This is a question I run into a lot. Just as I also run into a lot of complaints that plagiarism is ignored and people aren’t punished for stealing. The problem with this is it’s not unusual for me to take a look at the proof given, only to find out that the person reporting it was completely mistaken. It’s simple really, just because something looks similar, it doesn’t mean it was actually stolen.
To help make this clear, I’m going to provide an example of a real report that was given for a wallpaper. The report reads as follows:
Almost identical to the vector on animepaper. Same color, vector, just lower quality on here
A link to the wallpaper was provided:
And a link to what the reporter believed was stolen from, was also provided:
Now, anytime I receive a report, I check it out completely. One of the first things I do is look to see if there are any author notes on both submissions. There isn’t much on the one reported as being stolen, but the other had some interesting notes:
So after seeing the Bleach episode 230 ending I just loved the pic of the Haineko and thought that it would make a nice wallpaper.
Took a snapshot of it and opened in Photoshop and started to work on it.
The snapshotFirst I started to work on it as 1920x1080 size since that's the resolution of my monitor but after that I re-read the Wallpaper FAQ and had to change the size.
And well... here's the result of all the work.
Looks simple enough, right? Unfortunately, the person submitting the report, didn’t catch that the person they reported for stealing, had merely used the same screenshot. If you look at the two, it’s painfully clear that it’s not a ‘lower quality’ of the other wallpaper which is a vector.
Vector work is in essence, a trace of the original. It’s often done for the purpose of getting clean crisp lines at a much higher resolution. In this case, the person didn’t bother to vector all of the little dots on the original screenshot from the show. So the difference between the two is very obvious. All one has to do is look at the screenshot that the creator provided a link to in their notes to see this.
So bottom line, of course I’m not going to remove the wallpaper that was reported. They were innocent of any wrongdoing. All they did was use the same screenshot as a base for their wallpaper. So if you report something and I don’t remove it keep in mind that it’s usually for this kind of reason.
This is how I deal with reports of suspected plagiarism. I always look into the notes on both reports and look carefully at the items in question. If necessary, I also look further into the person. I never just remove something without verifying that the proof given is actually accurate.
Anyway, if there are any questions, just ask in the comments and I'll answer them.
