And we have another ripper

Makke

During my time as both an active scener and a silent bystander I've seen quite a few disturbing things. One of the most pathetic and lowest ways of making an idiot out of yourself is by far the total ripping of other people's work. I have no problem with sample-ripping or ripping being done for educational reasons. But when you take someone else's work and slap your name on it you're on thin ice.

In the world of tracking (and music in general) it's fairly easy for people to get a bit big headed it seems. Thinking they won't be caught with their theft they totally lack respect for the original composer. The latest major copyright theft in music I can think of is the Zombie Nation ripoff of the Lazy Jones-soundtrack for their Kernkraft400. Stealing the melody from an 80's C64 game made them a big hit all over Europe. They got caught and paid up 8000 DM to the original composer, David Whittacker. 8000 DM might not sound as much, but at least Mr. Whittacker was happy with it and a lawsuit could be avoided.

In our own protected little demoscene-world we've also encountered a bunch of rippers. I remember a few years back a kid who was in somekind of musicschool in Stockholm getting caught ripping off other people's songs for his schoolwork. I don't know what happened to the kid but hope he suffered.

Where this lack of moral comes from I don't know. Perhaps a lacking self-esteem or the will to impress one's friends is too great to resist, and by thinking you can get away with it you decide to copy someone else's work.

A few days ago I was surfing around looking for samples and headed over to ModArchive.com. In a small "newsbox" I saw that a major ripper had been revealed. I followed the link to an article written by Andreas Viklund where he explained what had happened and who the ripper was. The "badguy" calling himself Omus (realname Tony Johansson from Nykvarn, Sweden) had ripped off a whole bunch of songs, doing nothing more than changing the name of the composer to his own. There was also a list of the songs that had been identified. Among them were an old song I had made called "Electric Shades" but also well known songs such as "A moment of love" by Andreas Viklund and "Sundance" by Purple Motion. It was however "After Hours" by Elwood that got the whole thing rolling.

A "fan" of Omus had discovered that this Elwood person seemed to have ripped Omus song. Not knowing who Elwood was he spoke to Boray about it. Boray also not knowing who Elwood was started to look into it to help Omus find the "ripper".

Boray found out that Elwood had done the song in 1998 and Omus claimed to have done it in 2001. Boray got a bit suspicious and started to look up more of Omus' songs and so the truth was revealed. Boray contacted the Swedish music rights organisation, STIM. But as there were no money involved they were likely to do nothing about it.

Boray then started to track down the original modules and contacting their rightful "owners". Word started spreading and some composers wrote in Omus' guestbook and emailed him about it. Omus then desperatly deleted the download-section on his homepage (exchanging it for a "Under Construction"-sign) and also removed the guestbook entries. He was however far too late to repair the damage. He was caught, and now he has deleted his whole page.

The composers he had ripped were as follow: K-Dubios, Elwood, Purple Motion, Andreas Viklund, Makke, BHK and NHP of Anarchy, Toby, Virgill, Mystical, Radix, Nitzer, Some1, Moby, Necros, ZyberZip, Eric Z, Marvin and Voice, MyVoice, Exalot, Heretic, SMT of Infect and Jeroen Tel. (These are the ones that have been identified, there are more which composers we're not sure of.)

As you can see, most of these composers are well known. Some even considered the cream of the crop! It's stunning how long this could go on without anyone noticing the theft. Omus proving himself being an even bigger idiot by not even give the songs new names or new filenames, which made it easy to track most composers down. In some cases he didn't even bother to change the sample text, which was the case on the modules he had ripped from me. He just changed my name to his, and that was it. He still had my old greetings lists. He even claimed to have been working with my old group, Comic Pirates. Something he, to my recollection never did as I had good contact with the group even after my departure.

Thanks to the great work of Anders "Boray" Persson (http://boray.musicpage.de) and collaboration of a lot of people it could be stopped quickly after the discovery. Let this incident be an example for us all. Rippers should get what they deserve. Never take credit for someone else's hard work.

Omus proved to be quite optimistic about his chances of getting caught. He even took credit for the female voice in SMT / Infect's module "A Race Against Time". And perhaps that could be true, because Omus proved a total lack of balls and proved to be quite a sad excuse for a human being.

I did get an apology from Omus. Saying that he's very sorry and that he didn't know better. I don't know if I accept the apology or not. But if you don't know better than to steal other people's work, how sincere can the apology be? Would you understand what that apology would mean? I was going to include Omus' email in this article. But decided not to. That's as far as I'll accept the apology for now.

Thanks for your time,

Makke

Here's the list of the ripped modules:

More or less identified mods:

"After Hours" by Elwood - Jussi Salmela*

"Unknown Phuture/Future" by Elwood - Jussi Salmela*

"A moment of love" by Andreas Viklund*

"Mr. Doubt" by Andreas Viklund* (?)

"Lonely Heart" by Andreas Viklund* (?)

"Electric Shades" by Makke*

"Into the pirate" by Makke*

"Smallone" by Makke*

"The Adventure" by Nitzer*

"Dragonīs Legend" by MyVoice* (original by Koto), J.Lundqvist/Lohja

"Donīt Stop" by MyVoice*

"Makina" by K-Dubois - Enrique Dubois

"Sundance" by Purple Motion

"Imphobia" by BHK and NHP Anarchy

"Corridors of time" by Toby

"Back to my roots" by Virgill

"Ancient Times" by Virgill

"Salsa Con Carne" by Mystical/Purple

"Tilbury Fair" by Radix - Jacob Svanholm

"Cappuccino" by Some1, Morrow & Frame (unchanged?)

"2 good to be true" by Moby?

"Golden moments" by ZyberZip

"Orbital Delusions" by Necros?

"The song of sympathy" by Eric Z.

"Technohead4" by unknown person in 1992.

"Relevation" by Marvin and Voice.

"Summer Breeze" by Void/Reality 1994

"After the rain" by unknown author.

"Basket Case" Cover by Krow.

"Children" Cover by Heretic/Destiny

"A Race Against Time" by SMT / Infect made 10.07.93

"Hypnosis 3D Demo" by Jeroen Tel

"Ultranium" ? Probably the authors of the computer game Ultranium.

"Greenery" by Exalot?

"Someday" by Exalot??? (Didn't find it)

* = The author has been contacted and has written back.

? = The mod has not been identified by listening to the original, so these are a bit unceirtain.

Here follow the tunes that have not yet been identified. They are probably stolen just as well. If you would like to investigate futher, search the internet and look for similar names, number of channels, zipped sizes, playing time, etc... Boray has saved all the fakes if anyone wants to compare. If you think you know the original, send him an email: boray@alfa.telenordia.se

Name, unpacked size, playing time

"Aware", 93 kB, 0:40

"Benny Hill" (Cover), 95 kB, 2:41

"The Initiative/Drag Into", 602 kB, 3:09

"Novindus" by TFB?, 269 kB, 2:53

"Universe", 1 131 kB, 5:11

"2000", 188 kB, 8:58

"Art of crome", 316 kB, 2:39

"Come as you are" (Nirvana Cover), 137 kB, 3:51

"Freedom", 848 kB, 4:21

"Exhale", 1 869 kB, 3:15

"Backstar" (mp3), 1098 kB, 2:19

//Makke