Quote:
Originally Posted by Chibi-Chan
This is like comparing apples with bananas.
In one case Ayu and her team took the work another graphic designer made and used it as their own. So Ayu's team gets paid for the work another graphic designer made and Ayu gets lots of money from merchandise.
In the other case people download videos/songs just to watch/listen to them. No one here would claim having composed or sung those songs and sell them as their own to make money out of it.
Stealing intellectual property and downloading piracy are two completely different issues.
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On both cases the artist (or "artist", sorry, I can't call someone who only produces fanart an artist, maybe a "fanartist") aren't getting the money from their work. Ayumi (or any other artist) doesn't work to make you happy, she works for money (even because, producing Ayumi Hamasaki is an expensive task by itself), and when someone relies on piracy to get her releases, she isn't paid by her work. Nor her musicians, her dancers, her producers, her stylists, the guys who construct the stage or even the graphic designers people are claiming to defend here. So, the final outcome of both actions aren pretty much the same.
Also, the fanart people are getting her work, changing it and posting it on the internet for free... So, not only are they messing with someone else's intellectual propoerty (and trust me, painting color on an already taken photo is easier than taking the photo, and producing a temporary logo based on a logo that was already done by professionals is far, far easier than producing the original logo, that is so well made it has been around and totally effective for almost two decades), they are demanding rights over it.
Not to say those people shouldn't produce their own take on her stuff, they can do whatever they want... And I believe a lot of really good artists can come out of this process, by copying and editing someone else's stuff until they are able to do their own thing... But even if I agree some kind of shout out would be the best thing for Ayu to do, it's not like there's anything that could really be protected over here. In the end of the day, the fanart producers are the ones messing it up with her work, not the other way around.