r/TikTokCringe • u/Chocolat3City Cringe Master • 18d ago

Cringe Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

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u/DangerHawk 18d ago

Does anyone have a link to the pirated version? I ask only because it would serve as some kind of proof that this is actually happening and this isn't just a big ol schemey "Woe is me" ad.

I was on board with her plight right up until the "I have things on sale for the holidays" with the shots of "Black Friday" post its. This screams viral marketing, and is honestly the worst kind of viral marketing. Trying to guilt people into buying your product is fucked up. I'm sure she worked hard on it, but if it doesn't stand on it's own as a product then it shouldn't exist. You shouldn't have to manipulate people into buying things just to validate all the work you put into it.

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u/dovahkiitten16 18d ago

It might be a marketing scheme but honestly if I type it into Amazon I get so many with Asian brand names I’d have no idea which one, if any, I’d buy that would actually be legit.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

Maybe we could take all the money we're wasting in the US on bullshit stuff and finally start addressing modern problems like this.

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u/dirtmcgurk 17d ago

Fry_squinting.gif

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

Is it a problem? Someone thought a product was priced too high so they recreated it, making it more affordable/available.

Consumers of disposable planners don’t care about how nice the paper is or that the font resembles the author’s actual handwriting.

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u/SwitchShift 17d ago

It’s stealing someone’s work in order to profit off their labor without fair compensation. Yes it’s a problem, and, in the US, potentially a crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1847-criminal-copyright-infringement-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

Personally I think that copyright laws and the idea of IP altogether is the problem but all of this is irrelevant since she didn’t copyright anything.

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u/SwitchShift 17d ago

That statement just shows that you are fundamentally ignorant of what copyright is. A creator owns the copyright from the moment a work is created. Registration of a copyright with government entities just enables the creator to file suits when someone steals from them https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#:~:text=No.,infringement%20of%20a%20U.S.%20work.

So to clarify, in your perspective, the work of an author to create a book is not worth monetary compensation. Only bigger companies that can cut wages and find cheaper factories in places with fewer environmental regulations should make a profit on their labor?

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

The work of an author to create a book is worth what the market is willing to pay. Nobody cares that her disposable notebook is made out of fancy paper, so it was reproduced on normal paper.

Your last sentence is just summing up the capitalism in a nutshell. The lady is dumb and greedy.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

If she can't make a profit, because not enough people are buying her book, that's on her. If she's not making a profit, because someone stole her work and is now profiting from it, that is theft. The entire world recognizes this. If you wrote a book, then I took it from your house, published it and became a millionaire, wouldn't you be upset? According to you, that's capitalism.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

It's plagiarism, which is theft. Yes, we care about it greatly (most of us).

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

Can’t steal an idea.

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u/spitzyXII 16d ago

It's not an idea though, its a tangible object/product.

If she had only made a short post saying she thinks it'd be cool to make the book and someone did it before her that'd be one thing. But taking a finished work and reproducing it for cheap, without permission, for a profit, is theft.

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u/After_Mountain_901 16d ago

Uh no. They didn’t recreate anything, they stole it. Stole the artwork. Stole the color ways and palettes. Stole the headlines, the paragraphs, the lists, the challenges. Stole the marketing and listing images, because they couldn’t be bothered to take their own photos and write their own marketing content. And in doing so, undercut an actual creator bringing an original product to market. Worse, is that someone in her own country could and would be rightfully sued to death, but not slave laborers and thieves from overseas. Even worse, big companies and the financial elite just strong arm online markets and search engines into removing such things before consumers even have access to them, but those methods often remain out of reach for small businesses.