This is awesome -- it looks like (at a glance) that about half of the president of Jacksonville State University's PhD dissertation was plagiarized from another PhD candidate's dissertation. There have been zero consequences.

From the comments of that post, I found this -- a compilation of proof that a commercial artist is using vectored (?) photographs of those creepy resin dolls, mostly without permission, to create other works of art that have made hir probably a stack of dough.

Here's one of the examples, since explanations don't quite cut it:

[link]

On the left you have Mijn Schatje's artwork. In the center you have the original photograph of the personalized doll. On the right you have the doll overlaid with the art, showing the identical facial structure. There are a whole bunch of other examples with the link up there.

To me, this feels like Fair Use, similar to the debacle over Shepherd Fairey's Barack Obama "Hope" poster. Side-by-side, it's clear that the artist did incorporate that source material -- but just as a red-and-blue chalk drawing will never be confused with an AP photograph, a vectored iPod skin will never be confused with an original resin doll. I can't imagine Mijn's use of the doll shapes hurting the doll owners or designers in any way. Sie did not create identical dolls; sie created derivative works in an entirely different medium with an entirely different purpose.

Tacky and rude? Maybe. Illegal? I don't think so, but then again, I'm not an expert on Fair Use law (or any law for that matter). Stealing? I don't think it's that, either.