Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
I don´t think it´s pointless. I simply can´t understand why someone should make a profit of our work. For 2 reasons it seems.
1. They are already free and im fine with that since im spamming poor Bis with fmvs.
2. Atleast I have spent many hours creating those fmvs for entertaining purpose. So why again should someone just steal my hard work while I get nothing except the knowledge that ppls maybe are watching my movies.
I know I have said this before but im still totally against that.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
kopernical wrote:
I know there's no way to prevent him from doing it, but that doesn't mean we are obliged to give him permission.
I am trying to argue that you lose nothing by granting permission. Money? You weren't making any to begin with. Control? An illusion at best. Granting permission would get you, *at the very least*, greater exposure. Royalties? Not likely. But what do you gain by refusing permission? Nothing.
I am trying to argue that you lose nothing by granting permission.
I'm more opposed to someone else -making- money. I suppose it'd be like taking a freeware game, which was made by one person working away at a computer for hours and hours, and then selling it to loads of people for profit.
Even though it's free, it's not yours to sell, and I'm sure the programmer would be offended seeing his free game making someone ELSE money.
I believe no money whatsoever should be involved anywhere. If these videos were being put on CDs for FREE, then I have no objection. In fact, I encourage it, as long as credit is given.
If we truly adhered to this creed, then this site would not exist. Emulation is a *prime* example of users going against a creator's wishes.
Emulation is legal when it is created through "clean room" reverse engineering. Thus, anyone may use (or improve) existing emulation techniques, provided that all the work was entirely their own. That's a legal precident that supercedes the author's desires. You might argue that it's an arbitrary law, but so are all laws. Still, in this society, it means that laws (supposedly set into existance to preserve and continue to cultivate society) are more powerful than individual's rights. Heck, without laws there would BE no "rights" that could be licensed or sold. These rights are "inherent" only because there are laws dictating what those rights are, and where those rights begin and end.
As such, I have no problem seeing the authors wishes violated when a law says so; if the author disagrees with the law, then he/she must change the law to extend his/her rights.
As for this site in particular:
The FMVs are legal, as they are merely a listing of button presses with respect to time. If you took the time, you could make an FMV by hand. A FMV of SMB1 may be played on SMB2, or on Tony's Neat-o Demo 2000. Even if it only plays SMB1 "perfectly" it's still a generalized file format that can be used by (and for) other games.
The more I think about it, AVIs are almost certainly illegal. They use copyrighted audio and video. The technique of playing is legal, but the rom usage in their production is not. This would be similar to anime fansubs, which illegally use copyrighted video and audio with a translated script. The result, in the modern era, is videos which are distributed en masse, illegally, and usually comply only grudgingly with copyright holder demands.
Anime fansubs exist, of course, for one very simple reason: Lack of awareness from the Japanese industry. Almost no one reports anime fansubs to Japanese companies, and the companies don't hire people to just sit on the net and look for specific copyright violations. American companies receive more reports than the Japanese companies (for obvious reasons relating to the language gap) and so they'll act more often in defence of their legal rights. Fans re-interpret this unawareness as "tolerance" or sometimes even "preference", given the apparant prevasiveness of the videos. The ignorance found in the Japanese industry, however, does not legalize the videos. Thus, if Nintendo sent an e-mail to Bisqwit today, he'd have to comply by removing the AVIs, or else face a potential court battle.
So, the AVIs on this site would be removed, but this site would continue to exist without issue.
Joined: 4/11/2004
Posts: 155
Location: Fairfax, VA, USA
Cherry wrote:
I suppose it'd be like taking a freeware game, which was made by one person working away at a computer for hours and hours, and then selling it to loads of people for profit.
A person selling a freeware game for profit, without telling the customer, is ripping the customer off. A person paying a few bucks for a collection of free works is paying for the convenience, not for the content. If a person pays money for a freeware game under the assumption that the game costs money, they'll most justifiably be pissed off. If a person pays money for a freeware game, knowing full well that it's freeware, then they have a good reason.
If you guys think grassmunk is ripping his customers off, then say so. I think he'd only be ripping them off if he didn't make it clear that the content he's selling could be downloaded for free elsewhere. If you think he's ripping *you* off, I have at least tried to argue why he isn't.
If you think he's ripping *you* off, I have at least tried to argue why he isn't.
It may or may not be ripping customers OR the creator off; that's really a secondary concern. Businesses rip off customers all the time, and customers are largely unaware of it, or else feel rich enough that the extra money they pay doesn't contribute a significant loss to their own lifestyle.
What concerns me most is that it would be unauthorized reproduction and distribution, two rights clearly granted by copyright laws. The unauthorized distribution could also impact sales, if Bisqwit/etc ever decided to sell the product on their own terms.
Granting permission would get you, *at the very least*, greater exposure.
If he's willing to sell these CD's without our permission then what makes you think that he'd be willing to credit the people who actually did the work? Why is he suddenly going to be respectful of our wishes?
Edit: I'm not necessarily talking about grassmunk here, more in a theoretical sense.
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
As such, none of you have any rights concerning your FMVs. It would be folly to argue in court that an FMV represents performance art that has been fixed in a tangible form of expression, as the FMVs are clearly procedural documents, by their very format. Note that this is not true for traditional speed runs, like those found at Twin Galaxies.
fuwafuwa wrote:
The more I think about it, AVIs are almost certainly illegal
Almost definitely not. The right of public performance allows the copyright holder and only the copyright holder to control the public performance of his copyrighted work, however, how this applies to software has never been fully explored in case law. Certainly video games themselves are copyrighted, as is all software, but there is absolutely no precedent that indicates whether or not recordings of the use of software fall within the scope of copyright law.
Furthermore, it is very likely that the way Bisqwit uses copyrighted ROMs falls under the fair use statute. When considering fair use, there are four factors that are considered:
- The purpose and character of the use.
- The nature of the copyrighted work.
- The amount of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work.
- The effect of use on the market for the work.
1) Purpose - Though never stated explicitly, one goal of Bisqwit's site is clearly education (through entertainment). Even more important, though, is that the videos are not used for profit or anything else of a commercial nature. In court, this factor would probably weigh strongly towards fair use.
2) Nature - The nature of the playing of video games is not one that has been well established in court. If anything, I think it likely a court would consider a Nintendo Entertainment System to be akin to an electronic keyboard, and a ROM to be akin to a MIDI pack that alters the sounds of the keyboard. Though the sounds in the MIDI pack themselves are copyrighted and cannot be copied and sold in another MIDI pack for use in another keyboard, neither can the creator of the keyboard or the MIDI pack prevent an artist from selling a recording of his playing. Keep in mind I'm really stretching here, again, there exist no precedents, but it is likely that in court, this factor would weigh towards fair use.
3) Amount - This is a sticky one. Most of the videos don't use significantly more copyrighted material than a random 5-10 seconds of video would. However, it is also clear that the videos, by their very nature, are attempting to show some quality of a game in its entirety. This is damning and in court, this factor would likely weigh against fair use.
4) Market effects - Even in the 80's and early 90's it would be very hard to show that videos such as those on Bisqwit's site could have a detrimental effect on the market for video games and consoles. The overwhelming response to the videos is something to the tune of, "Holy crap, that is AWESOME! I've got to try it for myself." In the 80's and early 90's this would lead to the purchase of games and consoles, so in court it could undoubtedly be succesfully argued that Bisqwit's videos help rather than hinder the market. However, it's not the 80's or early 90's! It's 2004 and the primary market for NES games and consoles is nonexistent. There is no way by any stretch of the imagination that the videos could be shown to have any effect at all on the primary market for NES games and consoles. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely a correlation could be shown to exist between the videos and the market for GameCubes. In court, this factor would weigh overwhelmingly towards fair use.
To conclude, three of four factors weigh towards fair use, two of them quite strongly, so it is exceedingly likely that a court would rule Bisqwit's use of the videos as fair use.
regardless of Grassmunk's intentions and the exposure benefits of selling the runs, the author should have the final say. It is already very easy to rip off someone else's time attack. For example, I could take a smb fmv, create an avi out of it, claim it as my run, and there would be no way to prove otherwise. I could simply say that I did a run myself that ended up looking exactly like the original. If the author is denied something so basic as refusing to have a price tag put on their work, then why bother publishing at all?
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
I agree with Deviance here. Well, if someone steals my work in any way I don´t see any reason Why I should continue to do time attacks. Eventually they will just be stolen.
I'm still totally against this whole thing. Let's say some new movie gets released, and it starts playing in the movie theater. Then I go to the movie theater to watch the movie, and I sneak a movie camera in and record the whole movie. Then I open up my own movie theater and I play the movie in it, and I charge ten times as much as the other movie theater. I also advertise it much better, and much more people come to my movie theater than the other movie theater. Then I become a millionaire, while the person who worked so hard to make the movie gets almost nothing. Does that sound fair to you people?
OK, so I think this has been mentioned before, and the point of it was that the distribution mechanism was for FREE. Free versus paying money is the big issue here, and I think that's why capitalism is the worst currently existing society in the world today.
If you compare the so-called "first world" countries including but not limited to England, Canada, United States, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Netherlands... to most of the African nations (called "third world"), there are EXTREMELY different qualifications for what's important.
1st- money and the "ownership" of inanimate objects
3rd-ability to provide for one's family and well-being.
The point here is that as a request, it was denied by several makers, and the site owner. This means that there are two specific areas these views can be interpreted as:
(1) Strict construction of the rulings by said users as to the consent for distribution. Anything said must be adhered to. That is, if they answered "NO, you may not include any of my works on your media" you are limited by the answers of the respondents.
(2) A looser construction of the means these objections give to the wanton distributor are taken as a way to take all exclusive to the list.
All in all, I think this is another one of those arguments that you'll never win until the world is destroyed many-times-over and all our "wonderful" technology is destroyed.
Edit: group the countries in Europe above, as the E.U. Then you have US, CAN, EU, NZ, AUS, JP .. many of the primary region holders for the DVD
Woah WOah woah, you guy's are going WAY to far on this one.
Here's the straight shit.
1) You guy's dont own the work Bisqwit is showing
2) Speedrunners dont own the work they're giving to Bisqwit.
So that cut's them BOTH out of the decision making process.
I'l keep going
3) Games are licensed for use, in specific countries. Most of the ones we use are region 1 (North america) or otherwise.
4) Nobody, NOBODY, is allowed to reproduce those under any circumstances (this includes speedrunners, re-recording is in it's own right illegal)
As far as international rights, see #3. They are on under licence for specific countries. Going outside of a country to sell it is still illegal.
NOW THE REALITY.
These games were made years ago. The copyrights (and other laws) are barely enforced anymore. This is because of one thing. What we are doing is harmless. Making video's only encourages others to play them. Wether they're bought or used on rom's, the dev's no longer care because they know they cant make money anyway. They're contracts for producing Cartriges are long gone.
This however does not make it legal. If WE started using it for ANY type of thing that made ANYONE money, they WOULD enforce the laws, and shut sites like Bisqwit down, in a heartbeat.
please please please, NO NOT TRY TO SELL THESE. No, the speedrunners and Bisqwit cannot stop you, but Namco, Nintendo, and others WILL. and they will stop ALL our fun with the media.
Wow... i never expected to start such a heated debate. Honestly i wasnt going to try to make thousands of dollars, I just thought people would want to see these amazing videos. For the most part they blow my mind and when i show them to friends at work they go crazy. I'm slightly offended by some comments here. If i wanted to sell them on ebay without any consent or care for your hard work i would've just made the videos and posted them on ebay. Then id wait untill someone here noticed and emailed ebay to complain then take them down. I wouldnt have emailed Bisqwit or posted on these forums. I prolly would have just downloaded the AVI's from a torrent site like supernova, convert and burn. Also I had no intentions of 'Duping' consumers. I'd prolly put a link or an As seen on Bisqwits with a link to this site. You'd be surprised with the ammount of people who dont want to mess with bittorrents cause they have to download and install more programs, im serious.
I didnt mean to offend anyone at all. And my intentions were honest. I'm obviously not going to go ahead untill i get written/emailed consent from people who want their videos in a VCD/DVD and send me the FMVs personally. Bisqwit already stated that he forbids anyone to download, convert then sell the video on his site and i respect that. He put all his hardwork into making these videos. As did most of you working on these time attacks. So I'm not going to be an ass about this.
I just want to know what made people so outraged? If i didnt use the video and made my own using the FMVs would people be as pissed? What if bisqwit had banner ads? Is it because i was charging too much? Cause i was charging at all? If i sell them at a flea market is that ok? ( They obviously dont have a net connection at that time). I would just like to know where the line in the sand is drawn about permissions. IANAL so please forgive me.
One last note, i find these TimeAttacks so utterly amazing and i just wanted to share it with other people.
[EDIT]: Just read sean.brockest post and totally agree with him. Ill make some DVDs/VCDs for friends/familly but otherwise i aint gonna sell em. Period. Dont want this stuff to get taken down over something like this.
Forgive the meanness... it's all honest philosophical debate in my eyes. The point here is that many people get bitched at because of preconceived notions that spread hatred and disgust in the movies upon learning they're not what "others would consoder legitimate playing of the games".
I guess when you're reamed from both ended for a while, you get to be defensive in nature for anything, even like your comment. :)
Oh yea, also, I think it was suggested to be posted here so you could get to know us all a little bit better, and how we see the current system of gaming :) Welcome to the board
Well thank you. If i get around to making a DVD or VCD would anyone want to host a BitTorrent of the ISOs? ( I just want to make menus etc, maybe a trailer or two and throw some videos on there ). Is that ok with the community/Bisqwit/Time Attack makers??
You can't really do a not-for-profit service like burning these onto VCD/DVD and sending them out on a service like eBay. Auction != not-for-profit.
I don't think anyone is opposed to someone setting up such a service, where the VCDs/DVDs are made and shipped at-cost, IE no auctions and no profit. It'd just be an alternative way of distribution. Leave eBay out of it.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster.
I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
I don't think it's a good idea to distribute the videos on DVDs even if it's for free. I'm not sure why, but if something bad happens don't say I didn't warn you.
You are under arrest.
