Sony has been accused of allowing stolen artwork to be sold on the PlayStation Network. A Czech anime artist known as “liah0227” claims that a piece of their artwork is currently being sold on the PlayStation Store, though credit for the art is given to Kingdom Media LLC.
In a tweet addressing the matter, liah0227 stated that they had reached out to Sony, but that the company had since stopped replying to their emails. The artwork in question, called “Anime School Girl Avatar” onPlayStation Network, had been made for game developers to use in both commercial and non-commercial work.
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Because of the nature of the work, liah0227 never filed a copyright on the property. “I didn’t think anyone would claim ownership of it and try to sell it,” liah0227 stated in a follow-up tweet. While failing to copyright the work would be damaging in court, the image is still their intellectual property.Copyright law can get incredibly messy, and it’s possible the dispute could escalate pretty far if Kingdom Media resists pulling the piece.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Back in December 2019,Sony pulled a PS4 ad after plagiarism accusationsbegan to circulate. While the responsibility to verify who owns the work being published falls to those trying to monetize it– in this case, Sony– it’s fair to say that the verification process has gotten far more difficult due to the rise of the internet and the sheer amount of content created every day.
Hopefully, liaho227 is able to get credit for the work, and have the avatar pulled from PlayStation Network. It’s an unfortunate situation to be in, and one that almost certainly has created a fair bit of stress. However, it largely depends on how Sony decides to proceed.
Plagiarism happens all too frequently on the internet. Some time ago,Elder Scrolls Onlinepulled a plagiarised adventure, and it seems that stories of other ideas being ripped off pop up almost every day. With any luck, Sony will pull down the liah0227’s art quickly, but that remains to be seen for now.
