Did YouTube Phenomenon Poppy Steal Her Style From Another Star?

[Wilhelm]

Poppy rose to prominence on YouTube beginning in 2014.

Damien Maloney for WIRED

A prominent YouTube personality who has garnered tens of millions of views is being sued by another star for allegedly stealing her persona. The question now is whether the case has any merit under copyright law.

In April, YouTuber and musician Mars Argo, whose real name is Brittany Sheets, filed a lawsuit in California against another star, Poppy (Moriah Rose Pereira), and her co-collaborator, Titanic Sinclair (Corey Mixter). The complaint, embedded below, accuses Mixter of "calculatedly" transforming Pereira into a "Mars Argo knockoff." Sheets is also seeking domestic violence damages from Mixter, accusing him of "severe emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation." The pair were in a romantic relationship until early 2014; after they split, Mixter began working with Pereira, who would soon become famous as Poppy.

I'm Poppy—No, You're Poppy

From 2008 to 2014, Mixter and Sheets dated and collaborated on the Mars Argo project, which gained a cult following on YouTube and other social platforms. They were best known for their vlog series Computer Show, which mostly parodied American internet culture. In early 2014, after the pair had broken up, they published one of their most successful videos, "Delete Your Facebook," which garnered over 1.8 million views. In November of that same year, Poppy released her first video "Poppy Eats Cotton Candy."

Mars Argo fans immediately noticed similarities between the newcomer and Argo, and a conspiracy theory began to brew online. Poppy's mysterious, deadpan videos mimicked the same ironic, dark humor as Mars Argo's. The overlap wasn't just tonal: the two looked alike. Before she adopted the Poppy persona, Pereira, a then 20-year-old singer from Nashville, was a brunette. After she began collaborating with Mixter, she started wearing her hair in a platinum blonde bob, a move that Sheets' suit claims was done to mimic Mars' look.

Corey Mixter (aka Titanic)

Damien Maloney for WIRED

Fans soon began to speculate that Poppy was, perhaps, an extension of the Mars project or that Poppy simply was Mars. Meanwhile, Sheets deleted most of her social media posts, and largely disappeared from the internet. In the lawsuit, Sheets says she did so in order to protect herself from Mixter's threats and abuse.

In the three years since Sheets went dark, Poppy has risen to fame. She became the face of Sanrio's "Hello Sanrio" collection, released a studio album, and embarked on a concert tour in 34 North American cities, as well as London and Tokyo. The first episode of I'm Poppy, her original series for YouTube's subscription service YouTube Red, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Now, her collaborator's past is coming back to haunt her. But can Sheets successfully sue Poppy for stealing her online persona?

The Response to the Lawsuit

Poppy/Pereira did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent through her manager, Nick Groff, and a rep for Mixter claimed he no longer represented him. But Poppy's official Twitter account released a statement Monday, three weeks after Sheets' complaint was filed, saying she and Mixter were "surprised" by the lawsuit and that its accusations were false. "It would appear Ms. Sheets was intent on building a publicity campaign around her filing of a complaint and was not interested in our lawyers first having a serious discussion about the merits of her claims," the statement reads. Poppy goes on to say that the lawsuit was painful to read, because she, too, is a survivor of abuse. "This legally documented trauma from my past is something I never wanted to make public, because I did not want to relive it. Ms. Sheets' publicity campaign makes that impossible."

Poppy goes on to accuse Sheets of "collaborating and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the exact man who took advantage of me when I was young and vulnerable." That man is presumably Joshua Michael Moran, also known as Mosh Joran, a musician who is friendly with Sheets. In addition to her statement, Poppy also tweeted two restraining orders she and Mixter allegedly filed against Moran, as well as graphic surveillance camera footage from 2015 that purports to show Moran assaulting Mixter several days before those orders were filed.

Moran issued a response on Twitter, claiming the restraining orders had been dismissed. "This is a desperate ploy to detract from their own pending legal issues, which I have nothing to do with," he wrote. A representative for Sheets declined to add anything beyond the lawsuit. In a statementpublished to Twitter when the lawsuit was filed, Sheets wrote she was "terrified" about saying the wrong thing and "hoped coming forward about this will make me feel better, feel safe, and feel like I am able to be myself again." She also referenced the #MeToo movement, and expressed gratitude toward women who had spoken up about domestic violence and sexual abuse before her.

The Copyright Claim

Sheets' domestic violence allegations are serious and shouldn't be viewed lightly. But her copyright and "right to publicity" claims against Mixter and Pereira are worth exploring, especially in an age where YouTubers constantly mimic each other's style and content. Were her case to win over a jury (the complaint requests a jury trial), it could set stricter guidelines for YouTubers and other entertainers going forward.

"This is a fairly unique case of copyright infringement and looks to stretch the bounds over what is protected under a copyright registration," says Michael Lee, a partner at the law firm Morrison/Lee, which specializes in intellectual property related to YouTube and videogames. "This will be a case to closely watch as it could set some important precedent if it goes to trial."

Sheets (left) accuses Mixter and Pereira (right) of stealing her online persona. Side-by-side comparisons of the two YouTube personalities appear within the lawsuit.

BRITTANY ALEXANDRIA SHEETS V. COREY MICHAEL MIXTER, ET AL

In her complaint, Sheets outlines a dizzying number of instances where Poppy appears to have mimicked or outright stolen Mars Argo's aesthetic, makeup, hair, way of speaking, and clothing. Sheets even accuses Poppy of wearing the same exact jacket as Mars Argo. Her lawyers also point out that Poppy uploaded a video with the same name as one of Mars Argo's: "Delete Your Facebook." But legal experts say many of Sheets' copyright accusations are fuzzy, and include generic ideas and behaviors, like filming a video while sitting on a particular style of chair, wearing bunny ears, and sitting in a white bathtub with a pink background.

"You'll notice the complaint is very vague when it comes to what works actually infringe—there's just a lot of hand-waving about global similarities between the two projects," says Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's intellectual property team. "But you'd need to show that a particular work (either a song or video) infringed another specific work. The complaint just doesn't do that."

Art Neill, the executive director of New Media Rights, a program at California Western School of Law that provides legal counsel to online creators, concurs, adding, "the copyright claim independently is a bit of a shotgun approach, and with copyright you really want to be surgical.”

Another question is whether Mars Argo is a well-defined enough character to be copyrightable. "Copyright protection does extend to well-defined characters, and the use of those characters can form the basis of a claim for unauthorized derivative works. Mars Argo, based on what I’ve seen, isn’t a fully developed character in the sense copyright law requires," says Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and the author of several books on intellectual property, including The End Of Ownership. "As the complaint describes it, her 'sound, style, and aesthetic' has been copied. But even if true, those strike me as quite abstract character traits."

Mars Argo's video "Delete Your Facebook."

Poppy's video of the same name.

Neill specifically references Anderson v. Stallone, a California copyright lawsuit where the author of the script for Rocky IV, sued Sylvester Stallone and MGM for taking his work, which he authored on his own accord because he was a big fan of the series. The court ruled that some of the characters the author created were developed enough to be copyrighted, while others were not. While Mars Argo existed for years, experts note, she didn't have a signature outfit, specific backstory, or settled biography, making it harder to prove that she is well-defined in the same way that, say, Batman, Mickey Mouse, and Yoda are.

In addition to copyright infringement, Sheets is also claiming her right to publicity was infringed upon, meaning she lost her right to control the commercial use of her likeness. This is the law that prevents a company from putting, say, Drake's face on their energy drink without asking. The problem is that Poppy isn't using Mars Argo's name, or pretending to impersonate her directly.

"The right of publicity claim also seems very weak. A similar persona is not the same as actual use of someone's identity—Madonna would not have a right of publicity claim against Lady Gaga, nor should she," says Nazer.

Even if all of Sheets' claims don't hold up in court, the mere existence of the lawsuit serves as an explanation for her disappearance and validates Mars Argo fans who have speculated about similarities between her and Poppy for years. It's also emblematic of our messy internet age, where stars emerge as online amateurs without access to record label lawyers. We will likely continue to see lawsuits like this in the future. "We have so much content available all the time," Neill notes, "we’re naturally going to be borrowing from each other."

Edited May 10, 2018 by HiroJun