OS-tan wars?

[unbibium]

miwasatoshi posted something about OS-tan, so I looked them up on Wikipedia.  An OS-tan is an anime personification of an operating system, usually as a hot girl, only partially because anime geeks tend to be lonely men.

Anyhow, one part of the article jumped out at me as illustrating a key cultural difference between the US and Japan.  Apparently two fanart publishers in Japan have clashed.  The first point of dispute Wikipedia listed was:

1. Deja Vu's manga use its own design of NT-tan (Windows NT 4.0 SP6) instead of Futaba's design."
   • Futaba users claimed this is disrespectful to original creators of OS-tan, hence so called "stealing" OS-tan from them.
   • Deja Vu claimed it has rights to create new characters.

Am I reading this right: Deja Vu is accused of stealing not because they ripped off all the characters, but because they copied most of them but changed one.

This seems to illustrate a difference in the way the Japanese think about copyright, but what's at the root of it?

BTW, I know some on my friends list have seen very few anime, and that "Ogenki Clinic" is often one of them. So you'll appreciate the personified spirit of Norton AntiVirus:

Doctor Norton, an unspeakably lecherous old doctor, personifies the Symantec Norton AntiVirus software. While an ingenious physician, he is infamously known to request (and attempt) the total undressing of an OS-tan for a full physical inspection, even when they're completely healthy. The doctor's lust has no bounds, and his morality is void. His appearance as a Japanese ghost (the whisp of smoke style tail end instead of legs) is a reference to the Norton Ghost system recovery tool.

Comments

[piehead.livejournal.com]

Does this have something to do with why the ship in Andromeda had a "hot Asian chick" personification?

[jecook]

*dies laughing*

They forgot to mention that it occasionally whines and has a fit like an alzhimer's patient.