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INTEREST: Doujinshi Manga Creator Wins Lawsuit Against Piracy Websites


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cookiemanstah



Joined: 09 Dec 2013
Posts: 546
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 3:08 pm Reply with quote
amen, fudge pirates. Like actual vermin that profit off the works of artists.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2911
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 3:10 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
amen, fudge pirates. Like actual vermin that profit off the works of artists.

Like the woman who just won the money did ? I hope someone messed up the uploads and her works are indeed not derivative doujin, because doujin creators whom are themselves doing illegal things and are supported for other reason , being able to profit form their doujins in a legal way creates a very weird legal precedent.
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Sakura-Alchemist



Joined: 17 Nov 2009
Posts: 489
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 4:35 pm Reply with quote
^ I think instead of thinking of it as profiting off fanart you should think of it as like protecting the artist. Like doujinshi as a whole are done in small print runs for a small audience of hardcore fans. By scanning and posting them online the put the artist in more danger than the small print run. I don't think that her payout is 100% loss of sales, I would assume part of it is due to the unwanted exposure of her work.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 5:24 pm Reply with quote
Well, seems likely that the piracy websites will disable their pageview tracker then.
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Emerje



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 7424
Location: Maine
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 5:25 pm Reply with quote
An appeals court should dismiss the case and then fine them both for illegal activity. There's a reason why only certain days are set aside in Japan to turn a blind eye to this sort of activity for profit, outside of those days when it's "legal" there should be no way to make a profit off dojins, be it in direct sales (including the used book market and auctions) or ad revenue on pirate websites. I can't believe the court failed in their own due diligence to see if what she was claiming was even legal in the first place, citing insufficient proof isn't good enough when she clearly doesn't have any sort of license to produce her works from the IP holders.

Emerje
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5600
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 5:36 pm Reply with quote
This is a bad precedent. Not only did she apparently not actually own the manga herself but also


Quote:
was liable for approximately 2.19 million yen (US$19,937) in damages to the woman.
is something they literally can't prove. Just because the sites made X money in ad revenue doesn't mean she would've of she did the same on a legal site (paid access or ad-based). It's an assumption. Meanwhile actually studies have shown that most pirates will be pirate no matter what. And if they can't, they still won't buy the product - they'd find something else to play/read/watch. You can't say Person A lost Y amount of money to pirates. It's literally impossible to prove unless you can see the alternative timeline where the pirated site never existed and either the pirates still didn't use legal means or they did.

TLDR: this is a garbage ruling with no basis on proven facts about how much money was "stolen" from her, if any.
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DRosencraft



Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 674
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 6:34 pm Reply with quote
Emerje wrote:
I can't believe the court failed in their own due diligence to see if what she was claiming was even legal in the first place.
Emerje


Actually, that isn't part of the court's job unless the opposing parties themselves presents the evidence to support the claim. It's hard to say for sure without the actual opinion of the case, but it sounds like the Defense simply didn't provide enough supporting evidence - they basically alleged that it was unlawful derivative and left it at that. "unlawful derivative work" is a legal term, and so the question of whether the plaintiff's work is an unlawful derivative is itself a separate legal question, and a judge cannot simply raise that question and demand the plaintiff and defendant provide testimony and evidence to the subject. The burden is on the defense to make that allegation in their answer to the plaintiff's complaint and, if they make such a pleading when filing their answer to the original complaint, to provide evidence to that effect. The article is simply saying that the judge said there wasn't enough evidence to support the Defense's claim.
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Lynx Raven Raide



Joined: 01 Nov 2017
Posts: 412
Location: Central Coast, AU
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:42 pm Reply with quote
Emerje wrote:
An appeals court should dismiss the case and then fine them both for illegal activity. There's a reason why only certain days are set aside in Japan to turn a blind eye to this sort of activity for profit, outside of those days when it's "legal" there should be no way to make a profit off dojins, be it in direct sales (including the used book market and auctions) or ad revenue on pirate websites. I can't believe the court failed in their own due diligence to see if what she was claiming was even legal in the first place, citing insufficient proof isn't good enough when she clearly doesn't have any sort of license to produce her works from the IP holders.

Emerje

There is nothing in the article to say yay or nay if she did do it outside of those days, but that being said, the fact that physical copies were scanned and uploaded suggests that it might have been during those periods. That being said, I kind of find it funny that they went for that defence because while this is a civil case, they basically admitted what they themselves was doing was wrong and opening themselves up for a criminal case with worse consequences.


Edited: changed first criminal to civil


Last edited by Lynx Raven Raide on Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:14 pm; edited 1 time in total
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-SP-





PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:51 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
amen, fudge pirates. Like actual vermin that profit off the works of artists.

Doujinshi is a form of piracy. Using someone else's character's for your own stories and profiting off them, sounds like piracy to me.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3019
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 9:21 pm Reply with quote
-SP- wrote:
Doujinshi is a form of piracy.


No it isn't, they are both legally distinct forms of copyright infringement in Japan (where, due to TRIPS, "piracy" has a clear and specific meaning).
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DRosencraft



Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 674
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 9:22 pm Reply with quote
Lynx Raven Raide wrote:
That being said, I kind of find it funny that they went for that defence because while this is a criminal case, they basically admitted what they themselves was doing was wrong and opening themselves up for a criminal case with worse consequences.


This isn't a criminal case. It's purely civil.
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-SP-





PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 9:25 pm Reply with quote
BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
-SP- wrote:
Doujinshi is a form of piracy.


No it isn't, they are both legally distinct forms of copyright infringement in Japan (where, due to TRIPS, "piracy" has a clear and specific meaning).

Nope,from what I've previously read, it's widely accepted in Japan, and publishers simply don't care about pressing charges, doesn't mean they can't, they just don't.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3019
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 9:50 pm Reply with quote
-SP- wrote:
BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
-SP- wrote:
Doujinshi is a form of piracy.


No it isn't, they are both legally distinct forms of copyright infringement in Japan (where, due to TRIPS, "piracy" has a clear and specific meaning).

Nope,from what I've previously read, it's widely accepted in Japan, and publishers simply don't care about pressing charges, doesn't mean they can't, they just don't.


That has no bearing on whether it is a "form of piracy". To use an analogy, you could commit a burglary that is also a larceny, or a robbery that is also a burglary, but that doesn't make any of them "forms" of each other. It's the same thing with doujinshi and piracy.
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dragon695



Joined: 28 Nov 2008
Posts: 1377
Location: Clemson, SC
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:10 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
amen, fudge pirates. Like actual vermin that profit off the works of artists.

Unauthorized (non-licensed) derivative works are theft, too. Profiting off of them is theft of the original creator’s work. It is no better than plagiarism. Sorry, but ABSOLUTELY NO sympathy if these were unoriginal fan doujinshi. It is not clear if they were, but since 80% of doujinshi is unauthorized fan works, it likely was. Fan artists should not be protected like real artists, sorry. It is no better than expecting traced art to be protected.
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harminia



Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 2064
Location: australia
PostPosted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:00 pm Reply with quote
dragon695 wrote:
Unauthorized (non-licensed) derivative works are theft, too. Profiting off of them is theft of the original creator’s work. It is no better than plagiarism. Sorry, but ABSOLUTELY NO sympathy if these were unoriginal fan doujinshi. It is not clear if they were, but since 80% of doujinshi is unauthorized fan works, it likely was. Fan artists should not be protected like real artists, sorry. It is no better than expecting traced art to be protected.


I understand where you're coming from but comparing fan artists to traced art is perhaps not the best way to word it. Fanart may have taken established characters, but the art itself is original. Tracing is literally just copying established art and characters.
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