A member of MAAST forum,
Rohnds, is stealing a big amount of contents from ATS and posting them in that forum.

Here there are some examples:
www.maast.org...

Image # 1

stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Image # 2

Stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Image # 3

Stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...


Image # 4, 5 and 6



Stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Image # 7

Stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Image # 8

Stolen from here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I would like to point out that some of these images are findings from other sources (for example image 1) to which i've given the credits.

Some of them are close-up or other elaboration that i've made
(for example, image # 8]
But some of them are MY PERSONAL findings, like the images 2, 3 and 7.
Now, even if these last three images i mentioned would turn out to show natural formations, they're the results of my efforts, no matter what they actually represents.

This guy, is REGULARLY stealing contents from ATS, i've noticed at least other two images made by me in Mikesingh's thread, and some Mikesingh's images (again you my friend) and he's passing these contents as if they where his personal findings, or at least omitting to give the credits.
I confess that my first intention was to post there, i joined that forum, but at the last moment i decided to stop before posting and to leave this issue be handled by the site owners, since i'm not the only member who has been hurted, and i think that this is a problem which involves the whole ATS community.

By his profile, i've found who is this guy:
His name is Rohn DeSilva, and this
www.geocities.com...
is his website.
I also suggest to all to take a look at that forum because this may being happening for a long time, i don't know.


[edit on 8/1/2008 by internos]

Thank you for informing us of this.

I have informed our Administrators of this as they are the ones who will be able to help you out.

I know this can be very frustrating...

When it comes to images, we should slap an ATS watermark on them or something.

I feel bad for you guys that are constantly getting ripped off.

Jeez what's wrong with these a-holes??

All they would have to do is give a little credit where credit is due, right?

Instead they glom onto other's work and act like it's their own.

Man, this is just wrong!

Internos, you do good work and deserve to get the credit for it, I feel for you bro.

We know SO's gonna be all over this in no time!!

You know, watermarking images is good idea!

Unfortunate that it should come to this, but what can you do, eh?

Man, this sucks!

*now, where'd I put my burning torch and pitch fork?*

*NO! must...exercise...restraint...SO will handle this..*

Damn! Not again!! When will this ever stop? Where ethics are concerned, there’s only one way it’s going – downhill.

I’m sure the Amigos will take this seriously and haul this guy over the coals in an expeditious manner like they’ve done on earlier occasions.

I have started copyrighting my images, and I think you should too as must others who spend hours in hard work pouring over images and annotating them, just to get them ripped off to some other web site by these inter net thieves.

At the least, ATS should have been mentioned with the link. But then, thieves have no honor.

Anyone here in the north Austin, Texas area? Maybe he'd like some company and a little talking to about claiming photos he didnt find or do the actual research for?

Is there a technical way to block images from being removed from ATS, forcing the thieves to resort to using screen shots? Maybe something that would scramble the image as they were being lifted?

As to the written word, maybe it would help if ATS is mentioned in the text once or twice in each post. Example:

"This pictures which I am now putting on ATS for everyone t comment on came from my work with the ZYX photos from NASA.com. Blah, blah, blah...."

By embedding such statements into the meat of the posts, it would make the cut and paste artists have to work harder to remove it all. After all, they're too lazy to do the research themselves or to write a couple of lines to give credit, so maybe this would be too much work for them to do.

This is becoming a bad trend, and at some point will start to make people work less hard at quality posts here on ATS, as they will feel regularly violated.

What is the difference from ATS linking footage from Youtube and other sites?
I mean they probably use ATS as a bandwagon for their own needs, we do the reseach and they steal the glamour for their own copied homework site.
But if anything then ATS should watermark it self, but you can not if its also from another site, unless you own the picture your self.

I am not sure of the whole story of this, my guess is that someone is copying information and not providing a link to say it came from here and claim as their own work. Even at universities when writing an essay that is known as copy right offence if you don't show your research with evidence.

I am not really up on matters of intellectual property etc, so I'm not the one to say if this is any offense or not, but in regards to "the difference between this and what ATS does" I can say this much:

I've noted that ATS works very hard to be fair and equitable with others, and our management can always be counted upon to handle any concern of this nature with far more professionalism than I have personally witnessed from certain other sites. I think it's safe to assume that our fine management will never hold others to anything higher or lower than the reasonable standards that they hold their own community to.

If the rights of our members are being infringed, you can count on them to handle it right. If it's legit, you can count on them to be the voice of reason.

My suggestion is that we all remain calm and give this a day or so to get looked at.

Also, although its not a good thing that our stuff gets taken (and it does- I've found my posts and those of other members on other sites before) it is because our community sets a standard all its own, and I think we can be proud that our community is generating content that other sites want.

I have never went looking to see if I have anything stolen. I think it's wrong to do so, as I don't like a thief in any form. But the sites where stolen material shows up must be ones with a very dumbed down readership.

Since the person posting stolen items didn't do the work, it would be pretty obvious when being questioned on the matter. He wouldn't know anything except what was in the stolen posts, or he would be smart enough to do his own work in the first place.

Thank you all for your support on this one, much appreciated. My idea is to put an abovetopsecret.com visible digital watermark on every single image i will post in the future. Of course, if this is allowed. But this would block them from stealing the image by himselfs, of course not from the personal findings. Now, since many of us post all the data referring to the source image (from nasa, for example) i think that there's no way to stop this people from stealing if not our images, our ideas. I came across ats because it was the primary source for some of my researches. Now, the system of this forum should be able to prove when something has been posted: frankly, i don't think that someone is able to prove that he's the original poster of something that has been posted here before. Anyway, my purpose is to create a situation which may get harder the work of the thiefs. My idea is to ask Jeff Ritzmann about some technical facets of this problem. And some legal issues need to be clarified once for all. The fact that ATS is the best conspiracy site in the world, doesn't allow the people to steal our findings, our ideas, our efforts. And what about the credits? Is it so hard to add one line of credits after putting all the efforts needed in order to steal the contents?

It is wrong to steal someone else work, and re-post it on another forum, in the same words as the real work, without giving credit. However, if they save an image from a post, like a Mars photograph, anyone can find that on Google. Unless you work for NASA and decide to post it here, which won't happen. Either way, they should at least give the source where they found it from.

[edit on 8-1-2008 by jca2005]

[edit on 8-1-2008 by jca2005]

Just an FYI.....

Rohnds is also a member here at ATS.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

SO would have his IP address somewhere.

Yeah I guess thats annoying, but no need to get too upset. MAAST is a crappy little site with 3,000 members. I thought you meant someone credible and large was stealing material

I really don't know why you all are getting all defensive and crying foul.

Did YOUR space shuttle take those pics originally?

All you guys did was post your opinions about shaddows and blips..you didnt take the pics or write a published work.

Nobodys stealing anything from you..because you dont' have anything to steal.

This IS what appears at the bottom of every single post, if you hit the button "copyright & usage", and this IS the second time that you defend the people who steals the ATSers works. I don't want to be payed for what i do here, i like to SHARE it IN A CIVIL MANNER and i hate when the people behaves as if they lives in a JUNGLE. I just would like TO BE RESPECTED even by people like these THIEFS, and if not me, at least ATS should be mentioned.

I sent this in a U2U to a mod:


my initial idea would be to have the 3 amigo's design the watermark and post it publicly, maybe with instructions on how to add it into images (maybe using a free program found somewhere on the net as photoshop is expensive.) This would make it the users perogitive to add the watermark.

Pros:
A pre-emptive strike against theft.
Increased awareness of ATS (as these watermarked images get spread.)
Fewer threads about theft and thus less bandwidth usage.

Cons:
Not everyone is photo savvy and it will take time to adopt such policies/suggestions
I dont know how many more bytes this will add to (potentially already large) photo's and may cause a slight increase in overall bandwidth use. (speculative)

I think its a good idea to add an ATS designed watermark (hold a design competition if you want) and create a page in the ATS handbook on how to watermark images.

Why would you watermark an image that wasn't even shot by you from space?

I was told by a reporter from a local TV station (Oakland California) that almost everything posted over the internet is basically "fair game" to all those that utilize our World Wide Web. I'm not sure if that is totally a legal statement, nor do I totally know what ATS Policy is.




www.fno.org...

I for one wouldn't get all crazy over this and take it as a compliment. That site is someone's homepage isn't it? Big deal. Even if you place a watermark on your photos they can be easily removed in Photoshop with the Crop Tool can't they? What about some of the Avatars in use here on ATS? I'm sure many are not original by any means!!!

Like someone posted here has already stated that these photos were not YOUR ORIGINAL photographs and were just enhanced .... you too have 'stolen' (as you stated) the original photographs.

Aren't there more important things to worry about? I for one would let it GO!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like more a case of re-using images that have been used by members in ATS threads.

If you've created those images as original pieces of art, then there may be cause for action.

However, most of these seem to be modifications of public domain imagery... while the ethics are certainly in question, there legal standing is exceptionally tenuous at best.

We have well-established legal recourse when your entire post is taken and reproduced without permission with attribution and often claimed as someone else's work. And that type of plagiarism is indeed where we've focused our efforts in the past. Unfortunately, these images are a much more difficult proposition.

In the future, if you created modifications of public-domain images such as these to illustrate your point in a post, it might make sense to at least watermark them with your ATS username, image source, and date of creation.