Admin at pee-spider said:PlasmaSpider Bans Signtorch
by admin, Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:35 pm
I wanted to take a moment to address a recent issue that is stirring things up here.
Many of you may have read the post on Signtorch making mention of the recent ban of his PlasmaSpider account. If so you would likely have read a sentence he selected from a message I sent him, in addition to his short, vague, and misleading side of the story derived from a much larger problem. From that it would appear the problem has to do with money and his lack of payment for advertising and that is not entirely the case.
I don't feel my professional relationship with Signtorch is anyone's business however Signtorch has taken it upon himself to make it everyone's business by quickly posting his 1 sided explanation for all to see. Many have been quick to judge without a question asked so I feel compelled to clarify a few things that were conveniently left out.
We have a long history of problems working together as many may know, but have been on decent terms for a few years. This has provided him with an opportunity to promote his business on PlasmaSpider, and our members have benefitted from his assistance in many areas. SignTorch paid a small annual fee to freely post his logo and solicit business on the site and for the most part things were good with only a few little issues I could ignore in order to keep the peace.
A new year has come and times have changed. Signtorch has his own file sharing forum set up this year and has now refused to pay his advertising bill. It was a very small amount, he does help our members almost daily, it certainly wasn't worth fighting over so I let it go.
Not long after that he stopped posting links to the Signtorch website in favor of directing traffic to his new forum based website. I contacted him through our private message system and asked him to refrain from posting links to the competing forum and continue to direct traffic to Signtorch which is what the advertising was for in the first place. I received no response to that message after days of waiting so I attempted to contact him by phone more than once to straighten this out. No answer, and no answering machine, he did not want to speak.
This is when I sent my second message to him indicating that he was no longer welcome to advertise for free and he would have to remove his company avatar, signature, web link, and profile name. This is the only information he shared with anyone which is convenient in terms of supporting his claim.
Still no reply and he had yet to change any of his profile information despite being logged on for hours that day removing his shared files. At this point he was still not banned. I was waiting to sort this problem out so I called him again and this time he answered. Our conversation lead up to him having a meltdown, screaming at me. This ended abruptly when he called me a b.tch, told me to f..k off, and hung up on me. This is the point where he was banned.
So there it is, the full story. I would not normally post something like this, however I feel the need to defend myself against his convoluted claim. For those of you who are upset that he is no longer here I am sorry, it is not the way I would have liked it to turn out either. After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me.
Keep in mind that this is 1 member out of thousands that make our site the great community that it is, and this 1 member can still be found when you need him, you just won't find him here.
Have a great weekend everyone
Admin
SignTorch said:I guess SignTorch will no longer be on plasmaspider who sent me a PM saying
then after being treated like a lying idiot for a half hour on the phone then being told essentially that I'm just kicking back here in Texas sucking traffic away from him, and taking food out of his kid's mouth, I did tell him to go F himself and hung up....this the end of the road. You are no longer welcome to advertise your company name, company logo, website url, or anything else on PlasmaSpider.com free of charge. By the end of the day tomorrow I expect you will have made the appropriate changes to your username, profile, etc. to accomodate these changes.
my largest body of work other than my retail graphics is all the things I donated and posted at plasmaspider or for plasmaspider members
and now when I try to login I get this
You have been permanently banned from this board.
Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.
A ban has been issued on your username.
admin at pee-spider said:After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me.
admin at pee-spider said:I don't feel my professional relationship with Signtorch is anyone's business
admin at pee-spider said:After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me.
admin at pee-spider said:After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me.
SignTorch paid a small annual fee to freely post his logo and solicit business on the site
admin at pee-spider said:A new year has come and times have changed. Signtorch has his own file sharing forum set up this year and has now refused to pay his advertising bill. It was a very small amount, he does help our members almost daily, it certainly wasn't worth fighting over so I let it go.
Not long after that he stopped posting links to the Signtorch website in favor of directing traffic to his new forum based website. I contacted him through our private message system and asked him to refrain from posting links to the competing forum and continue to direct traffic to Signtorch which is what the advertising was for in the first place.
admin at pee-spider said:SignTorch paid a small annual fee to freely post his logo and solicit business on the site and for the most part things were good with only a few little issues I could ignore in order to keep the peace.
A new year has come and times have changed. Signtorch has his own file sharing forum set up this year and has now refused to pay his advertising bill. It was a very small amount, he does help our members almost daily, it certainly wasn't worth fighting over so I let it go.
admin at pee-spider said:After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me
admin at pee-spider said:This is when I sent my second message to him indicating that he was no longer welcome to advertise for free and he would have to remove his company avatar, signature, web link, and profile name. This is the only information he shared with anyone which is convenient in terms of supporting his claim.
admin at pee-spider said:After years of bullying and intimidation attempts he has reached the end of the road with me.
SignTorch said:I can’t seem to login
I assumed my username was to be changed to FreeLoader as agreed
I’ve offered to pay standard membership fee to access the file sharing section, so by all means send me a bill
Because, as you know, your web site has a history of infringement and deliberate efforts to prevent me from gaining access to avoid discovery and notification of infringing activity which is known and expected to occur on your web site.
So, please do not deny me access, in order not to make things any worse than they already are, which will be taken as a (repeated) deliberate, hostile, unfair, commercial effort to harm me by, and gain from, hiding copyright infringing activity.
Since you demanded I not post links to readytocut, I have not posted any links to readytocut
The last thing I was going to do is remove the link in my profile as per your request today, but now I can’t login.
I complied with your requests and demands and to my knowledge I no longer “advertised” on your site after my former ad account expired, if I did it was minor and definitely not after being told not to.
I apologize for being so angry, but you are condescending, and acting like I advertise more now than when I was paying you and that is just totally absurd…
admin at pee-spider said:You are not deserving of a response as you do not reply to my messages however I will clarify a couple things prior to ceasing communication with you.
After screaming profanities at me, calling me a bitch, and hanging up on me I will not provide you with the courtesy of changing your username. You have been banned and your account will remain unchanged and you will no longer have access to it.
You did not comply to my requests yesterday, you were logged on for hours and I did not see one change made to your profile. No response, no web url removal, no username change, nothing.
In the past some of your vector art has been posted by members. For this reason I have instructed my moderators to add a preview image for every dxf file that is uploaded and these images will be visible to any visitor on PlasmaSpider.com. You will have no problem accessing these images regardless of whether you are a member or not. Feel free to forward any problems you see with our sites content to myself or a moderator and we will review the content and take appropriate actions to remove it if need be.
In the past you have taken it upon yourself to attempt to shut down PlasmaSpider.com and the vital services the site relies on. Any future attempt to do so will result in a public notification of your actions and intent. I no longer wish to have ties with someone as unprofessional, hostile, and vindictive as yourself and I will make your actions available for all to see. This goes for your actions, words, and attempts to sabotage any of my websites or website standings which a topic currently under investigation.
Please contact me in the future with any infringing activity you see and we will remove the material immediately.
Justin Heslinga
SignTorch said:I cancelled and removed my sig ad and avatar
On Feb 10 you said “Your all set up with your requested membership. Retain your signature, avatar if you wish to and have a great afternoon. “
I stopped posting links to readytocut.com when you said to on Mar 12
By complying, I responded to your message, otherwise it was hostile, off-base and insulting so I did not reply directly
The profile link is obscure, it is not designated as an advertising element, I forgot about that, all you had to do is say so, other than that what “one” change was I supposed to make, you keep saying I didn’t do something, yet you never make it clear what you expect me to do, as I said it appeared to be impossible to change my username, to which you implied that I was dishonest, saying “oh please” and such, and I asked you to show me where to do that, and you said you would do it, and you did not
Otherwise all you did on the phone is basically call me a liar, freeloader, and insinuated that I am “laid back” just “sucking traffic away from you” and so forth, and “taking food out of your kid’s mouth”
Where you come up with all this is beyond me, all you do is complain and argue and throw insults.
As for your paragraph 4, thank you, but you cannot cut off communication and then tell me to feel free to contact you, you know where that will lead
As for your paragraph 5, I refute all allegations and suggest you’re full of crap
As for the ending sentence of your paragraph 4, you will be notified, but see paragraph 8 above,
As for your paragraph 6, see paragraph 8 above
All you had to do is make your expectations clear and do what you said you would, rather than constantly, endlessly insulting me, making up stuff, and fabricating charges against me. You said you’d change my username and give me 2 more hours to finish removing stuff, and then you’d remove anything else you didn’t like. Did you do that? No. Does me cursing you change anything? No. Does your banning me change anything? Yes. Is it wrong for me to respond as prescribed by law when your site engages in copyright infringing activity that exploits and harms my business? No. Do you bitch when anyone else links to any other site like allfreevectors.com? No. Is banning me an appropriate response or does it solve anything? No.
Learning from past experience and being prepared to respond when you go crazy is hardly sabotage. It’s your site, I have no control, to characterize my actions as an act of sabotage that is being investigated is laughable.
As long as your paragraph 1 stands, there’s nothing else to say.
Just make sure you do not repost a single file or image of mine that I removed, that will be seen as de facto intentional copyright infringement on your part.
Gary DeWitt
signtorch.com
readytocut.com