Mass Plagiarism Controversies -

[Iwasamwillbe]

I've noticed a recent trend in the modern cultural discourse where there is an increasing glut of accusations and "proofs" that various big pop cultural properties are "actually" plagiarized from earlier, more obscure properties. The big pop culture properties are never just inspired from or influenced by the earlier obscurities, their similarities can never just be mere coincidences, no no no, they are straight-up rip-offs of them.

This of course, leads to some incredibly misleading "evidence" being thrown around to prove the similarities. One example is the Lion King-Kimba plagiarism controversy, in which people have claimed that the Lion King is a rip-off of Kimba the White Lion. To put it bluntly, that's completely false (and in some cases, Kimba is a rip-off of the Lion King), primarily because the Kimba series is fucking insane, and the fundamental storylines between it and the Lion King are very often completely different, with any similarities being very selectively defined in nature.

One can only imagine how many other such plagiarism controversies are based on lies, misinformation, and false pretenses.

What are your thoughts on this phenomenon? Personally, I think a lot of these plagiarism controversies are overblown garbage, and any new plagiarism controversy that comes out should have serious doubt placed on it unless real and unquestionable proof comes out in favor of it.

 

[SSF2T Old User]

lol you saw the YMS review as well

I think with the whole Kimba thing I don't think it boils down to ONLY one thing. For example, there are people that are always wanting a reason to hate Disney. Not to mention there is a huge chunk of people online who are total weebs an/or furries that always get ultra-defensive whenever their favorite shit get's fucked with (even if it really hasn't). If they actually cared, like YMS said, they would have done their research.

You also have people that like to be reactionary just for the sake of being reactionary. You also have people (like that law person who wrote a book about it) that try to make a profit off of it.

 

[Yaniv’s Hairy Balls]

Look into the young adult genre, they’re terrible for it. Cassandra Claire is the worst

 

[Orion Balls]

There are no original ideas, only creative retellings.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

lol you saw the YMS review as well

Definitely corrected me. A teacher back in high school played the 96 Kimba film for Japanese class, claiming Disney stole from this and I just never knew better.

Also as I learned from that review that the Simpsons did it so fuck it, dont get so hung up on originality.

 

[HumanHive]

My favorite is "LotR stole from African myth"

 

[Sperghetti]

It goes with another recent trend of creative types being obsessed with the idea that they own every single thing they create as if it were physical property and if anybody elses uses or references it without explicitly asking them for permission and giving them credit, it's stealing. They're like 8-year-old girls, accusing their peers of "copying" them.

This is not how art and creativity works. This is not how it has ever worked. If these people realized how many stories are lifted from ancient myths and legends, and how many artists learned by copying other artists' works, they'd have an aneurysm.

 

[ScamL Likely]

My opinion is that furries and/or dogfuckers are inherently wrong and all deserve to be Old Yellered no matter what their opinions on the similarities or lack thereof between two childrens films are.

 

[Tim Buckley]

Literally everything, black people created and invented everything and were Kangz but then we stole it an shit.

Shiiieeeet

 

[whatever I feel like]

Kimba, a series that came out in the 60s, stole from the lion king? What are you on, boy?

FWIW I never believed the Kimba stuff until I looked at some of the side by side animation comparions. Its obvious that some of the most powerful shots were "inspired" by Kimba, even though the animators claimed to have never heard of the series at the time.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

Kimba, a series that came out in the 60s, stole from the lion king? What are you on, boy?

FWIW I never believed the Kimba stuff until I looked at some of the side by side animation comparions. Its obvious that some of the most powerful shots were "inspired" by Kimba, even though the animators claimed to have never heard of the series at the time.

This was literally all just refuted from the first 20 minutes of the video I had just linked.

All those "most powerful shots" we're from the 1997 Jungle Emperor Leo movie, made three years after the Lion King was first released in 1994.

 

[Pissmaster]

For example, there are people that are always wanting a reason to hate Disney.

(...)

You also have people that like to be reactionary just for the sake of being reactionary. You also have people (like that law person who wrote a book about it) that try to make a profit off of it.

There really are a million and one reasons to hate Disney but it's hard to get the public to care without big punchy reasons like "hey you know this movie? it ripped off this anime verbatim", and the truth just doesn't matter to the masses. Adum outright even calls out some Dot Indian woman who published a book and did a TEDTalk all hinged on total bullshit, including one of her sources in her actual published book being a really shitty YouTube video from 2008. I guess nobody ever checked or cared. Telling everything from half-truths to downright lies for the masses to consume is like the entire backbone of all politics and marketing, so in a way, the Kimba crowd calling Disney out for plagarism is sort of like those old AXE commercials that imply every woman in a 50 mile radius will want to fuck you if you cake yourself in that shit.

 

[SSF2T Old User]

the Kimba crowd calling Disney out for plagarism is sort of like those old AXE commercials that imply every woman in a 50 mile radius will want to fuck you if you cake yourself in that shit.

lmao holy shit I forgot about those.

I used to be friends with someone who would spray that shit all over himself before we went anywhere. His entire inside of his car smelled like that too. I never knew what the big deal was about with AXE, but i guess that explains it. To me it always smelled awful.

 

[whatever I feel like]

This was literally all just refuted from the first 20 minutes of the video I had just linked.

All those "most powerful shots" we're from the 1997 Jungle Emperor Leo movie, made three years after the Lion King was first released in 1994.

The video Mr. Nasalvoice shows in his isn't the one I watched, which only had 65 series footage.

 

[epigenes]

honestly the fact that a Georgetown Law professor got away with publishing an article comparing Kimba and The Lion King of such poor quality, and one which unironically uses youtube videos as sources, made me kinda depressed
for reference, Georgetown is one of the "top 14" law schools from which the majority of successful lawyers and nearly all law professors graduate. policies regarding research and intellectual originality are (at least nominally) very stringent for law journal articles

Spoiler: slight powerlevel

and having shared extensive dialogue with a prominent intellectual property scholar in the US makes it even worse -- if she can't source her shit properly, what does that say about the rest of legal academia?

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

The video Mr. Nasalvoice shows in his isn't the one I watched, which only had 65 series footage.

Link the one you watched, because I have a feeling he brought it up before.

 

[Saxxon]

The internet made available a ton of work past and present, so a lot of people started seeing patterns in how stories are written when authors take the same clues from a source material (which can take it's roots from millennia before the concept of copyright existed).

Other thing that I thing plays a hand is the "X series was the first time I saw something like that so everything else is just a copy" so you will see guys giving works they like titles like "the first time this was ever done" despite the fact that there's many works in the past that already did many of the things they praise.
And yet other thing is that I think creators in general are more aware of how legal fuckery can leave you without a penny is someone is smart enough to get the rights of a concept before you, so I can get why so many of them are very defensive about everyone else using "his" ideas.

 

[Y2K Baby]

YMS is megafaggot.

 

[Tim Buckley]

YMS is megafaggot.

He is openly a gay furry so yeah.

The video Mr. Nasalvoice shows in his isn't the one I watched, which only had 65 series footage.

Watch the fucking video, not only it overkills and debunks the plagiarism debate but also calls people like you a retard for over 2 hours.

The video itself is borederline irrefutable evidence btw and you would feel embarassed of posting this had you watched 15% of it.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Watch the fucking video, not only it overkills and debunks the plagiarism debate but also calls people like you a retard for over 2 hours.

The video itself is borederline irrefutable evidence btw.

But YMS is stinky.