FA+
Shop
Plagiarism Policy
8 years ago
General
So, as I've stated elsewhere, my intent is to make otherwise expensive products more affordable to the inflatophile community. Currently, the main producer I'm looking at going through is the China company HongYI. Individually, their products are just as pricey as anyone. But, bought in mass production, they become quickly drastically cheaper. When I first started dealing with them, they had products I had never seen anywhere else, leading me to believe that they are original content providers. Then, I posted up what was being offered, and found out otherwise. At this point, I had found a couple of products that had not only been created by someone else, but that the someone else was quite irate about the idea of someone else stealing their idea.
And all this is understandable. And if someone had sent me a message simply stating 'hey, this is my product, you can't offer it up', I'd acknowledge the mistake and remove the product. Easy, simple, no harm, no foul, right? But, that's not how things work, is it? No respect. No subtlety. Instead, anyone with such issues have decided the best idea is to completely blast the entire project on the main page. Which, hey, that's great. Meaning, I can respectfully deal with their issue and remove the offending project, but their comments remain, permanently scarring the intent and message of the entire project.
I was told that this kind of idea had been attempted in the past, by a few others. I wondered how, with such a strong interest in such a thing, they wouldn't have remained in business. But, now I'm starting to understand. There's two ways to handle something like this... On one hand, a person can discretely inform the offending party that there is an issue, and work to help make such a business better, while at the same time protecting their own property. Actually, something like this could even be good for content creators, as it could become a venue in which they may be able to mass market their ideas. Or, the second way, where a person is so offended that their one creation was accidently claimed by the company, and thus they make it their mission to do everything they can to destroy such a company. This community can be helpful or hurtful to such a project.
I am very open to criticism and will take on any ideas to help improve things. I have NO intention of taking someone else's work. I try to be very clear about where I get my stuff from, and my intent. However, to my knowledge, there is no centralized database of all intellectual property, and I have no way of being able to determine if anything posted isn't already from somewhere else, save for some major organization like IW or PP (and I do try to regularly check those to make sure). To be honest, it never even occurred to me that maybe HongYI would have stolen such ideas from others, and once I'm made aware, I've trying to search such things a lot more in depth.
But I wasn't addressed with respect. There is clearly no interest in designers to be constructive or helpful to make this kind of thing work for the community as a whole. And, it has left me stopped and debating if I even want to create this kind of service for this community. The funny thing is, any toys that have been called, thus far, for plagiarism, weren't even popular products.
I want to do this the right way. You can help me do that. Or, you can help to destroy what is meant to be a good intent for a very tight niche community. If you want to see this kind of project get taken down, then don't you worry, it'll happen. But, it's going to take away a valuable service for so many just because you got offended for a few minutes. The idea that a person immediately results to publicly announcing they seek to threaten legal retaliation before even so much as mentioning that their IP has been stolen...
Just pure disrespect.
And all this is understandable. And if someone had sent me a message simply stating 'hey, this is my product, you can't offer it up', I'd acknowledge the mistake and remove the product. Easy, simple, no harm, no foul, right? But, that's not how things work, is it? No respect. No subtlety. Instead, anyone with such issues have decided the best idea is to completely blast the entire project on the main page. Which, hey, that's great. Meaning, I can respectfully deal with their issue and remove the offending project, but their comments remain, permanently scarring the intent and message of the entire project.
I was told that this kind of idea had been attempted in the past, by a few others. I wondered how, with such a strong interest in such a thing, they wouldn't have remained in business. But, now I'm starting to understand. There's two ways to handle something like this... On one hand, a person can discretely inform the offending party that there is an issue, and work to help make such a business better, while at the same time protecting their own property. Actually, something like this could even be good for content creators, as it could become a venue in which they may be able to mass market their ideas. Or, the second way, where a person is so offended that their one creation was accidently claimed by the company, and thus they make it their mission to do everything they can to destroy such a company. This community can be helpful or hurtful to such a project.
I am very open to criticism and will take on any ideas to help improve things. I have NO intention of taking someone else's work. I try to be very clear about where I get my stuff from, and my intent. However, to my knowledge, there is no centralized database of all intellectual property, and I have no way of being able to determine if anything posted isn't already from somewhere else, save for some major organization like IW or PP (and I do try to regularly check those to make sure). To be honest, it never even occurred to me that maybe HongYI would have stolen such ideas from others, and once I'm made aware, I've trying to search such things a lot more in depth.
But I wasn't addressed with respect. There is clearly no interest in designers to be constructive or helpful to make this kind of thing work for the community as a whole. And, it has left me stopped and debating if I even want to create this kind of service for this community. The funny thing is, any toys that have been called, thus far, for plagiarism, weren't even popular products.
I want to do this the right way. You can help me do that. Or, you can help to destroy what is meant to be a good intent for a very tight niche community. If you want to see this kind of project get taken down, then don't you worry, it'll happen. But, it's going to take away a valuable service for so many just because you got offended for a few minutes. The idea that a person immediately results to publicly announcing they seek to threaten legal retaliation before even so much as mentioning that their IP has been stolen...
Just pure disrespect.
Again, I don't mind the fact that someone is willing to call me out if I posted something that shouldn't have been. But, there's a helpful and respectful way of doing, and there's a destructive harmful way of doing it. If anyone feels infringed upon, all I'm asking is just talk to me in a reasonable way. My primary complaint was in regards to how it was handled, not that it was addressed in the first place.
It's not the first time I made the mistake, I'm fairly certain it won't be the last. I just hope others in the future will be more respectful in their methods of addressing the issue, that's all.