Homage Dolls - One company's no-no is another's fortune?

*shrugs* Will just have to leave it at that then.

They were impaled by their own sword. Because if you ask me without that he just looks like another generic Vampire Hunter type.

 

*laughs* Something I've seen over and over, unfortunately.

*sighs* Yes, I know that. Not about Breccia, but there's the danger of sending unsolicited designs if true. I started out not particularly caring if companies made homage dolls. . . but the more I read the more I feel like I want to change my stance.

And now. . . I'm going to break into my case of craft beer. Merry Christmas to me.

 

I don't think it is right under any circumstance. Whether it's a doll as a whole, a hair style, an outfit, a specific eye, or a specific prop, I think it's plagerism. Someone designed the original piece, and it's art theft to rip it off and make it your own. Don't get me wrong, we all know that originality is sparse now adays, and almost everything is based off of something. But when it is blatantly obvious that a copy is being made, that just ticks me off. It's okay to take inspiration from something, but some of these examples go a bit too far.

Think about it. If you had created an image or a doll design that was one of a kind, unique and original, and some company ripped it and made a doll of it for themselves to mass produce, I think it would piss you right off. I take art theft very seriously and I find people who do it intentionally disgusting. There are people that subconsciously draw something from memory of something else, and they don't even realize they are doing it. Typically under that circumstance I think it's usually some small detail, not the entire character itself. These companies obviously had conscious understanding of what they were doing, yet didn't stop themselves from producing said plagerised product.

I have a good deal of respect for some of these companies too, and it really saddens me that they would do something like this. Of course they might not see it as wrong, but if they were to recieve a few kind e-mails describing the doll/outfit/ect's similarity to something else, perhaps their eyes would be open to a new perspective. If said companies did not respond to the e-mails in a thoughtful manner, then I would be very dissapointed and would hope someone would contemplate contacting the holder of the original thing's liscnesing. This kind of thing shouldn't go unchecked, because if it did, we would have mass copying hysteria.

 

Why was it not okay for Nobility Doll to make two Twilight dolls and RingDoll to make an homage doll of Grell from Black Butler but it's okay for Soom's Hyperon to be a fairly blatant homage to Vampire Hunter D?

I believe the reason people accepted Soom's "homage" more readily is because it's a well-established and respected doll company. That doesn't make derivative works any less right or wrong.

And if there is no problem, why?

The bottom line is that you can't copyright an idea. If you want to get brutally honest, you could argue that every BJD on the market today is an "homage" to the original Volks Super Dollfie, which was a larger-sized version of their Dollfie figure, which was an "homage" to American fashion dolls. (That's right--if you strip it down to bare bones, BJDs are oversized Barbies.)

Also, if we feel there's no problem with these dolls, should we let companies know that it's okay?

Why bother? Blatant copying-almost-to-the-point-of-plagiarism has been going on since long before BJDs were even thought of, and they'll still be doing it when we're colonizing Alpha Centauri.

Also, if you feel there is no problem, how do you feel about people who are a part of this community emailing these companies to tell them to stop?

They have a right to their opinions just like everyone else, and a perfect right to express their displeasure.

 

i don't see anything wrong with it. i mean, unless the companies outright SAY, "this doll is based off (enter character here).", then they're not doing a huge wrong. i rather liked the Grell doll, and yeah, i could tell from a glance that it was based off Grell. and, who's to say Grell's creator had any clue that a doll based off their character was being sold? they could have known, and given permission. (i hate Twilight, so of course i'm gonna bad-mouth the Edward doll. who doesn't look like Edward. >.>

 

Idk.. I guess I see it as making a fanwork derivative of a preexisting character. Which I believe lawfully is actually alright? I just don't think that that they should be able to profit from it unless maybe they at least get permission from the original artist? My memory is foggy in terms of whether people can profit on derivatives......
But who knows if Soom is bound by the same laws in Japan? I'm not familiar with Japan's laws concerning intellectual property but I would guess that its fairly close to the U.S.?

 

"The quality of copyright is not strained;
It droppeth like a gentle rain
Upon the creator beneath"

with apologies to The Bard. I heard this wonderful and very memorable bit from a copyright lawyer. Ideas *are* copyrightable just as soon as they hit the paper (or resin, or plywood, or stone, or whatever medium you set them in.)

Merry Christmas!

 

Not in the sense people are taking it here, though. http://www.benedict.com/ has great information on this. Also: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html -- most specifically:

"Under the Berne copyright convention, which almost all major nations have signed, every creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form. No notice is necessary, though it helps legal cases. No registration is necessary, though it's needed later to sue. The copyright lasts until 70 years after the author dies. Facts and ideas can't be copyrighted, only expressions of creative effort."

In other words, 'a vampire named Edward with spiky hair in a grey suit' is not copyrighted. Any given specific image of the character from Twilight is, as is any chunk of the author's text about him. Those things can't be reproduced without permission of the writer, photographer, or author in whole or in part -- but copyright itself won't prevent someone from making something from scratch like the NobilityDoll Edward.

 

One of 5star Doll's new dolls, Aiden, is a TOTALLY blatant rip-off of Hellboy. I mean, I am barely familiar with the comics or movies and immediately recognized it.

Aiden - Hellboy

Aiden - Hellboy

Young Hellboy

Which doesn't really bother me... but what's irritating is how up-in-arms people will get with some dolls being only-kinda-sorta similar to another character or sculpt, and then it seems everyone LOVES that this guy is a "baby Hellboy". Yes, he is very different from the movie or comic versions... but he's similar enough to be unmistakable. [Edit: Aiden has since been deemed off-topic for DoA.]

Personally, as long as copyrights aren't broken and it is done respectfully, I don't mind homages or taking stylistic hints from elsewhere... but I don't like it or support it, and in most cases wouldn't buy a doll I considered a "ripoff". I also would very likely not buy or sell a one-off/custom doll based on copyrighted material.

 

Yeah, I find that curious also. Especially since, even if it is just in the names and the fact that one of the dolls has horns, the 5stardoll Tumnus and Edmund make a reference to characters from Narnia.

I have to wonder if people are sick of this issue and the ZOMGoutrage fests -- which I genuinely hope really is the case -- or whether it's just more fashionable to bash or forgive certain companies than others. Nobilitydoll, Ringdoll, and Soom got their tar-and-featherings; I just hope the lack of screeching now is because people are calming down about the issue and taking a more realistic view of it, and not because of the the company involved.

 

Personally I like homage dolls and I get really excited when I recognize who they are supposed to be. I think itd definitely be cool if some of the anime/manga or tv/movies got involved and gave rights to do a BJD with a company and make it offical too! Not sure how that'd work but seems like volks gets permission for some dolls like Chii, and Rozen Maiden etc.

I don't know enough about law to say if it's right or wrong, but I never gave it much thought other than "hey thats cool that looks like so and so from that show" etc.

 

I think, if he was a copy of another doll I'd have a problem, but seeing as the Nobility dolls are hideous and I hate Twilight, I'm partial to the not caring that they had their dolls pulled off the market.

polyhymnia hit it right on the head with the throwing a fit and alerting the artist. that is so true. and I can't find the original poster, but whoever mentioned the IRL goth guys with long hair, coats and funny hats could ALSO be seen as a "no-no" if you were to go with the copy/homage thing. So, either way, I don't really care about it. I never drew well enough to have people "steal" my character designs, nor would I really care, even if they DIDN'T ask.

 

Everyone has a point! When these types of dolls come up for sale, the sculpt can be purchased blank...therefore you can faceup your own. The same goes for clothing. So not to put a burden on all sculps of these lookalike type. It's nice to see different variations of homage, it is an artists' rendation. If the company that manufactures such dolls makes an EXACT copy, one would hope the producer of such would have permission to do so. Then the copyright licence agreement will be with the company that produces that doll. Like the Lee Jun ki doll that had a licence agreement, but I feel it WASN'T in fact the doll looked exact, but by using The (Lee jun ki) NAME and the clothing was very close to exact. Hyperons only copyright infringment, is he may be guilty of looking like other characters too, just by changing his hair or clothing. Many other dolls could look like VHD with the right looking accessories...is that a bad thing?

 

I still think there's a difference between a company doing it and a fan doing it, and for me it's really not about the legality of it. It's not just the hat, it's the combination of hat/hair/facial features/sword/dhampir-ness that pushes past the level of homage. And that just leaves me with a bad feeling in my mouth when I look at Soom now. I don't need the law to validate that for me.

As for the other cases, they're companies I don't pay any attention to, so I'm not bound to notice and go around complaining about what they do. I don't think any company gets to "get away with it" -- but more people are going to have opinions of dolls from popular companies, and be talking about it. Soom's threads are probably the most active on the board, full stop.

 

lol, because it's Soom!

It's a case of double standards. Soom can get away with murder because they are so popular. No one was upset when Volks did their Chobits Chii doll or their Rozen Maiden dolls. Why? Because it's Volks! Popularity makes a big difference when it comes to what people will accept and they will not accept in the BJD world.

Now I know people are going to argue that Volks had permission from the original Manga artists so it's ok, but I know of at least one other case where a company was within their legal rights and was hounded to remove a character based doll anyway. That doll was Ringdoll Judges, the Black Butler Grell doll. I'm a distributor for Ringdoll, so I know for a fact that Ringdoll went through all the proper legal channels and didn't break any copy right laws with their doll! They made this publicly known and still collectors freaked out until they reluctantly removed the doll.

I'm not bashing Soom or Volks, in fact I love both and currently own 10 Soom BJDs and 2 Volks Dollfies! Still, I feel we have a bit of a double standard! It seems like we are quick to jump all over Chinese companies but give plenty of leeway to Korean and Japanese companies. This reminds me of the debate over one company copying another company's BJD design. The Chinese companies always got picked on, while most of the Korean companies remained untouched.

Another big problem is that many of us are looking at this from a western perspective. Copy right laws in Japan and the rest of Asia (?) are much different from those in North American and European countries. Now I'm no law expert so I can't get into much detail but I do know from my various Asian Studies courses back in college that most Anime/Manga series are public domain until they are bought by overseas companies for dubbing/translation purposes.

I apologize for the wall of text, but this is something that has been bothering me!

 

If Ringdoll had obtained legal permission and licensing rights from Yana Toboso and the other entities behind Kuroshitsuji, they should have posted so. As they didn't and only posted a vague post that they were sure they couldn't be sued for selling the doll, I really don't believe it. Sounds more like them knowing with Chinese copyright law as it stands they knew they were in no legal trouble from selling the doll.

Volks ARE a different case because they do acquire the legal rights to market their character dolls as the characters. Their sales benefit the artist. It has nothing to do with how popular they are. I am not sure what the company is called currently, I want to say it's Mudoll? but D12 Project, who I am sure most people have never heard of, did acquire the rights to from Saint-Exupery's estate to sell their Little Prince doll.

And as for anime and manga being public domain, they very much are not. You can see who the copyright holders are for any manga or anime by looking inside a book or watching the credits. There are big old international copyright and often trademark symbols.

 

Wow! This is complicated. This world has so much of this going on. One would have to look into their purchase carefully not to get caught in this web of copyrights. I just don't beleive companies are allowed to sell to the public without proper licence agreements.

 

These types of bjd companies sometimes give us inspiration or ideas. And so happens that Soom made a doll that has quite a contraversy on legality. Some people may love it or hate it. I do agree that Soom is very popular.

 

Volks had the legal rights so how are they getting dragged into the debate? Why get down about a company when they do things by the books?

It is not an "argument" to bring up the validity of their product. It's actually a fact.

Also, I am curious. Did Ringdoll just avoid breaking laws or did they get the actually OK from the creator? I don't personally know a thing about it but maybe it was perceived that the company was jumping through legal hoops but not including the creator? Again, I don't know about this doll but if you are willing I would like very much to hear what happened?

 

Uhm... no. If no one cared 'because it was Soom', this thread wouldn't exist. That's pretty much nailed earlier in the thread. The reason this thread is here is because people were having a fit that other people weren't screaming enough yet, and that started other irritations, and then this thread was created. Just because the outrage festival isn't in the Soom thread doesn't mean there isn't one inspired by that incident. To borrow a line from an old commercial, at the moment, actually "you're soaking in it."

Volks isn't different because they're popular. They're different because they go through all the licensing hoops, pay the fees to use the proper name and logos of the series/etc., and so on. That isn't being done in any of these other cases from what I've seen. I'm curious about the Ringdoll issue you've mentioned, since it's surprising that they didn't cover the page with the logos and such if it was officially licensed.