If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it. That also goes for infringing on an artist’s image as a Netizen learned the hard way. Posting under the handle Gua Gua Mars (瓜瓜Mars) on Weibo and on streaming site BiliBili, the Netizen was slapped with a hefty lawsuit by Singaporean singer JJ Lin for using face swap on JJ’s face and posting it online to poke fun at him.
Gua Gua Mars also made videos where he switched the singer’s face on women’s bodies. On JJ’s birthday even, Gua Gua Mars popped up a collage of face-swapped photos of the singer super-imposed on faces of mostly women despite several warnings not to do so.
Well, JJ Lin is not having it anymore as he’s suing Gua Gua Mars for 275,000 RMB (43k USD) – 250K for financial losses, 20K for mental damages, and 5K for litigation fees on the grounds of the unauthorised use of his image rights. The singer is also demanding for a public apology from the Netizen for infringing on his image.
Nonetheless, it’s worth noting here that JJ Lin is not the only celebrity face swapped by Gua Gua Mars in his videos. After learning about JJ’s suit against him, Gua Gua Mars posted, “have no words.” Gua Gua Mars did however deny making 250k in video revenue and said, “regarding those screenshots on wb that were taken out of context and rumors that I made 250,000, I don’t know if these people are the water army they paid for. Let me clarify here. All the proceeds from those videos added together is only a few thousand yuan, and those who fabricate rumors are despicable. In addition, I know that there are many netizens on other platforms (*ban, *ba) who still support me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.” As of press time, the videos featuring JJ Lin and his Weibo page have all been taken down.
lil
The guy already admit to his wrong doing. You can’t make any money off any any property/images/music ect… that you did not create yourself.
XZF
The netizen deserves what he is getting. Hopefully it will send a strong message to others people who are doing the same thing. They need to know where to draw the line. It’s not about money in my opinion. Some people just don’t have respect for anyone period.
HL
I too hope this lawsuit will be successful, it may stopped others from creating such images.
Dominique
Next step up from this is people deep faking p*rn. So he’s right to be cautious