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Postby ShadowOfTwilight » Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:59 pm

*shrugs* It was just an idea. I personally wouldn't choose to argue that what is on this site fails to qualify as art... but hey, that's just one user's opinion. If I've offended you somehow, domo sumimasen.

You ended your post with a "So", and I do agree that we shouldn't waste time on pointless ideas. I will donate what I can, when I can--which will hopefully be soon. In the meantime, I'm more than willing to do what is necessary to protect this site. What I'm trying to figure out is simply this: Until I'm in a financial position to donate, how can I help?
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Postby 7sigma » Wed Sep 28, 2005 9:32 pm

Thanks for the clarification on donations, I shall get mine going.

On the legal issues of AMVing, though, I really know very little about how it works there, but in Brazil piracy is only punishable if you distribute pirated content for profit. So, if worse comes to worse, we could change the Org to brazilian soil :lol: However, server costs are pretty high here, notably for large sites such as ours... last time I checked, around 3 times higher :roll: There are probably other countries with loose anti-piracy legislations and better server costs. Could be worth checking. This would clear the way (at least legally) to advertising on the org.

About advertising, I think it could be done without harm. GameFAQs has a nica layout for dealing with ads without getting in content's way. Furthermore, otakus are known for buying goods (the members of this site, added together, ought to buy thousands of dollars in DVDs alone), and the traffic we put together is pretty awesome. Could work.
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Postby trythil » Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:38 pm

ShadowOfTwilight wrote:*shrugs* It was just an idea. I personally wouldn't choose to argue that what is on this site fails to qualify as art... but hey, that's just one user's opinion. If I've offended you somehow, domo sumimasen.


My argument is not based on what is and what is not art, nor did you offend any of my personal sensibilities.

My argument is based on the extreme difficulty of using "it's art" as a defense against copyright infringement, why that effectively makes it a useless defense, and why it has major implications for what the .org can and cannot do.
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Postby celibi87 » Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:00 pm

trythil wrote:
ShadowOfTwilight wrote:*shrugs* It was just an idea. I personally wouldn't choose to argue that what is on this site fails to qualify as art... but hey, that's just one user's opinion. If I've offended you somehow, domo sumimasen.


My argument is not based on what is and what is not art, nor did you offend any of my personal sensibilities.

My argument is based on the extreme difficulty of using "it's art" as a defense against copyright infringement, why that effectively makes it a useless defense, and why it has major implications for what the .org can and cannot do.

if they were gonna get us for copyright infringment then they would have done it by now. hell you type in anime music videos in the search engine and what do u get? this site. i dont think they are worried about us making amvs cause most (cough)pirates(cough) of us do get it off dvds just to make it more legal. i know i have downloaded (off my limewire pro) anime episodes. so there is no way of knowing what wil happen. if the movie or the song industry gets a wild hair then i guess we will just have to find an alternative to posting amvs. simple as that.
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:29 pm

celibi87 wrote:if they were gonna get us for copyright infringment then they would have done it by now. hell you type in anime music videos in the search engine and what do u get? this site. i dont think they are worried about us making amvs cause most (cough)pirates(cough) of us do get it off dvds just to make it more legal. i know i have downloaded (off my limewire pro) anime episodes. so there is no way of knowing what wil happen. if the movie or the song industry gets a wild hair then i guess we will just have to find an alternative to posting amvs. simple as that.


This is why i feel it's far more likely that if Phade was ever served, he'd be far more likely to be asked for member records. Spicifically for the info regarding contributers who are financially backing illegal activities. Since that may figure into the reasoning behind some people not donating, i'd like to hear his stance on that.

By donating money you could be implicated and even if it's a bogus charge, it all goes back to the question: will you settle, or give up everything you have to fight it legally?
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Postby trythil » Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:38 pm

celibi87 wrote:if they were gonna get us for copyright infringment then they would have done it by now.


This is a strawman, and I have no idea why people keep bringing it up. Whether or not you get sued has no bearing on illegality.
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stop me if you've heard this one...

Postby carotenuto » Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:04 pm

This thread is getting pretty long so I didn't read it all, but here's my idea.

You can safely say that most of us know someone who thnks AMV's are cool as all heck but don't have the resources available to download/view on their own. So they end up coming to those of us that do to see the latest vids on our computers. Maybe they're technically illiterate :oops: , or they can't get highspeed, or some other bizarre excuse. The usual answer to this is we burn them a CD or DVD and give it to them to peruse at home - no hassles, no bells and whistles, just "here's your stuff, now go home and one day, get a better computer/net skills, etc. and stop bothering me" :x

I recall at the last AX that I went to, the AMV winner received a rather large case of DVD's of every AMV made that year(or maybe just for that contest).

And I thought to myself "Self....that would be really cool to have"

And my Self said " :roll: Moron....we don't have a DVD burner and it would take us 2 months steady to download that many videos"

So I replied " :cry: but we don't need to get ALL of them just the ones we like"

So disturbing conversation aside, my idea is this:

Offer a service wherein a member (anyone) may request of the ORG a DVD (playable anywhere) with certain videos on it, and must pay $X for base cost (DVD, shipping, etc.) and then a donate fee of $Y per video burned. All wrapped up in a shiny spiffy case (bells, whistles, weee)

Hence saving those lazy, technologically impaired, peoples from themselves, and us. And also allowing for more varied donations without the stupid names attached to those that donate and those that leech. because those titles really do make it feel like you don't care if I only want to donate $1 a month, and that you only want those with disposable income in your hallowed halls (whatever the intentions may be).

Of course this has drawbacks. So maybe instead of a choose-your-own-adventure styling. Maybe instead make them available via the convetion/contest they were part of, aka a DVD of the ORG's Viewers-choice contest winners/runner-ups. Or AX, NDK whatever.

You could even sell them from Convention sites post-con, or at least offer the link.

That's my idea :oops:
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Re: stop me if you've heard this one...

Postby Coderjoe » Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:18 pm

carotenuto wrote:Offer a service wherein a member (anyone) may request of the ORG a DVD (playable anywhere) with certain videos on it, and must pay $X for base cost (DVD, shipping, etc.) and then a donate fee of $Y per video burned. All wrapped up in a shiny spiffy case (bells, whistles, weee)


Again, exchange of money for AMVs, which is bad. the X cost may be acceptable, as long as it just covers materials and shipping, but your forced donation of Y per video is very bad.
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Y per video

Postby carotenuto » Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:46 pm

No matter what way you look at it. Those of us that donate are already paying a Y per video, based upon the fact that if we don't the ORG might not be here. At least we currently get to choose to donate or not. And those that donate obviously appreciate the efforts here enough to attempt to ensure future success.

My idea was based around still allowing that "choice" to continue, but at the same time increasing the ORG's ability to receive donations. Right now we only get the choice "to donate or not to donate". This at least gives an additional option, especially to those who can't use or acess the ORG.

No matter what additional plan they come up with, it's going to amount to the same thing: those who give less will probably receive less and those who give more will get more.

I'm not saying remove the current program, merely add another way of allowing donations.

You could also try getting some artists to donate some videos to auction - the artist could donate a cd/dvd 1 or many and we could bid, if interested. All proceeds going to the ORG.

Or we could try convincing the conventions to attempt to collect donations during AMV showings. They do benefit from the very existence of AMV's as it is.

Like it or not, there will be no perfect plan.
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Postby batmanMG » Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:55 pm

You can safely say that most of us know someone who thnks AMV's are cool as all heck but don't have the resources available to download/view on their own. So they end up coming to those of us that do to see the latest vids on our computers. Maybe they're technically illiterate , or they can't get highspeed, or some other bizarre excuse.


easier solution if you haven't donated yet, and even if you have... you and how ever many of those friends can stick your hands in your pockets and pull out all the spare change in them... pool it all together and donate it to org. They should be more than willing to give up a few quarters. Especially if you've burned a cd or dvd for them before.
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Postby xort » Fri Sep 30, 2005 2:43 am

After reading the first 10 pages, I'v skipped to the end. (sorry if someone else has already posted something to this effect)

If you have bandwidth issues and don't use bittorrents to offer content then you are just being silly.

I am very wary of putting up bittorrent for several reasons. Personally, every time I have tried to use BT, I always get suck download speed, always. Of the 38074 local videos, 36538 were downloaded at least once last month. This is 95.97% of all local videos getting downloaded last month. From what I know of BT, it doesn't work very well for lots of files getting few downloads. Also, in the industry matrix of "who should we go after and sue next", the checkbox of "uses file sharing networks" seems to push people way up to the top of the list. I don’t want BT to be the straw that breaks that camel’s back

Or maybe a technophobe.

The legal issues at hand are not changed by the use of torrents. Either an AMV is legal or it's not. The distro method isn't going to change that. However taking money for profit (even if just to fund the site) might ruffle the feathers of some media groups. (either music companies or the anime copywrite holders).

As for the idea that BT doesn't work for many files... well maybe that was true at some point very early on. However, currently their are trackers and clients that will let hosts seed multiple files that are open for individual downloads. So those few of us out here with unlimited bandwidth connections might be willing to host a gig or two of the more popular AMVs with our spare bandwidth more or less unlimitedly.

I don't know how the bytes fall but I'm going to guess that the most popular files are a small fraction of the total and take up the most bandwidth.

And as for the suck download aways... that's your problem caused by a range of issues; millions of people are moving TB of data a every day. I normaly max out my connection almost 24/7. So very clearly the technology works for those willing to make the effort to make it work.

I'm never going to offer up a single cent for something that can be free. But I'l freely offer up 10k of my upstream to host files.

Frankly I'v always been stunned that this site hasn't been using BT for years now. Your .com twin IS a BT site, although it is bad repair due to very very low useage. I did seed most of the torrents at one point however the death of one of my HDs with all my AMVs on it has limited what I can seed to a select few.
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Postby badmartialarts » Fri Sep 30, 2005 3:22 am

Unfortuneately, this HAS been addressed. There are almost 2 TB of videos on this site, and they are downloaded almost at random by the users of this site. If it was a few videos that generate all the bandwidth issues, yes, a torrent would be ideal. But from the usage statistics (which have been posted before, if not in this thread then in the previous 2000 threads begging for torrents), that is actually not the case. Almost every file on this site gets hits, maybe not every day but once in a while. Even the 'bad' ones (which is very subjective).
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Postby celibi87 » Fri Sep 30, 2005 12:30 pm

badmartialarts wrote:Unfortuneately, this HAS been addressed. There are almost 2 TB of videos on this site, and they are downloaded almost at random by the users of this site. If it was a few videos that generate all the bandwidth issues, yes, a torrent would be ideal. But from the usage statistics (which have been posted before, if not in this thread then in the previous 2000 threads begging for torrents), that is actually not the case. Almost every file on this site gets hits, maybe not every day but once in a while. Even the 'bad' ones (which is very subjective).

even my worst vids gets hits and having found good and bad amvs i decided to donate so i can have the good ones first and the bad ones....well last.
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Fri Sep 30, 2005 1:41 pm

For BT to work, many users would need to be seeding many videos. Bandwidth issues asside, do you have any idea the system resources that would be required to keep up with tracking 70,000 + videos?

When you work with small filesize / large numbers of downloads, a BT system simply does not work because the memory requirements needed to simply keep track of seeding information for that many files is enourmous. Now take into account the average ratio of someone that gains nothing by closing the BT window after his/her download is done and you have far less than 1% of the videos being seeded at any one time.

Setting up and properly maintaining such a tracking system would cost more (in terms of man-hours and hardware upgrades) than it would ever save.
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Postby Coderjoe » Fri Sep 30, 2005 3:14 pm

Granted, I haven't seen the usage statistics, but I would think a large amount of the bandwidth winds up being spent on downloads of newly posted videos.

There is also the idea that you could put new vids on bittorrent, and then once the downloads get below a certain point, drop the torrent and only offer the normal local download.

Of course, the feasability of bittorrent at all depends on those usage statistics that I have not seen.
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