Weird lawsuit alert: A woman has to pay for defaming a virtual K-pop group
A virtual K-pop group can have feelings, apparently.
Plave (I guess you have to be a K-pop fan to know about them, but they’ve been around since 2023) are a five-piece animated group voiced by real singers and animated through motion-capture technology. No one knows the identities of the singers.
Last year, Plave’s agency was made aware of a social media user who was making mean comments about the group. She went after Plave–often using bad words–saying that the singers behind the group “could be ugly in real life” and gave off a “typical Korean man vibe.”
The defendant said, “Hey, I was making fun of the avatars, not the people behind them!” The judge said, “Nope. Avatars are generally accepted to represent someone real. Therefore, anyone attacking the avatars was actually attacking the real person.”
Plave’s human managers wanted 6.5 million won for each of the five singers. That sounds like a lot, but at current exchange rates, that’s CAD$6,400, saying that the comments cause the singers emotional distress. In this case, the judge disagreed, knocking it down to 100,000 won or a fraction under CAD$100. Total cost to the perp? Just less than CAD$500.
The case is being appealed, so this one ain’t over.
(Via the BBC)
