An end to the kawaii_omi saga?
starherd is awesome. When I'd given up all hope of kawaii_omi/Nagii/bishounenomi/NightSorrow ever getting taken to task for her AMV plagiarism, Starherd tried one last time with the new animemusicvideos.org admins:
Greetings...
Just before the change in administration on animemusicvideos.org, my amv group was beset by a nasty plagiarizer. On amv.org she (Kaz) goes by the name Nagii (which she shares with her brother Chris). (I thought that was against the rules to begin
with...)
It all started when this person made an amv using some of my cohort Kasra_wtf's heavily edited footage. She said "thanks to WTF Productions" (us) at the end of the video, but didn't a.) give accurate video credit or b.) contact us in any way whatsoever (and we're *not* hard to get a hold of). She promoted this video on a community that we belong to, where I responded (Kasra being livid and not trusting herself to make a civil response) with "Hey, we never heard of you. If you would've asked first, we could've probably given you better footage or something."
This person's response was uncomprehensible to us. Kaz made a video entitled "Young Killers Smiles", which she made by pasting together Kasra_wtf's video "Killer Smile" with Kumagorou's "Comfort Through Weiss" (which contains more heavily edited footage).
For reference:
Kumagarou's "Comfort Through Weiss":
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=24064
Kasra_wtf's "A Killer Smile":
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=15554
And Kaz's "Young Killers Smiles", posted to amv.org under the name Nagii:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=33072
All further communication with this person was met with responses full of profanity, rudeness, and such immature arguments as "Anyone making an AMV is plagiarizing from anime so you should shut up".
I did eventually talk with her brother, who seems to be a much more reasonable person, and was quite surprised to learn the extent of his younger sister's amv nastiness (he had, I suspect, received a much abridged version of the story from her).
There were, in fact, other blatant instances of plagiarism by this Nagii (probably the Kaz half of the ID), including uncredited use of footage that another user had actually drawn on in photoshop.
Unfortunately not all of the plagiarized videos are on amv.org right now, so this is rather a moot point.
Eventually we gave up, as this rude little girl (apparently she's only in her early teens) was run out of the groups we belonged to by the mods there, and we heard no more from her.
Then, on a whim, I went looking for videos with original animation. I noticed a video by Nagii entitled "Dust Yourself Off", which was listed as being entirely original animation. I thought, "Wow! Did they put their money where their mouth is? That would be quite impressive!" So I downloaded it.
Surprise, surprise: there is no original animation in this video. In fact, there's no animation at all. It's composed of live action J-Rock videos cut into Aaliyah's "Try Again" live-action video. All of these videos are accurately credited at the end. This made me wonder where the claim of original animation came from. But then, when I went back to look at Nagii's other videos just to be sure, what should I find but a listing for a video called "Try Again" made with J-Pop Music Videos, listed 04/20/2004. The "Dust Yourself Off" video was listed on 04/25/2004... undoubtedly after they discovered that their J-Pop listing precluded them from uploading.
I was under the impression that spamming the database was also against the rules... If you look at the listing of videos by Nagii, you'll see that they've done this more than once.
What really gets me?
Why is Nagii getting away with this stuff when I'm following the rules and not even listing perfectly good Samurai Jack videos?
It's kind of depressing. :-P
Anyway, I'm not particularly bothered by the plagiarism, and I think that even Kasra_wtf has cooled off (since for a long time, there was no recourse for this sort of thing)...
But what *does* this Nagii conglomerate have to do to get some kind of reprimand, at the least?
-Starherd
The reply, impressively, only a day later:
Dear Starherd,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. In light of the numerous rule violations we have no choice but to completely ban the Nagii account from the site, remove the local versions of the videos and hope that they never come back again. This kind of action is not tolerated from any user of any age, especially when they have been confronted and are unapologetic.
If there are any other infringements of the rules or, worse, if said pair somehow re-emerge then please be sure to let us know.
AMVorg admin
So far the account still exists and Nagii's vids are still downloadable, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before the admins take care of the issue. I don't know what kind of hassle is required to remove vids from their local drive (especially with the amount load on the server at any given point in time), but if animemusicvideos.org goes through with what they've promised then I will be satisfied. Whether or not this will teach kawaii_omi a lesson, I don't have nearly as much faith; when she was banned on deviantart, she came back under the username NightSorrow, albeit so far without any blatantly plagiarized works to date. I don't care if she or her brother come back to amv.org so long as any videos they submit are completely their own work. Hell, I'll even leave opinions and tips for improvement.
Just don't rip me off again, bitch. All you had to do was ask first. You're 18 years old; try acting like the adult you claim to be.
Greetings...
Just before the change in administration on animemusicvideos.org, my amv group was beset by a nasty plagiarizer. On amv.org she (Kaz) goes by the name Nagii (which she shares with her brother Chris). (I thought that was against the rules to begin
with...)
It all started when this person made an amv using some of my cohort Kasra_wtf's heavily edited footage. She said "thanks to WTF Productions" (us) at the end of the video, but didn't a.) give accurate video credit or b.) contact us in any way whatsoever (and we're *not* hard to get a hold of). She promoted this video on a community that we belong to, where I responded (Kasra being livid and not trusting herself to make a civil response) with "Hey, we never heard of you. If you would've asked first, we could've probably given you better footage or something."
This person's response was uncomprehensible to us. Kaz made a video entitled "Young Killers Smiles", which she made by pasting together Kasra_wtf's video "Killer Smile" with Kumagorou's "Comfort Through Weiss" (which contains more heavily edited footage).
For reference:
Kumagarou's "Comfort Through Weiss":
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=24064
Kasra_wtf's "A Killer Smile":
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=15554
And Kaz's "Young Killers Smiles", posted to amv.org under the name Nagii:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=33072
All further communication with this person was met with responses full of profanity, rudeness, and such immature arguments as "Anyone making an AMV is plagiarizing from anime so you should shut up".
I did eventually talk with her brother, who seems to be a much more reasonable person, and was quite surprised to learn the extent of his younger sister's amv nastiness (he had, I suspect, received a much abridged version of the story from her).
There were, in fact, other blatant instances of plagiarism by this Nagii (probably the Kaz half of the ID), including uncredited use of footage that another user had actually drawn on in photoshop.
Unfortunately not all of the plagiarized videos are on amv.org right now, so this is rather a moot point.
Eventually we gave up, as this rude little girl (apparently she's only in her early teens) was run out of the groups we belonged to by the mods there, and we heard no more from her.
Then, on a whim, I went looking for videos with original animation. I noticed a video by Nagii entitled "Dust Yourself Off", which was listed as being entirely original animation. I thought, "Wow! Did they put their money where their mouth is? That would be quite impressive!" So I downloaded it.
Surprise, surprise: there is no original animation in this video. In fact, there's no animation at all. It's composed of live action J-Rock videos cut into Aaliyah's "Try Again" live-action video. All of these videos are accurately credited at the end. This made me wonder where the claim of original animation came from. But then, when I went back to look at Nagii's other videos just to be sure, what should I find but a listing for a video called "Try Again" made with J-Pop Music Videos, listed 04/20/2004. The "Dust Yourself Off" video was listed on 04/25/2004... undoubtedly after they discovered that their J-Pop listing precluded them from uploading.
I was under the impression that spamming the database was also against the rules... If you look at the listing of videos by Nagii, you'll see that they've done this more than once.
What really gets me?
Why is Nagii getting away with this stuff when I'm following the rules and not even listing perfectly good Samurai Jack videos?
It's kind of depressing. :-P
Anyway, I'm not particularly bothered by the plagiarism, and I think that even Kasra_wtf has cooled off (since for a long time, there was no recourse for this sort of thing)...
But what *does* this Nagii conglomerate have to do to get some kind of reprimand, at the least?
-Starherd
The reply, impressively, only a day later:
Dear Starherd,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. In light of the numerous rule violations we have no choice but to completely ban the Nagii account from the site, remove the local versions of the videos and hope that they never come back again. This kind of action is not tolerated from any user of any age, especially when they have been confronted and are unapologetic.
If there are any other infringements of the rules or, worse, if said pair somehow re-emerge then please be sure to let us know.
AMVorg admin
So far the account still exists and Nagii's vids are still downloadable, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before the admins take care of the issue. I don't know what kind of hassle is required to remove vids from their local drive (especially with the amount load on the server at any given point in time), but if animemusicvideos.org goes through with what they've promised then I will be satisfied. Whether or not this will teach kawaii_omi a lesson, I don't have nearly as much faith; when she was banned on deviantart, she came back under the username NightSorrow, albeit so far without any blatantly plagiarized works to date. I don't care if she or her brother come back to amv.org so long as any videos they submit are completely their own work. Hell, I'll even leave opinions and tips for improvement.
Just don't rip me off again, bitch. All you had to do was ask first. You're 18 years old; try acting like the adult you claim to be.