The following is an honest mistake that any non-familiar person could make regarding fanart. However, this mistake flared up into an argument through e-mail, that could have been the trigger for the next shite that hit the fan.
Page One:
Temporary Ban and Warning: Punk Bat - www.ezboard.com (Page 1)
This is what was left of the fanart incident, as far as the EZBoard threads. It saved on my computer, and uploaded here for your convenience. If the images don't work, I wouldn't fret. Those are unimportant. Read the text of Illucian's first post, and you'll get the idea. It also alludes to the AIM Flame Incident. The main point of this being here, is to give an idea of what she was banned for.
The specific lines regarding to the fanart problem were:
Also, there was an attempt to claim artwork in Fan Art as your own; all the images in this post ("these are some of my Candidate For Goddess pics"), all of which came from this site ("Yukiru Sugisaki's art work is just too adorable"). -- Posted by Illucian
It is possible that the meaning of the fan art gallery was not understood, and the admins will take this into account.
The fanart gallery is used to display self-drawn (read, less than 10% directly traced or copied from a professionally drawn picture or screenshot), picture of anything that has been published in the media. This includes books, songs, poems, movies, television, radio, and computing medias. Fan art is Not acquiring a professional-drawn or amateur-drawn artwork that is not your own, and displaying it for personal purposes and usages.
If you were using these pictures as an example picture of say, an RPG character, then it would simply be an example picture. You must give proper credits when using pictures not your own. If they are original scans from an artbook, keep in mind that reproduction of pictures within the published material is copyrighted by companies and artists that could in all likelihood bring up very nasty legal matters that you really don't want to get into.
This will be reposted under your original thread within the fan art forum. -- Posted by Streamrunner
Obviously, I (Streamrunner) was playing Devil's Advocate there. I wanted to believe that PunkBat had made an error regarding her posting of the fanart. In this case, fan art was art that she was a fan of, and not art that was drawn by a fan. This is an easy mistake to correct.
However, the e-mails that were sent to Illucian about this fanart issue were very immature and completely evasive of responsibility. You'll see this, below.
From : IllucianLux@aol.com
To : oceans_wrath@hotmail.com
Subject : Fwd: what r u saying?!
Date : Mon, 29 Apr 2002 21:53:49 -0400
Received from Punk Bat.
First of all I didn't claim that artwork for my own, my cousin said it was her Candidate for Goddess site and that I could share it with her.
Second of all what are you saying by calling me an artwork theif?!
Third of all I'm not even sure what your talking about with my file er whatever!
-PunkBat
Commentary: Immediately, she puts the blame on a 'cousin'. Laying the blame on a family member, fairly distant family member at that, should be a warning sign. Who was this mysterious cousin of PunkBat's? Who knows. But for the benefit of the doubt, I was willing to go along with this. The second point, I wanted to point out to her that yes. She was stealing artwork. By putting scanned art from a published media on the web, you are using it without permission of the publisher and artist. No website is supposed to be able to display this artwork except sanctioned ones. This is why people put 'Used without permission' and 'This site and images are not intended to be a challenge to copyright' as disclaimers on their pages. And Third, I haven't a clue what she was talking about regarding a file either. Maybe the file was the AIM log that was saved. In any case, clearly from this e-mail, we weren't going to get straight, calm replies.
A major thought to bring up would be to note that at this point, we (the Guild admins) didn't think she was a troll. She was likely confused, hurt, and hence the hostility.
From : IllucianLux@aol.com
To : oceans_wrath@hotmail.com
Subject : Fwd: what r u saying?!
Date : Thu, 2 May 2002 17:57:36 EDT
My reply to her first.
It sounded like you were claiming it for yourself. Fan Art is for artwork produced by yourself, not for posting pictures of things you're a fan of.
Commentary: Illucian's reply was short, but very much to the point. Also, she stated the reason for this whole fanart fiasco. The way PunkBat's post was worded, sounded like the pictures drawn were hers. They weren't, obviously. It's no secret the Guild is rife with people who are a bit fanatic about copyright protections. They are jumpy because of artwork stealing and such, but this whole negative reaction from PunkBat was rude. Anyone mature enough to realize a misunderstanding would have figured it out. But as it were, this let to the AIM Flame, the real cooker.
From : IllucianLux@aol.com
To : oceans_wrath@hotmail.com
Subject : Fwd:
Date : Thu, 2 May 2002 17:57:09 EDT
The second one.
Oh,okay I thought since it was artork and that I was a fan of it I could post it there, also my because of what i already told you.
Bye the way that wasn't me who said that to your over AOL IM. I wasn't online that day.
It may have been a hacker because when I logged on the next day all of my buddies were blocked.
But if you don'y believe me, I am sorry. Okay?
-Punky
p.s. Please believe me it's true!
Commentary: This e-mail was sent to me during a stint when I asked Lux to forward all the e-mails she had from received from PunkBat. This was after the AIM Flame Incident, and the banning. Hence, why PunkBat had referred to it. This thing I had to note here was that she mentioned how she the fanart was artwork that she was a fan of. By this point in time, you know, the Guild's fan art forum had been established for awhile and there were people who were posting obvious fanart pieces in there. The instructions at the forum header at the time were also obvious in stating that the forum was used for fan art, which was artwork done by an artist that was something from published media. Well... someone wasn't reading those headers. Nor did she think to ask further into the definition of fanart. As the saying goes: Ignorance is no excuse.