OC ReMix plagiarism: report it here!

[Tydin]

I hate outing people. but, I think some of you have the right to know, there is a girl on youtube, who has, in the past had numorious accounts, and changes accounts upon being outed by others, but basically, she is taking published remixes, and WIP's and and posting them on her channel, and claiming them as her own, I know this, because I have delt with this girl in the past, and found out through others, what she is doing, and to be honest, i forgot all about her, until, I found one of my own WIP's of Zeal from Chrono Trigger on her channel.

From what I know, her name is Cindy, and she has had at least 3 channels, where on being found out, she closes the channel, vanishes for a few months, then comes back, uploading others remixes along side her own covers.

http://www.youtube.com/user/xLightningxLita

I suggest you all take a look, and look out for friends, and your own songs.

[The Damned]

The thing is, with a few exceptions I could find, she doesn't actually claim them as her own work. She just states she likes said remix, she uploaded it to share, and she hopes everyone enjoys them.

The one that she seems to kind of claim as her own (but not directly) is when she states "I improved this previous piece hence I reuploaded it..."

But I did find one where she clearly state "I had a great time working on this song" when responding to a commenter.

She's being careful with her descriptions and not making direct claims if she can help it. It will be up to commenters to prove these remixes are not hers and that she intended to make people think they were her works. Which is going to be difficult once the accusations start. The best one can hope for is she will amend every video to give proper credit to the original remixer(s), but I doubt she'll even bother with adding "This isn't my remix".

If it's true she is the same person and has done this multiple times before, then this won't stop her from doing it again. Sad, but that's the way it is with some people.

Edited May 8, 2011 by The Damned

[Gario]

Her channel description claims that they are all her tracks.

Hello! I'm Cindy. Formerly known as LightningxLita on Youtube. I'm a music composer and I compose music on this channel...

I recognize your track, Tydin, but I'm not too familiar with the rest of them. If someone could provide the sources of the other tracks I'm sure that'd help with this channel, at least.

Also, there's a thread dedicated to this sort of thing, so you can post it in there and people will respond. OCR flame crew, ASSEMBLE!!

[Tensei]

Most of her songs just sound like midi rips, with shitty (but at least consistently shitty) samples, so I dunno. I definitely can't recognize any of her 'remixes' as direct plagiarism.

Anyway, just harass her youtube channel or something.

[SonicThHedgog]

thats why i use water marks on my final productions

[The Damned]

I actually couldn't read that text with that wallpaper in the background. What a fucking mess.

[Mak Eightman]

thats why i use water marks on my final productions

Interesting how?

[Rozovian]

Found some of her former identities, hybridcindyness, sossuzumiya and SOS_S_U_Z_U_M_I_Y_A. She's been around for a while.

[SonicThHedgog]

Interesting how?

Just add a vocal synth or "text to speech" like microsoft sam or the one in FL.

[The Damned]

Ugh, she's claimed to have made entire albums of video games, offers her services to people (sometimes for money) and posts in wrestling forums.

I'm requesting a tactical uterual nuke strike.

[Tensei]

WRESTLING FORUMS?

Okay, that does it, this bitch is going down.

[Monobrow]

Dunno if this has been mentioned before (by myself even) but Star Salzman's song "Long Night" was taken and basically renamed "Esme's Song" or something like that by Twlight fans lol.

I think the issue has been addressed and he's sort of getting credit for it, but it's really funny to me.

http://youtu.be/HSMntbhZjKA

Also pretty sure it's a really old song that probably didn't take him that long.

750 thousand views... Damn.

[Enetirnel]

The thing is, with a few exceptions I could find, she doesn't actually claim them as her own work. She just states she likes said remix, she uploaded it to share, and she hopes everyone enjoys them.

The one that she seems to kind of claim as her own (but not directly) is when she states "I improved this previous piece hence I reuploaded it..."

But I did find one where she clearly state "I had a great time working on this song" when responding to a commenter.

She's being careful with her descriptions and not making direct claims if she can help it. It will be up to commenters to prove these remixes are not hers and that she intended to make people think they were her works. Which is going to be difficult once the accusations start. The best one can hope for is she will amend every video to give proper credit to the original remixer(s), but I doubt she'll even bother with adding "This isn't my remix".

If it's true she is the same person and has done this multiple times before, then this won't stop her from doing it again. Sad, but that's the way it is with some people.

I can actually confirm that she claims to have made mixes, albums and the like that I know the origin to as I lurk OCR, ReMix:ThaSauce, various Japanese, Chinese arrangement communities and artists'/groups that actually release albums as well - that I've heard her claim as her own, she has actually harassed me and asked me to model (really made me go WTF!) for her "album covers" after seeing some photos of me on The Horror Is Alive dressed as Jill Valentine and then to voice for her as some characters for some sort of "Resident Evil remix X drama album" she told me she was apparently working on.

She words things carefully, but when speaking with her privately she claims credit to things that I know she wasn't responsible for as I recognized the artist and could go through my CDs to find some burnt copies of albums that didn't have disc releases, or even on my hard-drive to find the remix with it's original name, the original version.

Overall, she's rude and quite a liar and I know that she has also picked up some MIDI remakes that people have made of their favorite VGM, changed the instruments and claimed it as her own among other things.

When I brought up some of the artists' she stole from, she quite honestly got pretty pissy and had bit of a rant about how they didn't apparently appreciate her, and she was also pretty avid to avoid discussion of them and OCR and after that she would forever be putting on her Skype status crap about people thinking she's a bitch and so-on and that they just don't understand or appreciate her "talent".

If anyone wanted to speak with her in person on the matter, Cindy's Skype is the same as the YouTube account - lightningxlita

My apologies, if I had realized the extent of her plagiarism earlier then I would have reported it on OCR long ago!

[Edit] She might vanish again, but her names are usually fairly obvious and she tends to subscribe to a couple of friends of mine on YouTube as she likes the parodies we do so it shouldn't be hard to find her again if she makes another account and does it all over again.

Edited May 9, 2011 by Enetirnel

[big giant circles]

Cindy's been around for a while. She originally did a midi-upgrade release of FF7 not long after VotL and a bunch of people here on these forums gave her a hard time about it, which I didn't agree with. She's a great voice actor, and I've actually spoken to her many times on AIM in the past, but I can never get a clear answer from her regarding things like what software she uses etc (which always makes me wonder). Her remixes do usually sound like MIDI upgrades, which isn't a big deal, but I do know she's prone to claim credit on things that aren't hers. She asked me once to remix a theme from an anime series which I eventually went ahead and did as just a friendly gesture. (She wasn't really too gracious about it either, which was definitely off-putting). Regardless, shortly after sending her the link, I stumbled across a post she'd made on a forum (I forget which) showing off the track as hers, and soaking up any compliments it received. I posted the track officially to my youtube account, and immediately after I noticed that the link in said forum post was taken down, and I think she closed down her account there. Maybe it was coincidence, and she felt bad so she took it down, but then again, maybe since the video had an official link she just didn't want to get caught. (My hunch tells me it was the latter).

I didn't bother "going after her" or anything, because honestly it's just not worth my time. I haven't spoken to her regularly in a while, I try to just be nice to her because I think maybe she just craves attention, but I can definitely agree with Enetirnel that she can be prone to rudeness, and it's pretty obvious that she's been known to outright lie. Having spoken to her a bit in the past, I have a hard time feeling outwardly angry at her, because who knows what it is that makes her do the things she does. But as far as I know she hasn't made any money off anyone else's work, she's not misleading huge crowds of people, and again, in the end, I just honestly don't care enough to make the Internet Justice worth my time, seeing as she does follow the "get caught (or whatever), close up shop, wait a while, make new account, rinse and repeat" routine.

I've told her she should really just focus on voice-acting, as I really do believe she has a solid knack for that, but yeah, unfortunately, she does have a record of claiming work that isn't her own, so that's really going to inhibit her ability to achieve true success until she outgrows that as well as her tendency to be rude/snappy/indignant with people.

TL:DR

I feel bad for Cindy, she's definitely not really trustworthy, and is prone to rudeness, but I feel bad for her and just try to be nice to her, and I just don't feel like there's much point in calling her out on any plagiarism cases that pop up with her. I hope she outgrows it, because when she's not throwing fits about denying credit-theft, she's a reasonably nice person and a good voice actor.

Edited May 9, 2011 by big giant circles

[Enetirnel]

TL:DR

I feel bad for Cindy, she's definitely not really trustworthy, and is prone to rudeness, but I feel bad for her and just try to be nice to her, and I just don't feel like there's much point in calling her out on any plagiarism cases that pop up with her. I hope she outgrows it, because when she's not throwing fits about denying credit-theft, she's a reasonably nice person and a good voice actor.

I have to agree with that, I would feel more bad if she wouldn't be so rude about credit or speaking to people in general to get permission and the like as in most cases I've seen with her - there wasn't any need for any of her outbursts (such as simply introducing people she had mentioned she had wanted to speak with previously) and I can only say is that I hope if anyone messages her if she's stolen any more of their WiP songs/remixes, or have modified their work then at the very least she could provide some proper credit instead of claiming it as her work as it makes her look quite bad.

More-so when she was trying to offer assistance with music for a project I'm working on, and I declined as I'm not going to take music without thoroughly checking through places and/or artists' as she's got a past record of plagiarism.

[KyleJCrb]

This guy is using an earlier WIP version of http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01904/ as a backing track for his cover without crediting it. I made a non-inflammatory comment to help point this out, but it seems the guy has deleted it, which leads me to believe that he is purposely trying to take credit for the arrangement.

[Rexy]

I'm tempted to go in there and comment, but you guys keep telling "not to feed the trolls". But it must be some troll if the view count has ended up in six digits already. What can be done about it?

EDIT: Stuff that, bit the bullet and went with a friendly (and still non-inflammatory) remark. Will quote it here:

You must really love Sixto Sounds too - his works are amazing, especially the finished song of his WIP you hosted here. Did you see his other works at OCRemix yet? =)

And I see someone else already beat me to the punch with a straighter remark. This'll be interesting to see the results for, supposedly.

EDIT 2: That reply was quick:

what's this strange comments attack about Sixto Sounds???? I just founs this backing track on a backing track site, and there was no credit written at all.

And then I asked him which 'backing site' he got it from - seems weird to take one of Sixto's works without any trace of his credit. So far being gentle is working because he didn't scrap any of my comments just yet =P

Edited November 4, 2011 by Rexy

[Liontamer]

Wouldn't the plagiarism culprit but "ricknaguitar" from http://www.guitarbackingtrack.com/play/themes/castlevania_-_bloody_tears_%28in_gm%29.htm then?

The YouTuber added a link to it in his video description.

[Rexy]

So if you only dislike this video because of (the backing music theft), then you're a loser !!!!

Not a very tactful response though; it's meant to put many of those so-called 'top watched Youtubers' to shame. But at least we now understand exactly where it ended up being leaked.

So, what are the likelihoods of staffing around guitarbackingtrack.com being any saner than Youtube's (and their lack thereof)?

[Gario]

WOAH.

I never thought THIS would happen. Remember that guy who stole all of OCR's/other artists music and claimed he was DjP/bLiNd/Rama/etc.? Newgrounds finally took his stuff down (Well, they took it down on his page, but the actual tracks are in a re-evaluation process right now). Only took them a few years to do it, but hey - better late then never.

[The Derrit]

This guy is using an earlier WIP version of http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01904/ as a backing track for his cover without crediting it. I made a non-inflammatory comment to help point this out, but it seems the guy has deleted it, which leads me to believe that he is purposely trying to take credit for the arrangement.

credit in the description now

[Rozovian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlOggAZKZw

http://soundcloud.com/ambient-tribe/stone-tower-temple-ambient

This track sounds familiar... I wonder why.

Gonna shoot him/her/them/it a message, you guys take it from there if nothing happens.

[DusK]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGV6ytef1SI

Another one. Also seems a bit familiar.

[Liontamer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlOggAZKZw

http://soundcloud.com/ambient-tribe/stone-tower-temple-ambient

This track sounds familiar... I wonder why.

Gonna shoot him/her/them/it a message, you guys take it from there if nothing happens.

http://soundcloud.com/ambient-tribe/forest-temple-ambient-tribe - Also sampled "Prayer" with 0 credit. Soundcloud has copyright infringement notification steps, but it has to be done directly by the artists since they are the copyright holders of the arrangements themselves.

[big giant circles]

So who's been itching to go harass them some music thieves? Ready, go!

http://soundcloud.com/megaclown/megaclown-killing-lazer

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Megaclown/205114716196179?sk=wall

Those guys stole the track "Katana Blaster (Constantly Playing Mix)" by Mick Gordon from my album Impostor Nostalgia.

I already flagged it on Soundcloud btw.