lol internet drama

So apparently Honya (of Yuri on the Chalkboard fame, also CAINE's showings director and the maker of our club t-shirts) helped spark up some internet drama a couple days ago.

As I saw it, it began with some comments on Honya's blog, Lyrical Spark, on the post about Scarlet Meister, an unofficial Touhou game.  The post was made in 2008, but this didn't deter the drama.  People were posting saying "the music from this game is stolen from newgrounds artist KgZ" and so forth, one poster even going so far as to say Honya stole it.  One poster even used the name "Obviously From Newgrounds".

Then tonight in our usual escapades after a meeting Citrus discovered a thread on /jp/ (I have no idea how fast /jp/ moves, and all threads on 4chan dissapear eventually, so no point in linking it) with a Newgrounds URL pointing to a thread on their forums containing, alongside a small amount of text (posted by KgZ) a link to Scarlet Meister's developer's site, and Honya's blog.  Reading this thread pieced together the rest of the story.

KgZ discovered that his music had been used in this game without his knowledge.  Newgrounds, being who they are, immediately raged and went into attack mode, spamming the developer's YouTube (which resulted in the removal of several videos), and basically doing /b/-style harrassment.  Meanwhile, other people are busily insisting that he should sue because the music is Creative Commons by-nc-sa, meaning the original creator must be credited, no commercial use without explicit permission from the creator, and any derivative works must be released under a CC license; and the developer is charging 750 yen for it.

750 yen isn't much (about $8 with today's economy), so it basically covers the media cost and not much more.

Then someone rained on the raiders' parade and posted a screencap of the credits plainly showing that KgZ was credited.  KgZ immediately shifted to "I'm credited so I'm ok with it".

As of now the saga is at the point where they're trying to convince the developer to go ahead with the production of his next game, and apologize for the entire ordeal.  As one can easily imagine, it's difficult since Japanese developer = not the best English in the world, and American Newgrounds users = no moon rune knowledge.  Fortunately some people who knew the runes came along and are trying to help KgZ communicate with the developer.

All I can say is: lol internet drama