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The ACTA isn't a concern for p2p software use exclusively. Copy-right protected material for general non-profit use, will be considered illegal. As you can see, the issue already contested. Although the law currently to date has not given a verdict as to the legality of the issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hla7KMY8OFA , http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60255

The ACTA isn't a concern for p2p software use exclusively. Copy-right protected material for the general use of non-profit will be considered illegal. As you can see, the issue already contested. Although the law currently to date has given a verdict as to the legality of the issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hla7KMY8OFA , http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60255

I don't think you should get flamed for this. I agree with you that this particular case in the article (soundtrack for a slideshow) is a poor example of fair use at best.

There are four considerations for fair use in US copyright law:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The case holds up well on points (1) and (4), it is not for profit and is for a very limited audience. On (2) and (3), it's used without modification and is not changed enough to be transformative (even if the audio quality was degraded), so it completely fails these points.

However, There are plenty of other cases where most if not all aspects of fair use are clearly present, but the content was removed anyway. In one case, WMG ordered the takedown of a video of a girl singing 'Winter Wonderland'. Also, numerous AMVs (Anime Music Videos) have been taken down that provide parody of and artistic commentary on the original subject materials. It is this blanket, cluster-bomb approach that is the problem. It's completely unfair (and illegal) for content holders to tread on our fair use rights, even if it is in the name of the supposedly noble cause of fighting piracy.

when you say participate, you mean steal copyrighted content right?
If not, what is the problem?

rifftrax can't be watched if DRM exists, neither can AMV's or mashup projects like fsFs

99% of the material on the internet is infringing. The only reason copyright hasn't been used to shut down the ENTIRE world wide web is lax enforcement.
your typical myspace page carries hundreds of infringing images, infringing quotes, infringing music, etc. etc.

Of course, this is the reason practically everything that becomes popular gets shut down. People notice "their" material on the site, whether it be images, videos, print quotes, whatever, and kill it dead "as an example".

I refer you to this writeup on the reason why copyright is out of control, and in direct opposition to modern cultural norms.

To sum up, please be more vigilant about all the material around you which is copyrighted, and avoid swallowing propaganda whole.

To the GP and anyone else who suggests that watermarking is unacceptable because it also reduces functionality, I've got a question. How, exactly, does a watermark with no other DRM prevent you from doing whatever you want with what you buy?

Assuming the watermark is continuous throughout playback, it's a problem for fan vidders and possibly AMV'ers.

Vidding and AMV'ing involves using footage from a favorite live-action TV show/movie (vidding) or animated TV show/movie (AMV'ing) to create a mashup music video. I don't know that much about AMVs-- see Wikipedia-- but in ye old days of vidding, which dates back to the 70s, they used to do it by a method involving two VCRs and a stopwatch. Three VCRs, if you wanted to do fades.

(I believe that these mashups constitute fair use, but IANAL and won't rehearse my arguments here unless someone asks.)

Vidders tend to prefer really clean, high-quality source video, and will buy DVDs when available, but otherwise will resort to recording off of their TVs. They also come from a tradition of fan mentorship that used to inculcate extreme lawsuit-shyness in new vidders. As a result, I predict that these watermarks will have a chilling effect even if the *AAs don't take full advantage. As a fan of fan vids, I find this sad.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/

not that hard, now was it :P

However, this brings up my question. Fansubs (of unlicensed anime), and AMVs have generaly been considered O.K. by the Japanese companies that hold the rights to these shows. Will we see places that direct link to these types of things start to dissapear (AMV.org hosts almost every AMV that is listed on it, there are a number of fansub groups that do alow for direct download instead of torrents)?

If companies were serious about copyright, websites like AnimeMusicVideos.org would have been dead years ago. Most companies don't seem to give a crap, and even fewer care if someone takes a short clip of their content. See the thousands upon thousands of Family Guy clips on YouTube, for example.

Meanwhile, hosted in Sweden or not, Anime Music Videos march on! http://www.animemusicvideos.org/home/home.php

Seriously, could this become a new art movement? Unauthorized, pirated "remixes" of movies, with dull parts edited out, added dialog to clear up confusion/contradictions in plot, better effects, new scenes without the original characters, or in the extremely ambitious case, new scenes with stunts of the characters?

Oh, you mean anime music videos ?

(Or aunauthorized appearances of bribable original actors ;-)

Unlikely, since the producer would then sue the actor for "helping with copyright infringement" or something equally inane.

http://www.archive.org/ has plenty of music and video to fill your hard disk with.

One might argue that http://www.animemusicvideos.org/ is piracy, but they haven't been shut down by the RIAA yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_of_the_Underdogs may or may not be down currently, but only over a domain name problem. http://www.the-underdogs.info/ seems to work at the moment.

http://digihosters.com/~cdosorg/ more.

...though the requisite agencies are perfectly capable of shutting down abandonware sites regarding piracy.

http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ Rockstar makes available older games for free.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148013&did=1 101 best free games.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/ is real enough for me, though it does borrow heavily from other sources. http://www.amvhell.com/ is especially good. What we need are laws that will make it easier for this sort of thing. Also see: http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_movies
Seems to me that there are enough "little men" with (almost) all the incentive they need.

>>Yes, there is a meriad uses to the computer and data, but not a meriad uses to the copyrighted materials

then show me the DRM system which allows me to sample and remix a movie in the codec I choose please.
I refer you to this music video for reference. It does not diminish the value of the work to the author, does not use more than 30 contiguous seconds of video at a time, which is the current guideline for fair use at my university, and finally incorporates professional level effects which were not present in the original film, but current DRM infringes upon this person's use.

My friend makes videos like this, and audio too. Another one likes to take audibooks and convert them to a very obscure file format made specifically for audiobooks which allows such features as chaptering and compression tweaked for spoken word.

A computer can digitize anything, and once it's data it does have a mariad of uses, the 'limits' on which are being expanded at all times.

Anime makers seem to not feel the need to complain like the the MPAA and RIAA despite:
http://animelyrics.com/
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/
http://www.jameswong.com/ykproject/core.html

Then there's the Laziest Men on Mars, which quickly turns up http://kilna.com/ and http://www.kilna.com/D88BE0D2/music
free downloadable music.

And there's more like that out there.

What do we need MPAA and RIAA and their supporters for again?

You're assuming we care about the "intended" effect, and you are making several additial unwarrented assumptions, not that I am neccesarily not making unwarrented assumptions myself. For blurring, compare frame 1 to frame 3 and if there is a similarity not in frame 2, copy the similarity to frame 2 regardless of the "intended" effect. If we cared about the intentions of the originators, we wouldn't be distributing this thing to begin with. Visit http://www.animemusicvideos.org/ for more information about not caring about the intentions of the originators and how far one can get with that without facing prosecution.

Here you go: :-)

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_vi deoinfo.php?v=49405

See also:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_vi deoinfo.php?v=50219

Unfortunately, the site requires registration, and won't let you download anything for two weeks (or so it was when I registered). I'm sorry I don't have direct links. Still, it's a good site, they have tons of great amv's. Anyway, in two weeks, your dream can come true. :-)

Here you go: :-)

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_vi deoinfo.php?v=49405

See also:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_vi deoinfo.php?v=50219

Unfortunately, the site requires registration, and won't let you download anything for two weeks (or so it was when I registered). I'm sorry I don't have direct links. Still, it's a good site, they have tons of great amv's. Anyway, in two weeks, your dream can come true. :-)

The question isn't if MPEG4 has those features - it doesn't. MPEG4 (DivX/XviD/others) is a compression format for video, not a wrapper (avi/ogm)

which was based on an even nicer quicktime ad available here. there are also more movies available there.
also look for an anime music video at animemusicvideos for a movie called "AMV Hell". They have a nice clip in that short movie using the ellenfeiss commercial.

... Lucas to get him to stop making Star Wars films?

Or at least to let someone else write the dialogue. Lucas used to know that he couldn't write dialogue and let someone else do it.

I'm surprised this didn't happen with anime first. After all, then you're not stuck with particular actors. You can get one-off voice actors. And you have the creative fanbase with the motivation to do this sort of thing. After all, they do fan art and fansubs and AMVs.

Okay, someone's probably done it, but it was probably just hentai or somthing along those lines.

[Europe's Authors' Rights include]...a 'moral right' to control what is done with the work.A writer or her heirs can prevent someone from writing a sequel to her novel. A producer cannot impose cuts in a movie against the director's will (hence only 'director's cut versions of European directors are shown.
Nice point you bring up. Since I was/am fantasizing about possible hacks on copyright law, I hope you don't mind indulging me in a little bit of socratic teaching.

Who is to say where one person's creativity begins and another's ends? For example, consider anime music videos, the result of some bored anime fan grabbing a "random" piece of music and mating it to cuts from whatever anime(s) she/he is fond of. Is this an act of artisic creation? If it is, what rights do the authors who created the original IP that this derives from have? Are their rights so much "stronger" than that of the music video creator that the final result cannot be granted copyright? If the final result is copyrightable, do the original authors have any say in what can or cannot be done with the derivative? What considerations should be included in determining the answers to the above questions (intent & profit being most common)? How do other, related forms of IP (trademarks) potentially change this?

To get back on topic, what you say (and what I can find on Google) about Author's Rights implies a strong mating of copyright and trademarks... which is fine by me (considering that I argue that all IP-- copyright, patents and trademarks-- should both evaporate when the author dies and not be tranferable).

OK Since I'm currently in Japan, currently speak Japanese, and am an insane anime fan (please don't slashdot my homepage) I can sort of speak on this subject with at least some sense that I know what I'm talking about.

[shameless plug] He's also one helluva AMV creator. Dig through animemusicvideos.org for ErMaC videos.[/shameless plug]

I will agree that learning Japanese will benefit your enjoyment and understanding of Japanese, especially of Japanese culture. You can tell who these people are when they laugh at the scene in TenchiMuyo OVA ep1 where Aeka sneezes right after Ryoko talks (those who've seen it know what I'm talking about). Cultural nuances like that will fall on deaf... eyes, unless you provide liner notes or something. Also there are plenty of things in Japanese which just do not translate. There is no good way to translate the fact that certain people in Scyed talk in Keigo all the time. There is no good way to translate the pun in Puni Puni Poemi involving 80 gram breasts (and it's a brilliant pun).

I invite you to try, now that you've made us all curious, ErMaC. =)

Oddly enough, I picked up on there being something about Aeka's sneeze in episode 2 and made reference to it in my [shameful plug] Tenchi Muyo Thumbnail Theater. [/shameful plug] "Aeka: *sneeze* Are my ears burning, or is it just hot in here?" I guess if you watch enough anime and are looking for cultural stuff, you'll pick up a few things.

but only because it is just so wrong... For more examples look here and here

but only because it is just so wrong... For more examples look here and here