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Recently we've been seeing a lot of concerns raised by users when staff take official actions with users, and of course with some recent bans the worries have resurfaced and have reached us. First and foremost I would like to stress that we only ever take steps such as these when there is ample onsite evidence that actions that breech our Terms of Service have occurred.
In this instance it has regarded the "USD Sales of Designs By Artists" section of the ToS, which reads as follows:
"This section governs the sale of derivative works (artworks incorporating official Aywas pet bases, SCC pets that have been submitted already, and HA avatar artwork). Players may only accept USD for their derivative artworks through the Commissions Platform or through the use of Artist Paintbrushes. Players are forbidden from negotiating or selling derivative artworks through any other means, or in any other location. This means that players may only receive USD direct to their PayPal account when in connection with a Commissions Platform official request, or when an administrator redeems a Paintbrush for them."
This was written into the ToS in June of last year when the feature was released, and a news post was made to make everyone aware. There is also a knowledgebase article which was linked in the news post and is linked on the Commissions Panel page, to ensure that the knowledge of this was clearly and easily accessible.
Previous to this all USD sales of derivative works were disallowed by the ToS, except through Paintbrushes when they were initialised. As such any purposeful circumvention is a permanently bannable offence.
The fee that the commissions platform takes is not to punish the artist, but a licence for them to profit from the use of our copyrighted materials. These fees also allow us to continue building and repairing the site, as well as support the many artists that work as contractors for us in the breeding and custom ticket systems.
No one on staff takes banning a user lightly, and none of us take any joy from it - it is simply a necessary part of the work we do to continue maintaining the website. As always, as long as you have read and abide by the ToS then you are not in any danger - and if you are ever in doubt about something you want to do, or something someone has asked you to do for them, then please contact a member of staff. We are here to help you and always happy to do so =)
Posted by Eve
(#2775) on Mon Apr 4, 2016 4:49pm
- Riri
(#48591)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:19pm
Synthaphone (#15786) The idea has always been, as far as I know, if it already exists on-site, you need to use the commission panel. I was a little surprised to see any confusion because it was always pretty clear to me.
SBC babies go through a breeding artist and are created as pets on-site, so getting them based would need to be done on the commission panel. Pure silvers are different because they don't exist on the site yet. Hopefully that makes sense!
- Sharni&Gamzee
(#4917)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:19pm
I feel like users would feel less threatened and upset about all these recent bannings if the punishments made more sense.
And if people didn't get banned over four dollars.
That would have willingly been paid back.
I mean, if four dollars is enough to get a site to ban members who'd pay it back along with having spent years and tons of money on this site, I think I understand why there's so much upset and unrest.
And honestly, its scary seeing how many people are leaving the site these days. People who's name's you've gotten so familiar with, and people who's art you've come to really appreciate.
Users who are leaving, because of all of this uncertainty.
I'm not saying all the users who have been banned are entirely innocent here, but I AM saying that a perma ban is a little extreme.
Especially since the user who'd stolen thousands of dollars from the site (I feel we all know what situation I'm talking about here) was given weeks AND a PM to rectify the situation.
I feel like all the site did in the case of sylver, ryou, and kili is make Sylver believe that if they co-operated that they wouldn't get banned without the intention of following through with said promise, and using the names Sylver provided under the idea that it would save theirself to ban two other users without notice.
Now if there's a better side to this story, I'd honestly love to hear it. Because I like Aywas, I really do. But this entire situation is driving alot of people away from the site right now because it's really cast a bad light on Aywas, and their idea of justice.
And that makes me sad.
- Synthaphone
(#15786)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:19pm
Kayla-La (#48591) Ah, okay, thank you!
- Py (Rolytic)
(#48446)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:24pm
Where does fan-art fall here with USD commissions? For example: doing a humanized version of a melo, or icons/pixels (non-humanized) of your teo that you made into an OC?
- K-HAO-S
(#11644)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:29pm
Honestly I'm not entirely sure why any of this was uncertain to begin with. But I suppose some could have been taken with uncertain but honestly a permanent ban does not seem that harsh to me. Profiting off of copyrighted material can get you in a LOT of trouble in the real world and this site is a business. It has the right to protect its copyrighted material just as anyone else does. Same point can be used in the privacy issue. For the same reason your privacy is protected off site people would rage and go up in arms if your privacy was breached here.
It does cause a lot of issues but there is no perfect solution for any of this ever. People really can't expect one. But that's just my opinion on the issue.
- Mythic
(#69505)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:30pm
The fact of the matter is that some of these users were banned for such small amounts of money. I could see a ban if you were losing hundreds of dollars. But the fact is... your not. You are losing small amounts. Some of which were mentioned that they WOULD pay the amount that was lost.
Swinging a ban-hammer for such small amounts doesn't make sense. If you wanted people to keep using your site, maybe consider giving warnings for first-time offenders instead of an instant perma-ban. I'm sure some would even take a month or so bans.
Also, one of the users who was perma-banned did mention they did everything you asked for and still banned them.
Those that were banned are not innocent obviously. However, some of them were willing to make things right and instead of working with them, you just threw a ban in their face.
- Kyu & Mauri
(#1010)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:31pm
Synthaphone (#15786)
You are correct, a basing of a sketch pet needs to be done through the commission panel, because it is aywas property. Creation of an entirely new SCC species does not need to go through the panel.
In almost all cases the banned account is unbanned if an appeal is accepted. In some rare cases when a ban appeal is denied, we've allowed the other lair partners to join on new accounts (with permission), but that is highly circumstance dependent.
Arceus&Woobat (#4917) - While we do not wish to go into specifics of any single case, you have been misinformed - though perhaps not intentionally - of what happened. Investigations had been underway for some individuals before their involvement.
Pyroar [LL] (#48446) - Commissioning fanart for personal use outside of the commissions panel is okay.
- 2 sleepy sleepers
(#109)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:34pm
Kyu & Mauri (#1010) I'd like to know the answer to this that you skipped:
I'm curious how https://god4.tumblr.com/post/142258840674/zephkin-aywas-skype-cannot-be-used-as-a-means falls in with the chat logs have never been and will never will be used against users?
- Tae
(#66637)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:34pm
Just another reason to stay away from SBCs and USD commission thingy... too bad we don't have paint brushes any more. Guess I'll stick to hunting the forums for people still willing to take GP / BP since those are safe currencies and won't cause a mess like this.
Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:17pm
I think I'm just going to refrain from making any USD commissions for a while. I'm not really looking forward to hearing the next commission panel issue to cause mass perma-bannings, nor do I want to get involved.