should the DJ pony have different name tags for when the character commonly has purple eyes and another for when the character commonly has red eyes?

Congratulations you discovered leoian. Your life is never going to be the same again. This is not the only case of his "original" character like this. Unfortunately admins said that for some unknown reason avoiding takedown request is more important than keeping rules intact.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Congratulations you discovered leoian. Your life is never going to be the same again. This is not the only case of his "original" character like this. Unfortunately admins said that for some unknown reason avoiding takedown request is more important than keeping rules intact.

Don't forget giving him his own copyright tag too.

There was a dispute about that character not too long ago. Users were convinced that that is definitely Flora but the artist said that she has bigger boobs and different eye color which, in his opinion, is enough to qualify as a different character. Eventually the dude removed most his character from the site and I guess some months later he posts some stuff again.

TheHuskyK9 said:
There was a dispute about that character not too long ago. Users were convinced that that is definitely Flora but the artist said that she has bigger boobs and different eye color which, in his opinion, is enough to qualify as a different character. Eventually the dude removed most his character from the site and I guess some months later he posts some stuff again.

And it seems some posts were undeleted as well lol.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Congratulations you discovered leoian. Your life is never going to be the same again. This is not the only case of his "original" character like this. Unfortunately admins said that for some unknown reason avoiding takedown request is more important than keeping rules intact.

So how is it tagged...?

Butterscotch said:
Don't forget giving him his own copyright tag too.

Does the copyright underneath his name stay? If it does, does that mean that we have to take out the Hasbro and/or My Little Pony copyright from all the MLP "original characters"?

And not tagging related now: What makes a character "original"? Does just a minor change like eye color make a color trace from (Insert popular artist's name here) work "original"?

_Waffles_ said:
So how is it tagged...?

You probably should ask leoian about it. We wouldn't like to lost his art again. In fact I should edit my forum post about who are the most important people on the site, and add him at the top.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
You probably should ask leoian about it. We wouldn't like to lost his art again. In fact I should edit my forum post about who are the most important people on the site, and add him at the top.

If not him nor you, then who should we ask?

_Waffles_ said:
If not him nor you, then who should we ask?

An admin, they always have the answers

Any admin care to respond. I am very curious on how I really am supposed to tag an image like this.

Yes, Leoian's character "Fauna" is obviously very similar to "Flora" from twokinds, but typically it is possible to distinguish between the two.

I mean I'm not really sure what else to add here. The characters are not identical, you just need to be careful when tagging.

Also, remember that TWYS makes an exception for tagging character names, the exception being that there must be SOME evidence of the character within the image. There is evidence in that image that the character is Fauna as opposed to Flora, so Fauna is what gets tagged.

Honestly that would still hold true even without the exception to TWYS, but it's especially true when you take the exception into account.

Char said:
Yes, Leoian's character "Fauna" is obviously very similar to "Flora" from twokinds, but typically it is possible to distinguish between the two.

I mean I'm not really sure what else to add here. The characters are not identical, you just need to be careful when tagging.

Also, remember that TWYS makes an exception for tagging character names, the exception being that there must be SOME evidence of the character within the image. There is evidence in that image that the character is Fauna as opposed to Flora, so Fauna is what gets tagged.

Honestly that would still hold true even without the exception to TWYS, but it's especially true when you take the exception into account.

Researching the name of the character makes sense since the implement of the current TWYS rules.

I am more curious about the copyright at the moment though.

It seems odd. If tagged "Leoian", then all MLP OC's have to have the MLP tag removed. Same for Sonic the Hedgehog OC's and such.

But if the Copyright tag is removed and replaced with a "Twokinds" tag (which seems more appropriate in this situation), would that cause a 'backlash' of people saying that this character is stolen?

This is where I was looking for guidance in tagging this particular (and similar future) pieces.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
This is not the only case of his "original" character like this.

http://donutsteel.tumblr.com/

forum #64978 is how it should have ended. What happens now is just shameful. I wonder this is precedence to comeback of a lot of stupid mlp tags like princess_molestia, futashy, etc.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
forum #64978 is how it should have ended.

Agreed.

_Waffles_ said:
Researching the name of the character makes sense since the implement of the current TWYS rules.

I am more curious about the copyright at the moment though.

It seems odd. If tagged "Leoian", then all MLP OC's have to have the MLP tag removed. Same for Sonic the Hedgehog OC's and such.

But if the Copyright tag is removed and replaced with a "Twokinds" tag (which seems more appropriate in this situation), would that cause a 'backlash' of people saying that this character is stolen?

This is where I was looking for guidance in tagging this particular (and similar future) pieces.

The copyright tag is kind of getting a dual-use right now as a way of saying who has copyright of a character/image, and the source of the characters themselves.

For instance, Simba is not copyright "The Lion King", it's copyright of Disney, yet we have "The Lion King" set as a copyright tag and even implicated to Simba. Clearly, that's not correct, right?

But then if this means we're going to reserve the copyright tag for ONLY specifying the actual copyright holder of a character or artwork, then what do we do with tags like "the_lion_king"? Do we create an entirely new tag type for them? What should the tag type be called? Surely we wouldn't leave it as just a general tag.

I think there's probably a bit of a double-standard going on too, or at least some confusing practices. For instance, we allow MLP-style OC's to be tagged with "MLP", yet I'm almost positive we haven't allowed The Lion King style characters get "the_lion_king" as a tag. I suppose it can be argued that MLP-style characters are more recognizable than TLK-style characters, and so an exception is made for them, but exceptions to practices like that can be confusing.

Same with Leoian's character "Fauna". It's obviously the same style as twokind's characters, yet we don't want "Fauna" to get the twokinds copyright tag just for being in the same style, because it sends a message that the character is actually a part of twokinds in some way. Yet we allow it with MLP because god forbid some users see an MLP-style pony on their e621 (or maybe they want all MLP characters AND OC's in the MLP style when they search).

I guess all I can tell you is that there is no good answer to the point you bring up. The site has been using the copyright tag both ways all this time, and there's not been any requests to change that behavior. It might be something we need to actually resolve though if people are going to complain about it more and more.

Char said:
The copyright tag is kind of getting a dual-use right now as a way of saying who has copyright of a character/image, and the source of the characters themselves.

For instance, Simba is not copyright "The Lion King", it's copyright of Disney, yet we have "The Lion King" set as a copyright tag and even implicated to Simba. Clearly, that's not correct, right?

But then if this means we're going to reserve the copyright tag for ONLY specifying the actual copyright holder of a character or artwork, then what do we do with tags like "the_lion_king"? Do we create an entirely new tag type for them? What should the tag type be called? Surely we wouldn't leave it as just a general tag.

I think there's probably a bit of a double-standard going on too, or at least some confusing practices. For instance, we allow MLP-style OC's to be tagged with "MLP", yet I'm almost positive we haven't allowed The Lion King style characters get "the_lion_king" as a tag. I suppose it can be argued that MLP-style characters are more recognizable than TLK-style characters, and so an exception is made for them, but exceptions to practices like that can be confusing.

Same with Leoian's character "Fauna". It's obviously the same style as twokind's characters, yet we don't want "Fauna" to get the twokinds copyright tag just for being in the same style, because it sends a message that the character is actually a part of twokinds in some way. Yet we allow it with MLP because god forbid some users see an MLP-style pony on their e621 (or maybe they want all MLP characters AND OC's in the MLP style when they search).

I guess all I can tell you is that there is no good answer to the point you bring up. The site has been using the copyright tag both ways all this time, and there's not been any requests to change that behavior. It might be something we need to actually resolve though if people are going to complain about it more and more.

I can understand this. Even with MLP, we no longer use the "Hasbro" 'copyright tag' unless it is directly in the image. But at the same time, if someone uses a slightly altered charcter from the MLP universe (Futashy, Pinkiminia (the evil pinky pie, sorry if I misspell), princess molestia, etc), they no longer have their own tags, but rather are alaised to their 'original' form.

So here is a proposal: Take the Fauna tag and alias it into Flora, but retain the "Project2nd" copyright tag. Remove the "Leoian" copyright tag. Keep Tom Fishbach's name out of copyright and artist since the cracter is not created by him.

Allows people to block the artist (Leoian).
Allows people to block Leoians project ("project2nd" in the copyright tag)
Allows the character to be tagged Fauna (aliased to Flora)

Any foreseen problems with this?

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
forum #64978 is how it should have ended. What happens now is just shameful. I wonder this is precedence to comeback of a lot of stupid mlp tags like princess_molestia, futashy, etc.

Just read this. Sorry, I did not know I was bringing up an old problem.

_Waffles_ said:
I can understand this. Even with MLP, we no longer use the "Hasbro" 'copyright tag' unless it is directly in the image. But at the same time, if someone uses a slightly altered charcter from the MLP universe (Futashy, Pinkiminia (the evil pinky pie, sorry if I misspell), princess molestia, etc), they no longer have their own tags, but rather are alaised to their 'original' form.

So here is a proposal: Take the Fauna tag and alias it into Flora, but retain the "Project2nd" copyright tag. Remove the "Leoian" copyright tag. Keep Tom Fishbach's name out of copyright and artist since the cracter is not created by him.

Allows people to block the artist (Leoian).
Allows people to block Leoians project ("project2nd" in the copyright tag)
Allows the character to be tagged Fauna (aliased to Flora)

Any foreseen problems with this?

Yes, the problem is that you're aliasing two different characters together and treating them like a single character, which they're not. :|

To me, this is like saying "huey_duck", "dewey_duck", and "louie_duck" should be aliased together because the "only" difference between them is their clothing: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120402170439/disney/images/6/60/HDL.jpg They look completely identical otherwise. If I made my own "duck" character that looked identical to them, except mine had orange clothing, would you say my character's name needs to be aliased to... well, I have no idea what you'd alias it to actually, there wouldn't be a good answer there. But I think you should see what I'm saying.

Again, this problem isn't solved by just trying to mess with Leoian's tags. They're merely a symptom of a much larger problem, which I mentioned in my previous post.

There are 2 issues:
1. Intellectual property like "MLP", "The Lion King", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", etc are marked as copyright tags, which isn't accurate, since IP is what you copyright, it can not be the copyright owner of something itself. So should we further distinguish between who a copyright holder is, and the "franchise/show/comic/whatever" that is represented in a post (whether it be a character, logo, etc) by creating a new tag type for them? If so, what should the new tag type be and what are its requirements?

2. From what I can tell, there is a double-standard currently for when the above-mentioned tags are applied to posts. For example, we permit MLP OC's to be tagged with "MLP", yet we have a history of NOT permitting other "types" of characters to be tagged like that, such as characters that are very obviously inspired by The Lion King. Is there something that makes MLP characters different? If so, what? If not, how should we rectify this double-standard? Should we permit other "styled" characters to receive their appropriate tag(s), like how MLP-styled OC's currently receive the MLP tag?

Discuss.

Edit: I will also go ahead and mention that it's actually the other way around as far as the copyright tag type. From the Help page for Tags : "The copyright type indicates the tag represents a game, a novel, a book, or some sort of copyrighted setting". So it's actually the use of the copyright tag itself to denote a copyright owner that's "different" from what our policy says. I admit that this slipped my mind, because we've been using it two different ways for so long now. Please take this into account when reading my above post.

Edit edit: Also I wanted to quickly mention that I'll be out of town all weekend, so it's unlikely I'll be able to respond to this thread again until Sunday night.

Char said Quite a bit.

Discuss.

So it sounds more like a problem of using MLP in the copyright as a standard. It is popular, but it seems like OC's should not have a copyright tag at all.

Like you said before, the problem is not having them tagged correctly, but rather tagged in a way for people to black list.

---Side note: If a small variant like shirt color or hair style can make a character be different (which is proved by you). Then shouldn't there be different character name tags for variations of characters. IE princess celestia and princess molestia; pinkimenia and pinky pie; male and female version of tails from Sonic the Hedgehog (know there is a name, but can not remember it). They are named something different and have a physical difference, thus should there be a name-tag difference?

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Unfortunately admins said that for some unknown reason avoiding takedown request is more important than keeping rules intact.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
I should edit my forum post about who are the most important people on the site, and add him at the top.

This is not the kind of attitude we expect from someone with janitor status.

OC's should not have the copyright tag, and, IMO, Leoian's artwork should be taken down because it's obviously infringing copyright. We should have better standards than that, I think.

For the Pinkamena and Princess Molestia characters, they are the original characters done with a different persona. Yes, there is a persona to it, and that should be tagged in some way, whether through already occuring tags or the introduction of new ones appropriate to the particular change, but they should NOT be labelled as separate characters. In the case of the Huey/Dewey/Louie Duck example, that's actually a poor example because they are very specifically identical triplets and, if no other information is shown on the image, we can infer that each is which dependant on the colour because they are unique (well, there's Phooey, but we don't talk about him) and there are no other even slightly similar characters under the Disney copyright. An OC that looked identical to them should NOT get the Disney copyright, (and is generally how such cases have been handled) and thus would be, for the most part, fine, as that's better covered under Fair Use.

A better example would have been the Powerpuff Girls or other strikingly similar-to-each-other characters that are not explicitly twins or *plets (triplets, quadruplets, etc) and have a colour coded schema, Char; then, copying any one of the characters but just changing the colour scheme and saying "well they're all coloured after a different colour!" can be countered with "But they all dress slightly different, so you're just copying the character design of one of them, altering the colour scheme, and calling it yours. That's blatant copyright infringement and does not fall under Fair Use."

It's especially egregious with Leoian, though, because he's breaking all four flags for Fair Use- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; The nature of the copyrighted work; The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

And what makes it worse for me on a personal level is the shamelessness of it all. Especially the tracing. :/

ippiki_ookami said:
This is not the kind of attitude we expect from someone with janitor status.

I really hope that is a joke Ippiki...

You have bashed and made fun of more people twice as much while being an admin than I have seen banned people do.

I am really trying to figure out this tagging situation, so to not have this entire thread go off the rails and become a piss fight, just hide the damn comment and I will do the same for this one.

123easy said:
Good points.

I dont agree that Leoians work should be just thrown out the door. I do not personally agree with the (VERY BLATANT) theft of character creation, but this is purely an image site. Our tagging and archiving should not be tested/ruled by personal feelings. We still hold and archive loli, cub, diaper, etc. even though a lot of people are against those images/depictions.

We almost lost the site a while ago from people bringing in personal ideologies to the site, and I dont wish to see that happen again.

_Waffles_ said:
I dont agree that Leoians work should be just thrown out the door. I do not personally agree with the (VERY BLATANT) theft of character creation, but this is purely an image site. Our tagging and archiving should not be tested/ruled by personal feelings. We still hold and archive loli, cub, diaper, etc. even though a lot of people are against those images/depictions.

We almost lost the site a while ago from people bringing in personal ideologies to the site, and I dont wish to see that happen again.

It's not about personal feelings; In fact, I actually like the art, objectively. What I don't like is the blatant copyright infringement and abuse of any possible consideration of Fair Use. I mean, if someone opened a store named "Dragon Bad" and sold furry dildos, do you think that Varka and Bad Dragon wouldn't come down on them like a bag of nails?

123easy said:
I mean, if someone opened a store named "Dragon Bad" and sold furry dildos, do you think that Varka and Bad Dragon wouldn't come down on them like a bag of nails?

They would just... acquire them. :3

123easy said:
It's not about personal feelings; In fact, I actually like the art, objectively. What I don't like is the blatant copyright infringement and abuse of any possible consideration of Fair Use. I mean, if someone opened a store named "Dragon Bad" and sold furry dildos, do you think that Varka and Bad Dragon wouldn't come down on them like a bag of nails?

So your suggestion would be to get rid of the Leoian copyright tag, and add in the twokinds copyright tag instead? Since this work is so close to Tom Fishbach's work, the twokinds trademark would acquire them?

123easy said:
OC's should not have the copyright tag, and, IMO, Leoian's artwork should be taken down because it's obviously infringing copyright. We should have better standards than that, I think.

I guess we should get rid of all other pictures which display intellectual and/or copyrighted property as well?

I mean, it would be highly hypocritical of us if we would just get rid of a single case of copyright infringement so let's delete ~50% of the content and only allow OC sparklesonas and generic foxes.

I'm fully aware that hyperbole'd this into the sun but that is still a valid criticism, why only one person and not everyone who draws Pokemon instead of his own creations?

_Waffles_ said:
---Side note: If a small variant like shirt color or hair style can make a character be different (which is proved by you). Then shouldn't there be different character name tags for variations of characters. IE princess celestia and princess molestia; pinkimenia and pinky pie; male and female version of tails from Sonic the Hedgehog (know there is a name, but can not remember it). They are named something different and have a physical difference, thus should there be a name-tag difference?

Canon Character variations get their nametags (link, wolf link and I believe shadow link) but the 25 different fanmade versions don't.

_Waffles_ said:
So it sounds more like a problem of using MLP in the copyright as a standard. It is popular, but it seems like OC's should not have a copyright tag at all.

Like you said before, the problem is not having them tagged correctly, but rather tagged in a way for people to black list.

Mostly whatever helps the search/blacklist.

Nintendo is a tag so that all nintendo franchises can either be ignored or searched together as needed, however so do all SMB characters implicate the SMB tag, to help give a wider array of search options.

Hasbro is a rather dumb tag because I don't think we have anything besides MLP on the site, nor do I know any other franchise they own, thus the tag would be often useless.

Maybe there is a better tag for all the OC ponies in the mlp:fim style, but currently our distinction (all ponies in the fim style get mlp, only canon characters get the fim tag) serves us well in giving more search options and better results while also allowing users to easily blacklist everything.

NotMeNotYou said:
[...]
Hasbro is a rather dumb tag because I don't think we have anything besides MLP on the site, nor do I know any other franchise they own, thus the tag would be often useless.
[...]

Magic: the Gathering (and any other Wizards of the Coast property, such as D&D) is technically also Hasbro's, since Hasbro owns WotC.

NotMeNotYou said:
I guess we should get rid of all other pictures which display intellectual and/or copyrighted property as well?

I mean, it would be highly hypocritical of us if we would just get rid of a single case of copyright infringement so let's delete ~50% of the content and only allow OC sparklesonas and generic foxes.

I'm fully aware that hyperbole'd this into the sun but that is still a valid criticism, why only one person and not everyone who draws Pokemon instead of his own creations?

No, it's not really valid criticism. Most other copyrighted or intellectual property that is parodied is usually a) done obviously, with credit given to the original creators/owners, b) done in a different enough art style to demonstratably be a different product, c) not done specifically for profit (in the sense of they aren't creating it then charging money, but others may commission their artistry for a picture of the copyrighted character; A small but important distinction), and d) don't affect one whit the original copyright holder's productivity in a negative fashion.

This said, this is not the ONLY case that I would remove the artwork because of obvious and intentional infringement, merely a relatively high-profile example.

NotMeNotYou said:
Canon Character variations get their nametags (link, wolf link and I believe shadow link) but the 25 different fanmade versions don't.

Mostly whatever helps the search/blacklist.

Nintendo is a tag so that all nintendo franchises can either be ignored or searched together as needed, however so do all SMB characters implicate the SMB tag, to help give a wider array of search options.

Hasbro is a rather dumb tag because I don't think we have anything besides MLP on the site, nor do I know any other franchise they own, thus the tag would be often useless.

Actually, Hasbro has many other copyrights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbro#Units for a generic list. I'm sure at least some of the other aspects are contained here on E6, and we just didn't know that they were/haven't cared enough to properly alias them over.

NotMeNotYou said:
Maybe there is a better tag for all the OC ponies in the mlp:fim style, but currently our distinction (all ponies in the fim style get mlp, only canon characters get the fim tag) serves us well in giving more search options and better results while also allowing users to easily blacklist everything.

Honestly, that's a good reason for me. MLP is more about the style of the ponies in general, regardless of generation, whilst FiM is about the canon ponies (and others) in the series specifically, regardless of matching art style.