This post is regarding the new Gamingforce audio website:

http://www.gamingforce.com/audio/gfa.php

This website has stolen a vast amount of information from Chudah's Corner (http://www.chudahs-corner.com) without express permission. This community of theives has blatantly ignored the disclaimer that is at the bottom of every single webpage on CC ("All images, information, compositions, and trademarks may not be copied from this site without the express, written permission of Chudah's Corner") and they have uploaded images and information that people at Chudah's Corner actually worked to get on the website.

Here is a perfect example:

CC's scan of Melody Casket:

http://www.chudahs-corner.com/img/cover … 4_back.jpg

GFA's scan of Melody Casket:

http://www.gamingforce.com/audio/gfa-co … cover=8944

These scans are identical, from pixel size to the white matting on the top and bottom of the picture.

I would just like to thank everyone that has contributed to this project in any way shape or form. I would like to thank you for taking Chudah's hard work, dedication and genuine love for game music and bastardizing it as your own. Of course, those thousands of hours of hard work must mean nothing to you leeches when you can just go to a webpage, take all the information and scans and upload them somewhere else in a matter of a couple of minutes. Hey, it's "free" information, right? Nevermind the disclaimer or a conscience, right?

I should have expected something like this from a community of lowlife carpetbaggers and illegal MP3 hoarders. Why support the artists when you can just download the MP3s from somewhere? And why work on your own album scans and info when you can just steal them from another website? f--- intergrity, right?

To everyone who took even a single scan from CC and uploaded it to Gamingforce: I appreciate your honesty, consideration and respect toward Chudah's Corner. You give the soundtrack community a wonderful name, and I'm proud to be a member of that community with such esteemed people such as yourselves.

EDIT: For clarity's sake, the phrase "I should have expected something like this from a community of lowlife carpetbaggers and illegal MP3 hoarders" was directed specifically toward GFF, not STC or the soundtrack community as a whole.

GFA has been the bottom of the barrel for the game music community for a long time now, I'm not sure this is going to come as a suprise to anyone.

It's a nice attempt at a replacement to GMR, because GMR is horribly outdated and has lacked good database functions for going on like 8 years now, but it still falls short.

As a addendum to this post, I would like all to be aware that Chudah's Corner will officially be closing as of April 22, 2007.  All information, reviews, lyrics, scans, etc. will no longer be available to the public.

I apologize to those who have genuinely supported Chudah's Corner.  I appreciated your kind comments and encouragement through the years, and wish you the best in your future game music endeavors.

_WHY_ again start another stupid drama and not contacting guys behind GFA first?

Anyways, another shitstorm coming up it seems. What about bitching against GMRonline, it gotta have few 'stolen' tracklists from Chudah's Corner. And some other vgmsites too.

Only thing that I can clearly classify as total douchery is stealing those scans without crediting, or probably translated tracklists. But should I start credit Chudah's Corner on my mp3's now that I've used your translations many times.? Or something, just writing what's on my mind.

And about copying information from CC, probably it should be specify for translated stuff? Not stuff that's already in the english in booklets, etc.?

But still, all this could be fixed with few mails to the guys behind GFA, which hopefully will replace GMRonline, especially if that site will never get any good update.

And if CC will be closing, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish". Good site it was.

And seems that VGM can never much be mainstream if we start drama's with this easily. Or something.

Razakin - Using translations for your own personal purposes is one thing, but taking that information and the scans and passing them off as your own is not right, no matter what spin or what angle you put on it. I'm sure you would see things a lot differently if you had spent the past six years building your own website from the ground up and having your hard work stolen and posted elsewhere.

Someone should update all their DB entries with "Stolen from Chudah's Corner".

Absolutely a bad thing. Chudah's Corner has been probably the best VGM info site to date.

Might be the end of GFA too, though. And that would be bad also.

Well, I don't see where they pass they as their own, all of those information in there has been added by the GFF's who has been chosen as beta testers. Of course, users should have contacted CC before adding. And me not knowing all aspects of copyright laws, but they do only have copyright for the site, and material is disclaimed as property of their respective owners. Still, you probably can answer that did CC staff contact GFA?

And I probably with my somewhat lazy and carefree attitude would probably been as 'pissed off' as you guys. Probably I would be more "Gee, they really do like my work" and then I would probably contact them about giving little bit credit to me.

And remember guys, GFA has albums that Chudah's Corner doesn't have, with some good info, probably most thanks goes for Secret Squirrel for that one and probably Carl, can't remember if I saw his name also on the names who have putted some info on the site.

(ps. probably getting that Fusion on monday, gonna answer to the mail by then too. Sucks that it didn't arrive this week, got my GC + GBA player back from a friend for that one)

It has been the best VGM info site really. I've never much trusted GMRonline, thanks to the fact that's so easy to change things in there.

Of course if we would be living in the perfect world, Chudah's Corner and GFA would be combined for greater good.

Did Gameingforce Audio's disregard for the copyrights of Chudah's Corner effect her decision to close down the site? I'm not trying to pry but I'm curious as something such as this would seriously disenchant me as the operator of a website and as a member of the VGM community.

And as Zane said, personal use of tracklistings to label your own mp3's is a completely different matter.

Edit:

Nevermind my question up above, I guess I should have read the statement on CC first as it pretty much answered my question.

Anyway, Gameingforce Audio's actions are complete Bull**** - I will not be accessing there stolen database.

I would be very sorry for Chudah's Corner to go, because it has indeed been a great source of information not found anywhere else in the past years, and also, I would not want to have Chudah feel sorry for all those years that she has been working on the site. If GFA has indeed stolen the content completely, then their behavior is despicable. Worse of it, being Gamingforce, they might very well go under at any time, in a few months or whenever. GFA simply cannot be trusted to even keep up, and thus it would be moreso unfortunate if their ignorance managed to drive Chudah out and close the website permanently.

I hope that the people at GFA understand the gravity of the situation and will pull their unlegit content down immediately.

It seems as if this "combination" is what created the whole problem in the first place.  Dissappointing behavior from GFA, but I can't say I'm all too surprised in light of what I've seen from them in the past.

It seems the only solution to the sites stealing hard work and claiming it as their own is watermarking.

I did quite a bit of that when RPGStuff was in its final throes, and I found great pleasure in finding things such as FF8 MP3s that I painstakingly recorded from the Japanese version of the game that had my watermarks (hex edited text in the bottom of the header that couldn't be edited with a tag editor) in them - on sites that claimed they'd created them themselves, etc etc.

There are so many better solutions to this than drama.

It is a bit shortsighted to strive to provide a service that nobody will ever rip off and claim as their own.  After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery, no?  The best offense is a good defense - and that is to ensure that the public knows the material is unquestionably yours from the get-go.

Of course, this is always a sticky situation, because album cover scans are on that fine line of copyright infringement...

"Officer, someone broke into my house and stole a bag of pot!"

The best way to share information in this era of rampant copyright infringement is to do it completely selflessly and smile and laugh at those who think your work is good enough to claim as their own.

It's unfortunate that Chudah's Corner is going away; it was a valuable resource for tracklisting translations, one of the things that is absolutely not copyright infringement.  However, it is a translation, so it is the type of thing that one should be proud to see in the public domain.

Is it "stealing" to take a translated tracklisting for a CD and to commit it to a CD database such as FreeDB or CDDB?

Anyway, enough rambling... I DO know what it feels like to have my hard work claimed by others, and over the years, I've just stopped caring.  Accept it as inevitable, or take steps to watermark your data.  Those are really the only two solutions.  Some people are just not reasonable (GFF, in this case), and would rather chew off their own foot than acknowledge that someone else created the data on their site (in the form of giving proper credit.)

I highly doubt it, like it was said FGA just looks to say afloat by any means nessasary... despite what harm it does to the greater good.

Since it is a "public" private project anyone is allowed to submit information, and most just grab the data from other sites then submit it without even thinking. Anything that the staff has submitted it a result of their own effort, not stolen information. It was probably assumed that the members in this project would meet the same expectations that the staff does - submitting quality information taken from YOUR OWN WORK, not something stolen from another website and trying to pass it off as your own. Apparently such is not the case.

The staff of GFA is saddened and angered about this; nobody wants to see CC close down, but at the same time how come nobody from CC bothered to bring this up with them? You would think that people would normally want to talk up such matters staff-to-staff or something, instead of just going ahead and making a rash decision. If I am wrong, then please Chudah, child of eve, Eriol, the rest of the staff over at CC, please correct me. At the same time, it is true that CC does not actually own the copyrights to the information that is in their database. However that doesn't mean that it's fine and dandy for someone to just go ahead and steal it as their own work without contacting them first. Even if there is no copyright protection, simply taking one's hard work isn't the most pleasing thing you can do.

It would be best if the CC and GFA staff could get together and discuss this over. You people make it seem like GFA has no plans to remove this stolen information even when confronted with it. It might be true for the members but the staff is not as petty. I'm willing to bet if Chudah and Secret Squirrel actually got together and discussed this, all the stolen information would be removed.

As someone mentioned in the thread earlier, the stability of GFF is to be questioned as well. The admin just ran off again for around the fourth time since GFF's initial creation with about $400. None of the other staff members or even his friends have been able to contact him either, so everyone is quite upset that he would just return with a sob story, beg for $2100, then fly the coop.

Although at this point I doubt any of this was worth posting, as people cannot have their minds so easily changed by mere words over the internet (unless they are fickle).

It probably doesn't help that GFA isn't the only place that has stolen CC information, it is just one of the more obvious english sites out there.

Why does it matter so much? It's not like people did the artwork themselves or produced the album. I could care less if people stole my photos or game rips I did (In fact, I don't even put my information in the tag anymore). It's not like I composed the music or own it at all in any form whatever. The only thing I would have a problem would be if someone said they were the ones that did the rip themselves (which the only problem I have with that is that they are lying). Otherwise, I don't understand what the big deal is.

~Sky

Most of you probably know me from SlightlyDark, but I'm stepping forward here in my capacity as one of the leaders on the GFA project, to offer some form of explanation to the community.

The original vision I had for this project was to provide a comprehensive database that combined all the information that is spread haphazardly across various English and Japanese language sites, combined with a search capability that would allow a researcher to identify every album a composer was invovled in, or perhaps to find out every official album, preoder bonus CD, or Dojin that contained music from a particular game.  There was really nothing out there that could do this; GMR was of course the closest, but it's been on hiatus for a long time.  Last year, when Richard Rhee of Gamingforce offered to provide the space and time to make this vision a reality, I agreed to lend my expertise.

At this point, I'd like to publically apologize to Chudah for allowing some of her labors to be incorporated into the database.  It wasn't done maliciously, but it was done carelessly, in an attempt to build up content.  Although a fair amount of the album information came more directly from GMR, or was extracted from an updater's mp3s with a perl script, and similarly scans tended to come from an album folder, but the ultimate original source was Chudah's.  I realize that I should have handled this thing differently from the outset.

In order to make some sort of restitution, I would like to offer the following.

1.) A temporary shutdown of the Gamingforce Audio site, until things can be worked out with Chudah, and with you, the community.  The site was in private Beta, and not intended for public consumption anyway, but it looks like Google had other ideas.

2.) Removal of all lyrics from the site.

3.) Removal of display of all scans until some kind of solution can be worked out that satisfies the entire community.

4.) No action on tracklist and artist information.

I do want to find a solution that satisfies the community, Chudah, and everyone who has worked hard over the years researching VGM.  I know the devil is in the details, and I completely misread how this would work out, but I still think a resource like this would be useful for us all, and not just for a "lowlife carpetbagger and illegal MP3 hoarder" like myself.  I don't want to make money off of this (in fact, I intend to lose money), and I don't want Bobo or Gamingforce to make money from it. The association with GFA is just random happenstance. I wouldn't care who ran this project, as long as it agreed with my vision.  I've personally spent thousands of hours myself translating track and album titles and artist information, most of which I would like to be posted somewhere that matches the vision I've outlined above.

So in summary, I'd like to reiterate my apology to Chudah, and to offer some kind of dialogue to figure out how we can untangle this mess.

I'd also really like our dream of a new-and-improved, comprehensive GMR to become a reality, but we do not intend to pursue them in disregard of the efforts of other VGM enthusiasts and their contributions to the community as a whole.  I hope we can work something out.

I apologize for the very short post earlier, but I was not in the right mindset at the time to post anything at length with much logical thought.

While many have brought up the copyrighted material issue, I am fully aware of this.  I technically do not own the images or tracklists on the website, and I have never claimed to own them.  Yes, I have had people use my information, a few albums here, a few there.  Many of our original staff translations end up on GMR, and I have never minded much.  But a full blown reproduction of most of our database on GFA was going further than I had ever expected, and was a literal blow to everything I've worked for and had given this community.

I won't lie to you, I have gathered some information from various websites, including translations, but have always offered to include the original translator's name.  Although I may be mistaken, Chudah's Corner is probably one of the very few websites that credit translators because we believed those people deserved credit.  If GMR had a better log of their translators, I would gladly have credited those people for whatever tracklists we'd used.  But because anyone could edit that information, I always risked the translation credit being inaccurate.  Yet, I gave credit to anyone who e-mailed and requested me to do so.

But, I digress...the prospect of continuing to spend a majority of my free time, and spend my personal money acquiring rare soundtracks to add to Chudah's Corner's database, knowing that this information could be claimed by GFA at any moment as their original content, is something I just cannot do.  Could there be an amicable resolution to this situation?  I'm just not sure at this point.  For the time-being, I refuse to allow this beta project to continue acquiring our information.  Thus, Chudah's Corner will be closed until further notice.

[Edit]

Secret, you posted just before me.  If you can send me an e-mail at chudah@chudahs-corner.com to further discuss this, it would be appreciated.

As of now, the GFA project is in temporary lockdown.

I appreciate that this matter has been brought to our attention. As one of the main coders, I too would like to extend my apologies, as I know all too well the amount of effort and dedication that goes into original content.

Word.  Back when I was owner of #gamemp3s, I used to have my own personal rips "stolen" all the time, passed off as another group's work.  Sure, you could go the lordskylark route and say it's not my "work" anyway since I didn't compose the music, type out and/or translate that monster 4-disc soundtrack, etc. but it sure felt like work at the time.  Same thing when I used to do console ri.. recordings (Hi Amber! ).  That shit takes hours and hours to do.  You have to record every track from the in-game sound test, loop the tracks twice, add fade outs, name them all, and then encode.  That stuff used to get "stolen" as well so I know exactly how you feel Chudah, and it definitely sucks.  That's partly the reason why I left #gamemp3s, by the way.  The "drama" of it all was getting annoying.  And yes, I'm abusing the hell out of "quotes" today for some reason.

I like this idea the most, having one central database site to reference instead of checking three or four "not as complete" sites.  Personally, when I'm looking up info on some random game music album that I'm curious about, I always find myself checking GMR first because their database is so vast.  CC is definitely more comprehensive when it comes to the album info (nice scans, reviews, complete tracklists, etc.) but it definitely lacks when it comes to the size of the database itself.  I'm not saying CC sucks or anything, I've used it maaaany times when the info on GMR was lacking or I couldn't find something with good old Google.  Composer name translations, for example, very handy.

Currently, GMR has 6,217 albums on it's site.  Also, much like a Wikipedia page, you can edit or add an entry no matter who you are.  Of course, this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who's doing the editing.  Maybe have it semi-restricted by using logins and "gaining" trust?  I would love to see a Wikipedia-style game music database.  Maybe all you guys could collaborate on it?  Chudah, Secret Squirrel, Mik, Carl, etc.  I'm sure a lot of people just in our STC community alone would be willing to participate too, I know I would (I own around 160 albums at current and have access to a NICE color scanner at work, for example).  Basically, it would be nice to combine all of these VGM database sites into one community-based site run by the people, for the people, just like Wikipedia.

Regardless of what you all decide on, for the time being.. just go outside, sit on your porch, crack open a nice cold beer and enjoy the nice (depending on where you live) weather today.  Cheers!

-Mike

I guess it's nice to see some sort of action on GFA's side about this whole matter, but I can't help but feel that this is an issue where you were caught with your pants down and now the whole issue is being apologized for and discussed; it seems too little, too late. Inferred from your post, you knew that taking the scans from CC without permission was wrong in the first place but you didn't ask or even care. If nothing was said, the apology would have never been out there in the first place, which means that you would have continued taking scans in the future to build up your database at the expense of Chudah's hard work. That's a damn shame.

EDIT: Wow.

Dude, are you serious? I can hear you zipping up all the way over here.

Say what you will.  I'm being an ass because I want all the glory?  I'm being selfish for trying to protect the time investment I spent?  I'm being a drama queen?  The last thing I wanted was to deal with this situation.  If you don't like the fact that I took down the website, then please, feel free to pay my server fees yourself. 

You know what...life isn't worth this.  It's not worth spending countless hours offering information to people who feel they're entitled to it.  It's free information you say?  Then go buy the soundtracks and put it up on a website yourself.  There's nothing worse than looking at all the money I spent for the benefit of this "community" and realizing I could be out of debt right now, putting money away for my future family, and not having to worry about my next paycheck.

I'm sorry to disappoint all the people who genuninely appreciated my work.  But nobody paid me for the time I spent on Chudah's Corner, and nobody is going to pay me for a website that has old information that can be found elsewhere.  Chudah's Corner was 8 years of my life.  How many years of yours was it worth?

i agree with that but if only it's better than a simple wikipedia

Chudah,

Shutting down the site just because you don't like game music enough anymore, is the vibe I'm getting. I feel sad for you, if that's the case.

If you just can't continue, find a worthy replacement as a manager who cares about vgm to maintain the site to some extent. At least that's what I'd do if I didn't have the mental resources for something anymore. The site is wonderful and does not deserve to be demolished on a whim.

I don't give a shit that you took down your site. If i needed covers or a track list for a game sound track, i would buy it. And i have. And so have a lot of the rest of these 'lowlife carpetbaggers and illegal MP3 hoarders'.

Mike already made this point but from, i think, the entirely wrong perspective -- #gamemp3s has been ripped off all kinds of times. We've had our stuff re-tagged, re-branded, even transcoded, and sold as someone else's. We've had our albums put up on different Web sites. We've had people bring down our servers because some jerk linked one of our files on a high-traffic site. We've had to put up with hosts dropping us. We've had to put up with people making ridiculous demands. And now i guess we've had to put up with some dork on the Internet calling us carpet-baggers.

And 'you know what'. Life is still worth this to us. We still purchase these albums ourselves, we still do a meticulous job ripping and distributing them, we still pay for all the hosting, we still do all the coding, we still do all the site maintenance, we still spend time with 'the community', and we continue to put up with all the crap that brings. The enjoyment we derive from just doing it is worth far more than any of the money we've spent, the time we've lost, or the good moods we've had ruined. I can't imagine that something this trivial could possibly affect a genuine motivation like this, never mind give us cause to shut down.

You could also say that this whole situation could have been avoided if Secret Squirrel and the rest of the GFA staff got in contact with Chudah to ask permission to use the scans from the site, but they didn't. It's not a one way street where CC should have contacted GFA; GFA definitely should have contacted CC before they did what they did.

*waves* Hi.

Razakin, you are out of line as well.

The monetary investment in a vast site such as Chudah's Corner must be immense, and I'm afraid of the amount of money these big websites chew through. Nobody could demand of anyone to put in these kinds of sums from their own pocket. However, a sudden shutdown isn't either a fitting or deserved end for that eight years of work and the investment put into it. At the very least, I would suggest making several confirmed backups spread out across different media, so that if the desire to start again or to make an archive ever appears, it is suddenly not found out that all that work has been lost.

Which is exactly the reason I don't believe I belong here anymore.  For a swift moment I thought I might rethink things and try to work everything out.  Thanks for clearing my head for me.

And if you think I'm being selfish...why don't you say the same thing to my husband and family that have sat here waiting for me while I poured my all into my hobby.  When you get bitten like this, you tell me which option is more worth it.

The information is still there and is not lost.  Until I can decide where to go from this point, it will be unavailable.  But please understand, if I were to give warning of what I know, without knowing the intentions and honesty of those people running GFA, how could I possibly leave that information there?  I'm not saying they would've grabbed as much as they could before the site was gone, but in any business (and even though I make no money out of this, one has to look at it as a business), if I were not to protect my own interests and content, then I would be a fool.  If GFA is sincere about resolving this issue, then the rest will work itself out.

clearly you have never spoken to the husband of someone who is addicted to pirating music in an unselfish attempt to fill their whole raid array

Sure and I should probably have type my thoughts like that. But anways SS apologized already and is willing to take the stuff away etc., but it seems that you guys don't care about that, or unless there's been some discussion behind the curtains?

As usual, I'll disagree with you. You know why.

And if the server costs are too high, why don't start using something like Google's AdSense or whatever it was. Heck, there's site what uses it and you don't actually much see the ads. And every cent helps.

Come on you guys, please stop trying to stir up further drama. I'd like a chance to work something out that can hopefully benefit everyone.

There have been no contact with me as of yet.  I was OK with leaving well enough alone until dialogue was established with GFA, but people keep feeling the need to beat me down with their disapproval of my decision to close the site for the time being.  I'm sorry if you can't get access the site right now, but I have valid reasons for taking it down.  Please understand, I'm not doing this to hurt anyone.  I'm doing this because it's what I feel I need to do for myself.

Does that mean I'm less of a person for realizing there's a problem and wanting to remedy it?

You're not less of an anything. I just don't buy the arguement.

You don't have to.  But it doesn't change the fact that I'm having to weigh the happiness of my family over the happiness of this community.

Whatever the case, I'm waiting for GFA to contact me.  I'm not against an amicable resolution to this.  But until then, I choose to keep the site closed.