Voicebank Thieves

kimchi-tan said:

This isn't meant to be a calling out thread but rather a thread where voicebank creators experienced having their voicebank stolen can talk about their experience and for them and/or others to give advise from keeping their voicebank/utau avatar from being stolen.

From the day I started created my utau, I was very worried about voicebank thieves so I only talked about personal details about her with my friends privately and never showed off her full name (I used her nickname instead, Hime-chan, should I name her which a lot of utau are named so I didn't worry much about that getting stolen), only used her silhouette/covered design when showing her off in SoundCloud and YouTube since stealing that won't warrant much when stealing without the full design and because I still wanted something others to attribute to her before she was released, and only giving the link to her beta voicebanks to my friends since I trust them.
When I make a "preview demo reel" and shared it in a Google+ UTAU community, someone commented asking if the voicebank was mine. After I said yes, they then immediately asked if we wanted to be friends which I ignored since it found it really suspicious :/

Any advise/comments? Feel free to talk about your experiences as well.

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legolasorbraceface said:

Oh boy I could talk for years about my experiences.
I had to deal with VB theft in August and I'm pretty sure the person switched accounts and is on Google+ now which is really annoying because that's where most of my audience comes from, so if I tell the groups anything, they find out as well. I can't call them out I also feel like the entire group would get mad at me and kick me out.
I just ignore them now and hope for the best, but I don't really know what you should do.

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수연 <Suyeon> said:

I haven't experienced this situations myself - of random people trying to befriend me/asking if my bank was indeed mine, but I do have a friend who experienced having their VB stolen and getting things sorted (getting the video flagged, etc.).

I don't think my bank is a special snowflake, worthy of being held on a pedestal or anything egotistical, but thieves are part of the reason I first made the bank for-sale only. Now it's private (no cost) and requires an application to be filled out. Restrictive and paranoid? Perhaps. But at least I know who has my bank in their possession and it won't be guesswork if I can recognize my voice associated with another character and name.

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HoneyPai said:

It seems like the "want to be friends?" thief is going after a lot of people

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Nanika said:

Hmm, I've always wondered, how often does voicebanks getting stolen actually happen?

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kimchi-tan said:

Not only is keeping track of how many voicebanks are stolen is tricky, but also identifying whether or not the voicebank is actually stolen or just similar sounding is kinda tedious :/ The voicebank thief may not even release the stolen voicebank if ever.

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Adlez27 said:

I don't understand why someone would want to steal a voicebank. There's thousands of voicebanks out there, with thousands of different vocal tones. Why not just use a person's UTAU and credit them normally instead of going through the effort of trying to pretend that their voicebank is yours? Especially since anyone can create their own, too...

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Kitcat190 said:

I remember a year or so ago someone took my CV AL!CE bank. I friend of mine pointed out they were using it with a g- flag and trying to redistribute it as their own UTAU. When I confronted them about it they denied the accusation until I made a soundcloud post with one cover they did with the stolen bank and a comparison of mine with the g flag. They then said something along the lines of "I never stole anything, I guess the bank was dropped in the wrong folder, sorry!" Which we all know is bull.

That person actually stole other banks as well and someone who also had their bank stolen let me know why the user stole banks in the first place. And the reason behind it was "They didn't want to do any work but used good banks to try and get popular"

I later found out this exact user commented on my CV AL!CE release video with something like "Nice voice" :' D aahhaaaaa

Personally, I was both appalled and flattered at the time. Appalled for obvious reasons, but I was slightly flattered they actually thought my bank was good enough that it would get them "popular" that they went through the effort of lying and faking.

So yeah : ' D

It never once changed my view point however, I still was going to release banks. If someone steals mine, that's on them, not me.

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moonst4r said:

I felt the need to share after encountering different types of voicebank theft while being in the fandom.

Most of the time it seemed people did it because they thought they could get away with it. My UTAU has an, uh, unique accent which people can identify and reported to me when there were thefts. I messaged the people who were suspected of theft and each time it seemed like they had an "Oh crap, I've been caught" moment and deleted everything and pretended nothing happened.

There was another accident where it was more of a cover theft. Someone took one of my covers and then put their own "UTAU" to it. It made me really mad because in the comments there were a lot of people praising how this "UTAU" sounded when it was really one of my UTAU which I put hard work into and also the cover which I made including the UST. Once again I messaged them, they realized they were caught, and deleted everything and pretended nothing happened.

In this last one, someone actually took my voicebanks, pitched them, and actually put them up for sale. A person bought one of the voicebanks and came to me once they realized the voicebank wasn't pitched like in the samples and also found my UTAU's concept art within the files. I was extremely upset at this and also at the fact that the seller seemed like they disappeared off the earth. I had no choice but to make a public post about it and one of the seller's friends found my post and apologized on behalf of them and gave the buyer a refund. I was glad that this was able to be resolved.

All in all, please don't steal voicebanks because you will get caught or the lie will catch up to you eventually.

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Animé Fan said:

That's absolutely terrible and disrespectful, especially going as far as to sell your voicebank under their name! I guess it's a good thing that I always put my UTAU'S concepts and boxarts in their files.

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モノクマ said:

I mean not all thieves are smart, but think of the ones who will inspect the bank and remove anything so the creator has proof that they stol their bank
What I do just in case my banks get stolen (Which will never happen lol) I put an image file and change the type of it (jpg,png,gif etc etc)
and call it something like "a2.frq" etc etc and I can always revert the frq to jpg and prove them that their guilty

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