Wind-up records? Copyright Infrigement?

[Knowname]

Because if a band has only ONE AMV to it (or better yet NONE, and YOU make the first one!!) and you make the BEST amv with their song than it will be 100% BEST AMV Material!!! Logic!! MAX ARIJONALITEE!!!111
/sarcasm

True I could point to at least 2 dozen GREAT Evanescence AMVs (not too mention some may serve as gateways to GREATER ideas/ amvs), not to mention I haven't seen more than I can count with a single hand since that fateful day about 4 years ago. You know what that is? A TON of wasted potential!! Not even Linkin Park should be subject to that insanity.

[CrackTheSky]

If nothing else, incidents like the Wind-Up Records one will just prune the .org of more bad videos.

Can we please not to be throwing out the baby with the bath here? How are those bands any different from the majority of other groups around here, in that 95% of AMVs made to their songs are crap but the other 5% are good and a few are spectacular?

That was half not serious.

[Knowname]

your glass is sooo Half empty!!

that was half serious

[awesomepower71]

Well,

There are a lot of sites nowadays sharing and uploading videos from various Copyrights owners such as MTV, Sony and their respective producers. I wonder how are they going to issue demands or warning to these 1000s of sites, asking them to remove the copyrighted materials.

Personally speaking, I think these intellectual property owners should be thankful to these users for uploading or sharing the videos, as these will lead to wider penetration of audience for their videos. At least the sites that intend to use their videos, should either asking them for permission or put up a link and credential back to the owners of the copyright videos.

As we can see from the videos found in Revver, Dailymotion, Youtube, Myspace and many more...most of the video files found there are from various sources and they have been widely shared. Example : Youtube. When you upload any video, they will ask you whether the video is originally belong to you. Heck, most people will say yes even though it's not yours..hehehehe..and the video is still show up to the worldwide viewers.

I think it's a bit foolish for these companies to request the sites to remove their videos. If they want their videos to be shown to wider viewers..they should be glad to allow these people to share the videos.

You can get lots of videos from Torrent sites. Well shared with no problem for now. What we want is to have good entertainment and enjoy the videos.

Cheers !
Vincent

[Dark Lord of Debate]

I just noticed this thread so allow me to shed a little light on the situation. I am a first year law student planning to pursue a career in copyright and technology law, and I've been studying copyright issues for a long time.

a-m-v.org really is not in as bad a situation as people generally tend to think, even as the site's owners apparently thought during the Windup incident. As a site that hosts videos, this site qualifies as an ISP under the DMCA, which makes it just like YT or any other video sharing site on the net. Assuming this site complies with the DMCA provisions on notice and takedown, where a copyright owner can send a takedown notice to the site's admins and demand an infringing video be taken down and the site complies, a-m-v.org should be immune from secondary liability under the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA. While the admins understandably did the safest thing in the Windup incident and thus managed to avoid a lawsuit altogether, if they had been sued they would have had a pretty strong case. However, it's not as certain that they would have prevailed as it is with YT since this site is unique in that it not only allows users to upload videos but encourages the uploading of a particular type of video and provides the ability to designate the song and anime used in a video. This could be viewed as a knowing encouragement of infringement which would deny the site safe harbor protection and make it vulnerable to secondary liability under the US v. Grokster decision.

Ultimately, there are fairly strong arguments on both sides, though I'm inclined to think a-m-v.org probably would have won since the presumption is for safe harbor protection. Of course that's in an ideal world where this site could actually afford the humongous legal fees to hire a competent copyright attorney to defend it. Though I'm willing to bet if it ever came to that a digital rights group like the Electronic Frontier Foundation would have been wiling to defend it for free (pro bono). In the end, they were certainly better off avoiding a lawsuit for the time being and just sacrificing some videos, though eventually the site may eventually be faced with a situation where it has to either shutdown entirely or stand up and defend its rights as a service provider under US copyright law. Give me three years to graduate from law school and pass the bar, and I'd be willing to defend it myself.

Now just another word of encouragement to everyone. AMVs are not as forgone a conclusion with regard to copyright as most people here seem to assume. There are actually strong arguments to be made for why AMVs can be considered fair use, which I have detailed in a post on my blog here. I myself have successfully defended a number of my AMVs against copyright claims on YT, including a number of videos swept up in the Warner Music dragnet, which is actually easy to get around since all you have to do is file a dispute and the video is instantly restored. Most recently I got one of my Final Fantasy 7 AMVs restored after receiving a DMCA takedown notice from Square Enix, for which I had to go through the whole process of filing a formal counter-notice and waiting three weeks for them to respond before YT restored the video. You can read the whole story here. So there is hope, and if you are willing to stand up and take some risks to defend your rights under fair use, you can successfully navigate the troubled waters of copyright law and come out on top. You just have to be willing to fight for it.

[Dark Lord of Debate]

Drat, the stupid word filter broke my second blog link, and of course you're not allowed to edit posts in this forum so I can't do anything to fix it. You can get to that post from the link to the other blog post.

[awesomepower71]

Hi Patrick,

It's nice to know that you have succeeded in getting the videos re-installed back by YT. It will take hell of a time but you being a student that pursue the Copyrights issues...what I can say is, well done.

I would like to see more users able to bring up this Copyrights issue and have the freedom to share the videos without getting into trouble. Yeah, I know that these companies that owned the videos have the rights to their properties BUT as long as the users or uploaders use their videos for Non-Profit means...it should be not a big problem for them. The more people see the videos, I think it will do them good than bad.

As I am currently operating a site that lists videos for entertaining purposes, and not for gaining any profits...I think it's going to be ok. Currently listing mainly YT's videos, but I intend to extend to other videos from various sites. This include music videos and other videos related goodies.

As long as you put a Disclaimer and You put a notice that, in case of any copyrights or infringement issues, they can notify you and you will be happy to remove them. All properties and copyrights will be taken up with their respective owners accordingly..

Thanks for the uplifting information and wish you the best !

Cheers !
Vince

[Dark Lord of Debate]

Thanks Vince. As a side note though, putting up a disclaimer does absolutely nothing to alleviate liability for truly infringing material. I'm always rather bemused by the people on YT who think putting a little statement in the video description that "this videos is not intended as copyright infringement and all rights belong to their respective owners" will do them any good if they're accused of copyright infringement. At that point the only thing that matters is whether the material is or is not infringing. A disclaimer can't make something that is infringing not infringing. And if something is indeed fair use, then it's not infringing, and you don't need a disclaimer in the first place.

If you are a website owner though, you generally do want to have a statement that the site follows the notice and takedown procedures in the DMCA and and list a way to contact you about copyright concerns. That I believe is required for any hosting type service in order to take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor provision.

[Dark Lord of Debate]

If anyone is interested in learning more about the subject of whether anime music videos could constitute fair use, I found a detailed law journal article about fanvids in general and fair use which comes to essentially the same conclusion I did, namely that the video source would most likely be fair use while the audio would probably not be, though it is possible. The author's arguments for why fanvids SHOULD be considered fair use at the end are particularly interesting, especially in terms of market failure, social utility, and the purpose and intent of copyright law.

[awesomepower71]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your advice. Yeah, I put a Disclaimer on my website and since it is mainly using the YT's API and all the contents will still channel back to YT. I think it is not an infringement of any sort. Anyway, the site is mainly concentrating in providing listeners and users the access to YT's music videos collection which listed all the songs by the singers/artists themselves.

Cheers !
Vince