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eBaum's World (subtitled "Media for The Masses") is a popular website based in Rochester, New York featuring entertainment media such as videos, Flash cartoons and web games. It is highly controversial for many reasons, primarily due to allegations that content on the website is taken from other sources without permission and rebranded with the eBaum's World logo. The site, which is owned by Eric "eBaum" Bauman, a native of Rochester, New York, ranks in the top 1000 sites on the Internet according to the website Alexa. It is co-owned by Eric's secretary and father, Neil Bauman.

Features

The site features individual celebrity soundboards, where users can click buttons to hear quotes or phrases spoken by that celebrity. By pressing certain buttons in an organized order, users can simulate the celebrities saying unusual things. In this way, the soundboards are commonly used in prank phone calls. These calls are often recorded and subsequently re-submitted to the site.

eBaum's World has a very large forum community, with thousands of members and over one million posts. There is also a chatroom, and a store which sells eBaum merchandise. There is also a section called "Moron Mail" which features feedback sent in by users.

eBaum's World has a very large collection of prank and comedic photos which are divided into signs, photoshop images, and fake edits of normal pictures.

Controversy

eBaum's World has garnered significant controversy in many Internet communities over the years due to numerous allegations of content being taken from other sites; such as YTMND, Something Awful, Albino Blacksheep, 4chan and Newgrounds; without attribution. Companies such as Viacom , 20th Century Fox , and Sega have all claimed that Eric and Neil Bauman have infringed on their copyrights as well. Eric Bauman denies critics' claims that the site's content is stolen, citing research done by site editors and the consent form that must accompany uploads of material. He claims to honor all requests to remove unauthorized material , but this is contested by some content creators. In particular, web artist and animator Jonti Picking, was only able to have his animations removed at the beginning of 2006. Bauman has claimed that he formerly worked with Picking, though Picking has stated that this is false.

A web site, eBaumsWorldSucks.com, has been set up by Newgrounds/Something Awful supporters Neil Cicierega (Lemon Demon), Shawn Vulliez (AltF4), and Abi Rendon (LegalCondom, a former eBaum's World employee) to document the ongoing eBaum's World controversy. The site hosts a page containing statements from content creators claiming that some of their works appear on eBaum's World without permission.

Recently, the site's forums has been taken down do to an alleged hacking. Forum members suggest that the forums will take a very long time, if ever, to get the forums running again. Legal Condom revealed on September 26, 2006, that the site was not hacked, but was switching servers. An opposing site, eBaum's World Sucks Sucks, had been hacked and taken down in a similar fashion, but both have since been brought back up.

Timeline of controversies

• As early as 2003, Eric Bauman had been threatened by legal action by corporations, citing unauthorized use of trademarked names or copyrighted material. One notable case involved the "soundboards" and the audio used within them.

• In early 2005, Hasbro sent a cease-and-desist letter claiming that the GI Joe parody videos, originally made by independent producer FenslerFilm, violated their registered trademarks and copyrights. The videos were not removed, since FenslerFilm did not face any legal action.

• Since November 2005, several arguments between eBaum's World forum members and Something Awful forum members have occurred concerning the posting of "Photoshop Phriday" images on eBaum's World without permission.

• In late 2005, Sega threatened to sue eBaum's World after a copy of the game "Super Monkey Ball" was posted on the site. Adding injury to the insult, not only was the Flash-based game posted on the site, it was "hot-linked," meaning that the game was merely diplayed on the webpage while being hosted on Sega's official website; most of eBaum's detractors take this as direct proof that eBaum's World employees knowingly host stolen material, and screenshots of the page loading text and page source code are easy to find using a search engine. The page was removed, and eventually it was replaced with an image of Eric Estrada pointing to the viewer, with the text "YOU'RE A HOMO" in large bold letters on the bottom of the image.

• On January 6 2006, eBaum's World hosted and watermarked a Lindsay Lohan montage created by YTMND user SpliceVW without crediting either SpliceVW or YTMND. In response, users from YTMND joined users from other internet communities, namely Something Awful, Newgrounds, 4chan, FARK, and IGN. These groups disrupted the eBaum's World forums with spam posts and DDoS attacks. On January 10, eBaum's World alleged the attacks were a form of "cyber-terrorism", and on January 11, Neil Bauman stated publicly that arrests were being made in relation to the attacks, though none have been made public as of yet. Max Goldberg, the owner of YTMND, and Neil Bauman eventually came to an agreement, with Bauman agreeing to remove the montage from his website, and in return, for Goldberg removing any reference to "eBaum" from his website. Despite the resolution, both sites experienced DDoS attacks on the morning of January 12, 2006.

• On February 23 2006, Michael Parker, an eBaum's World representative, appeared on G4's Attack of the Show to try and clear up the recent controversy with YTMND. Kevin Pereira, co-host of the show, asked Parker explicit questions about the alleged infringing. Parker claimed:

There aren't any written rules or regulations. We're trying to do our due diligence and do the things that we feel are right by not taking other people's material without crediting them or contacting them first. We try to...we contact all these people. Like if we something we like, like a game, we don't just put it on our site . We contact these people. And if you notice with all our new Flash games, we have our own intro in them, and it's done by the creators and we pay them for that.

• On May 26 2006, several images from the Something Awful forums were displayed on the eBaum's World website. The images on eBaum's World were cropped to remove the Something Awful watermark. The page was removed later in the day following multiple complaints being expressed on the eBaum's World forums. As a result, Something Awful switched to a more invasive watermark template.

• On June 12 2006, Steven Lerner of Albino Blacksheep explained that eBaum's World took the animation "Animator vs. Animation," and the creator of the Flash animation, Alan Becker, would take legal action against eBaum's World. Albino Blacksheep has also threatened legal action and claims that other websites have also asserted difficulties with Eric Bauman. Lerner and Becker used the MochiBot Flash tracking tool to track who used the animation on their web sites. Lerner also explained that the Flash animation is legally protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Furthermore, when the flash was posted on eBaum's World, it had been decompiled and the line "Hosted on albinoblacksheep.com" was removed. On June 9, Bauman sent Becker a $250 check as well as entering him into a monthly "contest" (of which Becker was the de facto winner) in hopes of having any legal charges dropped. Becker was also told to submit a pre-written statement claiming that none of eBaum's World's content was stolen, and that Bauman had contacted him prior to his content being posted on the site. Alan accepted this proposal, and later submitted this letter of apology to the flash community of Albino Blacksheep:

Hello, I am the author of Animator vs. Animation...

I feel so ashamed, and the world is ashamed of me.

I fell into eBaum's trap. I gave them fuel to fight back.

With their constant persuasion and offers for money, they made me write a quote saying that everything was fine. Of course everything was fine for me, because I had the money they had given me. What can you expect, I was dead poor before, I have no experience with business. The quote says they contacted me before they posted my animation on their website, however I did not give them permission to put it on.

On June 26 2006, eBaum's World removed the animation and the apology from Becker from their web site.

• On July 9 2006, eBaum's World hosted an animation about a temporary tattoo of a dinosaur that looked dumb ("Dumb Dinosaur"), originally found on Albino Blacksheep and Spinnerdisc.com. They subsequently removed the animation, and issued this apologetic statement to Drew Mokris, creator of the animation:

Mr. Mokris,

We were recently contacted by a fan of yours in regards to the July 9th post on your website declaring that you did not give us permission to feature your flash animation. First off, I apologize for the mixup, your flash was submitted to us via our upload form (http://upload.ebaumsworld.com) and our clearance dept's initial review led us to believe it was submitted by the original author. I have removed the animation from the system, although it may take a few hours for the changes to be reflected for all users. Once again, my apologies for the mixup, and keep up the good work, we are big fans of

your animations!

It went on to issue him a draft notice to join Eric's program for flash animators to put eBaum's World logos in all their animations.

eBaum's World on television

On January 24, 2006, USA Network made a deal with the Fox Television Studios to create a television program based on eBaum's World. Producers intend it to be a late-night companion special to air with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Monday Night RAW featuring clips from the website as well as new and exclusive content including interviews with former and current eBaum's World subjects. The Show is to feature former TechTV Host Martin Sargent of Unscrewed and professional wrestler Chris Jericho. The show is being executive produced by Simon Andreae through his production company, The Incubator, in association with Fox Television Studios. The cease and desist letters from this company were removed when this show was announced.

On February 27, 2006, a researcher named Bradley Scott from eBaum's World TV show contacted the webmaster of Albino Blacksheep, asking the webmaster to sign over the site's content while refusing to admit what show it was for. The producer of eBaum's World television show finally admitted who he was but did not directly acknowledge the content that appears on eBaum's World, including Albino Blacksheep's. The webmaster recorded samples of these calls for their message boards.

The show's pilot was expected to air in August 2006, however as of August 31st the pilot has not aired. Concerns have been raised that it is due to the large amount of controversial e-mail received by anti-eBaum websites threatening boycotts.

On September 25, 2006, wrestling website PWInsider reported that USA had passed on the pilot.

External links

• eBaum's World - Official Website.
• eBaum's World Sucks - Site critical of eBaumsWorld.com.
• Albino Blacksheep - Animator vs. Animation Controversy

• Comedy websites
• Entertainment websites
• Intellectual property