Just how big is the issue of plagiarism?

[ComplicatedMuse]

I am a fairly new editor. Playing with it on youtube for a while... Went to my very first con last year (and didn't even understood that there was AMV contest. It's a big con, so I got real confused about schedules...) Submitted to my very first contest in December. So, don't know much about this community yet. So, this probably is a really dumb question - but just how big is the issue of plagiarism?

Clearly, there is a rule about this on every contest. Many editors have watermarks. I have thought about putting a watermark, but I have commitment issues, so locking down a watermark design...

Before seeing these rules on contests, I had always thought watermarks were fighting against re-uploads. To some degree, I was like, I guess if it's re-uploaded, someone else is enjoying it. But today, I just came across my first experience with plagiarism - where parts of my video was mixed with other videos. {With some of the transition choices, I'm >90% sure it's from my video. But yes, in theory everyone can cut/edit the scenes.}

AMVs are gray to beginning with. I myself source from official promo videos which sometimes have extra fun bits not in the show itself. For the most part nothing's monetized. For most people, it's all just for fun. So, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about plagiarism in this space. Should I feel like "oh, I got ripped off", or "wow, someone is actually watching my video and thought it's good enough to steal", or something else?

Just curious on how everyone feels about this.

[seasons]

How do you feel about it?

You'll get any number of different answers from different people here.

[ComplicatedMuse]

i don't know. A bit conflicted, haha. On one hand, I'm like, it'd be nice to at least get some credit. But I can't completely discount that that person put their own work into assembling the clips and it's a "remix" of sort. So, to some degree, there's a bit of validation to be good enough to be stolen. So, just curious on how everyone views this (trying to benchmark here...)

I guess I don't mind being remixed. Though a little peeved that I didn't get any credit for the original edit. But I've then checked out more of that channel, and watermarks stay. So, perhaps it's about asserting credit with watermarks. (Which goes back to my commitment issue )

[Mol]

One of old editors i heard about long ago just said to blend in your credits in a way that will be very hard to omit. Though scenes themselves probably will be easy to cut out but 1 extra step is usually enough . Ppl will rip it anyway but contests usually don't let those slip by.

[TritioAFB]

Thats what I like from contests. And they insist to not try to steal other people's videos. Even though its still Hard to see it erradicated, its been a while since someone last mentioned it

[ComplicatedMuse]

thank you all for the thoughts and comments!