Please note that I have included links to other user's works in these pastebins. It is not my intention to harass other artists or users of this site - and please do not do so - but to allow the reader to judge for themselves whether or not the mods are enforcing the rules equally.
I've had some rather *illuminating* trouble tickets with the Inkbunny staff, and I believe their enforcement of the rules is politically motivated rather than the an honest attempt to enforce the rules fairly and uniformly. I say this because;
1. The moderators assume that 'permission' for any major characters is implied, so long as the owner hasn't cited specific instances where it is not allowed.
2. The moderators argue that Pepe cannot be used in political satire because the owner does not wish it.
3. The moderators removed my avatar, as they argue that 'it portrays Pepe in front of a symbol that represents values the author didn't want Pepe to be related with'.
Regarding the first, 'permission to use' a character requires affirmative consent; it is not implied. Some action on the part of the owner, rather than simple inaction, must be given - and this is a pretty big disparity in treatment between characters like Pepe and all the other characters you see on Inkbunny (ie, Sonic, Tony the Tiger, ponies from MLP, etc). Moreover, while Nick Furie has given specific examples of how he doesn't want characters to be used, Nintendo and Hasbro have shut down *any* use, regardless of political content; if the Inkbunny staff were truly impartial, they would support the wishes of Nintendo and not allow the use of their copyrighted characters under any circumstances.
The second is patently false; they cited a Motherboard article ( https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x8gaa/pepe-... ) as evidence in the original exchange, and nothing in there indicates that Furie objects to political satire with his work. Indeed, Furie's attorneys state that, "[Furie] was very serious when he said that we wanted to make clear that Pepe was not the property of the alt-right and couldn't be used by the alt-right". Moreover, Pepe has been used in political commentary on 4chan and other message boards for a long time, and Furie has not objected to it; it is only in recent years that he's taken umbrage, and it's clearly for the reasons stated in the article. They don't oppose political satire; and since I'm not Alt-Right and was not making Alt-Right memes, it is unreasonable for them to extend such a restriction to me.
And again, the owners of MLP and Pokemon likewise have shown their wishes to retain their copyrighted characters in the various DMCAs they've given over the years, regardless of political content; yet the Inkbunny staff are perfectly alright with allowing these. This is a double-standard indicating political bias in their enforcement of the rules.
I don't know what 'values' the moderator thinks I was espousing besides enjoying and taking pride in Southern culture and heritage, but I can guess it's quite uncharitable and inaccurate.
I really did expect better from the Inkbunny staff, but it seems they do have political biases in enforcing their rules. Oh well. Even so, I will act in accordance with these rules, such as they are; I've replaced my 'Pepe' with my own original race, the Kekians, even though I hope the staff will eventually realize their errors and will stop discriminating against the Frog.
There have been many fan made projects that have been completely shut down by them. Hasbro very much wants to protect their intellectual property. It might be best for the admins of Inkbunny to crack down on MLP as much, or in fact, MORE than Pepe. Because Pepe has only had a THREAT of litigation. MLP has HAD litigation.
Pokemon, yeah, also to an extent, but no way near as much as MLP.
I don't know why there are such extreme double standards going on. That for some reason Pepe, which has had a couple of news articles about it, oh no, we need to get rid of that. But MLP which has had court cases to stop people from creating things, yeah, lets have heaps of very questionable porn about that!
The mind boggles.
Unless we consider that there are double standards in play, and that political pieces aren't allowed. So they are using the handful of news articles about Pepe as a means to crack down on anything that they don't like, while ignoring other things (MLP, Pokemon, Digimon) that are in the same boat.
Furthermore, the way that you had used it was obvious parody, and therefore allowed under fair use, due to the modified nature and the fact that you had created an altered version yourself. So... again. I don't really know what is wrong with what you had up, in comparison to the MLP things that... well... aren't really parody. They are just porn. Your artworks had critique as to the current political climate, and that is usually used as a bit of a testing method as to if it is qualified as parody or not. The MLP porn is just... porn... set in the MLP universe... using the Hasbro owned characters...
Kinda much more questionable if you ask me, or, pretty much any lawyer.
MLP quite strongly so. There have been many fan made projects that have been completely shut down b
