People are making a big deal about copyright infringement–some say it’s bad for the companies, but good for consumers on various levels, depending on the quality of the product.

While I support the companies by buying DVDs and related merchandise, I think it’s at the point where people are getting tired of being labeled a thieves–even if it’s for sampling purposes. There are two popular websites in the anime fandom community that is frequently used by fans as a way of letting their imagination fly…Until it gets stopped by a moderator.

Back in 2006, I started making LiveJournal icons as a side hobby… Something that web addicts usually do when their bored. I even used a couple of icons from other LiveJournal users, and gave them credit in my profile. I made a few that others might enjoy, but was never released to the public, except for my own LiveJournal account. Until one day in August of 2006, I decided to provide a preview of my talents on the most popular website in the fanart community, deviantART.

I made an account and decided to do a little browsing around to see if anything similar to my creation was on the site (this was to make sure something like this was accepted). After finding several Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean icons, I decided to upload mine.

The icon was based on the image used for this post from the Fullmetal Alchemist anime artbook, along with some brushes created by other members of the site. After an hour of debating whether or not if this was sutible (and comparing it with the creation of other member’s icons), writing up a description and slapping on a disclaimer, it was made public. After the upload, I closed the browser and moved on to other things–with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

The next day, I logged on to the site to see if my upload survived. As thought would have it, it didn’t… I received a little note saying my upload was deleted due to Copyright Infringement.

I remained claim and when over on what I did wrong: 1) I made sure the little sayings in the icons were somewhat neat and readable. 2) I gave credit to the brush artists. and 3), I added a disclaimer before the upload. If I did everything to make sure it wasn’t infringing on anyone else’s creation, then why was it deleted?

Not the Only One…

Let’s stop here for a moment and go over a similar situation with another website, which is also used by anime fans, as well as the general public: YouTube. Since 2006–maybe earlier than that–the Japanese government started cracking down on illegal distribution of various Japanese media, including a few on Anime Music Videos.org.

Right now, there aren’t has many AMVs on YouTube as in the past (except 348,289+ AMVs featuring Linkin Park’s “In The End”). There are some videos out there that made it past the moderators, but don’t count on them being there forever. The only way you can see AMVs today is either on the website that houses AMVs, but even those are being targeted by not only anime distributors, but mainstream music artists as well.

At a convention I attended back in March, the panelist who held both the Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist panels had her share of unfair removal, but from YouTube. At the Death Note panel, she showed everyone in the room a few Death Note AMVs she made herself. At the end of the panel, she mentions that the same videos were on YouTube for a while before they were deleted. She even added a disclaimer to the video’s description.

The next day at the Fullmetal Alchemist panel, she also showed a few AMVs from the series she created that were also removed from YouTube. A much bigger issue was made about it at the FMA panel and suggested a(nother) petition should be made to stop this. But in times like these, such a thing would be impossible for the companies to deal with…

Preservation or Greed?

The whole idea of making media dedicated to a series we love is to express our love for the series, and was not meant to hurt any feelings, if not, promote the studio’s creation. It seems the “higher-ups” see it as a way to make more money by “eliminating the competition”. When my Edward Elric icon was deleted, I did contact a moderator for an explanation. Did I get an apology for a little misunderstanding? Not really… Just a clear explanation of the deletion from what looked like to be a copy and paste that was sent to everyone else asking the same thing, stating that “We find and delete copyrighted material when we see it”.

I’m making a big deal out of this because deviantART is the leading site for fanart based on anime series, such as Naruto. Why is it they’ll allow fanart from series such as like this when in reality, it’s also copyright infringement? Is it because that in the US, there are stricter copyright laws than in Japan, where doujinshi of popular series are free to roam in the halls of Comiket?

For YouTube, they have a very good (and publicly noted) reason to delete AMVs that’s copyrighted, and I’m fine with that–adding that I’m not the best at making AMVs to upload myself to fume over if it gets pulled. I haven’t returned to dA since the incident, but that doesn’t stop me from looking at artwork from aspiring artists not directly on the site itself; the artwork can be on LiveJournal. GaiaOnline, another blog, or on a *chan website.

The whole thing about my upload being deleted has me disappointed in the site, even after a couple of years has gone by. It’s not like I uploaded a full episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, so why take it down? Unless they have another reason to take down something that’s in threat of a lawsuit, they should have posted it up front and this would have never happened–along with this post.

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