Stolen Cosplay Designs: Is Cosplay Technically Illegal?
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2023
- Let's talk about Genshin Impact, Pokemon, and law! Welcome to my deep dive into the history of cosplay and design theft! Settle in with a snack for a little story time and some imaginary court cases.
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i remember just a month or two ago, dokidokicosplay posted a misa amane design saying they were making it as a cosplay, with the caption “this costume design has been approved by the artist” when the artist posted on their story saying they were never even contacted by dokidoki asking if they can do the costume
The fact that the company stole the photo right off of a Tik tok is truly disgusting. You really thought you’d get away with that?
If you watch Potato Chan's full TikTok on their account, you can see even more examples of other cosplayers 💀
There is actually a cosplay shop out there with my Tecna UA-cam video linked directly to their Tecna cosplay listing. My video showing how I made the cosplay from scratch...for myself. I sent them a message, but not much else I can do unless I wanna buy the cosplay and do an educated roast video on it Bernadette Banner style. And side note, I was obsessed with Mango Sirene in the 2016 costube days. The hold she had on the online cosplay community was significant.
I’m local to Nina and got to see the mimikyu cosplay, it was beautiful! I also saw their pronto cosplay and talk about their leaving UA-cam. She’s a very kind person. ❤
Ok so first thing first this video is really cool,I vaguely heard about these stories a little while back but never really got any more details,as you stated I feel like it’s important to do researches before purchasing more original cosplay from sneaky corporates who won’t hesitate to steal and lie about everything.But I think the thing I’m more shocked about in this video is the fact that this primogem cosplay is hand painted like omg the skill and dedication it must have took to make it,hoping the og cosplayer is being successful by opening commissions like I never really check TikTok but your video made me want to check them out.
Thanks! I can attest she's super cool!
I CAN'T unhear the fact that she almost have the same tone of voice as Heather Chandler
(long comment inbound)
one thing we can do is to do a bit more research into the companies we're purchasing from. do they make their own designs, do they actually know what goes into making a garment, and what goes into making a well-fitting garment at that? or did they copy someone's instagram photo, someone's tiktok video, someone's twitter photos? unfortunately this will involve cosplay being, well, expensive, since you cannot get that for under $150 for even a simple design. materials alone will cost more than that, let alone the labour (currently, a lot of fast-fashion fuckery is happening in cosplay, and it has resulted in garments being really shoddily made - my celestia costume i bought in 2015 is still going quite strong, but my friend bought one in 2021 that pulled seams and tore within a few wears).
using, let's say, komaeda & experienced seamstress being commissioned/making it themself, as a base point: you could probably purchase a t-shirt, black pants, and some fabric paint, and make most of his costume for $20 or less via thrifting (most of that price being a decent fabric paint), or $60 through stores. however, his jacket is a way more unique one that will need to be made from scratch. you'll need 2-3ish meters of material (about 3 yards) - for him i would likely use a green cotton broadcloth. even the cheapest of that will be $10 a metre (or approx. $9/y), you could maybe shave off a dollar a metre/yard if you find a polyester material of similar weight. you then also have to get lining material - lining material can be a little cheaper at $4/m ($3.75/y), as well as some shoulder pads for some additional structure at the shoulders ($5-8), and a little bit of fusible interfacing for the yoke at the back of his hoodie ($5). the seamstress may already have a hoodie pattern in their possession - he still has a unique jacket and the pattern will need to be altered and transferred to new sewing paper ($10, though this gets you enough for several projects). then you need good thread ($5), a metre-long open zipper (if you go for the absolute cheapest option, $15), two buttons/snaps ($5), and a red drawstring ($3). so going to the absolute most budget, cheapest option: it will be $84 _for materials alone._ then the labour into making it: i would imagine between pattern altering, mock-ups to make sure everything hangs correctly, actual sewing, ironing, etc: you'd be looking at at least 10 hours on the garment. multiplying 10 hours by the absolute minimum wage (i'm going to go with the australian minimum wage of $21.38/h): that's $213.80 on the labour at the absolute minimum. that makes the jacket _alone_ worth just shy of $300.
if you're looking at that and going 'well i can just buy it on aliexpress/amazon/[shady cosplay website] for a 6th of that or cheaper', that is true, you can. but can you make that entire jacket in 2 hours and 15 minutes? because that would be the fair price of the labour going into it. the reason they can charge so cheaply for the garments is they treat the seamstresses horribly - underpaying them to the point where they're not paid enough to live, employing children as young as 10 to work on garments so they can produce them quicker. and to be completely transparent: if that cosplay is all you can afford and it is one you intend to wear constantly, to repair until it shreds into rags, that is a different thing to someone buying a new one cheap every week or month so they can have a large quantity of cosplays, or to jump on a trend and intend to shovel it away never to be seen again once everyone moves on to the next trend. that person clearly has the disposable income to save up and get a good quality garment, and has chosen to not to, to contribute to the exploitation of garment workers when there's an alternative to them.
the fast-fashionification of cosplay in general is an issue for the community that i've watched slowly (and then with the rise of tiktok during quarantine, very quickly) take it over, and it's what's led to large companies exploiting designers and seamstresses. the mimikyu copied design looks so sad compared to the original - the tulle looks uncomfortable and scratchy, the colours are washed out, it looks ill-fitting and very clearly just copied from an existing photo (and the belt through mimikyu's actual eyes - ouch!). and that's the photo designed to get you to buy the product, which is designed to look nice. i imagine actually receiving the product would be even worse quality. i don't want to put blame on the seamstresses: they're, as already stated, likely overworked and underpaid literal children - the primary problem is the companies that enable this, that have no issue with employing children and underpaying seamstresses for what they're worth.
with that said, to some degree, we make some concessions with our ethics for the sake of a perceived entitlement. and sometimes this concession is not for the sake of a personal joy, like bringing a beloved character to life with your passion. it is for instagram clicks, for tiktok views, the hope that you will go viral. or in less polite but more understandable terms: cosplayers who buy from these websites are okay with kids being employed almost as literal slaves to make badly made costumes from materials that destroy the environment that may or may not have stolen the costume from other designers, and sometimes, they are okay with this purely in the name of chasing clout and becoming more popular as a cosplayer. there's an entitlement to playing dress-up, regardless who over in vietnam/bangladesh/china/sri lanka/india gets exploited for it. and as i said, being a cosplayer at a normal rate - wearing and re-wearing cosplays, having a few that are in rotation, doing it at a normal and passionate rate, is one thing, that's just being a poor cosplayer, all classes of people have done fun things throughout history and the idea of one being locked off to an upper class is stupid.
these websites likely would not exist if there was no demand for them - so back to the research point, how many times can you fit a living wage into that price tag, and do you think it's at least minimum wage? or, if someone offered you that price to make the costume, would you see it as worth your time to do it? i would maybe make the komaeda jacket for $300, likely if it were for a friend, but a stranger would be looking at $100 added on to that price at least. for $50, i'd ask you to roll up the 50 dollar note, make like sans and komaeda's fingers, and shove it up there.
if you have the money, consider looking through etsy sellers instead, or even asking cosplayers that come to conventions what their commission prices are if they're offering (if you need them to you can even add little requests, like a little embroidered pride flag or something similar!). and if you want your cosplays to last just a bit longer, maybe consider investing in a little sewing kit, and learning some basics of sewing! there's plenty of youtube tutorials on hand-sewing and repairing garments. you'll keep your cosplay out of the landfill a bit longer, learn a skill, and save yourself some money, as well as have some time to catch up on anything you've missed on streaming services or a podcast! everyone wins!
Your instinct was correct. Its 'Pree-Moe' gem like "Premium" as in the paid currency that a die-hard Genshin stan would sell their immortal soul to get more of (not that I would know...)
I shit you not I messaged K-Dog mid filming to ask how to say it
"do they say it pre-mo or pime-o" uhhhh i say it "pr-em-o" idk how to pronounce ittt
Damm didn’t know there is cosplay beef aha 🤘🏻😂🍻🇨🇦❤️
Oh there's SO MUCH cosplay beef 🤣 we've barely scratched the surface
This is an interesting case! You see this a lot in fashion design in the "fast fashion" world as well sadly? And I know of it in the Fanart Sphere? Nintendo does occasionally DMCA Fanartists because... they're crazy. (the most notable examples, Nintendo DMCAs a lot of Redbubble fanart designs and stickers based on pokemon and such. They also DMCA'd a piece of adult fanart of Bowser which was... funny.)
Now... I only took one class on this in college, but it did come up, as far as the ruling was concerned for the Law department at the school, in cases of trying to monetize Fanart and art prints, while you don't own the original IP, you DO OWN your personal interpretation of the IP and work, so long as it's not something like a trace, and as long as you aren't using Logos and other officially Trademarked symbols? (I'm not perfectly 100% on that exact wording) So I think Cosplay likely is fairly safe? and again, no incentive for companies to take down free advertising for their products. So... I think Cosplay and selling cosplay derived from copyrighted IPs is likely fine, but stealing someone ELSE'S cosplay design is still clearly quite illegal, because they're not making alterations, they're clearly just outright lifting.
This is a really interesting addition, thanks! I've seen some smaller indie creators (podcasters for example) express that they didn't want people to monetize fanart of their work. I wonder how they would feel about cosplay commissions!
I will say one thing that does bother me is a large majority of cosplays online comes from China. That's not all bad, but Chinese copyright laws aren't the same universally as most countries. Therefore they can easily get away with stealing/copying because they are following their own government laws. It goes beyond just cosplay, but the fact of the matter is that unless you buy from a creator or make it yourself/put together, you will most likely be sponsoring these online cosplay shops. I'm more upset at the down right theft of the photo of Couch Potato. That's just digusting.
Elton John!?
8:51 ummmmm yeah Nintendo will do something like that ....... I'm not kidding there's stories all over of the batshit dumb thing's Nintendo has done to people behind the mask It's Wild!!