Would you buy a plagiarized doll/design? (not a recast)

I sometimes feel that people who work in art or art-related jobs forget that art is rarely new.
I am sick of hearing of plagiarism or copyright slammed on every bit of a product.
That someone is forbidden to make a copy of the whole product and sell it as his/her own is fair enough.
That someone is forbidden to use historical material is another matter entirely in my eyes, and I find it unbearable.

This totally reminds me of an infuriating experience I had among 'people In fashion': I had someone screaming at me that she would sue me if I used a certain colour as It was copyrighted - for the record, I like to make my own stuff using what is available, like everybody does, and that 'person' was forbidding me to use something readily available/I could make myself by blending colours-.

To come back to the subject:

Every time people have to look for a job or keep their job, they renew themselves, they improve their knowledge, they propose better. So should the 'art-makers'.

From looking at the BJDs on offer and that are advertised on DOA and other sites, all are plagiazed dolls in one way or another. Or did I get the 'plagiazed' definition wrong?

 

What specific examples?
Leekeworld has provided a picture of a 2008 WIP pear-shaped doll.
Though I wasn't a BJDs owner at the time, I came across a flickr post by an one-woman French BJD artist NEFER KANE complaining of DUST of DOLLS (2 artists company) threatening legal action against her for copying design or part of it (don't remember which). Something that DoD denied later on I believe, I don't know the particulars. Please correct me if I got it wrong, as I said, I wasn't privey to the particulars.

I don't see DUST of DOLLS attitude as having the David against Goliath spirit. To me, this DoD vs Leekeworld quarrel, is purely the sign of a young company using this way to market itself to a wider audience. Money is the aim here.

On a personal note, I am unlikely to buy any of Leekeworld BJDS. I am more likely to buy a Dust of Dolls BJD. Nevertheless, I dislike DoD's attitude of complaining about something any BJD artist would attempt ( a fuller BJD) as a result of his/her natural curiosity.

 

You know if there is one thing I've learned about BJD's it's that in a lot of ways so many of the dolls I see to some extent they're all rip offs of each other. I think it's inevitable really. These dolls are based on the human form and while there are a lot of combinations sooner or later there is bound to be crossover. I have a not on topic vinyl BJD doll that was roasted by the BJD community at one point for being too like another very popular resin doll. The company who made her was decried for a too close similarity to one of the resin doll's most popular faces. Personally I can see how this doll might have inspired that doll but a total copy? As someone who owns both the dolls in question and in particular the resin doll with the disputed face I can tell you that put side by side the resemblance just isn't that close. They do look like they could be sisters or cousins maybe but you can tell they are totally different sculpts.

Many of the biggest NJD companies out there routinely steal celebrity faces, sculpt a noticeable likeness and think nothing of it. They get away with it because the likeness isn't past the legally questionable point and because usually they're in China where it's difficult to do anything about legally speaking. If those companies were here though? Likely said celebrities would be suing them blind because sometimes those sculpts are still just a little too close and because usually celebrities here are compensated accordingly when their likeness is used for a doll, and that means any likeness short of parody, which is covered under a different law. From what I can tell the whole industry is riddled with people stealing each other's ideas, using each other's faces and faces from Hollywood etc. I honestly expect it. It seems to be very common to me.

I probably would not care, no. Why would I when BJD makers seem to rip off each other and use famous faces all the time? I've seen quite a few BJD faces from maker to maker that could practically be twins actually. I could get all upset, but what would be the point? It's so routinely done that it's not shocking at all to me anymore. I can't change it. It's just wasted energy getting all huffy about it, IMHO...

 

[MENTION=69510]varebanos[/MENTION] [MENTION=68957]ATYL[/MENTION]
I was out of forums for a while and it surprised me all the banned dolls due controversial plagiarism cases.
When Volks/Dollzone controversy happened, moderators decided to act and so I knew when to find the list of banned dolls.
It´s very interesting and I think that all of us should read it, not only to follow the rules but to know some issues about the hobby.

 

Are we talking recast or plagiarism?
Have you got a sculpt example?
If you mean: 'would you buy a recast with the copy of a company face-up?'
The answer is no, I would not buy a recast. At the same time, I would not see the copy of the company face-up as a major issue. Mainly because I have rarely seen a company face-up strictly looking like the company face up advertised on the company website.

The drawing issue you mentioned sounds to me like a recast. Plagiarism to me sounds like 'looks like something already done'. The problem with 'something already done' is that it does not mean 'new' or 'never seen before'.

 

We are not talking about recast, we are talking about cases like Leeke/Dust of Dolls case of plagiarism.

 

It depends on the case. There are definitely cases where, yes, Company X basically copied (without recasting) the design from Company Y. There are also cases (for instance, every single example in the linked "plagiarized clothing" thread from the first post--the resemblance is "not uncanny" at all in any of those cases; with the exception of the pink dress, the resemblance is "they're clothing in the same general style range") where someone spots one little similar thing (again, see that clothing thread), cries wolf, and gets a bunch of people on board with them, thus demonizing a company that did absolutely nothing wrong. And I've even seen cases where someone just tossed out a completely baseless accusation, out of the ether (I even did a search on their accusation and found no standing for it), just so they could tear down a company that, again, did nothing wrong.

If a product was, indeed, plagiarized, then yes, it would color my perception of the product, and how I would ultimately view it would depend on how the company handled it. However, we must also be aware within this group of how damaging careless words can be, and when a company is charged baselessly, it can do great damage to what's already a niche hobby with a lot of small companies involved.

It's important for everyone to think before they run their mouth and/or fingers, and keep the accusations to those who are genuinely in the wrong.

 

http://www.fairwagelawyers.com/most-famous-music-copyright-infringment.html

Recasters don't claim that the design are theirs - in fact, their product being an exact copy of x-y-z company's dolls is what sells. Plagiarism is taking someone's work and claiming it's theirs - a form of unauthorized copying and at least in some instances, it doesn't even have to be conscious to incur legal liability (see link above). However, "Art is either revolution or plagiarism." - Paul Gauguin.

In the case of DoD's allegations - who is to say all the questions Leeke allegedly asked and interests they supposedly shown weren't to make sure they both arrived at the same point via different, legal routes? That it wasn't a case of their sculptors leaking the design? We have things like OpenOffice and GIMP because it is okay to get to the same point via another route of your own design.

I agree with @Lilla and @vicemage about attitude and how a company/everyone else handles the claim. DoD's statement turned me off, especially since all the links to their supposed proofs are not working. Some of the vilification that goes on in this hobby (thankfully from a small subset) I find disturbing.

I'm also with @magkelly about similar designs and company copying celeb's faces without consent and compensation. It's hard for me to defend someone with uncleaned hands. Like all the Minimee's based on celebs faces - doesn't stop me from buying other D.I.M. sculpts, but I wouldn't get bent out of shape on their behalf if someone copies/recasts their dolls.

 

If I knew for certain it was plagiarized, and not just influenced or inspired by another design, I would not buy the product.

Would I hypothetically buy doll Cosplay? If the seller advertised it as cosplay, designed the pattern and made it themselves: yes. Though, in this tiny and niche hobby that would probably mean a private commission anyway.

For example, two of the outfits in your example link were clearly inspired by another design, but have many differences from the original and are unique designs. The colours and basic silhouettes of the outfits were similar, but the details, seam lines and embellishments were different. Most of the similarities were in the staging of the photos which appeared to pay homage to the inspirations.

As another example that was pointed out to me: This doll pattern is clearly plagiarized from this human pattern. All the seam lines and details are an exact copy. I would not buy this pattern. (Actually, this pattern is no longer available on Etsy, so I guess someone reported it.)

In the past, I have made a gothic doll jacket in a similar open-bust style to the above examples. Mine was more inspired by the open-bust costumes worn by ancient Minoan women, but at a glance my jacket could look similar to the examples linked. If I were to sell my open-bust jacket pattern with "steampunk" styled example photos, it would not be plagiarism because the construction and pattern of my jacket is completely different.

 

I wouldn't buy a plagiarised doll/outfit/anything from any company. (I don't follow anime or manga much, so clothes might be hard to spot for me personally.)

And I don't think I would buy anything else from that company either. If the plagiarism was something that wasn't very obvious (meaning it could have been an honest coincidence or just something maybe a little too inspired by source material) I might consider buying from them, but not that controversial item.

 

Must say, have only ever heard of this happening before with Volks/DollZone and the dress by Dollmore that was taken from Black Butler. Interesting.

As for whether one would purchase something from a company accused of plagarism, I would base my argument on whether or not it was proven or not. Thing about being a historian, I want to actually know something has been proven before I say yes or no. It could turn out that the accused may have been innocent all along, and that would be very hurtful to the artist. I probably wouldn't buy it until proof comes either way.

 

varebanos, the previously mentioned cases are relevant because they point out how difficult it is to say with certainty that a doll is copied. Regarding the Dollzone case, it's only the Lynn head that is banned from DoA, because it was proven to be a recast of a Cerberus Project sculpt. The DZ body vs. Volks Yukinojo body argument was never resolved. No one could come up with definitive proof, so the DZ body was not banned. However, in the Dollshe vs. Dollmore conflict, Dollmore was accused of recasting the Dollshe body, so it was a different issue from just plagiarizing. Dollmore did pull that body from production.

So to answer the question, whereas ideally I would not want to support a plagiarizer, in real life it's often difficult to say with certainty, "This doll was plagiarized."

For a good company response, check out this: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php/635563-Fairyland-Rin-and-Cline-60-moe-issues?

 

In all honesty half the time I can't even tell which company owns which doll. There are some companies that have very distinctive dolls that you can't miss who made them but there are many more where I look at them and I can't hardly tell one company from another. Since I started collecting BJD's I've seen a few claims of plagiarism or copying that I didn't consider to be well founded. I've seen a few controversies about who owns which doll sculpt, about designers moving from one company to another and making dolls that were considered too close to dolls they made at their former companies. I've seen dolls considered blatant copies of each other that I think barely resemble each other. I don't mean to sound uncaring but I grew up in retail. I managed stores for a long time. Knock offs it was just an inevitable part of retail. I'm so used to it that I don't even think about it anymore. I just expect any new and cool thing to be knocked off, copied. It's the way of the whole industry. Companies just knock each other off so much that I've grown pretty blasé about it I suppose.

I went to Target last week because my sandals are falling apart and I really needed a new pair. I found a style I liked, picked up two pairs actually because they were on sale. I get home later that night and I'm looking at shoes online trying to learn something about this company and to see what other shoes they make because I really like the ones I got and low and behold I find out my new sandals are pretty much exact copies of some new Birkenstocks. Did I take my knock off sandals back? No, of course not. I'm sure someone at Birkenstock isn't thrilled with Target's knock offs, but so far I'm not seeing any lawsuits and if they don't care enough to sue then why should I? Trying to shop responsibly is good, but IMHO it's almost impossible to avoid things like this completely. It's the nature of retail. Things get copied all the time. Someone comes up with a good thing, a million knock offs follow. 99.99% of the time getting upset about it happening, it changes nothing. Next year's shoes, I can almost guarantee that there will be yet another Birkenstock knock off being sold, if not by Target, then by some other similar store.

The usual argument is that these dolls are "special limited works of art" all handmade, and only made a few at a time. Uhuh. Okay, in some cases they still are, very small companies only make so many dolls a year, but from what I've seen the past few years I'm not buying the all BJD's are "art" dolls thing all that much anymore. I see plenty of BJD companies sending out hundreds even thousands of dolls. That's mass production albeit on a more limited scale if you ask me. It's not production as say Mattel does it, but it certainly is production on the scale of say Tonner, and that's not always limited to me. I don't consider a few thousand dolls a very limited thing. I did when I first started collecting but I don't now. If I see the same BJD listed again and again, available as a basic for years on end? That's not a limited art doll to me, sorry, but it just isn't.

I can't speak to the case mentioned as I haven't read up on it, but faces looking the same, it doesn't surprise me. You have designers going from one company to another, and popular dolls inspiring other dolls all the time. The BJD business is no different from any other retail business I've ever known. For all there's this rarefied attitude about these dolls being art these dolls are often produced in large numbers. At the level they are being produced in some companies I would expect knock offs. If it sells, it's going to inspire more of the same. That's how retail works. Is it ethical? No, of course not, but then retail almost never is. If companies don't get into the market and do their version of what's popular there's no competition and they will lose out on making money. It would be nice if every product out there was an original one, but it's not realistic to expect that. It's not how the retail game is played.

A lot of people think that BJD's should be exempt in some way from this happening, revered as "art" and maybe some truly limited sculpts should, but let's face it the whole BJD industry has exploded. There's so much out there now and so many more people doing this. It's not what it was years ago when dolls like this actually were produced in such small numbers and bought by so few people that they could command that level of respect. Look at how many people are online now buying, selling, trading, collecting BJD's. Compare that to say a decade ago and you can't help but realize that this "limited hobby" is now a pretty big industry. At this level I think some level of plagiarism and knock offs is bound to happen. It happens with other dolls and it happens now with BJD's too. No, it's not right, but I think it's going to happen, just like it does in any retail based industry.

Like I said before I see so much that is borderline illegal going on in this industry, so much copying that it just doesn't really faze me anymore. To me it just seems to be a normal part of the BJD industry as a whole. If I squawked every time I saw something blatantly copied from one company to the next I'd probably spend more time squawking and worrying about it than I do collecting my dolls. It is very hard to have sympathy to feel bad about it when a lot of the companies that are fussing are doing things that are questionable themselves.

I admittedly have this little quirk in my personality where I dislike being told what I must think is moral or not. I like to make my own mind up and sometimes I just like to agree to disagree rather than get contentious with people. There have been times in this hobby where I have felt very bullied because I don't necessarily feel strongly enough about something to get all that upset about it and hence don't make a very verbal stand in a manner that's clearly expected of me. Because I say I take a neutral position on something rather than choose to be argumentative about it, something that I honestly believe can be very counterproductive at times, I'm called immoral or a coward. People jump up and judge me, call me names, yes, bully me because I won't support their argument in a way they'd prefer. I won't stand for that.

This argument it's kind of more of the same. It's pretty inflammatory and clearly anyone who chooses not to stand up and take a major stance against all this is going to get caught in the cross hairs and end up disgruntling the people who would have it otherwise. You're not allowed to be neutral when it's expected you're going to be properly indignant on command. Well, sorry, but I'm not like that. If I am genuinely indignant about something I will definitely say so. If I am not I will say so. If I am neutral about it I will say so and if that gets me into hot water with some people then so be it. I can't please everyone and I don't particularly want to try. I'm way past that. I guess I'm just too old for it to matter anymore. Being popular, having the widely accepted "right" opinion on things. It just doesn't matter so much to me. As I have aged I have learned that what constitutes ethics is a pretty subjective thing sometimes and what one person thinks is ethical and another does it can often be very different, and even so they can both still be decent people. There are many things in life that I think are wrong that are not to other people. There are things I think that are not wrong that are wrong to some people. I can't just get up on a soapbox and decide for everyone else what is okay or not, what to believe. I've had so many people try to do that for me in my life, for society as a whole that it just makes me go "ARRRGH!" when I see it. To me life is just too darned short to be worrying about trying to change the things I obviously cannot change all the time.

I spent a good half of my life playing Don Quixote for one cause or another. I tried to always do what I thought was the right thing. I fought against war and for peace. For the rights of people less fortunate or different from me. Very seldom did any of that make any real difference. sad, but true. I lost my sense of idealism a while back I'm afraid. These days I've learned to choose my battles more carefully. I'm chronically ill. I just don't have the energy to fight the good fight over everything that I see and don't particularly like anymore. I don't particularly want to put myself in the position of being the judge to other people's sense of morality, of choosing their ethics for them. I'm also pretty contrary sometimes, I admit it. Someone tells me long enough I can't or shouldn't do something, tries to bully me long enough into seeing their position as being the only correct one, I just might eventually choose to do what they don't like anyway just to make them pissy. I'm like that, laugh. I'm a little evil sometimes when provoked...:P

I'll happily let these companies duke it out as they see fit, but no I'm not going to not buy a doll I love because two companies are fighting over who first came up with it. Not in an industry where it seems to me most doll companies knock each other off all the time...

 

There are no completely original ideas anymore. Something was borrowed from someone. As long as it's not a straight up copy, I don't worry about it.
i love my leekeworld mikhaila and I feel she is not a straight up copy, but definitely inspired by a competitor.

 

Once you know, you can't un-know. So if I knew...I won't be getting that sculpt. The unpleasant feeling I get outweighs whatever pleasure I may feel. Just like if someone shows a plagiarized doll on their avatar...it makes me VERY WARY of this person. They know, but they don't care. What else are they capable of? I have been the receiving end of this plagiarism/copyright monster so I know how it feels.

 

Dolls that are plagiarized I would feel uncomfortable buying. I'm not talking about doll's that are "inspired" by another doll but dolls that have ideas that the artist could not have reached themselves without first stealing that from someone else would make me uncomfortable. I wouldn't judge someone else for buying said doll and the legality of such actions is for wiser heads then mine to muddle through.

Clothes on the other hand are a bit different. Having designed cosplay costumes for friends over the years I have bumped into something that says changing an item just 30% means it is not a copy. Now I don't know if that is entirely true (like I said, wiser legal minds can work all that out) but I do know that with costumes the inspiration almost always comes from copying something else. If it is trying to depict Edwardian fashion for a stage performance or dressing up as a beloved anime character for a convention, almost all of the design elements come from copying something else in some capacity.

BJD clothes to me are similar. I don't buy clothes, usually, I prefer to make my own, and I will admit to looking at human sized clothes, other doll outfits, pictures, and books on the history of fashion for ideas. I don't directly copy anything or anyone's work and if I pull inspiration from something I try to credit it, but I can see why a doll company would take ideas from stories and history to create clothing for our dolls. We are going to buy what we like and lots of us are interested in manga, history, sci-fi, fantasy, ect. Doll companies will try to appeal to this and so will pull inspiration from sources that we will find familiar.

Now when your at a con dressed up as Sailor Moon or something other people at the con don' t need to be told "Hey I am cosplaying Sailor Moon, I didn't design this outfit and I have no legal rights to the characters." People already know that. I wonder (again not a legal expert!) if the same applies here? Doll companies are making small changes but giving references we would identify with various other sources. They are not saying "Hey I got this idea from X" Because they are not directly coping the original source, nor are they trying to pass of a Sailor Scout's uniform as an original design. We wouldn't fall for it and they know that. But giving us clothes that are similar to the designs of characters we like gives us the ability to dress our dolls up in styles that pay homage to those shows or what not. They don't need to say "This was inspired by Sailor Moon" because we the consumer would infer that anyway?

(No idea why I chose Sailor Moon)