Ebaum's World Sucks (it's true!)

First of all a nice cartoon created by Altf4 (Animation) and Trapezoid (Music) which will explain the situation nicely.

An extract from Wikipedia

Controversy

eBaum's World has garnered significant controversy in many Internet communities over the years due to numerous cases of content being taken from other sites without attribution, especially from websites such as YTMND , Something Awful , Albino Blacksheep and Newgrounds . Companies such as Viacom [2] [3] , 20th Century Fox [4] , and Sega have all claimed that Eric and Neil Bauman have infringed on their copyrights. Eric Bauman denies critics' claims that the site's content is stolen, citing research done by site editors and the consent form that must accompany uploads of material. He claims to honor all requests to remove unauthorized material [5] , but this is contested by some content creators. In particular, web artist and animator Jonti Picking , ("Weebl", creator of the Badger Badger Badger animations) was only able to have his animations removed at the beginning of 2006 . [6] Bauman has claimed that he formerly worked with Picking, though Picking has stated that this is false. [7] , [8]

Due to the unpopularity of the website in various communities, links to eBaum's have been filtered on various forums that have yet to come into conflict with eBaum's. On some forums instead of the members commenting on the link that has been posted they post ebaumsworldsucks.com link or insult Eric Bauman. Users can end up being flamed by other users or even banned.

A web site, eBaumsWorldSucks.com , has been set up by Newgrounds / Something Awful supporters Neil Cicierega (Lemon Demon), Shawn Vulliez (AltF4), and Abi Rendon (LegalCondom, a former eBaum's World employee) to document the ongoing controversy between content creators and eBaum's World. The site hosts a page containing statements from content creators claiming that some of their works appear on eBaum's World without permission. The site also details cases in which eBaum's World has allegedly taken bandwidth and launched denial of service attacks on other sites. There are allegations that eBaum's World's Funbar toolbar may install adware. [9]

In January 2006, eBaum's World hosted and watermarked a Lindsay Lohan montage created by YTMND user SpliceVW without crediting either SpliceVW or YTMND. In response, users from YTMND joined users from other internet communities, namely Something Awful , LUElinks , Newgrounds , 4chan , FARK , Ugoplayer (Flashplayer.com), Weebls -Stuff, and IGN . These groups disrupted the eBaum's World forums with spam posts and DDoS attacks. On January 10, eBaum's World alleged the attacks were a form of cyber-terrorism, and on January 11, Neil Bauman, the executive vice president of eBaum's World, stated publicly that arrests were being made in relation to the attacks. Eventually Max Goldberg, the owner of YTMND, and Bauman came to an agreement, with Bauman removing the montage from his website, in return for Goldberg removing any reference to "eBaum" from his website. Despite the resolution of the conflict, both sites experienced DDoS attacks on the morning of January 12, 2006.

On February 23 , 2006 , Michael Parker , an eBaum's World representative, appeared on G4 's Attack of the Show to try and clear up the recent controversy with YTMND. Kevin Pereira , co-host of the show, asked Parker explicit questions about the alleged infringing. [10] Parker claimed:

There aren't any written rules or regulations. We're trying to do our due diligence and do the things that we feel are right by not taking other people's material without crediting them or contacting them first. We try to...we contact all these people. Like if we something we like, like a game, we don't just put it on our site [sic]. We contact these people. And if you notice with all our new Flash games, we have our own intro in them, and it's done by the creators and we pay them for that.

On May 26 , 2006 , several images from the Something Awful forums were displayed on the eBaum's World website. [11] The images on eBaum's World were cropped to remove the Something Awful watermark. The page was removed later in the day following multiple complaints being expressed on the eBaum's World forums.

Critics affirm that infringing content continues to appear on the website. Albino Blacksheep has threatened legal action and claims that other websites have also asserted difficulties with Eric Bauman. On June 12 , 2006 , Steven Lerner of Albino Blacksheep explained that eBaum's World took the animation "Animator vs. Animation," and the creator of the Flash animation, Alan Becker , would take legal action against eBaum's World. Lerner and Becker used the MochiBot Flash tracking tool to track who used the animation on their web sites. Lerner also explained that the Flash animation is legally protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 . Furthermore, when the flash was posted on eBaum's World, it had been decompiled and the line 'Hosted on albinoblacksheep.com' was removed. On June 9 , Bauman sent Becker a $250 check as well as entering him into one of his monthly $1000 "contests" in hopes of having any legal charges dropped. As well as dropping the legal charges, eBaum's World forced him to submit a pre-scripted quote stating that none of the site's content was stolen and that Bauman had contacted him previous to his content being posted on the site. Alan accepted this proposal, and later submitted this letter of apology to the flash community of Albino Blacksheep:

Hello, I am the author of Animator vs. Animation... I feel so ashamed, and the world is ashamed of me. I fell into eBaum's trap. I gave them fuel to fight back. With their constant persuasion and offers for money, they made me write a quote saying that everything was fine. Of course everything was fine for me, because I had the money they had given me. What can you expect, I was dead poor before, I have no experience with business. The quote says they contacted me before they posted my animation on their website, however I did not give them permission to put it on. [12]

On July 9 , 2006 , eBaum's World also began hosting an animation about a temporary tattoo of a dinosaur that looks dumb, originally found on Albino Blacksheep and Spinnerdisc.com. They subsequently removed the animation, and issued this apologetic statement to Drew Mokris, creator of the Flash:

Mr. Mokris, "We were recently contacted by a fan of yours in regards to the July 9th post on your website declaring that you did not give us permission to feature your flash animation. First off, I apologize for the mixup, your flash was submitted to us via our upload form ( http://upload.ebaumsworld.com ) and our clearance dept's initial review led us to believe it was submitted by the original author. I have removed the animation from the system, although it may take a few hours for the changes to be reflected for all users. Once again, my apologies for the mixup, and keep up the good work, we are big fans of your animations!"

It went on to issue him a draft notice to join Eric's program for flash animators to put eBaums world logos in all their animations.

So yes people, that is why Ebaum's World is evil! and I ask for all reading this to boycott the website, and anyone who sends you links to movies hosted there, send them to this site, or even send them to the official Ebaum's World Sucks dot com website which is...

here