JackKieser

@ H. Guderian: What constitutes 'safe distance'? See, the line is murky. Strictly speaking, there really is no such thing. Again, the legal term is 'derivative works'. Every single song here, no matter how arranged it is, is a 'derivative work' by it's own admission (considering the site lists the games and tracks remixed). That means that it breaks copyright law and, if the holder so chooses, he/she can come collecting on that copyright. @Darkesword: Hey, no need to get all sarcastic. The whole reason I pointed this out here is because many people don't even KNOW half of international copyright law. I'm sure the majority of the people using this site don't realize the implications. This is all about education. Again, if you don't feel threatened, then don't do anything. Those of us who do, however, believe that copyright law has flaws that need fixing will attempt to bring those flaws to light. That's how social/legal change is made. I hope you aren't demeaning activism with that sarcasm... @The Coop: It's not strange to me. Not at all. I just don't like leaving things to chance. Personally, the very existance of the possibility of something happening to a site like OCR because of a technicality in law is enough to warrant action. It may not be like that for you. That's fine. Like I said, though, the fact that this site hasn't worn out its welcome yet doesn't mean that it never will in the future; if these companies find a way to make significant money off of licensing artists to arrange their music for sale, I assure you the possibility will become much more substantial. That's capitalism for you. I know that once it gets to that point, it will be too late to change things. I'm just trying to give people a head start by getting this story out there and explaining the implications.

Doesn't matter. Have all the disclaimers you want, the songs on this site are still 'derivative works of copyrighted material', and legally any company holding copyrights from any arrangement on this site could come collecting any day now. Fair use states that non-profit or non-commercial helps the case for fair use, but simply being non-profit or non-commercial isn't enough. @Bleck: You're missing my point. The fact that companies haven't called in on their copyrights doesn't mean that they don't have the right to. This site has just been lucky; hope that it doesn't overstay its usefulness, though. @Doulifee: Technically, reverse engineering ISN'T illegal; selling something obtained by reverse engineering without it being substantially changed, however, is. Like, I could reverse engineer Coke to find the recipe, but I couldn't turn around and then sell Coke; I'd have to change the formula enough so that it was close, but not Coke. The ]EE[ patch used reverse engineering, but the textures were different enough so that they weren't anything that was originally on the Brawl disc. The real problem comes from the .ISO debate and homebrew.

Just because it hasn't doesn't mean that it couldn't. That applies to Darkesword's above comment, too. When some company actually takes advantage of their legal rights and does something drastic is too late to do anything about it. The point is that they could, and that should be enough to warrant protecting yourselves. That, in this case, means that we disagree with the way IP laws are currently set up. I mean, if you want to leave the door open for this to happen here, be my guest... but some people aren't willing to even leave it to chance, to even want the possibility to be there.

That's a pretty big assumption. Who says that OCR's songs aren't potentially taking money from a game company? We really don't know that. It's very possible that Capcom could have, instead of asking for OCR's help on SSF2THDR, said, "Ok, either pay us for BotA, or take any derivative Capcom work down!" just so they could put music along that vein in the game. We're just lucky that they don't have Nintendo's legal team and they see the usefulness in fan made works. @Darkesword: But even you had to admit that, regardless of any technicalities separating OCR's work from ]EE['s, it's all still, in the eyes of the law, illegal. That's all that matters. It's. Illegal. And the people against this C&D don't agree with that, or at bare minimum don't agree with how this all played out. I can understand the .ISO problem. They were, believe it or not, working on ways to Ocarina hack the textures in, which would have eventally circumvented the need for an .ISO (much better). But, the rest of it? The implications that a site like this is flat-out illegal just shows how far this can be taken, and that's WAY too far. There's protecting IP, but this is much worse than that.

When we sing arrangements of songs in choir, all of the sheet music we use specifically states that not only did the arranger ask for express written permission in making the arrangement, but he/she also paid a royalty/licensing fee to do so. So, I'm sorry, copyrighted music has been rearranged on this site without express written permission or licensing fees. This site is just as 'illegal' as ]EE[, from a purely legal standpoint. A judge wouldn't side with OCR by a long shot. And that's just the music! What about the art in the upper-right hand corner of each web page? I'm pretty sure there isn't a copyright symbol on each of them, and I'm moderately certain that OCR doesn't have permission to use them. This site DOES sell things, too; even if it's not expressly FOR profit, money is gained in part because of the brand recognition of video game characters. If any game company decided to drop the banhammer on this site, there wouldn't be a legal thing anyone could do about it. That, frankly, scares me.

A ) I was showing the ridiculousness of the assertion. B ) Chrono Resurrection was only to be 6-7 (IIRC) key moments in the game, not the whole thing. C ) You still would have had to buy Brawl to use this patch, as you need to rip the .ISO from your Brawl disc. Not only were no links to currently circulated Brawl .ISO's to be posted on their site, but they even made sure (to the best of their ability) that people would not illegally download the .ISO (i.e., not rip it from their own disc; I know backups are always illegal in the US). D ) The patch, in and of itself, is useless. At least CR was a stand-alone game. This patch is worthless without Brawl; it does literally nothing.

That's not true at all. These are texture hacks, not model hacks. We can make Charizard look like Ridley, but we can't actually have Ridley in Smash (yet). No one in their right mind who would actually go through the effort to get this patch would refrain from buying SSB4 because of texture hacks. "Oh, I don't think I need this FF7 remake from Square; OCR has plenty of "One-Winged Angel" remixes already."

The point is that fan artists =/= mainstream pirates. Not even close. The worst ]EE[ did was break copyrights by making art of copyrighted characters, but then, this site is doing the same thing. I'm sure you all would be VERY upset if all the sudden gaming companies collected on their copyrights here instead of spending that time and money chasing legitimate pirates. Sure, legally they CAN, but is it necessary? That's what is getting people upset. This shouldn't be an issue... but it is.

Story Here. So, here's what happened. A while back, a guy on Smash Boards named Pharrox figured out where on the Brawl disc character textures were located and, being the genius he is, found a way to replace those textures with files he made in Photoshop. The first Brawl texture hack was made. Since then, numerous people have learned his techniques and expanded upon them. Three such people made up the hack team ]Syntax Error[, or ]EE[ for short. The guys at ]EE[ spent the greater part of a year creating a custom patch for Brawl that would have been the equivalent of a total conversion mod for textures. These three guys, with help from the Stack Smash team (linked above), paved the way for hackers in Brawl, eventually being able to hack everything from textures, to stages, to character selection portraits (think what you click on when selecting one of the Pokemon, for instance)... On the eve of the release of their patch, Nintendo shut them down. This has outraged much of the fan community that knew about the project. Other sites are standing up to Nintendo, vowing to release what they can in honor of ]EE[. The fans of the ]EE[ project want to get the story out there. Nintendo, instead of going after the creators of the Homebrew Channel, the Twilight Hack, or countless ROM distribution sites, chose to shut down a fanart project, one that took countless measures AGAINST piracy, attempting to do everything as by-the-book as a texture patch could have done. In Nintendo's defense: -- Hack required a Brawl .ISO, which could promote piracy. -- Hack required HBC/Twilight hack/other homebrew, something Nintendo takes an active stance against. -- Hack added textures of copyrighted characters, such as Megaman, Ridley, Fierce Deity Link, and more. -- Patch could be considered a 'derivative work', which is protected under US copyright law. Why This Concerns People: (EDITED FOR FENRIR ) -- There are way worse people to be going after than texture hackers. -- This is in the same vein as the "Chrono Resurrection" C&D. -- The ]EE[ people stated on their site (and others) their intentions (not to promote piracy, going as far as to actively ban users who talked about it, and to promote Nintendo games and products) and their wishes to be as by-the-book as possible. -- Nintendo targeted the few people with good intentions instead of going after active (and advertised) pirates. -- The implications here are that you cannot edit or otherwise change for explicit personal use something that you own because you don't really "own" the things you buy. Let it be known that no one is suggesting that Nintendo was outside their legal authority... but legal authority is hardly a reason to target good people who put their love and hard work into such a project, as opposed to true pirates. Please help get the story out and help us voice our disappointment at Nintendo for targeting loyal and loving fans, as opposed to true pirates.

Please don't skip OCRemix for this one!! There's nothing wrong with constructive critisism; trust me, if you ever plan on submitting anything to OCRemix, you'll be getting plenty of constructive criticism. It's always your choice to listen to it, though, and really the only opinions that matter are yours and the judges'. Either way, you should DEFINITELY submit this piece anyway; you won't lose anything, so why not? As far as my particular suggestions went, I just happen to like shredding, so that might have something to do with it. Believe it or not, people DO like a little improv or a little soloing, especially in driving rock arrangements. Don't believe me? Check out Sixto's stuff, and you'll see a really good example of what I'm talking about (right now, I'm listening to his arrangment of Ken's Theme from the BotA album). Like I said, you obviously have the technical proficiency for it, so we'd love to hear what you can really do. Please? '

Ok, first of all, I'll have to say that I personally think that this is skirting the line between cover and ReMix. It's a close call. Luckily, I think this could be fixed rather easily by messing a little with the rhythms of some of the melodies and a little more rhythm backing. Also, needs moar solos. Seriously, I was waiting for some balls awesome rocking out, and got none. You obviously have really good technical abilities, so let's see 'em showcased. I REALLY wanted something during Tornado Man's stage, but that's just me; feel free to solo wherever you feel comfortable. As far as transitions go, I don't really feel that they were too bad. Then again, I listened to it over teh Yootoobs, so that might have had something to do with seeing the stages in the background. Part of the complaints might just be stemming from the arrangement problems; with the exception of the differing melodies, each section doesn't really feel it's own. It feels more like a stylistic reinterpretation, but with each melody in the same style. Try taking some more liberty with your playing, maybe making one melody a little heavier while making another more bouncy, or making small tempo changes between sections. As it stands, it's a good song. Ok, a great song. But that doesn't mean that it can't rock out more. Try not to force yourself to be too conservative; have fun with this one. There's plenty of room for a little showboating.

I'm selling (possibly) Earthbound for the SNES. Great condition, plays like a dream, no box or manual. Also, possibly selling Mario Paint, out of box full set. Msg me if you have offers/questions, as I'll negotiate.

By now, I'm sure many of you have either bought or played GH:WT. I was listening to a few metal mixes from OC (including Neko's ballin' Wily WIP), and I was just wondering what people would think of a GH:WT custom song project featuring mixes from the site. I'm sure a lot of people would love to play some of the songs from OCRemix's library without hacking their systems (al la GH2) and with such a user base, I'm sure a well-organized project would take off quickly and powerfully. Especially if the community voted on a list of popular songs and got help from the song's arrangers. Discuss.

Oh man, Jewbei, it's great to see you here. I made sure to always listen when you had a WIP on the VGMix boards (before the site came back online), because your mixes always kick ass. I've always wondered why you never made an OCRemix submission... seriously, dude. Bring moar of your music here. Rock on.

Hmm... I have to say, that's pretty catchy. Honestly, after listening to it I'm kind of surprised it was only 2:51; it felt longer than that. Of course, that might just be me wanting it to be longer. The intro feels too sudden, though. That really threw me off a bit, and I wasn't able to really get into it for a few seconds; you might want to bring the beat in gradually. I like the piano/harpsichord work you have going on. You might want to think about using some of that for an intro. Now that I think about it, this would sound really bitchin' with some of Sixto's sick riffs on top of it; consider asking him for a solo section to flush this baby out a bit. Good stuff; really high-quality arrangement, IMO. Add some polish, and I'd say you're golden.

Strike, can I ask you a serious question? ...good. Why on God's green EARTH were you not intending on submitting this piece?! That is incredibly bitchin' non-traditional trance, my friend. Well done, sir. Well done. My ears are pleased. EDIT: I just thought of something; now that I'm downloading this piece for iPod listening pleasure, I need to properly tag this baby. You mind me asking what you call this lovely beat-o-thon?

Oh my GOD, that's good. I want MORE. Please, please, PLEASE PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE finish this piece!

Oh, trust me, I'm sure I speak for all the listeners when I say we FULLY appreciate that solo; that's why we didn't dwell on it too much, because it's already so very awesome. lol. I have to say, I really liked the bass line. I'm learning to play bass (one of my friends is teaching me), and I thought that it would make a really fun bass line to play, maybe with a few rock variations that aren't like the dance-style variations I heard in your mix. Honestly, the lower tones were what I thought stood out the most as distinct from the original; it's those lower tones that give the source tune the feel that it does, and by altering those lower tones you give the entire piece a new direction, which is exactly what I heard. Of course, you're right: this being a ReMix website, I'm sure we were all jonesing for some more variation throughout, but I still really liked what you did with the piece (so far; please keep going ).

Ok, so first of all, this song is a pretty b*tchin' start to a WIP. I like your ideas, I just think you need to give yourself a little more frredom to work. My suggestions, replace the first repetition from (1:04) to (1:37) with a little more of a variant melody, maybe some swing beats every now and then, and a lot of harmony. You might want to put a third, shorter repetition between this section and the solo with a few of the instruments taken out to build suspense for that balls-awesome solo. Personally, I'd actually extend the solo section a little more, but that's 'cause I want to hear more of it. After that, one more repetition of the melody should do it as long as you keep things high energy. Keep going, though. Definitely a really good start. Well done.

I'm relatively certain that the picture you linked to was Sonic's face when they told him Sonic Team was at it again. They probably took the picture for lulz, then realized how depressing it was that even Sonic thinks this shit has gone on for long enough.

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I've visited the Smash thread on OCR (I'm sad to see the previous monster of a thread go...), so I thought I'd come and let everyone know about this. Over at Smashboards, we have started something called the 'Item Standard Play' project; it has many purposes, among which the creation of a balanced, accepted item listing for tournaments, a unified item standard for tournament organizers to use, as well as the creation of a kind of 'stepping stone' tournament scene for the more casual of players to introduce them into traditional tournament play... really, we're aiming for a lot, but we're confident we can do it. We've gotten a lot of support from all over for this project, so I wanted to extend a hand out to the OCR community, as well; I know people here loves them some Smash. Our main thread at SWF, which has all of the info you need is at: http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=147012 (Don't worry; our thread is mod-approved and protected, so we have a pretty good flame/idiocy shield set up) We also have a group on Crush Siblings (a site being set up for the managing of tournaments/clans/groups): http://crushsiblings.com/groups/id/39 Please read the OP in our SWF thread, as it really describes more than I have room to here. If you'd like to support the project/become a tester, feel free to post in our official thread, PM me (here or on SWF), or hit me up on AIM. Thanks everyone, and happy Smashing.

Mine was simply a product of the strange way my mind works. I was wondering, way way back, what else I would have wanted to be named if I had the choice to name myself at birth, and I was always partial to the name 'Jack' for some reason. When I thought about it for the first time, I happened to be eating a Kaiser roll, and when I thought of the two words in sequence, I thought it had a nice ring to it. I was never a fan of simplicity, though, and so I changed the spelling of 'kaiser' to 'Kieser', and my handle was born. I have been using it since 8th grade, which, if my math is correct, means I've been known as Jack Kieser for six years now.

On the Penny-Arcade forums, they're planning to make just such a list, so that people can find all the methods of unlocking without finding out WHO they're unlocking. Just a heads up. --Jack Kieser

Amen to that. Really, like Camera mode, this update is great for certain people, and neutral to others. It's definitely not something that would hurt the game if included, and I'm sure those that are planning on using it will use it well (I'm one of the few people I know of who actively uses Camera mode in Melee, and I get some damn good SS's, too). What I think is great is that it will allow novice players who want to observe specific character's techniques to easily do so by letting them observe a variety of skilled (hopefully) players in real-time, in high quality. Lord knows I got better after observing people play Link / Doc. A point goes to Sakurai. --Jack Kieser

Hey, just got internets back (my computer's boot sector got a physical corruption on it, so I'm off that for a while; oh, the "joys" of the Opera browser), so I thought I'd respond to the 'apologetic player' thing while I have a chance. So, yeah. When I was saying that the Fox guy seemed 'apologetic' sometimes, it wasn't that he seemed like that because he was good; you're right, it's dumb to feel sorry because you are skilled at something. He seems that way sometimes because he plays Fox the way most people play him: lots of laser-spamming, shine edgeguards, and he pretty much only attacks with either his up throw, his up smash, or his up aerial. The majority of the people who play at school find that style of play... well, we don't like it, to say the least. (Mind you, we deal with it, because who are we to say that it's wrong; we just don't like it for philosophical reasons), and he seems like he sometimes feels bad because most of the people he fights consider his practices unsportsmanlike (in particular, edge-hogging, again for philosophical reasons). And I don't necessarily see why it's 'gloating' to feel bad when your over-abundance of skill markedly makes other people have less fun. Like I said, we all deal with our frustrations and just grin and bear it, but it also shows that other, more skilled players have a vested interest in OUR enjoyment of the game, as well. --Jack Kieser PS: Links taunts rock. Totally makes up for his crappy fight intro.