The Otakon 2009 thread

[outlawed]

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.

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.

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.

[Castor Troy]

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!

[VicBond007]

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"

[outlawed]

>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.

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

Play Girugamesh trailer imo !!

[VicBond007]

First post updated to reflect the official link.

[SilkAMV]

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).

[chui101]

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.

[RolltheStampede]

bump

[VicBond007]

bump for what? o.O

[chui101]

bump for what? o.O

For great justice.