Lates Plagiarism is something that has come to talk about, there had been several incidents on the news recently. This Story of Plagiarism is about a project of Adas Vasiliauskas, a photographer. His content that is said to be copied was previously featured on the Bored Panda as ‘Quarantine portraits‘ using a drone.More Info: Facebook | BalkonArtist.com
#1. The project ‘Quarantine Portraits’ had been Copied, it’s bound to be so as it was amazing.
Adas Vasiliauskas had received a lot of fame for his work done in the project and even was said as the father of the idea. He had been tagged in one of the post comments of a photographer last year by a person from Bulgaria. He was asked if they could tag him as a part of the pictures. And after Adas had seen familiar pictures of people on balconies enjoying their time, the pictures were taken from a drone.
#2. Adas’s portraits had been copied fully or not fully for an ad campaign.
Though they were not his pictures they had looked quite similar to his ones. Then Adas had found out after some investigation that a photographer named Aleksandar Kostov that Kostov was given these photos as a reference for the work he had to do. He had got a commercial request from the Smarts, a Bulgarian ad agency that works on an ad campaign for IKEA Bulgaria.
Adas had said in an interview with the Bored Panda that he hadn’t talk much with Aleksandar, the photographer. He had just asked and verified the fact whether he received them as a reference for his work.
Furthermore. he had said that he doesn’t blame that guy because as he’s also a commercial photographer he knows how things are done. And that the guy just had done his work and nothing wrong.
#3. Viliauskas had been tagged on someone else’s photo’s which look similar to a project he had done.
#4. After some investigation, it was found that it was an ad agency that had asked him to do the work similarly.
#5. The Photos are not exactly Adas’s photos, the concept looks similar to his ones.
Adas had received a link from Kostov to a page of IKAE where the pictures were. Some of them have had quite similarities to his work done a year ago. And it had been followed by a legal complaint letter of about 4 pages to the Bulgarian IKAE regarding the issue. Adas had shared about the legal notice on his Facebook post in Lithuanian.
In the interview with the Bored Panda, he had said that the complaint had demanded payment for the use of the idea. He was not much interested in anything other than that has he had been talking with a few more global agencies regarding it. And he had even joked saying that he had enough glory at that time.
#6. After waiting Adas had been responded with a legal notice denying his demands.
#7
After the team of Adas had got in touch with the IKAE mothership they had issued a statement. As Adas had said he had received a letter with about 5-6 pages which had denied what they have said and had used some legal speech with disregard to their statements. And had said that the idea wasn’t theirs and everyone had balconies and drones.
Adas had decided not to take any more action as whatever it is it’s another county with its own rules and regulations. And also gathering evidence is also not an easy task. He had just paid for legal procedures and had taken it as a lesson to learn from and had shared about it on the internet.
#8. Taking action without evidence and patents is tricky, he had said that it would be nice if they had asked.
#9
He had said that as for him plagiarism is a big problem. It’s that his photos are being used without permission, not the ideas. And had said some even get shocked that photographers dare to make a big deal out of it, and maybe it’s same with ideas.
Also, that if they had asked he would have permitted to use the idea even though the client had no budget for that. That he would get more than 1o request for a day. And that different rules apply for commercial use than for editorial or news sites.
#10
#11
As there’s no legal security for the idea he had accepted that the situation was slippery. But it’s easy to know that it was Adas’ idea. He had said that in the pandemic only the project went around the world and that the resemblance is too uncanny to claim anything other than his photos used as reference.
Adas had been awarded many awards for his project, which even included Drone Photo Award. And he had portrayed his project at the Yixian Photofestival. And also he had been covered by many news sites like Insider, the New York Post and PetaPixel, and many others.
It was not only Adas who was upset about it, people online had bashed the agency and had even joked about how fast the IKAE reply had been.
#12
#13
