Evolution Surrenders!

All last week I watched as the greatest flame war I've ever seen between two websites occured. It is still going, and things are now escalating to the point where I think someone may get shutdown.

The flamewar is ongoing between Something Awful, and eBaums World. I was a fan of both sights till last week, and now am the fan of only one. Eric Bauman and his eBaums world can suck a fire hydrant through a coffee stirrer for all I care.

What happened was the folks at Something Awful got tired of seeing Eric Bauman steal their work, slap his silly name on it, call it his own, and proceed to make money off of it. And he is making a bundle. They got pissed when he decided to steal their children's books. He has a disclaimer on his site stating that if anyone sees something that belongs to them and want it removed, all they have to do is e-mail and ask, and it will be done. It is complete bullshit. Numerous people have asked, and you either never hear back from Eric Bauman and moderators, or you get slapped back and basically told "nyuck nyuck nyuck". Dont believe it? Look how one person was responded to on this mirror thread from eBaum's forums. The thread, of course, has been removed from Eric Bauman's site.

Something Awful is not the only site he steals from. Wikipedia has a page describing more of Eric Bauman's pirating adventures. Here is an excerpt:

Critics of the site point out that all of the content -- in particular the Flash content -- is taken from other Internet sources, and that Bauman replaces any original mark of authorship with the phrase "hosted by eBaumsworld", decompiling them if necessary. They also claim that Bauman does not have the right to use or profit from the work of others, and point out that Bauman's site draws considerable advertising revenue in large part due to the Flash content on the site.

In response to such criticisms, Bauman has claimed that he believes that most material on the Internet is public domain (which is untrue; according to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, sufficiently unique works are copyrighted as soon as they are created, unless explicitly released into the public domain) and that he makes a lot of money by making it available in one place. He does not however address the issue of rebranding.

Critics respond that much of the content on Bauman's site, such as the Monkeyball game are copyright, and so clearly are not in the public domain; similarly, rebranded versions of the FenslerFilm GI Joe animations remain on eBaum's as of November 2005, accompanied by a fourteen-month-old Cease-and-Desist letter from Hasbro.

While critics have described Bauman's actions as theft, to date, there is no evidence of a successful legal action against him. Critics point out that the sources for much of the content on the site are small, independent sites which lack the resources to successfully prosecute.

As a result, several people have resorted to using small-scale attempts to discredit Eric Bauman and his practices, such as found on http://www.ebaumsworldsucks.com, a site started after a recent clash between eBaums World and Something Awful united with several other websites. The anti-eBaum song is sung by Neil Cicierega and the video and site itself was designed by AltF4. eBaum's World was accused of stealing content from sites such as Something Awful and Fark, and also posting a malicious code on the front page of eBaum's World that called pages from Something Awful; an illegal act. Many victims of eBaum's theft also claim that eBaum's World ignores them when they asked for their work to be removed.

Eric Bauman is a douchebag. Viacom is threatening to take him to court, but Eric and Neil Bauman are saying they won't budge from stealing.

I saw how this started out, and yes, the Something Awful crew did reply visciously on Eric's forums. But Eric escalated it further by replying with a DDOS attack on Something Awfuls forums. He never did reply to the question of "Why does he keep stealing stuff?" He is also known to steal plenty from Fark, but so far Drew still has a link to his place over there. TotalFarkers have asked why this is, but only Drew knows. It's his website. He can do what he wants with it. As for me, I will never be going to eBaums world again. I have learned too much this week. I have learned that:

Eric Bauman is a thief.
Eric Bauman sucks.
Eric Bauman is a cocksucker.
Eric Bauman's mom is a whore.
Eric Bauman blows his dad.
Eric Bauman gets anal raped by goats.
Eric Bauman hates America.
Eric Bauman steals for a living.
Eric Bauman don't care about black people.

T.O. for you Eric.
I'm sure I'll think of more to say in upcoming posts. :)

As they say...

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