Did Youtube Phenomenon Poppy Steal Her Style From Another Star?

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From Wired:

A prominent YouTube personality who has garnered tens of millions of views is being sued by another star for allegedly stealing her persona. The question now is whether the case has any merit under copyright law.

In April, YouTuber and musician Mars Argo, whose real name is Brittany Sheets, filed a lawsuit in California against another star, Poppy (Moriah Rose Pereira), and her co-collaborator, Titanic Sinclair (Corey Mixter). The complaint, embedded below, accuses Mixter of “calculatedly” transforming Pereira into a “Mars Argo knockoff.” Sheets is also seeking domestic violence damages from Mixter, accusing him of “severe emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation.” The pair were in a romantic relationship until early 2014; after they split, Mixter began working with Pereira, who would soon become famous as Poppy.

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From 2008 to 2014, Mixter and Sheets dated and collaborated on the Mars Argo project, which gained a cult following on YouTube and other social platforms. They were best known for their vlog series Computer Show, which mostly parodied American internet culture. In early 2014, after the pair had broken up, they published one of their most successful videos, “Delete Your Facebook,” which garnered over 1.8 million views. In November of that same year, Poppy released her first video “Poppy Eats Cotton Candy.”

Mars Argo fans immediately noticed similarities between the newcomer and Argo, and a conspiracy theory began to brew online. Poppy’s mysterious, deadpan videos mimicked the same ironic, dark humor as Mars Argo’s. The overlap wasn’t just tonal: the two looked alike.

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Fans soon began to speculate that Poppy was, perhaps, an extension of the Mars project or that Poppy simply was Mars. Meanwhile, Sheets deleted most of her social media posts, and largely disappeared from the internet. In the lawsuit, Sheets says she did so in order to protect herself from Mixter’s threats and abuse.

In the three years since Sheets went dark, Poppy has risen to fame.

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But can Sheets successfully sue Poppy for stealing her online persona?

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Poppy goes on to accuse Sheets of “collaborating and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the exact man who took advantage of me when I was young and vulnerable.” That man is presumably Joshua Michael Moran, also known as Mosh Joran, a musician who is friendly with Sheets. In addition to her statement, Poppy also tweeted two restraining orders she and Mixter allegedly filed against Moran, as well as graphic surveillance camera footage from 2015 that purports to show Moran assaulting Mixter several days before those orders were filed.

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Sheets’ domestic violence allegations are serious and shouldn’t be viewed lightly. But her copyright and “right to publicity” claims against Mixter and Pereira are worth exploring, especially in an age where YouTubers constantly mimic each other’s style and content. Were her case to win over a jury (the complaint requests a jury trial), it could set stricter guidelines for YouTubers and other entertainers going forward.

“This is a fairly unique case of copyright infringement and looks to stretch the bounds over what is protected under a copyright registration,” says Michael Lee, a partner at the law firm Morrison/Lee, which specializes in intellectual property related to YouTube and videogames. “This will be a case to closely watch as it could set some important precedent if it goes to trial.”

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In her complaint, Sheets outlines a dizzying number of instances where Poppy appears to have mimicked or outright stolen Mars Argo’s aesthetic, makeup, hair, way of speaking, and clothing. Sheets even accuses Poppy of wearing the same exact jacket as Mars Argo. Her lawyers also point out that Poppy uploaded a video with the same name as one of Mars Argo’s: “Delete Your Facebook.” But legal experts say many of Sheets’ copyright accusations are fuzzy, and include generic ideas and behaviors, like filming a video while sitting on a particular style of chair, wearing bunny ears, and sitting in a white bathtub with a pink background.

“You’ll notice the complaint is very vague when it comes to what works actually infringe—there’s just a lot of hand-waving about global similarities between the two projects,” says Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s intellectual property team.

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“Copyright protection does extend to well-defined characters, and the use of those characters can form the basis of a claim for unauthorized derivative works. Mars Argo, based on what I’ve seen, isn’t a fully developed character in the sense copyright law requires,” says Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

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Neill specifically references Anderson v. Stallone, a California copyright lawsuit where the author of the script for Rocky IV, sued Sylvester Stallone and MGM for taking his work, which he authored on his own accord because he was a big fan of the series. The court ruled that some of the characters the author created were developed enough to be copyrighted, while others were not. While Mars Argo existed for years, experts note, she didn’t have a signature outfit, specific backstory, or settled biography, making it harder to prove that she is well-defined in the same way that, say, Batman, Mickey Mouse, and Yoda are.

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“The right of publicity claim also seems very weak. A similar persona is not the same as actual use of someone’s identity—Madonna would not have a right of publicity claim against Lady Gaga, nor should she,” says Nazer.

Link to the rest at Wired

PG is skeptical to the max. Part of his problem is that he couldn’t bear to watch the videos of either “celebrity” for more than about 15 seconds.

Here’s a copy of the complaint so you can come to your own conclusions.

 


 

3 thoughts on “Did Youtube Phenomenon Poppy Steal Her Style From Another Star?”

  1. Can you steal style? If so then there should be a lot more ‘he/she sounds/talks/acts like me!’ suing going on.

    And you’ll have to forgive this old fart, but all those boy bands sounded alike/the same to me …

    A little something to get your hearts started:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M42LHHOyTUo

    (You won’t hear it if you’re not ‘alive’. 😉 )

  2. Umm… Why are two of the four points of complaint based on California statutes in this filing in a U.S. District Court? Seems rather out of place to a non-lawyer like me. How could a Federal judge rule on whether the defendants violated California law?

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