How are AMV's legal?

Rorschach · Post by **Rorschach** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:50 pm

koronoru wrote:The music industry is a lot bigger than the anime industry. You're expecting the big kid on the playground to defend you from a bullying teacher.

No, I'm not expecting him to "defend" me, just to shut up about where he got the goodies, since he won't get any more if he blabs. At the very least, our courts have made it so the RIAA can't twist any corporation's arm to make it talk. What we've got to watch out for are any tattle-tales who might go telling on us to the "bullying teacher."

Joykiller · Post by **Joykiller** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 4:06 pm

Ok, Here's my 1/50th of a dollar.

If ANY of you people actually gave 2 shits about the legal ramifications of the AMV's, and/or the sites that harbor them, then NONE of you would really have the balls to have you're names, email addresses, or even IP adresses associated with them/the site.

Are they legal?? that's CLEARLY debateable. Do I give a shit? Fuck no. As long as I have no moral issues with doing something (which in this case I don't) and don't have any kind of fear of being thrown in jail (which I don't) then why should *I* care if it's legal?

Isn't that what it's really all about? I could give 1/2 an eel fart about the legality of something. What I *DO* care about is being punished. I won't lose sleep over 'breaking the law'....What I *WILL* lose sleep over is sharing a 10 x 10 room with a burley 350 lb. child molester named 'Betsy'. See what I mean? There are bucketfuls of laws that people chronicly ignore, because there is no tangible evidence compelling enough to convince them that they stand a significant percentage of a chance of negative repracussion. Non missionary intercourse, MP3's, JAY WALKING! Hell there are still laws in the books in one of the states that makes it illegal to view a grounded moose from a flying apparatus.

Now, I'm not saying that it is good or bad to abide by, or break any laws that are on the books. What I AM saying is that ultimately you have the CHOICE. We may not have all of the facts on how or even if we are breaking the law, but I know I could count the number of instances where someone was imprisoned for making an AMV on my fingers, if I had none.

kaythankyouverymuchgoodbye!

Freeptop · Post by **Freeptop** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:02 pm

Oh, it's nice and warm and fuzzy and all to get a pat on the head from a corporate entity, but it doesn't change the fact that there exist higher authorities than the corporations. The RIAA is one that comes to mind. Corporations have to answer to these authorities. If RIAA dictates "NO DERIVATIVE WORKS FOR YOU", I am willing to bet that there will be few to zero corporations with any significant power standing on our side.

You may argue that these are hypothetical situations, and I would agree. You may argue that these are unlikely hypothetical situations; I would not agree on that. We usually argue that AMVs are a form of free advertising for music groups and anime producers/distributors. However, advertising is not always positive. Let's say I download an AMV, and decide that the footage being used looks like it came from an anime not worth watching, or that the song sucks. Now suppose I tell my friends about this, and they tell their friends, and so on. This process will result in losses for all parties that have copyrighted material in said AMV.

There's one big problem with your argument - the RIAA is _not_ a higher authority. In fact, they are not an authority at all. The RIAA is a lobbying group for the various recording companies, but if the recording company that holds the copyright on the song used chooses to not enforce said copyright, the RIAA can do jack about it. The RIAA only sues people on behalf of the legal copyright holders (and only if those copyright holders are members of the RIAA - not all record companies are).
When it comes to the video content, the licensors of the material have made it pretty clear that they will not bother AMVs so long as no money is made... and many of them actively support AMV contests. They know that AMVs provide them with free advertising of the sort you can't pay for.

Now, this isn't to say that if a company somehow discovers these things called AMVs, and discovers that some of them use music that they own the copyrights to, that they wouldn't call on the RIAA to send Cease & Desist letters out, but I just wanted to make sure it was clear that the RIAA _cannot_ act without the permission of the actual copyright holder.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:20 pm

I dont get why they would make them illegal?

To make AMVs, creators go out and (keyword)buy DVDs to make them.

They get none anime watchers interested in anime, and they get anime fans, out there door, too the store. So therefore, theyre good for sales. unlike mp3s, and downloaded full movies.

Why would they be made illegal?

Whats the point to it? I dont see one, do any of you??? Well

.... Is there? Of course not? If there is, i'd like to hear one.

shumira_chan · Post by **shumira_chan** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:08 pm

There's a simple way to make AMVs legal: distribute the
editing process, not the source material. An AMV would
simply be a program which asks for footage and a song
and would then proceed to rip/edit/encode the source.
A video-editing programming language is required, but
it's actually fairly straightforward: a video editor which saves
all steps in a plain text file. You dowload the file and "run"
it. I've been thinking of doing something along these lines,
but proof of concept is still a bit off.

Advantages? Imagine every single AMV ever made stored
on a single CD. Codec problems are a thing of the past,
simply change a single line in the program e.g.

target_codec=MPEG2

to:

target_codec=MPEG1

That's it. A popped frame at 01:13? Change another code
line and get rid of it. Remastering AMVs becomes easy,
backing them up, downloading, encoding... all trivial, all
legal, as no copyrighted material is copied (except for
the AMV program itself which _you_ own).

Drawbacks? It's greatest strength is also the greatest
weakness: you must have all the source material. Want
so see my Perfect Blue AMV? Sorry, you'll need your own
copy of the DVD and the CD (this is what makes it legal).
Not that awful if only one anime is used, but all but precludes
multiple-source AMVs. Also, anyone can remake an AMV,
maybe for the worse, maybe for the better. AMVs in the
end are simply programs, you could GPL it if you want
(downloading AMVs nowadays is like downloading
closed-source binary programs). You'll need a really
fast computer, though, as you'll be basically making the
AMV from scratch.

In a sense this would be a panacea for both anime
distributors and the record industry: they could literally
give away professionally-made AMVs knowing that if
you want to see them you'll have to buy the anime and the
music. Ironically, the entertainment industry would
_benefit_ from the existence of such a program, although
they would never support it as they don't care so much
about money as they do about control.

On the other hand I can see no legal way for them
to stop other people from making AMVs (or, more
appropriately, the program which contains the steps
which make an AMV). The only possible legal roadblock
I can see is the same one all other software faces, which
are patent infringements. Another problem would be if
personal copies of video/music are made illegal, either
through direct or indirect legislation (e.g. DMCA, Palladium).

I think it's a neat idea, even if not practical. At least for
myself, I would love to be able to easily remaster my own
AMVs, and to be able to easily save them (hell, I could
save them all on a single floppy). Instead of spending
days fixing old footage I'd just edit a few lines of code and
let the computer crank for a couple of hours rendering
the updated AMV.

Anyway, just my $0.02

azulmagia · Post by **azulmagia** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 7:16 pm

Freeptop wrote:[T]he RIAA is _not_ a higher authority. In fact, they are not an authority at all. The RIAA is a lobbying group for the various recording companies.....

Considering the way things run in the real world, lobbying groups might as well be the higher authorities...

The RIAA only sues people on behalf of the legal copyright holders (and only if those copyright holders are members of the RIAA - not all record companies are...

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 7:34 pm

Just as a quick note, not all copyright holders are members of the RIAA. Members of the RIAA are record companies, a good most of which deprive actual artists of copyright to their own music.

I might have said it before, but I've really got no sympathies for the RIAA or any of its' members.

/end musical underdog rant

fizzucker · Post by **fizzucker** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 8:06 pm

this is a really good topic...

while we are using copyrighted music AND clips from copyrighted shows, we are NOT making any profit...its like if we say the name coca-cola, we are not advertising it...just mentioning it, EVEN THO THE NAME IS COPYRIGHTED! as long as we dont have 2 getto the point where we have 2 buy AMVs, we will be fine.

Calim · Post by **Calim** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 9:38 pm

fizzucker wrote:this is a really good topic...

while we are using copyrighted music AND clips from copyrighted shows, we are NOT making any profit...its like if we say the name coca-cola, we are not advertising it...just mentioning it, EVEN THO THE NAME IS COPYRIGHTED! as long as we dont have 2 getto the point where we have 2 buy AMVs, we will be fine.

Not really they could sue us at any time.

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 9:42 pm

yeah, sue us, phade more specifically though. and perhaps AD and paizuir, and...

i think i'm goign to be fine. fi worse comes to worse, i'd sign up to do a pepsi commercial.