AZSpidey and Howlrunner believe as I do, that the arguement of getting permission to use a public domain image is pretty ridiculous.
While this may be the view you hold - it is an incorrect one. The issue of property, in this chase both chattles and IP, is a penumbra under law. For someone who has threatened lawsuits upon people in the past, I would have expected you to be aware of such. But this is irrelevant now as you have done what you should have done in the first place.
However, being that you have chosen the road of inserting snide and rude remarks - the “Glen Beck” comment, I am led to conclude you really have no interest in maintaining any sort of civility. “Because so and so called me this” is no defense on the internet, and is highly immature.
My main issue here is the effort you have put forth to suppress, with the aid of the webmaster Chad Paulson, any potential negative results you have produced in the past. There is always an avenue to rehabilitate one's reputation, but that is not a free pass to be absolved of what you have done. Given that this is the internet, I argue it is even more important for such a neutral standard to be held.
Unfortunately the Administration of this website disagrees. I find, however, that too often Johnny Q. Public fails to fully research something before they make a purchase. And the combined suppression here makes that even easier. Not to assume that you will “mess up” again, but rather to publish a record that makes buyers aware of the past habits of sellers.
However from what I have seen and been told, it seems that the sellers here should be more protected than the buyers - which is the real thrust of my problem here. This, of course, is not only applicable to sellers.
Would you be happy HotShot if Buyer A bought from you, but because prior actions had been suppressed and hidden, you did not realize he had a history of withdrawing funds - and he then shortchanged you? You would be out of money, and out of product - and have gained a major headache.
That is not the full extent of my hypothetical, what if Buyer B's record was out there - but after carefully reviewing it and determining he had some past mishaps that he had reformed himself - so you sell to him and everything goes smoothly.
Ultimately, hiding our past flaws does nothing for us. If we instead admit our wrongs upfront and work to redeem our record, then we can truly rehabilitate our reputation - but that implies conceding our past faults.
On a side note; I highly doubt anything I have said here will set in. But then again, there has to be a reason the number one game in the town is a ghost town now - right?