Copycats ?

Talk with others about anything shrine-related, be it presentation, content or something else.
Destinie
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Destinie »

@Neo Right. I don't want to sound heartless on the topic because it's incredibly frustrating! I agree with what Nyx has mentioned, re: Copyright.

I also think that if it still bothers you after a while you could always send them a message stating your feelings?
Mikari
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Mikari »

I disagree about it not being worth it if it's not about $ too. I would be mad either way, but I would be more upset about someone stealing something personal to me, then stealing a item that can be replace with money with another that's exactly the same. Besides, I tend to be detached from money things, if I sell x design, let the customer get mad if someone steals it, I made it, but I don't consider it fully mine because I didn't make it for myself. And you do have some copyright in terms of fair use, let's not forget media critics do make a living out of similar things and just because you choose to do it for free doesn't mean the same fair use laws stop applying, so yeah, you do have rights within a certain range. Okay, ending rant now.

On to the main topic. This happened to be years ago in various forms. One time I ripped sprites from a rom and credited the rom, then someone accused me of stealing them from another site, though they had clearly ripped them and didn't credit the rom, ironic isn't it? The one with the honest credits being accused of stealing from the thief.

On another more similar occasion someone copied my while code for a graphics site I had in the past and a good amount of the content, they just changed the layout pictures to make it look slightly different. Surprisingly the person emailed me saying that they liked my site and copied it. Since they seemed more so ignorant than bratty, I politely encouraged them to make their own original stuff and explained that it was pointless to copy a site and have 2 of basically the same. They did change their site and we ended up exchanging links after the copied stuff was removed. This is years ago though and my site doesn't exist anymore, I doubt the other one does either.

That aside, I use a lot of art on my sites, which I have up at deviant art and such archives. I recommend this for proof. I know it might sound paranoid, but if anyone ever copied your site and you happened to have some of it posted on an art or writing archive, you can easily prove it's yours if it comes down to that.

Mostly I echo some of the other comments about how much energy you want to put into this and some other points that have been made. How alike are the sites anyway? Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to credit people for inspiration, even if I made the actual content myself, it's nice giving others ideas and I appreciate when people let me know. I've had people ask to use some of my stuff to a reasonable extent and that's gone great in the past. I've had mostly positive experiences, so the negative stuff is less tolerable to me. But yeah, it still depends on what you want to do and how you feel about it. If you're uncomfortable, you shouldn't put up with it, though if you don't feel okay with taking action, you shouldn't force yourself either.
Robin
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Robin »

Seconding Mikari's suggestion to have outside sources for original art/writing/etc. so you can prove it's yours later. (I also have started doing screenshots of my layouts for similar reasons.)

As a former English teacher, plagiarism in any form makes me Hulk-mad. No matter if you "make money off it" or not, it's still YOURS; no one else has the right to steal what you have created and parade it around like it's theirs. I think of my various works as my brain-babies...I would be horrified and very upset if someone stole what I had worked so hard to create.
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Megan
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Megan »

I've had an experience where people copied my creativity on my old Axel site... I would make fake "magazines" and games that had to do with Axel... and soon enough that would pop up on another Axel site as well. It is frustrating when you try to make your site stand out, or you put a lot of time into something special and it is copied. I didn't feel good about it at all, I felt upset. However, I have had people email me about some of my sites saying they were going to put some of my media on their sites with credit, and that is fine by me! I guess it just depends on what it is.
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Emma
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Emma »

The only thing that I've noticed happen to me is people basically copying pages because they're roleplaying said character. Which just screams to me that you must be a terrible roleplayer if you can't even type up a personality page for the character you're supposed to be portraying. I always ignored it.

I've never noticed anything else, but it would also have to be extremely blatant - I tend to assume no one would want to copy my stuff. Plus, I'm always worried that I'm unintentionally copying from someone, to be honest. Someone once mentioned to me, years ago, that one of my shrines resembled another one to the same character. Which may be inevitable with sites like that, but it kinda freaked me out, because the other site was older and I had visited it before ever even thinking about making mine and then I worried that I'd absorbed stuff from that site and put it into my own. (This probably seems weirdly paranoid!)
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Robin
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Robin »

Emma wrote:I'm always worried that I'm unintentionally copying from someone, to be honest. Someone once mentioned to me, years ago, that one of my shrines resembled another one to the same character. Which may be inevitable with sites like that, but it kinda freaked me out, because the other site was older and I had visited it before ever even thinking about making mine and then I worried that I'd absorbed stuff from that site and put it into my own. (This probably seems weirdly paranoid!)
You're not alone--I worry about this with all my sites, especially since I visited a lot of fansites before I started making mine. Accidental plagiarism is a constant concern for me!
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Mikari
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Re: Copycats ?

Post by Mikari »

I sometimes worry that something will be interpreted as plagiarism though it's not. At least it motivates me to further personalize my sites.
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