Have you ever been plagiarized ? Share your experience!

[nixxusnibelheim]

How do you deal with it ? Specially if you know that person haha !

I won't disclose the name of the artist or show their artworks because I don't want to start any drama, I just want to hear your experience and share mine xD
I know it'll be hard for you to judge the legitimacy of my claim but I talked about it with a couple friends and they thought the same.

So basically last year with a group of artists I started the idea of creating new OC within a shared universe. The artist was in the group (we are a part of the same artist community so we know what people are doing, what's their projects etc)

We went on creating our new OC but when I saw the one from the artist, I felt weird because the character looked pretty similar to one of my main character.

I know she looks pretty regular but trust me the other one have similar features, like the long blue-ish jacket with the sleeve stopping halfway, the haircut that can feel similar, the redhair, the eye colors, the black choker.
The other character have a black shirt and a grey short which is different from mine but it's basically an inverted color pattern, the black slim pants and the midtone long shirt.

But then it didn't stop there, the story of my characters is set in france and while the artist's characters seems to be apart of a fictional setting (but still set on earth), the new oc lives also in france.
So even though my character is quite regular, I find it a bit odd to even create a character that could look similar to one of your friend/acquaintance's creation.

Also within the same community one of my friend had a similar experience with 2-3 of his OCs which kinda made us believe that some people didn't know the difference between taking influence and straight up copying xD
Just for the info, they are decently experienced (some started to be pro and other are in their last year of art schools) so they know better.

Sorry for the long post

EDIT : Since then I reworked the design of my character, they are still quite similar but I made the design more personal.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

When I was in elementary school, a girl requested me to draw a scenery. Thinking it was a harmless request, I draw a pretty detailed (and quite good for my level back then) drawing of prairie and mountain. I never sign my drawing.

Next day I checked at the weekly wall magazine and found out the girl has been submitting my work to it as hers. I was not mad and find it amusing because everyone knew it was my drawing and she cannot draw, and people talked about it a lot. Where was she thinking she was going with that?

---

Now that I have grown into desperation, I somehow want people to just steal my art. My life is boring. It was kind of a confidence boost having an art that worth stealing

[djwaglmuffin]

Someone took a bunch of my work and slapped it on some merchandise they were trying to sell on eBay...I mean. I was 5% flattered, 90% annoyed 5% enraged. And it wasn't just me.

I also had someone try to take the concept for one of my characters and renamed him on their DA page. I reported them as well as some of my followers with proof that I came up with the character first. It's not a pleasant feeling, to say the least.

I make sure to have dates and times on just about everything and one of the reasons why I appreciated DA so much. They have all of that information on the submission and you can easily use it as proof. Just make sure you can prove that you came up with it first and this is advice to everyone.

Also: I think if you change a story 15%, it's not considered plagiarism anymore but I think there's a grey area in that regard. It's a good idea to brush up on IP and small business law. Know your rights both in your country plus internationally.

[lil-sea-salt]

a lot of my books get plagarized. i think last time i checked it was 10 sites that have it on their romance platform that i didn't authorize. there are epubs of my tapas works floating around.

i don't care. hey enjoy my work anyway you can. i doubt people would have paid anyways to view my work.

in your case. that person is very insecure about their art, don't let that make you insecure. you made a great character. you do excellent work, you worry about your job opportunities and clients -- not hers because she probably is not at your level or ever will be with her current tactics. She probably does that a lot and will get called out eventually and lose what little credibility she has.

[ratique]

My webcomic that is exclusive to Tapas was ripped and put on another site where it is available for free (but is surrounded by about 20 rated R banners). Luckily they have been unable to get my latest chapters, which I put a lot of work into and am most proud of.

It's sad when others take your work for monetary gain and it's hard to fight against. So I simply don't think about it. It's nearly impossible to stop it from happening anyways.

[Sosofellow]

Does fanfiction count haha?

Back when I wrote fantasy wrestling booking, someone up and copied and pasted my opening posts from a different forum and passed it off as their own on the old WWE fan forums (so, like....2010ish?) I found out and was actually insanely pissed b/c writing every episode was essentially a novella and took a TON of work. But I had a fail-safe - my opening posts were absolute garbage. No one wanted to read the plagiarizer just like no one wanted to read my stuff when I started. Sometimes it pays to suck. It made me less mad when I realized whoever did it was probably no older than ten.

Still, it stuck with me enough that I brought it up during an interview once and actually landed me a gig as an editor for a literary magazine because I was the only one who bothered to check to see if entries were plagiarized.

To answer the question, I guess I never really dealt with it, just remembered and learned from it?

[GesuGesu]

Character designs are a dime a dozen, so it's very likely that someone out there has a character or two that shares traits with my own characters.

On the other hand, I've had my artwork straight up stolen and reposted on some random deviantart account in the past. This was my old artwork and it was pretty shitty quality for someone to even consider worth stealing.

[nixxusnibelheim]

Damn ! I do feel you with the desperation haha, it's kinda humbling to see people taking the risk to steae your work or take inspiration from you but it can never be good and shouldn't be xD
On the downside, sometime people that do copy and steal get more recognition than you, it's my current situation but it's also the problem with repost account that doesn't credit the artist. When it happens it sucks.

In my situation from time to time I see people thinking and saying I took inspiration from the artist, it's kinda tiring to always set the record straight. Even though it's a confidence boost for a minute, it doesn't last long and become more annoying that anything xD

[nixxusnibelheim]

That's true ever since it happened to me, I always try to have a proof of when I created the character, the story etc. You can never be sure 100% these days.

[nixxusnibelheim]

Thank you !

10 sites that's crazy....In some way did you see an increase of readership ?

[Mari]

I dunno why I was reminded of a time when a girl in elementary school asked to borrow my pikachu pokemon card so she could draw it and never returned it but there you go

Every now and again someone steals some of my animoo-esque old artwork (or fanart) and claims it as their own, but my stuff is too shit to be stolen most of the time

[monotone_ink]

Not about me, but rather my cousin, who does work in design:

Before the nintendo swtich came out, my cousin had to design a console for a University assignmet.
His concept was exactly what the switch was--predominantly a tablet screen with attachable controls on the sides, with room for flexible accessories. I believe he posted the concept online on his artstation.

I personally thought he was a genius for this idea.

Fast forward a year later, and the switch is announced. Now imagine how assblasted we were when they did it.

(this was all just fun little speculation though, we don't know what goes on behind the scenes I'm only writing this because I don't want nintendo to sue me oh god they're knocking on my window)

[lil-sea-salt]

I mean I do a lot of things that could have caused the spike so not for sure, but maybe.

[unknown_user]

Lol I haven't)))))))))))))))

[Rodimus13]

Went to order a cake today using the Hue Are You logo and images. They said no at first because they can't use images printed off the internet.

This is a grocery store bakery, doing more to protect art than some advertising businesses.

[Kura]

In a few ways.

• People really like to re-upload my comics to porn sites for some reason. So I'll occasionally get people messaging me about how they found it on there.
• People have traced or re-coloured my art work for their characters / stories and then posted it as 'their original art0 Ironically this is usually accompanied by a "original character do not steal" tagline at the bottom of the work.
• Unofficial translations, people will take my series and translate it into another language, sometimes they DO give me credit as the original creator, some though claim it as their own.

Because I don't draw a lot of fan art though, I don't often get hit with this. My friends though who make a living of drawing fanart, are CONSTANTLY having to fight with people stealing their art to sell as prints.

Had one friend go to an artist alley where there was another artist there selling her artwork. She was really.... confused to say the least.

Another friend I had was selling art at a convention, and took a break to check out the dealers room, where he found a t-shirt vendor selling shirts with his artwork on it.

These artists are also CONSTANTLY fighting with websites that are re-selling their art as prints and merch, and it is a never ending battle, even if they do manage to get it taken down it's just put up for sale again a couple hours later. It takes a LOT longer and a lot more work for an artists to get something taken down than it does for a company to put it back up.

[MadelineATucker]

My original novel ideas have been stolen before and I was so pissed because the character descriptions and plot were exactly the same but they changed their names so it didn't seem like they "copied" lol

I confronted them about it and they kept refusing, so to this day, they still have taken the idea of my novel and using it to their advantage. I really hate this o-O

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Never been 'plagiarized' to my knowledge, but I have had my art stolen a few times.

The weird part is that it's always by a "fan"...someone new will start following my work, often making sketchy-looking comments on the ones they'd like to steal, and before you know it I find all my stuff on their account with the shoes edited out or something similar...

This is why I'm wary of commenters who act clingy or obsessive...it's like, okay, should I just bear with this person for the time being and try to be friendly, or should I just go ahead and check their page now...?

[FedoraSpooky]

I've had peeps trace and repost my stuff on deviantArt a ton of times before. Fanart's more likely to be snagged, but I did see someone once whose gallery was full of traces of one of my OCs, with the name changed to claim them as their own, so OCs aren't exactly safe either. I usually just file a takedown and move on.

[ButterflyEmpress]

True! I work at grocery store bakery and if we could get fined $250K for putting a non licenced copyrighted phrase or picture on a cake without a consent form. That goes for school photos, pictures of monuments, and the term "super bowl". It's especially annoying when people think they own their Jostens school pictures or something they grabbed off Google.