Additional Forum Rules

VirtualPups · March 2012

Additional Forum Rules of Conduct Copyright Policy Due to players selling or giving away non original works as their own originals, we felt it needed to post a clearer idea of the rules and what you're facing if you get caught doing this. Stolen art, traced art, art that has been copied and any art that violates copyright in anyway will result in a minimum of 24 hour suspension from the forums. This amount of time increases depending on the severity and amount of stolen works and if caught a second time, forum account will be suspended indefinitely. This includes free art and lineart. Just because you give it away, doesn't make it legal either. Things that will get your thread locked, moved and account suspended: Taking someone elses completed art, leaving or removing the signature / copyright. Taking someone elses lineart, whether it be from a free line art site or a non use lineart and removing the sig / copyright and trying to sell it. Attempting to sell / give away layouts from free sites, claiming it as your own. Tracing someone elses work or photos. Copying someone elses work or photo. Using someone elses lineart that is stolen off copyrighted work. It's your responsibility to make sure the work you post here is legit to use, regardless of who ripped off the original artist. Basically, if you have to question it, don't do it. Reproducing model horses, this has never been allowed and violates the companies copyrights. If you have permission from the owner of the original copyright work, to use it, reproduce it or what not, then you will need to provide proof of the written permission (scan) or a screen shot of the email. Please edit out your personal info from the screen cap / scan. This information will be verified with the copyright holder as will any suspected copyright infringed works. Works produced from stock photos / art will be allowed, so long as they follow the rules of the stock photo / art owner and also MUST include a link to the stock photo / art. Note: just because it is on flicker, doesn't mean it's a stock item free for your use. All traced, copied work will also need a link or links provided with it of the original work or works used. If you see a listing you suspect is stolen / copyright infringed work, please do not take matters into your own hands. Message one of the Game Admins with a link to the thread and links to the work and we will handle it from there. VP has a very large artistic community, and the vast majority of us frown on copyright infringement. We wouldn't want it done to us, and we hate to see it done to other people, regardless of if they are part of VP or not. If you post stolen works, you can guarantee you will be found out by a community member and reported. Is making a small amount of virtual cash worth loosing your privileges, clients and respect over? A few good sites of info regarding copyright, referencing and things artists should know. If anyone has other good sites of info, please feel free to pm them to me and I will add them to this list. <a href="http://painting.about.com/cs/artistscopyright/f/copyrightfaq7.htm"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://painting.about.com/cs/artistscop ... htfaq7.htm</a> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=_2fuF2ncVkwC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=copyright+laws+++reference+++photos&source=bl&ots=RUsXIrtiYH&sig=cWL4c3uZvX8V8upAy5uwJE0lYZM&hl=en&ei=SB-sSfyZKIbOMt7DsZcD&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result" target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://books.google.com/books?id=_2fuF2 ... &ct=result</a> <a href="http://vintagephoto.com/reference/copyrightarticle1.htm"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://vintagephoto.com/reference/copyrightarticle1.htm</a>; <a href="http://painting.about.com/od/copyrightforartistsfaq/Copyright_for_Artists_FAQ.htm"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://painting.about.com/od/copyrightf ... ts_FAQ.htm</a> Vent Forum The vent forum is not to be used inappropriately. You cannot use it to bash players, individuals or an entire group. The vents must abide by all TOS and cannot be asking for relationship/dating advice. You are not allowed to give out any personal information. including links or mentions of social networking sites. Do not mask curse or attempt to cover up website names by saying "sites that cannot be mentioned". This forum is for: 1. Helping to relieve some tension 2. Keeping rant threads from cluttering up other sections 3. For people who don't wish to have anything to do with rant threads, they can just ignore this whole section This forum is not for: 1. Novice bashing (if you're a sponsor) 2. Sponsor bashing (if you're a novice) 3. Publicly humiliating other players 4. Posting private messages to get a laugh at others If you post private messages, you MUST remove all names other than your own. There will be no finger pointing and no flaming of any kind. This is merely an experiment, if it goes awry and people take things too far it will be deleted. Praise Forum The Praise section is not a discussion board. If you aren't going to say thanks or your welcome, do not post there. If you need to discuss something, take it to private messages. Goodbye Posts Goodbye posts are distracting and disturb the forum. If you post goodbye posts as a way to get attention, they will be locked and removed. Flaming, Fighting, Accusations Though this is covered under the points system, a special reminder is listed here. Do NOT ever fight, argue, or accuse another player in public for any reason. If you have an issue with something that was posted or think a rule has been broken, do NOT try to handle the issue yourself. It doesn't matter if you've seen art theft, it is not your place to point fingers. Please contact an Op immediately with your concerns and we will take care of it. Real Life Cash Sales Sales for real life cash are not permitted. Special circumstances, such as fundraisers, may qualify for an exception. You need to contact an Op regarding this. Forum Banners All forum banners must follow the Terms of Service with regards to the material it displays. If you question whether it is inappropriate for this site, you can contact an Op for their opinion. In most cases, if you need to question it then it's probably best to assume it's not appropriate. Banners and signatures are not permitted to exceed 500 pixels width, 200 pixels height. You may have multiple banners, providing that your signature does not exceed the total height or width restriction. Each banner violation is 4 points, failure to learn from banner mistakes could add up to lengthy consequences. Multiple Forum Accounts After much discussion between the Ops, it has been decided for the well being of the community that if you create a second, third or so on forum account and pretend to be new, you will be banned from the forums for scamming. You do not need to make a profit, nor do you need to gain freebies or cheap items for it to be a scam. You are lying to the community to gain its trust, to gain its forgiveness or to gain some kind of "popularity" from being new. Whatever your reason for a new account, if you lie to the community, you take advantage of their generosity. That is not fair to the wonderful players we have who go out of their way to make new people feel welcome and offer to help them get started. And it won't be tolerated any longer. The only thing we are addressing in this post are those accounts created and then posted or acting like they are new. As long as you are upfront about who you are and why you created the account with the entire community, it won't be a problem. Just a little forewarning, if creating new accounts because you don't like your forum name becomes a habit and people are frequently changing names, it may become an issue in the future. Likewise with creating accounts for joint use on the forums. We are very against sharing accounts anywhere. And if it becomes a problem or if there's an instance of "but the other person on the account did it" we will be looking at disallowing those accounts as well. RPG Posts All RPG related posts must be contained within the designated RPG sections. Picture & Personal Information It is not permitted for any user to give out descriptions of themselves (i.e., appearance). If you wish to give out location, state is as narrow as you are allowed to mention. It is suggested you use region (i.e., east coast). You are not allowed to post pictures that show faces of you or your friends/family. Player Made Rules Player made rules cannot and will not be enforced by Ops. In the case of dog sales, once the dog is removed from your possession the new owner can do as he or she pleases. In the case of services, you are required to provide a refund if you do not provide the service. You cannot keep the earnings because a player violated one of your rules (i.e., no contract notes). This is considered scamming and scamming is not allowed in any form. Shared Accounts It has always been policy that players shouldn't share accounts. Rented accounts are considered shared accounts. There is no rule against it, but probably half the major problems we run into are with people who share accounts. That's not to say there's aren't shared accounts that never have problems, but when there's a problem, shared accounts double or triple the work for us. From the welcome page <a href="http://virtualpups.com/"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://virtualpups.com/</a> The first and three easy rules to never loose your account are as follows: 1. NEVER give out your log in information, not in any case should someone need to access your account. If you give out your password, VirtualPups holds no responsibility. The most common way people lose shared accounts is that they are stolen by the person they shared or rented to. The second most common way for people to lose accounts is because someone they share or rent the account to breaks rules and gets banned, meaning every account they've accessed also gets banned. The third most common way for people to lose account is because someone on the shared account breaks a rule while on the account, but it's not discovered until after you log in, meaning your IP is the last on and every single one of your own accounts, including the shared account is banned. If someone is banned and it's found that they are given access to an account after the fact, every one of the kennels owned by the person who allowed them access may also be banned. And it isn't always the person sharing the account. We've had owners of accounts break the rules and the person who paid to rent or share the account is the one who lands in trouble. At the least, they lose any money they paid or made while on the account as well as any dogs left on the account. Please, Ops can't say this enough, don't share accounts. Please note, Ops are also referred to as Game Masters, Moderators (Mods), and Administrators (Admins). You can tell who is really an Op by their green names (on the forums), their giant "Game Master" (in game), or by their @ sign (in chat). Ops will never contact you regarding official business from an account that isn't clearly an Op account. Ops will never ask you for your password, email address, or any other contact information.

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Additional Forum Rules