Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2015 01:22:32 +0400
Hello Mr Velvindron&Mr Cheenaramen.
I am sending this email to Mr Cheenaramensince he is the owner of
hackers.mu and Mr Velvindron (logan.hackers.mu) being an ex-subscriber
to the mailing listwho is linked to hackers.mu.
I am writing do you as both a designer/developer and a careful citizen
of Mauritius. Recently I went through your Twitter account [1], a blog
article [2] and also the Facebook profile of hackers.mu [3]. In all of
these 3 sources of information, I found something in common, a
copyrighted logo/emblem.
I am raising this issue because, my work involves lots of design work,
developing logos &corporate identities from scratch with full
authorization on raw materials, fonts (licensed) and stock images.
If you see the file I have attached to this email, you will see that I
have contrasted 3 images including the actual hackers.mu logo. The
'stamp' image in the photo attached comes from a simple Google search
[4]. My question is, do you own the stamp image that has been used or
you have just downloaded from Google Images and gimpped/photoshopped the
image.
Do you have the license file? If the stamp image is not yours, with
whose authority did you edit the image and published it online on social
media?
If we analyse the current logo of hackers.mu, we can see:
(1) The Queen face has been first covered with a white brush and on a
second layer, we have the Mauritius flag superposed.
(2) The '60 cents' text has been covered in the same way as the Queen's
face and another text has been added over it.
That's badly edited to be honest, I expected a cleaner work but let's
get to the point. That's bad (if you don't own the image).
I know that both of you people, Mr VelvindronandMr Cheenaramen really
care and are big fans of licenses, BSD licenses, Apache Licenses and I
guess many of your "chef-d'oeuvre" are licensed to these :) As far as I
remember, Mr Valaydon mentioned the 'BSD License' in the last Skype
Meeting (I just hope his alzheimer doesn't show up).
Ish Sookun wrote a proper blog article [6] lately about BASH logo
design, the proposals, the voting process etc. Did you guys go through
this process?
Lastly, I myself wrote a blog article on logo design [7] two years ago,
how things are really done, in the write way to avoid copyright issue.
Give it a read when you can. Before I forget, I delivered a presentation
[8] during the Developers Conference 2015 about logo design process,
again I stressed on how to avoid copyright matters.
Mr Cheenaramen, I know you love to keep yourself updated to the MIU
Mailing List closely through the public archives available and I am sure
that you have read the previous copyright issue[5] on www.govmu.org that
we have addressed. Unfortunately, as you know, there was no response to
this issue. I hope you react to this matter unlike the government officials.
At this point, I think that I don't have to explain myself further more
because there are enough material to get your can yourself into a huge
lawsuit.
I am copying this email to the Mauritius Internet Users Mailing List
because this does concern the internet users of Mauritius and as said,
this is a critical copyright issue.
I hope to get a reply to the above questions.
Thank you.
[1] https://twitter.com/hackersdotmu
[2] http://www.tunnelix.com/hackers-mu-is-promoting-signal/
[3] https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010827759671&fref=ts
[4]
https://www.google.mu/search?q=mauritius+dodo&hl=en-MU&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4zs3I7PfJAhUE1xQKHVpPDBQQ_AUIBygB&biw=1920&bih=955#hl=en-MU&tbm=isch&q=mauritius+dodo+stamp
[5]
http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2015/12/4266.html
[6] https://hacklog.mu/maxcdn-sponsors-gnu-bash-logo-redesign/
[7] http://blog.nirvan.pagooah.com/articles/logo-design-process
[8] https://hacklog.mu/logo-design-process-by-nirvan/
-- Regards, *Tejas (Nirvan) Pagooah* CTO, Graphics Temple
(image/jpeg attachment: copyright.jpg)