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NEWS: Korean Firm Fined for Copying Advent Children in Video


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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:06 am Reply with quote
The record company's actually really lucky, because SQ'ENIX could've hung the execs out to dry by demanding millions in compensation.
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Egan Loo



Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 1300
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:27 am Reply with quote
Yuuichi Aizawa wrote:
Man, I heard about this like...a year ago, or close to it.


The song was only just released in February. While there was an injunction against further airings in the spring, this lawsuit did not go forward until this summer. The judge did not hand down this final punishment until Monday.
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PurpleM



Joined: 03 Jul 2007
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:42 am Reply with quote
Ah, I knew I'd seen this somewhere before! I've never seen Advent Children, but I've seen this music video and a comparison of the music video and the relevant scene in Advent Children a while back. I wondered what all the fuss was about. Now I know! I guess the moral of the story is to get permission from the creators before doing something like this! ^^
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1032
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:37 am Reply with quote
Wow, re-creating Advent Children almost frame-for-frame in live-action is pretty impressive.
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v1cious



Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 6199
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:25 pm Reply with quote
you gotta give them props for recreating this scene so perfectly. too bad all of this had to happen.
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Xanas



Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 2058
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:51 pm Reply with quote
I think they intended for people to know that it was based on Advent Children, and if that's the case it certainly isn't "plagiarism." It is certainly imitation, but plagiarism requires that they intend to be passing off someone else's work as their own. They used someone else's ideas in order to create their own scene and did a lot of work in order to do it. I think these kind of lawsuits are very chilling honestly. Lawyers are the only ones who make money on this kind of situation. It's to their benefit to have people believe that they deserve not to be emulated and that imitation is an insult rather than flattery. It certainly does not benefit society, or even industry, to go after these types of things. Of course I'm sure this kind of thing still gets tallied in the "$ lost to piracy" all the time, which is ridiculous.
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AvZeroMkA157



Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:10 pm Reply with quote
While the company may get away with plagiarism, the video clearly violates copyright rules and is making quite a bit of profit.

That is all there is to it.
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Xanas



Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 2058
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:40 pm Reply with quote
I'm not denying that, but I think copyright is stupid when taken to this level. The fact they are making money from something they worked on bothers me absolutely none. Only if they intentionally passed off someones work as their own would I take issue with it and think it's something worth fining/reprimanding/etc. As long as they are not defaming Square or using their trademarks (which help customers identify official merchandise) I think that the law should end there. Anything else is not clearly of benefit either to Square or to society.

The fact that they chose to imitate Square if anything would serve only to promote them. No one would seriously watch the video and not buy Advent Children because of it. It's irrational, then, to make laws go so far as to attack things merely because some people don't like imitations. Copyright law was not originally intended for this. It was intended first and foremost as a way to promote art/science and now it's being used to attack art that other artists may not like (and many times not even the artists themselves, but just the corporate hounds that "own" the rights).
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:25 pm Reply with quote
Xanas: The problem is they're copying Square's work scene-for-scene without getting their permission. And copyright law is based on the same precedents established by patents, which is that you have exclusive ownership over a particular brand or product. Thus, even though they're making no pretense of their source material, they're still
using it to profit without the consent of SQ'Enix.
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Twage



Joined: 29 Jul 2003
Posts: 356
Location: North Bergen, NJ
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:19 am Reply with quote
Re: Xanas

You do realize you're defending a big pop music production company? These aren't kids in their backyard or even film students working on a labor of love. The company made this movie to promote their song and their artist, not to help Square Enix. And a little fine print flashing the original title for a few seconds isn't sufficient payment for taking shot-for-shot the work of another group of artists and reusing it without their permission. I guarantee you there are plenty of people who saw this music video, didn't give a hoot where it came from and never gave a thought to buying Advent Children.

(And besides, most people who do buy Advent Children in Seoul pick it up from pirate DVD stands anyway. It's a perennial favorite for Korean DVD pirates to play on their display TVs. Copyright is still in a deplorable state in Korea for a developed country and any strike against infringement artists can pull off is a good thing in my book.)
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britannicamoore



Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 2618
Location: Out.
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:00 am Reply with quote
Makes me wonder if Kanye had permission to make his Akira themed video. Sure its not piece for piece, but its still there. I have no idea where you locate that type of information though.

And this may not be the best place to mention this but I rememer reading a few articles awhile back that music videos were no longer returning any type of money to the companies and that they'd start to lessen their usage. Again, not sure if that holds true world wide but if it does, i'd assume they wouldn't have made any money off the video anyway.

I can see Xanas point. Heck, I can even see the whole if this went down in America thing. I'm sure Square would just be so dammed excited to have their product out for a wider market they'd be stoked.

And if most of the people who'd buy AC buy pirated materials why would they waste money buying her cd?

But I digress.
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Xanas



Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 2058
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:54 am Reply with quote
Quote:

You do realize you're defending a big pop music production company? These aren't kids in their backyard or even film students working on a labor of love.

Yes I do know that. My position is the same regardless. The only thing preventing them from going after AMVs or other things like that is that they make no money. But that doesn't mean that those don't violate copyright as well. My belief is that both this and that should be allowable under law as there is no clear benefit to disallowing it.

I am no fan of copyright in the first place. I think it's existence should be stripped down to the very basics of what is beneficial to the whole. To be precise, I think commercial piracy (duplication, not imitation) should be illegal, and I think plagiarism (lying and saying you wrote something you did not) should be illegal. Furthermore I generally have no problems with trademark law, and patents (outside of software) are ok. So if the Koreans were marketing this and using Squares name or Advent Children directly I'd take issue with it, but as it currently is not being done that way I do not.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:32 am Reply with quote
britannica: I'm sure he paid the right companies, or at least got their permission. Even if he didn't do so, he's not recreating every scene shot-for-shot like that Korean group.

Xanas: The problem is that people might mistakenly believe that SQ'ENIX somehow endorses the group. And if the game company were to let it slide, the record company would probably attempt to extort SQ'ENIX or sell unauthorized merchandise based off of the film.
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Xanas



Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 2058
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 7:06 am Reply with quote
I wouldn't take accepting either imitation or derivation as endorsement. Think of it like this. If I license software under the GPL and someone uses my code and makes a buggy version of my program with a few extra features. When the users come back and complain to me instead of the guy who created the buggy version, I'll tell them "I don't support that." I don't have to support them merely because someone created a derivative of my code. I am not endorsing everyone who derives code from mine. In the same way an imitation of art by others should not be taken as anything more than "being a fan" by others. What should be admitted by the imitation is that that is what it is. Otherwise it is plagiarism as they are claiming to have created all of something when they did not.

Anyway, that's pretty much my standpoint on the issue and I realize many others will disagree as they think that Square has not only a legal but a moral right to do what they did. But I think it's going too far even for those to say that Square is endorsing something that they ignore. GATSU, would you say that the Japanese companies & music industry endorse AMVs? To this point it seems that they survive because the companies chose to ignore them. I'd rather this type of thing be able to survive regardless of "ignorance" or "endorsement." Yes that means that some people would be able to sell imitations. But as long as they are admitting they are imitations I don't have an issue with that. I realize that many many people disagree.
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Vortextk



Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 892
Location: Orlando, Fl
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:31 am Reply with quote
The law disagrees and that's really all that matters. The debate is moot. You think plagiarism is wrong in that if they say it's their own work but isn't, but don't see why a company would have a problem with this? They ARE saying the work is their own without giving money to square or getting their permission first. I would say, in business terms, that is definitely what it equates to.
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