The Otakon 2009 thread

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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby outlawed » Sat Apr 11, 2009 1:23 pm

VicBond007 wrote:so that we have enough time to shoot a tape over to Otakon's lawyer for final approval


How long has Otakon been reviewing the contest with a lawyer? I'm assuming this covers more than legal rights since we already know the use of the video footage is illegal.


VicBond007 wrote:ACen where it's been seen by 6 or 7 thousand people


An AMV making the final cut for the contest at ACen has probably been seen by 1500 attendees (we haven't been in main programming on Fri or Sat for years). Could probably bump that up another 1k if we include the awards ceremony replays which happened at the tail end of Sunday the last couple years. While I consider us well run due to the dedication of our staff pre/post-con (HI Julius, Omar, Bob, and Nate) we are by no means a main draw at ACen imo.

We have a dedicated room that's hella fun though I'd like to think. Word has it headshots have occured during IE.


BasharOfTheAges wrote:Such a rule puts a lot of extra responsibility on your shoulders to scour the results of every con between now and then to check for winners and update your finals disc after voting. Seems like an awful lot of effort to essentially deprive your audience of good vids for the sake of some sort of fairness ideal.


One of the advantages of running a contest is that you get to run it the way you would like them to be. I've never instituted such a complicated rule with ACen because I do not have the time or inclination to track that. We used to restrict to new videos only for a couple years when I first started staffing but I quickly realized we needed to open things up to improve quality. Now I'm all about the best bang for buck for the viewing audience so there are pretty much no restrictions other than you haven't sent it to us before.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby Castor Troy » Sat Apr 11, 2009 2:31 pm

outlawed wrote:
VicBond007 wrote:so that we have enough time to shoot a tape over to Otakon's lawyer for final approval


How long has Otakon been reviewing the contest with a lawyer? I'm assuming this covers more than legal rights since we already know the use of the video footage is illegal.



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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby VicBond007 » Sat Apr 11, 2009 3:05 pm

Castor Troy wrote:
outlawed wrote:
VicBond007 wrote:so that we have enough time to shoot a tape over to Otakon's lawyer for final approval


How long has Otakon been reviewing the contest with a lawyer? I'm assuming this covers more than legal rights since we already know the use of the video footage is illegal.



This is why Otakon needs Phoenix Wright!


Khervin Smith Ace Attorney may not be the star of the next hot DS game, but at least he's a reasonable guy. As far as I know, he's been there since Otakorp came to be. Whenever that is. We're just working with him a little tighter this year given what happened last year.

The legality of showing an AMV at a con isn't as "grey area" as everyone makes it out to be. Sure, there's some assumptions being made, but we're not doing anything wrong. As far as we know, you all acquired your source either from an analog broadcast or in a country that isn't affected by America's DMCA. I should take this moment to thank SSGWNBTD for inadvertently pointing me in the right direction when it came to the legality of us playing fan-parody trailers. There's a lot of details to go into so I won't go into all the armchair legal crap here. Maybe my panel at AWA should be "AMVs: Keeping Your Ass Out of the Fire" :D
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby outlawed » Sat Apr 11, 2009 3:56 pm

VicBond007 wrote:>given what happened last year.


Something happened? Maybe I should actually pay attention to what's going on in the scene instead of lurking so much post-ACEN. :)


VicBond007 wrote:>Maybe my panel at AWA should be "AMVs: Keeping Your Ass Out of the Fire" :D

Play Girugamesh trailer imo !!
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby VicBond007 » Sat Apr 11, 2009 6:39 pm

First post updated to reflect the official link.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby Silk_SK » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:02 am

VicBond007 wrote:There's a lot of details to go into so I won't go into all the armchair legal crap here.


Where would you go into it? Since I was one of the ones disqualified last year I'm a bit curious. I sent Khervin a letter asking what was up but never got a response. I probably wouldn't understand it but I'd be happy knowing there's a reason beyond the "lawyers are douches" myth (or reality? I really don't know).
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby chui101 » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:41 am

Silk_SK wrote:
VicBond007 wrote:There's a lot of details to go into so I won't go into all the armchair legal crap here.


Where would you go into it? Since I was one of the ones disqualified last year I'm a bit curious. I sent Khervin a letter asking what was up but never got a response. I probably wouldn't understand it but I'd be happy knowing there's a reason beyond the "lawyers are douches" myth (or reality? I really don't know).


I'll delve a bit into the armchair attorney role here. Judging from the rule changes made, I am guessing the problems last year were 1) non-fair-use usage of trademarks and 2) false statements made in another organization's name.

Regarding the trademark infringement, i.e. using an unmodified WB or Universal Studios logo sequence, copyright law and trademark law are quite a bit different - whereas copyright law is more lenient with definitions of fair use and parody, trademark law is a bit less so. Look up the Lanham act and compare the wording of that with the fair use descriptions of US copyright law if you want to know the particulars. If you wanted to take it to a court, I'm sure you could make a strong case that using the original trademark in an otherwise parodical work is fair use, but it's pretty deep in legal grey area and the Otakon lawyer is just doing his job by protecting Otakorp's collective ass.

Regarding false statements made in another's name... well... we all know none of the trailers were approved by the MPAA. So. Yeah.

Either way, even though we all dislike the end result of last year's parody/trailer category, it does boil down to just avoiding any sort of possibility of legal trouble... and you're entitled to your own opinions of a CYA legal strategy. I personally am just glad that Vic fought it out for us and preserved the category pretty much intact.

Cheers, mate.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby RolltheStampede » Mon May 04, 2009 2:49 pm

bump
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby VicBond007 » Mon May 04, 2009 3:30 pm

bump for what? o.O
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby chui101 » Tue May 05, 2009 2:09 am

VicBond007 wrote:bump for what? o.O

For great justice.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby VicBond007 » Fri May 08, 2009 10:17 am

Just wanted to clarify the "l33t seat" rules.

Any creator who sends us a video by the contest deadline will get 3 AMV Creator passes good for jumping lines at the AMV Contest/Iron Editor, and therefore getting some sweet seats before the mob shows up. IF YOUR VIDEO IS DISQUALIFIED DURING PRE-SCREENINGS, YOU WILL GET ZERO PASSES. This means that if you break the rules, you get nothing. This is the ONLY way that I can stop people from sending me trolled videos that the creator knows will be DQed anyways, but do so just to be able to jump the line. Yes, this screws over a few people with legitimate intentions of getting into the contest but the way I see it, under the old rules, these people would have missed out anyways. With the new system, I'm still going to be giving out 300 or so more passes than last year, even if the creator doesn't show up, I'm still running off their badges.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR
--------------------------------
1) No trolling. We had to DQ quite a few videos last year. Choose your battles people.
2) No English dubbing. American VAs will be at the con and we don't want trouble.
3) 6 minute time limit. Leave room for other people.
4) No corporate logos. MPAA Lawlsuits etc.
5) Watch your language and keep your characters public-beach-safe. Frack-words and boobies scare hellicopter moms who've clearly never been exposed to such things before.

Follow the rules, and you'll get passes. Even if your video doesn't make the final cut, so long as you don't get disqualified, you'll still get passes. It's really that easy.

Still holding off on sending out confirmation emails since I broke a Netstream, tried to fix it, and broke it more. New crate-o-netstreams should be here by Monday.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby NightMistress85 » Fri May 08, 2009 10:54 am

Thanks for the update! What do we do during the con to get our badges? Do we seek you out somewhere, or is it ready for us at registration? I'm only used to being a lowly regular :P.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby Kyssifur » Fri May 08, 2009 11:41 am

I checked the submission form, and there is no Hungary at the "Country" section. :shock: :? Maybe I'm blind... but please check it yourselves!
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby VicBond007 » Fri May 08, 2009 12:12 pm

Kyssifur wrote:I checked the submission form, and there is no Hungary at the "Country" section. :shock: :? Maybe I'm blind... but please check it yourselves!

Bah. It's a pre-made list, and I don't have an easy way to change it now that things are live. Just put "United States" as your country, but under city, put in "Your City, Hungary". I still go through these by hand so I'll see that and know how to change it once it's in the database.
Thanks for the update! What do we do during the con to get our badges? Do we seek you out somewhere, or is it ready for us at registration? I'm only used to being a lowly regular :P.

The registration desk is very large, and the staff members rotate, so there's a very good chance that the badges will get lost. The Info Desk didn't seem too thrilled about handing them out, so last year I just kept them with me all con long, and people that needed them just asked. I also made it a point to keep ducking outside of the theater, getting on a megaphone, and pulling contest finalists out of the crowd to give them their badges. As ghetto as it is, this seems to be the best way to hand them out. I won't give them out before the con because I do not want them duplicated.
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Re: Otakon 2009 AMV Contest Rules

Postby Kyssifur » Fri May 08, 2009 12:19 pm

VicBond007 wrote:Bah. It's a pre-made list, and I don't have an easy way to change it now that things are live. Just put "United States" as your country, but under city, put in "Your City, Hungary". I still go through these by hand so I'll see that and know how to change it once it's in the database.


Roger that! ;)
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