Forgiveness (do we forgive companies too easily or rather the opposite)

Sorry, I clarified my last post!

But yes, I agree, the fun of debate and opinions is that they vary. The trick is discussing with civility, which seems in short supply lately.

 

Yes, I know :/

But I really don't think LFL was being uncivil, if that's what you think (it's hard to tell ).
I think another thing that's hard about debates on the internet in particular is how easy it is to misinterpret someone's tone and the meaning behind their words. If a person is in a bad mood or irritated in general, they may think someone is being confrontational or uncivil, when they actually aren't! It makes for some pretty heated debates when pride gets involved and no one wants to look stupid or feel wrong! It's a recipe for disaster I say!

 

Just to clarify, I wasn't calling anyone out over civility. Rather, I was referring to the overall tone of this thread, as well as a couple of others (that are not necessarily even related to Puns/Mikhaila, sadly).

 

Getting away from the most recent D.D/Leeke issue a tad... I was thinking about the BJD hobby's history of bootlegging, copies, and "inspired by" sculpts. I ended up making a big timeline of the things I could personally remember:

http://another2am.com/armeleialand/?p=4388

It was really interesting to put put together... and bizarrely, I really enjoyed it. Not that I enjoy the issue in general, but some of the stuff was downright fascinating in terms of the dolls themselves and the community reactions to it. I'd forgotten about some of the issues... like Narin/Narae being accused of being a copy of Unoa! In my mind, I always think 'They're so different', but in photos they really are pretty darn similar!

With the Puns/Mikhaila issue, a lot of people are up in arms because Puns is so unusual in the BJD hobby. But most of the biggest dollery copying/inspired by concerns have been regarding body types that were new and different. It's easy to forget that now when there are a million doll companies and a ton of dolls that fill each genre. Going back to the Narin/Narae vs. Unoa comparison, at the time Unoa was the only mature mini... so seeing a doll that size with that body type, everyone was like WHOA! Same for Dollmore Model vs. Dollshe Hound; Dollshe was the only one making 70cm dolls like that. Same for the SD16 vs. Dollzone 70cm, where Volks was the only company making a beefy, mature male body.

What's interesting is that many of these companies recovered, despite accusations (some of which seemed very damning and rather clear-cut). Most of these genres grew - there are a variety of tall, lanky boys available now as well as an assortment of mature minis. No doubt there will be other pear-shaped or 'art-doll' inspired BJD as well.

 

armeleia, thanks so much for posting that -- it is really interesting. Some stuff I remember and some stuff I somehow totally missed like the B&G vs Luts thng. I remember the B&G elves being released, but not any controversy. The last big ones I remembered was the Teeny Gem fiasco and the hubbub about the AoD ads.

 

That is an awesome list. I can think of a few more Sooms that are 'inspired by', and the Ringdoll judges, but not much else. That's fantastic!

 

I think when a company messes up, it's a bigger deal to me and I won't bring my business there unless I hear from someone else that they had a complete turn around. The way a company may be able to regain that customer trust is to attract new customers who will be able to tell former customers about the change. (If change truly happened.)

I want to like a company for what they do. So most companies have that in their favor that at least with me, I hold them in high regard until proven wrong.

 

Very nice read. It's interesting to see that in every year since '04 there's been a case of inspired by/copy. It kind of makes me wonder who'll be next.

 

I think for me forgiving a company is easier if I've had a great transaction with them before. Even if they've been accused of copying, or if they've lacked on quality lately, I'll continue to support them because they've always come through for me. I guess I'm talking about Leekeworld. People were complaining about the quality of some of the wigs lately, and then the whole Dust of Dolls thing, but when I ordered from them, they were great, so I will keep ordering their wigs. I wouldn't order a doll from them, but the wigs have always been nice....

 

armeleia - Wow! I knew a lot of them, but not the Narin/Narae/Unoa controversy. They've always seemed so different to me. There was also a minor hiccup when the Oasis dolls were introduced because of their similarity to Elfdoll which was (fortunately) quickly explained by Elfdoll announcing that the sculptor Sarina was a huge fan of Elfdoll's work and had gone to Korea and trained under Rainman, hence the similarity. I've always thought there were quite a few Volks inspired doll around, a lot of which don't seem to raise comment. Keeping a blog like that is a great idea and a handy read for newbies. Perhaps you could link it in Newbieland?

Pear shaped/different body types does appear to be the start of a new trend in BJDs. I guess because companies are always looking for something new and different to tempt buyers. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years.

 

What an awesome timeline armeleia! Thank you for taking the time to put it together!!

It's most interesting to me to see the part where Soom was accused of copying Volks' tiny body. Soom is my favorite doll company and I adore their tinies. From the look of the photos, the resemblance is indeed very close, just the way Puns and Mikhaila are close, but there are differences. Obviously Soom is still selling hundreds and hundreds of dolls every month and are very well-respected in the community. I find it telling that this sort of situation seems to happen over and over through the years. The community becomes divided and heated debates form over situations just like the one Dust of Dolls and Leeke are in now. It seems like it's a fairly normal part of the BJD world and happens a lot.

I'm convinced that the heat on Leeke will die down (eventually). It's pretty obvious to me that the bodies are different and that this is a situation of inspiration. I know there are people that are just as convinced that it's obvious the bodies are the same, but I feel like that feeling is based on the anger of the situation. Truthfully, from looking at the timeline and the photos of Soom's teenie gem body and Volks' YoSD body, the Soom teenie gem body much more closely resembles Volks' tiny body than Mikhaila resembles Puns! And yet no one thinks of that anymore because of the members who proved that it was a case of "heavily inspired by." I think (hope) that the same thing will happen in this situation with Mikhaila and Puns.

 

I'd doubt those numbers, despite their popularity. Even with high popularity, I suspect it would be rare for even Soom to break 500 doll sales in a month, even with all the various lines they've released. The waiting rooms are dwindling and have for a while. "Thousands and thousands" just isn't realistic numbers for this hobby. Thousands in a year, sure, but much as I love them, I doubt they sell multiple thousand dolls inside a month.

 

lol! You're right! I meant hundreds and hundreds!

 

Armeleia: your blog post was amazing, very informative. Also I think Gigglegeek still has some very small foreverdoll photos on her site. I've never actually gotten to see a decent photo of one of those doll but definitely heard the horror stories.

I had never seen Nono and Ari next to each other before, I DO see the similarities now but it definitely doesn't look like a copy to me.

 

Armeleia, what an interesting and useful blog post! Those kinds of histories by veterans of the BJD world are really valuable. Man, Lucas is obviously one inspirational guy!

And this will all die down like previous controversies have. Some members of the community will forgive and forget, some will just forget, and some will never actually forgive. And one thing I've realized, being an atheist, is that I don't have to believe in forgiveness. If your gut reaction is not to forgive, then don't. If you truly believe a company has done something deeply ethically or morally wrong, you really shouldn't forgive them, IMO, unless they've realllly redeemed themselves over time.

To be honest, I don't see Dust of Dolls taking a huge hit over this. I'm sure lots of us now know who they are when we didn't previously, and the dolls are different sizes. In BJDs, size does count! Who goes looking for a 1/6 and ends up with a 1/4? It happens, but it's not a standard mode of operation, IMO, and certainly not a predictable buying behaviour.

 

Armeleia > Such a great work, thanks so much. It's very interesting.

Not only because of that. It's also because Dust of Dolls have made a public announcement about what they feel. In many cases in your list, the opinion was a collectors opinion, and sometimes the collectors opinion was enough to take back a doll from the shelves, even if the Company itself never said a world about it. The cases where the Company itself accuses the other of copy are quite rare, in fact (Dollshe, Volks, D.D).

If someone say the Mikhaila's body is wonderfully pretty, I feel sad because I think "yes, it's pretty, because Dust of Dolls sculpted it". (Edit because people make a fuss about it: they did not technically sculpted it, of course -_-, they created the design of the sculpt. OK?)
If D.D never made the announcement, I would think it's only my opinion. But now I know it's also their opinion, and that's why I feel sad and I want to defend them. I may be wrong but I never heard Volks accusing Soom for copying their Yo-SDs.

About the inspirations not based on sculpting but on presentation (or both) like Kaori Yuki and Angellstudio, there are many, many other examples: like the "Twilight" dolls that have been taken down (the presentation, not the sculpt itself) by Nobility, Soom/Rosette making Clamp's "clover" dolls and "Versailles no Bara" dolls, Soom again with their idealian having the same presentation as "Vampire Hunter D", Impldoll heavily inspired by the Soom Amber...

I never understood why people are sometimes bothered by the copy of famous characters and not by the ones copying a celebrity's face, like DIM Minimees. In both cases this is using a copyright you don't own, and personnally I'm bothered by both.

About recasts, Linn just said to me there was a Unoa body recast made by Free Spiritz Designz which stay for sale at least during 2 years.

(sorry for my english, it's not easy to have such a technical dicussion when it's not your native language ^^;; )

 

I don't know if this helps or not, but do understand something -- to you and some others the bodies are near identical. While to other folks, they see many differences and prefer one over the other. I genuinely prefer the way Mikhaila's body was sculpted over the Puns. That's not meant as an insult to DD, rather it's just a stylistic preference. I also read a post where someone said they preferred the way the Puns body was sculpted. So even though there are many similarities, to a portion of the people anyway, they are not identical. DD didn't sculpt Mikhaila's body, Leeke did. They share a similar shape, but there is more to the dolls than just that.

Whether or not a company chooses to openly complain does not negate the close similarities that happen between different dolls. In fact, some people who are very outspoken about being upset with Leeke, own dolls from companies who have been accused of the same things -- something that is admittedly a bit bothersome to me.

 

Actually, Dollshe/Tensiya did make a lot of noise on Korean BBS... it's very very similar to Mikhaila/Puns. One thing I forgot to put on the timeline was that at the time it happened, Dollmore was also a distributor for Dollshe... so it was very personal, like how Leeke met D.D at LDoll. Except that in Dollmore's case, they were even a business associate... making a doll that was the exact same size!

Most larger companies don't have the option of making public accusations because they are worried about libel, which would be very disastrous. Particularly because sometimes the "copy" has been from the same country and would have an easy time suing. Sometimes companies also just don't even other because it's not worth the cost it would take to fight it. I have friends at a number of doll companies... and you'd be surprised what goes on behind the scenes. For one of the dolls on the list, the company was notified and they felt it was a copy, but they didn't think it was worth making a scene over it.

To my knowledge, the only successful copying suit I've heard of was Volks vs. Yumia/ForeverDoll. Even Dollshe does not seem to have won against Dollmore, despite what a lot of people would consider very damning evidence and being in the same country for reasonably easy litigation.

 

Armeleia > Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry if I didn't express myself very well: the cases where the Company made a public announcement are rare (like the examples of Dollshe, Volks or Dust of Dolls), that doesn't mean Companies/artists don't feel copied the other times (I'm pretty sure, like you said, it happens very often, I would not be surprised). So when they make noise about it, it's because they think it's worth it, as in the case of Dollshe/Dollmore (incredible story).

Taco >

I never feel it was an insult and never said that. ^^; And yes, Leeke technically sculpted Mikhaila's body, but if Mikhaila's body is pretty and original in it's shape, it's thanks to D.D's talent (or ugly, if you don't like it). ^^ And people have the right to prefer Mikhaila if they want. When I said I'm sad, it's because if Leeke has simply recognized it, things would have gone way smoother. The "noise" was made *after* D.D tried to talk with Leeke about this with no success.

Again, I was only talking about what differences it makes for me, and how it helps to set my mind and make choices about it. I don't say "I want people to do the same"! When Nobility put those Edward & Jacob dolls for sale, with the Twilight presentation, I did say on the topic they have clearly copied a concept they don't own and that it bothered me, but it was only a discussion on a forum. I never signed a petition to tell Nobility to put down the dolls, but I would if it has been asked by the Twilight producers (and I don't even like Twilight, but that's not the point).

Armeleia has said exactly what I feel: "do research before you buy".