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| Entertainmentwebsite
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! Owner
| Steven Lerner
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! Created by
| Steven Lerner
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Albino Blacksheep is a popular website based in Toronto, Ontario that posts humorous and/or artistic member-submitted digital media. The most popular of these are movies or games created with Macromedia Flash. The website also features image galleries, audio files, and text files. Additionally, there is a [mobile section] that provides ring tones, screensavers, and wallpapers for cell phones.
In addition to the media available on the website, there is also a large user community that takes advantage of the forums and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, members of which often offer [tutorials] on the production of the type of media found on Albino Blacksheep.
Albino Blacksheep was founded in 1999 by Steven Lerner to promote his band of the same name, which was started in 1996. In 2000, Lerner took a web design course and redesigned the site. This new incarnation contained rants, graphical images, and a video stream from Lerner's video camera. Perhaps Lerner's first famous work was in 2003, with his site's Google Bomb for French Military Victories. Since then the site has been growing in popularity, currently receiving about 1.5 million pageviews per day ([link]).
The forum has been hacked and invaded a few times, and today is moderated more strictly, with patches generally being applied soon after release.
According to Steven Lerner, the creator of Albino Blacksheep, the name was derived from the following definitions (taken from Wiktionary):
albinoNoun (plural albinos). A person lacking in skin pigmentation.
black sheepNoun (idiomatic). A nonconformist; an unusual or unconventional person.
Therefore, "Albino blacksheep" is an apparent contradiction in terms; by definition, a black sheep cannot be an albino because it quite obviously possesses skin pigmentation.
More about the meaning of the name is available in this [text file].
\"Animator vs. Animation\"
On June 9, 2006 the website claimed that one of their flash animations, "Animator vs. Animation," by their member Alan Becker was placed on eBaum's World website without Becker's permission. This violated Becker's copyright according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 [link]. Albino Blacksheep and Becker are currently seeking legal action against eBaum's World.
Eric Bauman sent Alan a $250 check and attempted to award him an additional $1000 from a "contest" in hopes of having any legal charges dropped, which Alan accepted after also being awarded the prize for said contest. As well as dropping the legal charges, eBaum's World forced him to submit a quote [link] stating that none of the site's content was stolen and that Mr. Bauman had contacted him previous 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."[link]
Currently eBaum's World has taken the flash file off of their site.
\"Dumb Dinosaur\"
On July 9, 2006, one month after the Becker incident, eBaum's World stole the "Dumb Dinosaur" animation off of Albino Blacksheep. They subsequently removed the animation, and issued this statement to Drew Mokris:
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 fewhours 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 eBaums world logos in all their animations.
