No Philly. ID is saying it's out of their hands. Now how is that possible when this is a Wincustomize web site? If you have no control of your web site,you'll never be in compliance with all the legalities of the world. This whole incident should open some eyes to whether people are compliant with the law or not. The skinsfactory got all bent out of shape on this web site over somebodies infringement. And He/She should be tight with the community.

Using your logic we should probably reject any skin that's not 100% perfect which would leave a handful of Windowblinds and little else on the site. The alternative would be that Stardock takes each uploaded skin and to hell with creative rights they just go in and fix anything they assume needs it......

 

I am sorry this is causing an inconvenience, but you are not understanding that this is something beyond our control.  

We control the website an host peoples' work.  We do not own or control that work.

We are a US based company and only have to worry about US law.

How is it possible?  We don't create the skins affected!  It's out of our hands because we can't change the individuals skins.  

This is not good. Otherwise this could be a little problem which could to be hidden and solved without any public discussion. But now it became a BIG PROBLEM and a lot of people will be very disappointed and even wroth. It takes many efforts to solve it...

I mostly agree with the SD/WC stance but with these exceptions: Any product that has been purchased from Stardock that has a weather feed that doesn't work anymore should be updated to work. For example I've purchased a few of Gef's themes. Great quality and you pay for that. Those themes should be updated and anyone who bought them given the chance to get them again without cost. End of story. All free widgets/themes, tough shit. I've just gone back to windows sidebar or yahoo weather. This is unfortunate but in the grand scheme of things.....well there are a lot worse fates to suffer.

Vad_M, is it the resposibility of the WC moderators and admins to look at ever image or line of code to make sure it is correct or the author has the rights to use it?  If that were the case nothing would ever be accepted becuase not everything can be checked.

THe moderators do their best and as information becomes available (like stealing someones images or code) we act.

This really is no different from our normal policy.

1. Skinner A make a wallpaper and posts it at dA.
2. Skinner B sees it and submits it to WC.
3. User C sends a PM to a moderator telling us that there is a conflict.
4. WC moderator looks into it and acts.
   

Zubaz,I understand that. The point is,what if those logo's and links were not on the widgets/themes? You're using someone else's property with THEIR EXPRESS permission. Anytime you use Superman,Harry Potter,Batman...you've got to have permission. These widgets were created and approved with absolutely no thought or credit given back to the feed owners. And to say,"It's out of our hands" is shirking responsibility. It doesn't give ME,the customer, any confidence that Wincustomize is paying any attention.

I agree.  But this is again, and issue that you need to take up with the skinner.  The skinner is using the WC "storefont" to sell those skins.  If you bought a TV at Walmart you wouldn't go to Walmart to get it fixed.  You would go to the manufacturer, right?

I hate to say this but I am, all the discussion about right or wrong, who was paying attention and just plain wanting to place blame really doesn't mean much to me or I venture to say most of the community that have downloaded weather widgets and used them on thier desktops.  We want to be able to use them.  This thread by ID laid out how the situation is going to be handled.

Understanding that there are personal opinions as how this happened and what should be done, enough all ready.

What's being missed is a couple of us from the community have offer up our time to test the weather widgets as they get updated so they can be re-uploaded to the gallery library.  That's what we do, help one another here, or am I missing something again?

"Fan Art" falls under section 107 of the US Copyright act as derivitave works but leaves room for "Fair Use".  If a copyright holder approached us with an issue that was unclear we would resolve it.  Or policy can be found here: https://www.wincustomize.com/guidelines.aspx

Kendawg, what are you trying to accomplish?  What is your end goal?

If it's defective from the start, I take it back to Walmart -- they have a "no questions asked" refund policy.  Rarely, have I went to the manufacturer of anything I've purchased to resolve an issue.

Lantec. This isn't about perfection. This is about common sense. "We are a US company." And everything I've mentioned deals with US law. "Our policy is strictly enforced" Maybe so. But maybe your policy is not in compliance with the law. I see skinners crediting each other as it's a tight knit community. But I see little outside of that except with Stardock. This was the perfect example of what I call "Skinners law". We credit "Martin" for the script. But we fail to credit "The Weather Channel" for the feed. Skinners fulfilled the "skinner" policy of crediting each other and thats as far as it went. All I'm asking is that Wincustomize restores my confidence that they understand their own policies.

Instead of giving to the authors of WinCustomize some help with the weather widgets, you have decided to delete all of them from WC!
Is this a solution? Unbelievable!

Does anybody cares about the thousand users who used to have them in their computer desktop?

It is obvious that WC doesn't care with this solution.

In the other hand, these 10 days period until you start to delete all the weather widgets from WC are not enough during the summertime vacation, most authors are not even aware of the problem.

Please think again, you don't have to delete anything, because if a weather widget doesn't work there is no violation of any ToS/ToU in regards to weather feeds.

Almost all the weather widgets in WC don't work anymore!!!

 

Key word is 'fixed". (which is what seems to be wanted.)

Desktop X is a tool for creating widgets/gadgets/themes etc..... Stardock sells DesktopX

Sears makes craftsman tools....does that make them responsible for anything you use them to build?

Personally, a week is a very short period of time for me to redo all my themes.  Man, this is tough! Do you realize how many DX themes I have in the gallery, and all of them have a weather widget? Seems like this is short. Mine don't work anyway, so there is no TOS/TOU being broken.

It's not shirking responsibility.  When I say it's "out of our hands", that means there is nothing we can do to fix every weather related DX creation in the WC gallery.  It also means we cannot control or change what TWC has now begun to enforce. 

 

If a widget isn't working, it would never be accepted in the first place.  We dont want people downloading widgets that aren't working.  That will lead to even great confusion.  We are giving the opportunity for people to fix the issues.

Skins are never really deleted, they are just hidden from public view.  Someone can update their skin, or contact one of us and we can send them the orginal file if need be.

 

Initially all I wanted to hear was,"We screwed up. Our bad." Since then,I've heard a ton of excuses and deflecting. If you can't tell. I'm a customer. Love the products. Love the community. Love the matching weather widgets. Big disappointment to me that this had to happen. I don't like to hear from people whose work I've respected for some time now saying,"Not doing that" "That would be ugly" "To much work""If I have to do that,I'll just quit skinning" Things of that nature. It's as if everyone is at cross purposes. I guess I thought there was more passion than there is.