Plagiarism of my Advanced PVP Base Design series.

[Titanshield Gaming]

Hey folks,

I just wanted to get some input on what I can do or at least know for the plagiarism of a series I have been working on for the last few months. I have been working on interesting and widely unknown building mechanics in a game called Ark: Survival Evolved. In this series I show people how to fortify and build a strong dependable PVP base. I have shown ways of laying down multiple foundations of a building, laying down 4 thick walls, multiple layers of ceiling panels, and defensive tactics.

These videos can be found in this series of MINE:

[youtube]/watch?v=yN6NSgFyjFc&list=PLT5jeVEB2nXNS_2DwOhnGMnyNLuuVIZkz

In this series I currently have 12 videos and its nearing the end. The first video was released as of April 3rd, 2016.


The person I am looking at as plagiarizing some of my work is: Fresonis ([youtube]/user/Giliam84)

He has recently released his ARK I Advanced PVP Building Design Tips & Tricks the first video being released on: May 25th, second video on May 27th, 3rd video on May 29th and June 1st.


If you take a look at a few of his videos and compare them to my own, they are quite similar in technique and design. I have been doing some searching the last few days for anyone else that has shown some of these techniques. There are about 2 others that know about the 2 thick walls and use of dino gates stacked together. But I have not seen anything regarding the foundation stacks and ceiling stacking as well as other things.


What I am asking is, what should I do. I have already contacted the person which have gotten no response from through email. Two of my subscribers have called him out on it, and his response was that he has seen my videos and others and is making a series about the things he learned. Which in all honestly I am okay with, but to take everything I do and turn it around to be something that he comes up with irritates me more.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Titanshield Gaming

 

[subversiveasset]

Although his response certainly seems to be self-incriminating (that is, he admits he got the idea from your videos), the thing is that from a legal perspective, plagiarism actually isn't a legal term (that is, it does not appear in any statute, civil or criminal). It's bad ethics and can have professional consequences if a professional body puts that in their code of ethics (e.g., why plagiarism is considered so bad in academia), but if that guy doesn't care, youtube probably won't do anything.

While I'm not a lawyer and am not your lawyer, I'm not sure if this specific example of plagiarism would be considered copyright infringement (which is, of course, the closest legal concept that is relevant here). There's a separation between ideas (not copyrightable) and expressions in fixed media (which are copyrightable). In this case, while ideas and concepts can be plagiarized, from a copyright perspective the question would be whether the other guy used any of your tangible expression -- that is, your actual video. From your description and pictures, this does not seem to be the case -- he has taken your idea, yes, but he has created implemented and created the footage himself.

 

[Titanshield Gaming]

I messaged the channel owner and we talked through emails and have resolved things with a footnote or reference of my channel in 2 of the videos. Thank you for your response subversiveasset.