PAYMVs!

[Kionon]

Not sure where the anime industry is on that, but last I checked they're unofficially pretty happy with the status quo on AMVs, at least in North America.

This is because of the way the American and Canadian industries were created: ADV, Funimation, AnimEigo... they were all fansubbers first. Rare was the company like Harmony Gold or Voyager Entertainment that started out with a business plan looking for licensing.

The Japanese industry is a lot more vocal of MADs and the ilk, but the government has been pretty much unwilling to act. This was especially true when Taro Aso was prime minister. He was swept into office in large part due to his direct campaigning to otaku, and he maintained a strong stance in support of MADs and Doujinshi (Aso was a huge fan of Rozen Maiden, desu desu desu desu). Despite promises by the DPJ to help the industry control fan works, Hatoyama and company do not really appear to be doing much else but maintaining the status quo.

[BasharOfTheAges]

I wouldn't pay a tax. I would switch to CC attribution-only music sources, donate heavily (my time and money) to groups or organizations staunchly opposed to this, and do anything I could to remove the people who voted such legislation in from office. If I could manage to somehow make their lives more difficult in the process, that would be a plus.

[downwithpants]

I was thinking like something to be payed to the SIAE (think of like the RIAA and MPAA together over there, but not quite the same since the laws are different), that would then split the incomes to the various artists depending on download counts and other estimates (obviously keeping a part of the income for themselves, but the huge bulk of it would be split).

That's like royalties with extra red tape.

It is currently possible to set up an arrangement directly with an artist or its licensing company to legally produce and distribute a derivative work, though it's not guaranteed they'll agree to it (example: the Michael Jackson film, This Is It). If we let this agreement be instaed decided by someone like the RIAA, it would take control away from the original artists, which would be unfair to them.

[godix]

Any way of collecting money other than a universal fee would fail. Few people would know there even is a fee, much less how to pay it and be willing to pay. Voluntary methods would fail just because of that. A universal fee would have to be something like Canada's blank media levy where everyone who buys a song pays the fee in the assumption they'll be remixing. Most people will never do anything like this, so it's rather unfair to ask everyone to pay for what only few do.

Plus there's complexity. You couldn't just go 'Slap five cents on every song sold and let people remix all they want'. Currently if you remix a song for professional release it costs a shitload of money in royalties. Which is actually reasonable, professional releases are actually earning a lot of money (for someone, be in record companies or whatever) so the original creators deserve some. But AMVs and other fan based remixes aren't making any money and wouldn't come close to paying that level of royalties. Which either means we would end up violating yet another law as no one here would pay thousands of dollars to use a song in their AMV, or the law like this would have to be crafted very carefully with the difference between professional and hobby in mind, which means the law starts getting complex. As the law gets more complex, less and less people will understand it and many will violate it just because they don't want to take the effort of understanding it.

[Bauzi]

Our resant most fanous popartist made a cover of our national hymne in rock style for a tv spot for our national education system. The original text got modified:
"you are a country of big sons and girls" (she added the "and girls part")

Now she gets sued because she added this part. That's right. Not because of the melody or something. Just because of the lyrics alone, because she altered them a bit.

"It's not about money. It's about the harmed personal rights of this media. It's a scandal to alter the hymne this way."
Yeah right... fuck you all greedy money sucking bastards. The best point of the story: The original copyright of the lyrics is dead. That means that it already ran out. They don't even ask nicely for some small amount of royalities. No they just decided to sue her big times.

Months ago there was a public action to change the national hymne to exactly those lines (and some more parts) for gender reasons. No one ever complained about the copyright of this media that time.

You know... people didn't riot after Hendrix' famous interpretation of the american national hymne at Woodstock. Everybody remembers it and most of the people think it's great.


Oh no... piss-off-meter goes through the roof again

[Knowname]

I don't mind as long as it comes with <.< OTHER >.> services ahahaha!

[AGF-Antoine]

I wouldn't mind paying a tax, if it meant that AMV's wouldn't be illegal anymore.
I mean, if it wouldn't be illegal anymore, it might even get some proper attention on television etc(Nation-wide Anime Fun TV or something).

But the thing with the music industry is that they overprice their CD's and thus get huge profits.
So they partly cause the pirating issue themselves. I mean like, 20 euro for a CD that has 2 or 3 good songs is insane.
Don't get me wrong, I buy the CDs that have the songs I like, but I still think its overpriced, especially around here in the Netherlands.

Other then that, I think its indeed a neat way to advertise the anime and the music.

All in all this does show that both industries, especially the music one, don't yet fully see the potential of AMV's.
This is mostly the producers, since I know quite some bands actually like AMV's.

In any case, I think there should indeed come a way to make AMV's legal, to accept this way of artistic expression and accept that it indeed has promotional purposes.


AGF-Antoine

[osnar]

I wouldn't mind paying a tax, if it meant that AMV's wouldn't be illegal anymore.
I mean, if it wouldn't be illegal anymore, it might even get some proper attention on television etc(Nation-wide Anime Fun TV or something).

this is the one of the benefit if amvs become legal

[Nira1992]

http://transformativeworks.org/

The OTC is an organization created to protect fan communities. They're more "protecting the communities" than "make it legal", since for the most part, it already is, according to the information they have on their site. Some things are borderline, but not all of it. In fact, what we all do with clips is perfectly legal, according to this:

"Fair use favors uses that (1) are noncommercial and not sold for a profit; (2) are transformative, adding new meaning and messages to the original; (3) are limited, not copying the entirety of the original; and (4) do not substitute for the original work. None of these factors is absolutely necessary for fair use, but they all help, and we believe that fanworks like those in the archive easily qualify as fair uses based on all these factors."

Quote taken from their FAQ under the legal tab.

For anyone who wants to look into the legal aspects of fan communities (vidding, which includes AMVs, fanfiction, etc.), this is a very good site.

[Knowname]

That's what I'm sayin! I'd do it if I could sell my shit... but you'd have to be deaf dumb and blind to buy my shit :/