Digital Theft

About 2 years ago, there was a guy who was accused of stealing peoples’ artwork and then presenting them as his own. Recently another guy was accused for stealing peoples’ One Piece theories and presenting them as his own. It seems to be the same case but the way it is done is far more elaborate.

Jim was scanning fan made pictures, removing the signatures, and photoshopping in a few effects. Alpha on the other hand took texts from a public forum, rewrote them, added his own pictures and his own music, and made videos out of them. There is way more editing going on in here and there was no erasing of signatures taking place.

So the question is, are these two cases the same crime? Starting with how nobody stole the original material but rather made an altered version of it. Having a signature on a fan made picture makes it seem like it’s copyrighted, but then again aren’t most fan made pictures based on tracing characters from posters or book covers?

And in the case of text, how does posting it on a public forum makes it copyrighted? How is making a video out of an altered text still counts as theft? And down to it, it’s just stupid theories. Hot air made by battle shonen overthinkers. What content is there to be considered copyrighted?

If something as simple as that can be called theft, then why aren’t reaction videos considered theft as well? I am not talking about episode reviews, I mean those videos where they show the actual episode and comment on it as they watch it.

So, it all comes down to profit. The ones who drew the pictures or wrote the theories complain that the ones “stealing” them are getting views and making money based on their work, which was never meant to make profit on their part. If someone monetizes his videos, or sells his supposed traced pictures based on material which was never meant to be making money, then he is making effortless money which is not really stealing as it is cheating.

Stolen material is essentially like clickbaits. They are just abusing monetization policies. More views, more exposure, more money. Low effort, high revenue, maximum shame.