JOURNAL: Kasra_WTF

  • Plagiarism 2003-12-17 19:09:08 How hard is it, really, to find your own footage and conceptualize a video to your own image? Footage can be difficult to get your hands on, but that's what dvds, capture cards, Virtual Dub, and all of those other tools your average vidder relies on to make something usuable to edit in a digital format are for.

    Stealing footage from someone else's AMV and plopping it into your own - transitions, rendered stills, effects, and everything - is not an acceptable way to get footage. It is not ethical, and when the vidder finds out you've done it, you can sure as hell imagine they're gonna be pissed.

    It's been little more than a day since I found out, and I'm still mad as hell.

    A vidder posted to the livejournal community kemi_koi to promote her new Weiss Kreuz KenxOmi AMV. Being a fellow fan, I immediately replied that I'd love to see her video. I promptly downloaded MSN Messenger just for the purpose of getting the video off of her. I even chatted with the vidder while it downloaded, and when I found out she'd seen "A Killer Smile" but not "Coming Home", I sent that video to her while I downloaded hers (perhaps a mistake, in retrospect). Everything seemed pretty good.

    Until I watched the video.

    There's an indescribable feeling you get, the first time you recognize you've been plagiarized. I'd just been through a plagiarism incident two weeks before (fanfiction, not vidding), so I was already familiar with it. But it's different each time. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing 45 seconds straight of my AMV just carelessly plopped at the end of someone else's video.

    The girl (who goes by the username "Kawaii_Omi" on livejournal) had lifted, in addition to those 45 seconds straight of video, at least another 10-20 seconds of other footage from "A Killer Smile" and used it in other places in her video as well. I can tell because, dammit, I know that footage,I know what I did to it, and on top of it, she uses the same clip elsewhere reversed with subtitles (as I'd originally reversed it for my video). I mean, come on, that's just blatant.

    To add insult to injury, she credits "Thanks to WTF Productions for: Movie Clips" at the end. Like that's going to make it better. Starherd and I make no secret of our AIM IDs, we make no secret of our website, and it's easy enough to email us if all else fails. We really are quite reasonable about that kind of thing, believe it or not.

    That much said, I didn't scream. I didn't yell, I didn't jump back on MSN Messenger and ream this girl out. I ranted a little in my livejournal in protected entry while I thought over what to do.

    Starherd got to my rant while I was out and took it upon herself to mete out some justice. She posted a comment to the thread started by the girl on kemi_koi, asking for an apology and for the ceasing of distribution of the video until she removed what she'd taken from "A Killer Smile". I read that and I thought, hey, that's pretty fair, I can deal with that.

    Until Kawaii_Omi deleted the comment from the thread.

    Starherd one-upped her and made a new post about it. Since Starherd's post, I haven't seen anyone ask about the video. Kawaii_Omi has been silent on her part. I've chosen to not log into MSN Messenger for the time being, because I'd just as soon avoid harassment as anything else.

    The video in question is a Weiss Kreuz AMV called "Do You Dream of Me" by Kaz. She plagiarized my AMV "A Killer Smile"; I have no idea if she's lifted footage from anyone else's AMVs, though I'll guess that's less likely, since the stuff from mine was the only high quality/sub-less material in the video. At this point in time, I don't know that there's really anything left to do. The plagiarizer has been caught and exposed; whether or not she stops distributing the AMV, or goes ahead and changes it is up to her. I wish I could get some kind of closure out of it (like I did in the fanfiction plagiarism instance), but it looks like I'll have to write it off as experience.

    It doesn't mean I'm not still pissed off, though. 
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