The consequences of copied dolls

Luluna: I would never have intentions of selling the recast, or any. I do have to gladly say it was a lesson learnt on my behalf.

Right now I'm thinking of holding onto it. Like mentioned, to remind myself "the dont's" of purchasing BJD.

Thank you for the input! I'm just at ease to know the advice given was the same as my plans. And to be honest, this experience actually made the legitimate dolls more appealing and lovely.

 

The sad thing about knockoffs is that they have become the norm in many hobbies (To the point that the knockoff "companies" act as if they are legit). Some people think that knockoffs are OK, but in the end the artists and companies they steal their creations from go out of business and the knockoff "company" just churns out the same item forever (since they cannot create anything, just copy). I am truly amazed and respect the self policing in the BJD community against them.

 

Inklet: Glad to help. And it's reaffirming to hear how the experience makes you appreciate legitimate dolls even more.

 

I think even the pay for legitimate factories is way too low to give the people a decent living so I can't begin to imagine what it's like for workers trapped in an illegal organization. I'm sure you're right - there wouldn't be any concern for toxins and workers are desperate to provide for their families so their stuck in a very bad situation. You brought to light the very real cost to humanity that illegal recasts cause.

 

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but I just discovered there's a new kind of customer that keeps the recast market going. It's not just people who want a cheap doll or custom color for themselves anymore, I just came across an ad on Ebay for a recast tiny which was blatantly advertised as being a recast (or a legit faceplate on a recast body or something), and in the ad the seller stated that they bought that doll as nice starter doll for an 8-year-old girl to get acquainted with the hobby! Luckily the girl's father said no because "she's not old enough to play with such expensive dolls yet"(!) hence the need to sell the doll (the father obviously didn't even know there is such a thing as recasts).

Reading the ad made me kind of sick to my stomach, buying a recast for yourself is one thing (which I do not condone, but at least it's your own choice if you knowingly buy recast), but gifting one to an ignorant child, supposedly teaching them the love for the hobby while at the same time actively supporting recasts that undermine said hobby and being too cheap to buy the real thing, wtf>.>.

Not to mention that's one legit LTF faceplate that is lost to the legit bjd community unless it will get sold separately one day, no conscientious collector is going to buy a partial recast just to save the legit parts.

 

Recasters are hurting the artist to the core who put everything into a creation. It's stealing someone else's idea, copying it exactly and profiting from it. No one should be allowed to do that. It's unbelievable to me that anyone can think it is okay to buy a recast.

 

I'm pretty new to the hobby too. I think for me this means for the time being I will only buy directly from the companies in order to ensure the dolls I got are real.

Edited to add: now that I have thought a little more about this, I believe making and knowingly buying recast dolls are wrong. There are no grey areas because no greater good is being served and the wrongs are solely committed for personal gains/pleasures.

Buying a recast is essentially saying my pleasure is more important than the rights of other people to their own properties. I wouldn't want to have transactions with people who believe recast are okay because if they can justify cheating unknown artists for personal gains then why wouldn't they do the same to an unknown person over the Internet?

Having said that, none of us are without faults. If someone genuinely regrets having supported recast dolls in the past I have no problem forgiving them for it and I will not judge them by it. But forgiving a wrong is not the same as condoning it. We have to admit our wrongdoings and move away from them before we can ask others to forgive and to not associate us with those wrongdoings anymore.

Lastly, I won't buy a recast because who I am to myself is worth more than the few hundred dollars I would have saved on a luxury item. Can you really like the looks of something so much that having it in your possession is worth cheating and hurting its creators and breaking the law just to obtain an illegal copy of it?

I think of dolls as art and I find them beautiful. I hope art and beauty could bring out the better things in humanity.

 

This is a touchy subject and really...I couldn't be genuinely happy with a copied doll...even if no one else knew it was fake or copied, I would know...and that's enough to make me fall out of love with it. I seen and see recasts being sold on eBay and they stick around forever, with tons of "watches" and no purchases because there's no value.

 

It starts bothering me that there's a growing number of people who unintentionally buying a fake doll. Like [MENTION=68898]Inklet[/MENTION] here. I observe it on my local doll forum too. Many people just go to eBay, find cheapest offer and buy, I really can't blame them. One person said to me that she was thinking recast means something nice like repaint... And these sellers don't inform buyers that they are selling illegitimate copy.
I feel like there is nothing we can do about it.

 

Actually, yes, I can blame them for buying recasts. If they did their proper research before buying one of those dolls (as might be a sensible thing to do when you're deciding to spend such a load of money on something) they'd quickly become aware there's recasts out there and that they're illegal.

 

Some people like myself are impulsive buyers though. When I was new to the hobby I had no idea what a recast even was or that there were any illegal copies to begin with. I guess you could say I was in a "ignorance is bliss moment" until finally I joined some forums and found out what I bought was a fake. Some of the sellers make themselves look like trusted distributors by displaying the companies photographs. So in a sense, yes: People should do their research.

I wasn't even aware how intense the BJD hobby was, or what all went into getting a doll. All I knew was that I wanted one. So I was unaware of what I was buying. Yeah sure, that was a big mistake that I made and a learnt from it.

However that does not excuse the fact that I felt like I was buying the real product. I personally thought I was just buying second hand from a trusted distributor. I guess I should of put the prices together, but sometimes with more popular items you find good deals. I though I found a good deal, while in the long run I got a doll I didn't even want. It was a negative experience, a horrible one at that.

I think people should feel more sympathetic for the buyer for going through a negative experience like that. The only excuse we have as "newbies" is that we are ignorant. And personally, ignorance is a bad thing to justify, but in this scenario I felt like my ignorance was justified. All I could do was take it as a lesson and move on and educate other new people coming into the hobby rather than pointing fingers.


The fact is that it's a problem. It was basically false advertising.

I can guarantee you don't research which barbie doll is real and which is a fake when you go to a store. You simply trust that you are buying a barbie doll. To someone new, that is exactly what it felt like to me. I didn't realize there was so much competition and such a huge market for these dolls. Now I know though, and now I am aware that research is a huge factor into buying these dolls. It's a step you really can't skip.

We have to make sure other people who go through this experience shouldn't feel bad for what happened, but to just be vigilant in the future.

 

I'm not saying you can't get ripped off. That totally can happen, even to an experienced buyer. I'm just saying that I'd never buy something as expensive as a BJD without taking a closer look and finding out about BJDs, what they are, etc.

Let's imagine I'm totally new to BJDs, never seen anything like it before and I find one on eBay. Even with the low price recasts go for (and since I'm a total newbie I wouldn't know they're low) I'd probably still find them too expensive (I used to be the kind of person who'd consider spending 30 bucks on a Barbie "too expensive"). So I'd try to find out more about them which would eventually lead me here - where I'd be made aware of recasts pretty quickly. Maybe, my "paranoia" also would help stop me from buying a doll on eBay because I simply don't like buying really expensive stuff on eBay. It's too easy to get ripped off.

I'm kind of an impulse buyer myself, sometimes. Only that I tend to impulse-buy only from safe sources (straight from the companies or their authorized dealers or from the Marketplace here). The unfortunate truth is - nowadays, you have to be a lot more careful whom you buy from than back in the day when I got started in the hobby (or at least that's how it seems). So even though I'll feel sympathy and sorry for someone who got ripped off buying their first doll and got a recast instead of the real thing I also can't help adding a "hope you learned that particular lesson and you'll be more careful next time". It isn't as if the info how to tell a legit doll apart from a recast weren't out there on the internet ...

False advertising, on the other hand, is something completely different. If someone sells their recast as legit doll and makes everything look like it's the real deal and fall for it - I really can't see how you'd protect yourself from that. I'd send the doll back to them and demand my money back AND I'd report them to eBay for fraud. (I'd even do the latter if it already were too late to get my money back.)

 

I definitely feel sympathy for those who were scammed. It's overwhelming to start a new hobby and most hobbies don't have this kind of problem. You want to start painting? You only have to worry about your techniques and the quality of your paints, not that a canvas company secretly steals their canvases and resells them to you. I didn't know what to research when I first started either but I was lucky in that regard in that 1) My doll was an unpopular sculpt that wasn't in high enough demand to be recasted and 2) The official site was the only place I knew to get him so I ordered him directly from the company.

My problem is with those that willingly and knowingly buy recasts. These people are all over youtube and would never dream of supporting the actual company that spent countless hours sculpting that doll they supposedly love so much. They even point newcomers to the hobby at recasts instead of actual companies. Sure, give your money to a known thief instead to save a buck and run legitimate companies out of business.

 

I don't care that they're illegal. There are some laws in this country that are absurd, and I come from a country whose laws protect the government from their people, while they oppress and abuse them. So yelling, "Recast is bad because it's illegal!" doesn't move me at all. I find it MORALLY wrong to buy a recast, because it's hurting other people in all of the ways discussed here.

I think most of the world's evil comes from ignorance. The way I see it, everytime you get a good deal on something, some invisible person is getting screwed.

[MENTION=3379]Nefla[/MENTION] Ugh, youtube. I hate watching all these people on youtube looking all proud going, "Look at this totally cheap recast I bought and it's such good quality and just like the original." How would they know, if they don't buy the original. Like someone who buys a knockoff purse and they're so smart because they got the SAME THING someone else did but they were "savvy" about it and saved hundreds of dollars. I can't even. I can't.

 

Recasts are horrible.

When I first entered the community in like 2007, the only recasts I had ever heard of were the smelly, crude and fragile copies and were rarely mentioned because they weren't a rampant problem.

I come back fivish years later and they are EVERYWHERE. I was shocked. This hobby is made and perpetuated by ARTISTS. Recasts put this hobby in jeopardy. Companies are losing thousands (probably more) of dollars due to recasts stealing their thunder, legit artists are limiting which, if any, dealers can sell their dolls and have to come up with special construction for their dolls to keep them from being easily reproduced.

Recasters are taking artist creations without realizing that, if they continue to do so, these companies will stop making dolls and then both the recast community and the BJD community will start to fall to bits. Recasters are completely self destructive in their pursuit of a quick profit and probably won't even be around to witness the consequences when they worsen.

I feel bad for those that unknowingly get recasts, but I lose sympathy if they find out and don't care and I feel nothing but anger for those that defend recasting and refuse to see the facts being laid out perfectly. The excuses are bad. Seriously they should just be honest and say ''I don't care about supporting artists or the damage my doll does, I just care about getting my doll.''

They're like those big grasshopper bug things that fly in huge swarms- they destroy everything and fly away fast enough to not see the actual damage.

...

Locusts, that's what they are.

 

When I first decided to actually get into this hobby a couple months back I was researching on YouTube about dolls and the topic of recasts came up...a lot. It has scared me into only thinking about buying from the company and it's delaying my time in ownership but I want to make sure the correct person is getting compensation for their efforts. It really saddens me when people shrug off buying knockoffs.

Though my adamant stand stems from my love of Peter pan. I have a hard time supporting Disney due to their legal fight over royalties for Peter pan. The royalties go to a children's hospital for crying out loud! When I found out that the hospital gets money for their copyright I make sure every Peter pan related item I buy has the disclaimer that a portion of sales goes to the hospital. It made me understand that if I love something I have to support the right people. My favorite designer is Christian Siriano and I make sure everything I buy with his name is real because I want him to prosper and keep designing. (Thankfully he designs items I can afford now at payless!) Same thing goes for this hobby.

These dolls are so beautiful and part of the reason why is the passion and love that they are crafted with. Recasts don't have that. I've watched videos of people opening recast dolls and honestly it makes me sad that they don't seem to care if their doll was even made with love. They only care about getting what they want, an egotistical sense of entitlement that really outrages me. I normally just say live and let live, but recasts will actually kill companies if they get too popular. I don't care if the doll is super rare and hard to get, recasts of it will still hurt the company.

 

I'm really sad that recasts are so big in this hobby. It makes it less safe for everyone, particularly newcomers. I think I really took for granted being in the Pullip hobby where the fakes are blindingly obvious as fakes, and very rare. If you buy a nude doll secondhand, your biggest worry is that it might not be in the condition the seller described it as, not that it might be an uncertificated fake. That doesn't even have to cross your mind. Coming into the Blythe and BJD hobby has been a real shock as a result. You have to be so careful where and who you buy from, and it doesn't matter if the dolls looks almost perfect, because the warning signs of a recast or fake can be minuscule

I know ignorance isn't usually an excuse, but I do feel ever so sorry for someone who has unknowingly bought a recast if they thought they were buying the real thing. That can't be a nice feeling - to throw down a lot of money on a precious, desired item only to find out not only have you been tricked, but you have inferiors merchandise, the community shuns your doll, and you've unwittingly supported ripping off the poor artist who sculpted the doll in the first place, so add guilt to the anger and disappointment. Just...ugh. I can see why that would cause a newcomer to run screaming from the hobby.

I can understand people wanting a good deal on a doll they couldn't otherwise afford, and I try not to judge other people for what they buy. It's their money. However, I don't understand how they justify to themselves that the artist who made that doll they're enjoying so much is not getting a penny from all the recast sales. Or do they just not care? Some of my friends justify illegal music downloads because 'oh the artist is a millionaire, what's the difference of one track to them?' and although I disagree (and tell them so, not that they care) I see where they're coming from - and the same argument can definitely NOT be applied to BJD sculptors. From what I understand these companies are fairly small, and for every recast sold this must hurt their profits a lot. It's really sad to think about.

Tl;dr copied dolls be bad, yo

 

So many consequences of copied dolls, and pretty much all of the topics have been covered here. The trickle-down effect that can ultimately ruin the livelihood of small-scale artists, the feeling of violation a person is afflicted with when their hard work is blatantly stolen and bastardized, artists being terribly insulted by insensitive and entitled remarks that their prices are too high, and the secondary market becoming an increasingly dangerous place for buyers. Not to mention quality issues and possibly toxic materials; even unsuspecting newbies looking for a good deal are occasionally being scammed. All in all, the whole situation is pretty damn devastating.


And all this because consumers of recast have a childish sense of entitlement, presuming that if they want something, that they inherently deserve it, regardless of who it hurts. BJDs are luxury items, and there should be some pride in saving up for something you truly want to have and to love, as well as supporting the artists who make it possible. Where would we be without the artists, and why would we want to screw them over? Biting the hand that feeds is never a wise idea.

Recasters are able to make their stolen products at a low price point simply because they have cheap (and in some cases, inhumane) labor practices, and since they're usually already in the business of resin casting, they work with materials they can buy in bulk for cheaper prices in a huge factory setup, unlike even the largest of BJD companies, whose employee numbers probably max out at somewhere around 50 people. I've put some deep thought into a recaster's reasoning for bootlegging ball jointed dolls (of all things), and I think they do it more for the convenience of making money than simply for making profit (if that makes any sense). Basically they just need a product that is easy to rip off with the tools at their immediate disposal, which brings me to a hair-brained scheme:

A bit off topic, but I've actually seriously thought of sculpting and producing dolls of my own, and if they're good enough, maybe to sell. Recasting does scare me, but that wouldn't be enough to stop me from creating and enjoying the process. I've even thought of a few solutions for how to make it difficult to fake the product (if I ever actually get to a point where I can produce and sell ). In a lot of cases, I see proof of shipping get lost in the fray, doll boxes destroyed and thrown out, and COAs disappear into the ether. All of that is understandable, especially in instances of moving or a shortage of storage space. I've thought it might be a cool idea to include an original silkscreen print that relates to the theme of the doll, signed, dated, and with an included edition number. Something that would be a real keepsake to go with the doll as an included part of the package, a piece of art people would love too much to lose. Since recasters seem to do what they do out of the sheer convenience of their situation, I think they'd be somewhat hard-pressed to outsource a part of that work to a completely separate and unrelated printmaking studio. In addition, even the best xerox print is very easily distinguishable from a hand-printed and signed silkscreen. If you've ever seen a silkscreen next to a digital copy, there really is no comparison. I would hope, at the very least, that this would eliminate the risk of someone possibly attempting to pass the doll off as an original if the print were missing. Making the 2D piece an integral part of the 3D package, I would think (and hope) that people would want the print as much as the doll to appreciate as a special and unique set of sorts. Furthermore, it would be very difficult for a recaster to copy. Unfortunately, if there were people who just wanted the doll and didn't even care to pass it off as legit, then I guess my scheme wouldn't really work all too well...haha... but it might make the secondary market a little bit safer since it would be much easier to readily gauge the authenticity of the product. Okay, I am going to shut up now.

 

I think another conscequence here is if someone received a doll as a gift and it was a recast, people go on and on about how they: "Should have done more research" well if it was a surprise gift, then how would they know? And then saying: "You need to destroy it or get rid of it" while I don't like recasts, if I got one as a gift from someone important to me like my mother, or my father... I wouldn't give up my doll. My dad gave me one of my tinies for my birthday last year and you'd have to kill me to get me to give it up. I think some mercy should be given if they didn't go out of their way to buy a recast. It's one thing to buy one knowingly it's another to get one by mistake. Either way, not cool to bully someone and turn on them because their doll is different.

Note: I'm not saying it's okay to recast I'm saying... We could be a little less cutthroat.

 

This is the crux of it really. People are selfish immature. They don't care who they hurt as long as they get what they want for cheap and they get it now. Money isn't an excuse anymore since there are so many companies who offer legitimate dolls at lower prices as well as most companies offering layaway. They just don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. If you want an example of how this can affect the original artists just look at Kim Ki-Yong of Dollshe. When the Dollmore-Dollshe recasting debacle happened, it devastated him and he stopped producing dolls for years. Recasting isn't a victimless crime as so many seem to think it is and has a very real possibility of putting these small companies out of business.

I feel sympathy for those who unknowingly buy or are gifted recasts, it's a very tough situation to be in. I feel absolutely none for the people who willingly and knowingly support recasting and would have nothing to do with such a person.