Fan Sites Sonic MIDI Madness - Sonic United Threatened With Shutdown

[Dreadknux]

Troubling times it seems, for the Online Sonic Community. Sonic United, after having problems with hacking, N00Bs and such like, have now to face a new challenge when setting up home with their new hosts, Elite Webservers.net. The poor team just can't seem to catch a break.

This time, Elite Webservers have confronted the Sonic United webmasters, Ozy M and Brandon A, about music files that they have that are copyrighted by SEGA Corp. These music files however, are not MP3s. They are simple MIDI files made by fans, of which the original compositions were created by SEGA. Which is, in our books anyway, something completely different to having copyrighted material.

The following is a message, sent to all the major Sonic the Hedgehog fan sites (including TSS), to inform the Sonic Community (and, more directly, the fan site's webmasters) about what is happening:

Quote

"If you haven't heard, Ozy M, the other owner of Sonic United, has gotten an email from Sonic United's webhost, elitewebservers.net, saying that our account is violating their terms of use by storing MIDI sound files based on the sounds from games that are copyrighted by SEGA corp unless we can prove that SEGA has no objections to us having them on our site. Ozy and I weren't aware that SEGA corp. doesn't allow people to use midi files that are base on the sounds from Sonic the Hedgehog games or TV episodes."

In response to Elite Webservers ToS 'violation', Sonic United have sent the following response (the following are extracts, not the entire message:

Quote

"... we are a fan site that promotes the games that SEGA corp. makes..."

"Even though SEGA corp. hasn't heard about us, we do mention them in our copyright statement as the owners of copyrights of the stuff the site is about..."

"I have also talked with other owners of websites that are about games the SEGA corp. has made. I say about half the people I talked are little shocked [about the use of MIDIs]..."

"... they say [about SEGA's policy on use of MIDIS] from a historical stand point they probably don't care what people do with them as long as they get credit for them."

"If you don't buy this argument that I have presented, Ozy M and I will contact SEGA corp. and see if we can get clearance to have these sound files in question on our website."

If the problem cannot be resolved by this message that is being sent to Elite Webservers right now, then this could affect the whole Sonic Online Community. How, exactly? Well, Sonic United will be forced to contact SEGA themselves about their policy on the use of Sonic and SEGA MIDIs (already online in numerous fan sites, including this one).

Should SEGA end up disagreeing with MIDIs altogether, then there could be a huge crackdown by the Corporation on sites that are hosting both MP3s and MIDIs of copyrighted music, whether they have actually been 'remixed' or composed by a fan or not. Websites such as TSS, The Sonic Foundation and Sonic HQ will end up not being able to offer music files for download.

But it'll be a worse situation outside the top three Sonic information resource sites. The real victims will be music dedicated sites and composers, such as John Weeks, and ultimately, sites such as OverClocked Remix.

Naturally, Sonic News will bring you the latest of this shocking breakthrough as it happens.

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