supersoakers dot info

Discussion of other water gun websites.
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Drenchenator
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by Drenchenator » Wed Jun 25, 2008 1:45 pm

I believe you owe me an apology as well--especially since you continue to host this image on your own site. Please take it down along with any other stolen content and images from any site.

When we redid SSC in late 2007 and early 2008, I was in charge of redoing all of the reviews. I bought a new in the box SS 300 off eBay for 30 bucks in 2005 (I know, good deal) and still had the box around. It had some nice drawings of all of the Super Soaker Classics on it, including the SS 50. I scanned them in and used them as the gun image for those reviews.

Your SS 50 review is here; mine is here.

Despite my work to bring this to our site, you steal it and now boast the originality of your content. I'll let the public compare: mine versus yours.

Granted, your colorization is better. I should have spent the extra time to redo it myself admittedly. But it shares the original's pops and marks. The
box had a piece of tape over the image of the SS 50, and I had to do some Photoshop work to remove the damage it did to the drawing. When you're scanning the box in at 600 dpi, it changes the colors a bit. It wasn't hard work, but it was work nonetheless.

I also had to remove a stream from the nozzle, some of which is still evident. The transparency behind the gun wasn't a problem.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words, why not?

Image

You can clearly see the tape and the stream.

Oh, by the way, your image is the same size as mine, 640 by 320.

Please, take down our image along with any other stolen content you have. If you want to have a Super Soaker site, by all means make one. Just don't steal images and content and claim it's not a scraper site. I can see through it.

Edit: I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm assuming that this background is also stolen as well. It just looks too similar to this image on our site. It has the same large anomaly in the center of the reservoir.
Last edited by Drenchenator on Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

SuperSoakers.Info
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SuperSoakers.Info » Wed Jun 25, 2008 5:51 pm

Drenchenator,

Hello! It is great to finally talk correspond with you. We have great respect for your site and I must say it has been difficult to begin construction on our own page without infringing on your intellectual rights. With exception given to the page in question, I have made every effort to factualize information available on the web from the three primary sources on this subject matter. I have no intention of flagrantly plagiarizing your original content, in fact this same infringement upon my own property would upset me greatly.

I hope to shed some light on this situation.

Some explanations:

I have always been a SS fan. My Limited Edition SS50, the beauty that it was, finally bit the dust last year, clogged from sand and abuse by my 10 year old brother. The tank had lost its bright orange luster and was as dull as the yellow tends to become on the body of the standard models. I used to carry that around with the optional belt accessory that held two extra tanks. But i hated to swap them out because the additional green tanks looked terrible against the camo body of the special edition.

I am currently residing in South Korea where I am an English teacher. I have several Super Soakers resting comfortably back home in the states where I am from. However, while I ride out the remaining 6 months on my contract, I have absolutely zero means to obtain/photograph/sketch images of Super Soakers. Koreans have absolutely no idea what a Super Soaker is (they also think they will die of mad cow by importing American beef). Anyways, in my initial image grabbing from google, i sought to grab only those images that appeared on multiple websites. This seemed grounds enough to me that either the image was public domain or that the holders didn't care enough to police their dispursement. This was before I had become familiar with your site as well as iSoaker.com (clearly the two giants of this genre). I didn't really make the connection until now.

The swiped content from your modifications page was strictly meant for layout purposes. Of course the images were far too wide for our narrow, strict-sized content window. I had no intention of leaving it there. The site was scarcely a reality at this point and I had no intention of any real traffic. Had I taken the images and re-hosted them and changed names, etc I think it would have looked more devious and therefore deliberate. I assure you this is not the case. Reading through this thread was quite enlightening for me because in the span of less than two days your escalating anger over the subject seems to correlate with a growing "audacity" on my part which I assure you is only a perceived one. In no way was I aware of these issues or your anger over them. I am completely against theft of intellectual property.

Seeing as how we will be neighbors, I encourage you to police our site and submit any requests for changes or re-wordings. In no way do we intend to replace your site or its unique intentions. I have significant doubts about our ability to successfully rival your modifications page. Perhaps a link with permission from you would be the most viable option. You are clearly pioneers in your field and it would please me if we could have amicable exchanges in the future.

My proposed solution is that we both use the newer image ss50new.jpg. I will gladly relinquish use of the "brightened" image to you for any use you deem fit. However you claim it is your image despite the fact that it was clearly made by a third artist (he/she who helped design the box for LARAMI). With your permission, we could both use the new image. I understand that the extra effort you put into its creation is important to you. I do not seek to tread upon your well-deserved pride for hard work. I could also just tell you exactly how I did it in Photoshop. But remember I could also just get ahold of an original box and scan it myself and it would be every bit as justified.

Also, the /cbiggs directory is my college webspace. For some reason they haven't closed it in the year since I graduated from UF. Everything on it is personally uploaded by me.

I hope I have addressed every issue in question here. Consider this an addition to the original apology, now fully including Drenchenator.

cbiggs

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SSCBen
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SSCBen » Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:19 pm

It sounds reasonable for both sites to use those images because we didn't make them. However, as Drenchenator did do some touch-up work I'll leave it to him.

One thing I would like to emphasize is that it's always best to ask first before using something even if you think it could be fair use. A heads up helps clear up any potential misunderstandings. If I had been asked to use a page or two from here, to be honest I wouldn't care, but when I receive no notice, find no note of the source, and can find no contact information, it greatly angers me. Another advantage is that if you're looking for images, we could have provided you with higher quality copies that would be better to source from.

I see a lot of people copy our content and usually it's handled transparently, but this one I decided to post about publicly.

If you want public domain water gun pictures try patents. The CPS 1500 in our logo was sourced from there and colorized using colors based on real CPS 1500s. All US patents images are public domain so you can use them as you like. And there's a lot of water gun images out there.

Now that I look at it, the SS 50 in the patent database is much sharper looking than the one we have. It should work well colorized. Check it out: http://www.google.com/patents?id=z5gEAA ... act&zoom=4

Aside from a few issues starting the website I think you guys are doing a good job. I already used your eBay scanner to spot a good deal on a CPS 3000, so I'm glad the website is around. :)
Last edited by SSCBen on Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

SuperSoakers.Info
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SuperSoakers.Info » Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:31 pm

wow, great find!

Ben, I really appreciate your candor. You seem like a very reasonable person

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SSCBen
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SSCBen » Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:38 pm

One tip about the colorization: work in indexed color so you can directly manipulate the index if you want to change a color image-wide. It took some tweaking to get the images to look right when I did some colorization.

Also, the USPTO website has the highest quality versions of these images. Downloading a PDF from Google makes it a little more complicated too than downloading the TIFF file from the USPTO.

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Drenchenator
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by Drenchenator » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:30 pm

SuperSoaker.Info wrote:Had I taken the images and re-hosted them and changed names, etc I think it would have looked more devious and therefore deliberate. I assure you this is not the case.
I realize you are talking about the modifications page, but I must say, that's what you did to our SS 50 review's image. You touched it up, adding an extra step to the process. But in the end it's the same thing.
SuperSoaker.Info wrote:My proposed solution is that we both use the newer image ss50new.jpg. I will gladly relinquish use of the "brightened" image to you for any use you deem fit. However you claim it is your image despite the fact that it was clearly made by a third artist (he/she who helped design the box for LARAMI). With your permission, we could both use the new image. I understand that the extra effort you put into its creation is important to you. I do not seek to tread upon your well-deserved pride for hard work. I could also just tell you exactly how I did it in Photoshop. But remember I could also just get ahold of an original box and scan it myself and it would be every bit as justified.
I reject this solution. You get all the benefits while I get nothing. That's not fair. I did all the work (well, most anyway) and you get all the benefits.

You're completely right about the box though. I bought the box; I own the box; I scanned the box; I touched up the scan of the box; I cropped the touched-up scan of the box; and I posted the cropped, touched-up scan of the box. It completely justifies my ownership of the image. The box is my property.
Ben wrote:One thing I would like to emphasize is that it's always best to ask first before using something even if you think it could be fair use. A heads up helps clear up any potential misunderstandings. If I had been asked to use a page or two from here, to be honest I wouldn't care, but when I receive no notice, find no note of the source, and can find no contact information, it greatly angers me. Another advantage is that if you're looking for images, we could have provided you with higher quality copies that would be better to source from.
Ben brings up and excellent point. If you wanted to use the image and really had legitimate intentions, why not ask first? We want notice of what happens to our work. We also have no problem with helping others in the online water gun community. Asking first is much better than taking first.
SUPER SOAKER CENTRAL TERMS OF SERVICE wrote: LIMITATION OF RE-USE

You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes or noncommercial purposes any portion of the services or content contained within Super Soaker Central and its subsidiary sites. In order to use any content, graphical art, photos or files owned by or published by Super Soaker Central, direct, written authorization must be obtained from Super Soaker Central or the author of the content in question with no exceptions at any time for any reason.
This is quote from our terms of service. Our site is not public domain, yet I have no problem with you use of the image. But since we have these conditions, I must enforce them. If you want to use some of our content, you must ask for it first. You did not. You took it first. That's not fair use.

However, I think I'm a nice guy. I might let you use the image if you ask for it and credit Super Soaker Central for it. That's in accordance to our policies, so I see no problem with it. Ask away.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

SuperSoakers.Info
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SuperSoakers.Info » Wed Jun 25, 2008 8:15 pm

Take down the image? Fair enough. I'll take it down. You, however, are free to use it.

I suppose you are the owner, but certainly not the author. But I will definitely ask in the future.

If you want to modify the original yourself (rejecting mine on principle I suppose), load up a picture of a real SS50 in PS CS3 and sample the proper colors using eyedropper. Make a new layer in ss50.jpg and carefully "fill in" the areas. Right click layer and select Blending Options. Under "General Blending" select "Mulitply". This will allow you to paint in the proper color almost as intended without losing any pitch do to normal style or screen blending. Do the same thing for yellow/orange but I suggest using different layers. Afterwards clean it up. This is exactly what I did but if you would like to do it again yourself, have at it.

I still must insist that the site was not intended for any traffic whatsoever at that point. Forgive my sloppiness.

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SSCBen
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SSCBen » Wed Jun 25, 2008 8:36 pm

I have to apologize for releasing the website early then. From what I remember I've found a few websites that we're public yet in our referrer logs and this was just the latest one. Usually I don't do or say anything because I don't want to release the site before it's ready, but this time around I posted about it because I was angry that someone was using our content.

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Drenchenator
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by Drenchenator » Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:06 pm

I accept your apology. I apologize for two things as well. I was mean towards you and I shouldn't have been. Moreover, I'm sorry that we released your site early.

I'll give you permission to use both the SS 50 image and the SS 30 one. It seems that you are still using the SS 30 one as a background, but since it goes along so well with your site, you can keep using it. If you want to use the SS 50 one, go ahead. But please, if you want to use any other content or images from Super Soaker Central, ask first. That is all I ask of you.

Thanks for the Photoshop tips too.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

SuperSoakers.Info
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Re: supersoakers dot info

Post by SuperSoakers.Info » Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:11 pm

No problem. Water under the bridge. I found some great images on the patent pages and I'll let you use them (assuming you like them). I'll post them when I get done

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