I've seen other people plagiarize fanfic before (someone in a creative writing class I took once stole a Neogenesis Evangelion fanfic, changed out all the names and turned it in as homework) but this is something else. I feel like the guy is someone with some knowledge of the show and was aiming to make a few quick bucks, so he picked a fanfic that got lots of good reviews, picked out a few nice looking fanart to go with it, and slapped it together and called it his own. D:
When spheralunaris and I started thinking about publishing "This Pendent Heart" our biggest concern was about copy rights. I went ahead with it in the end because we felt if we made it clear that this was a fanbook and made the sale and advertising discrete, hopefully Hal Film Maker would be okay with it, just like they are with other doujinshis published in Japan, and the American license holder would leave us alone. But this guy took no precaution what so ever and had the guts to call that work his own. I'm not sure if there's anything legal we can do about it and make Amazon take the book down, since the original intellectual property holder (AEsir Holdings I think in the case of the North American license) will probably have to be the ones to file a formal complaint. For now all we can do is leave lots of cautionary reviews on Amazon and hope any potential buyer would look at the rating and take a moment to read our warnings before thinking about purchasing.
When spheralunaris and I started thinking about publishing "This Pendent Heart" our biggest concern was about copy rights. I went ahead with it in the end because we felt if we made it clear that this was a fanbook and made the sale and advertising discrete, hopefully Hal Film Maker would be okay with it, just like they are with other doujinshis published in Japan, and the American license holder would leave us alone. But this guy took no precaution what so ever and had the guts to call that work his own. I'm not sure if there's anything legal we can do about it and make Amazon take the book down, since the original intellectual property holder (AEsir Holdings I think in the case of the North American license) will probably have to be the ones to file a formal complaint. For now all we can do is leave lots of cautionary reviews on Amazon and hope any potential buyer would look at the rating and take a moment to read our warnings before thinking about purchasing.
Reply
Leave a comment