The correct title of this article is {{{title}. The initial capital letter is due to technical restrictions.}} } } } } } } } } Ebaum's World Inc. Type Corporation Founded 1998 Location Rochester, NY USA call=Infobox_Company/key_people 1=1=Eric Bauman, CEO/Chairman Neil Bauman, VP }} call=Infobox_Company/industry 1=1=Web Based }} call=Infobox_Company/products 1=1=Ebaumsworld.co }} call=Infobox_Company/revenue 1=1=Unknown }} call=Infobox_Company/operating_income 1=1= }} call=Infobox_Company/net_income 1=1= }} call=Infobox_Company/num_employees 1=1=20 }} call=Infobox_Company/homepage 1=1=www.ebaumsworld.com }} Neil and Eric Bauman, left to right. eBaum's World (subtitled "Media for the Masses") is a website featuring videos, Macromedia Flash cartoons, and Flash games, as well as other humor material. The site was founded in 1998 by Eric "eBaum" Bauman (born 1980). The vice-president of the site is his father, Neil Bauman (born 1941). According to the New York Department of State, Bauman's website is part of a corporation. eBaum's World Inc. is a Domestic Business Corporation, based in Rochester, New York. Registered to the same address is eBaum's Holdings LLC, and eBaum's Real Estate Development LLC. It was incorporated in 2002. In an interview, Eric Bauman has claimed that in high school he was a poor student and a prankster, playing practical jokes such as bringing universal television remotes to school and using them in class. The website itself began as an inside joke between him and his fellow classmates, but eventually became a comedy website. Bauman dropped out of school to pursue this pastime of running this domain. eBaum's World is one of the more highly-visited sites on the Internet. Some of the most popular content on the site are soundboards, which are web pages of recordings of celebrities saying words and phrases, intended to be used used for prank phone calls. As some of the celebrities featured on the soundboards are associated with Viacom, this has led to an ongoing (as of November 2005) dispute between Viacom and Bauman; Neil Bauman has challenged Viacom at the risk of his own reputation. The site also features "Forum Fun", a set of images to be used on online forums for multiple purposes. While not all of the images belong to the website exclusively, some people believe that eBaum's World has increased the popularity of the idea. The site also has games and animations, as well as jokes, a chatroom and a store. Since the site receives many emails with content to add, there is a section called "Moron Mail" for submissions that do not meet the Baumans' standards. eBaum's World has a very large forum community, with thousands of members and over one million posts. In the forum there are areas to post pictures, videos, and high scores for games (among other subforums). Every Friday, Bauman selects some of the forum content for display on the site's main page along with 2-3 jokes. Contents 1 Controversy 1.1 Something Awful 1.2 Viacom 2 Trivia 3 External links Controversy Screenshot of a customized 404 page from the Something Awful forums (as clearly indicated by the mention of Lowtax), rebranded with the eBaum's logo and made available in a public gallery. Critics of the site point out that a significant amount of the content—in particular the Flash content—is taken without consent from other Internet sources, and that Bauman replaces any original mark of authorship with the phrase "hosted by eBaumsworld", decompiling them if necessary. They also claim that Bauman does not have the right to use or profit from the work of others, and point out that Bauman's site draws considerable advertising revenue in large part due to the flash content on the site. Some people have made their hate of him public. In response to such criticisms, Bauman has claimed that he believes that most material on the Internet is public domain and he is doing a service by providing it all in the same place. They point out this is false, because according to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, sufficiently unique works are copyrighted as soon as they are created, unless explicitly released into the public domain. Some respond that much of the content on Bauman's site, such as the Monkeyball game are copyright, and so clearly are not in the public domain; similarly, rebranded versions of the FenslerFilm GI Joe animations remain on eBaum's as of November 2005, accompanied by a fourteen-month-old Cease-and-Desist letter from Hasbro. While critics have described Bauman's actions as copyright infringement, to date, there is no evidence of a successful legal action against him. Critics point out that the sources for some of the content on the site are small, independent sites which lack the resources to successfully prosecute. Many claim that they feel the owner ignores requests to remove content despite a disclaimer. As a result, several people have resorted to using small-scale attempts to discredit Eric Bauman and such practices, such as found on a site started after a recent clash between eBaums World and Something Awful united with several other websites [1]. eBaum's World was accused of stealing content from the sites, and allowing a malicious code taking bandwidth from Something Awful. Some of the content has been considered distasteful by many, including the "Epilepsy Test" (an animation constantly flashing black and white with the word 'epilepsy' on it), a prank flash that is a parody of the Where's Waldo series, and Pentagon Strike, which challenged the government's report of the Pentagon crash on 9/11. Bauman has complied with several of the higher-profile requests to remove some of the content or place a warning on it, but he does not, in the eyes of many people, take criticism seriously. There is a section on the site called "Hate Mail" which exhibits emails "with all bad grammar and typos left intact" sent to him containing negative remarks by visitors. Something Awful In November 2005 Something Awful's founder, Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka, contacted eBaum's World with a request to remove original works created by Something Awful members. Following the ignorance of the requests to remove original works, Lowtax encouraged those who had created the images to register as users at the site's message board in order to manually and personally request removal of the works. Users were told specifically not to use this encouragement for a justification of malicious activity or debasement. In response to the influx of requests for removal, an administrator at eBaumsworld inserted JavaScript code into the template for every page on the site. (No claim of malicious, external interference with eBaum's World servers has been made, so it can only be presumed to have been an authorised user.) The inserted code was recorded by internet users, and can be seen here. The items constituting the inserted Javascript are: a=new Image();a.src="http://archives.somethingawful.com/index.php"; a=new Image();a.src="http://archives.somethingawful.com/search.php"; a=new Image();a.src="http://archives.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=loginform"; Each web page opened on ebaumsworld called upon this set of commands to create traffic of three times the amount on Something Awful's server. Notably, the pages were served and downloaded, but never displayed on the end users' computers. The first two pages retrieved were index.php and search.php from Something Awful in order to increase traffic load, and the third of which was implmented in order to create server processing load. The login page specifically incorporated a CAPTCHA which is generated randomly for every request made upon the page. The subsequent flood of page requests (and subsequent creation of CAPTCHAs) caused noticeable slowdown of Something Awful's forums systems. As this code was most likely implemented by the ebaumsworld webserver admin, such an agent would be aware of the overwhelming load created by CAPTCHAs and off-site requests. Something Awful's CAPTCHA generation was disabled for some time, before the login page was relocated to an alternative URL. Some debate exists as to whether the actions of the webmaster in adding this code can be considered a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The actions, while we cannot know the full account of their motivations, were made subsequent to repeated requests by Something Awful members to remove their original material. Further the concealment of the loading of this material from the viewers of any ebaumsworld page indicates the inconspicuousness with which the author wished for it to operate and the target represents a website with whom eBaumsworld held some recent emnity. While some people may not be willing to deem it a DDOS, the motivations of the author and its anticipated and actual ramifications are congruant with such a classification. This ordeal was the impetus for the creation of the website http://www.ebaumsworldsucks.com/, a parody clip made to highlight the reputedly disagreeable undertakings of eBaumsworld.com. Viacom Viacom once threatened eBaum's World with a lawsuit, asking the website owner to remove material related to Judge Judy, Dr. Phil, Howard Stern and Tim Meadows; Eric Bauman refused, stating that Viacom would look like bullies (see external link). When another party asked that material related to Fred Rogers be removed, however, Bauman complied, stating that Rogers was not a fit subject for parody. However, in spite of this the site still contains Fred Rogers-related content, specifically the Mr. Rogers Soundboard. Trivia The website was started as a prank in Bauman's junior year of high school. Ebaumsworld.com is on Alexa 500. In 2005, Bauman had earned enough money from his website to sponsor a professional boxer. He has also purchased an $850,000 office building, and has a staff of twenty. The Ebaumsworld.com forum registration was still disabled 4 days after users from Something Awful Forums invaded it to mass request their original work be removed from the site, after emails from Richard Kyanka, the owner of Something Awful, were ignored. Registration on the forums has since been reopened. Howard Stern has mentioned the website on his TV show. External links eBaum's World Court TV page over the Viacom lawsuit Search Term: "EBaum%27s_World" Categories: Comedy websites