Fox clamping down on DVDCoverArt.com (1 Viewer)

[John_Berger]

Why should Fox be "Mr. Nice Guy" and open their own custom cover site? They don't have any moral obligation to do so at all.

Um ... because they could most likely make a profit from it if it's implemented properly? Because it could give their graphic artists a chance to explore their creativity? Because it could very well make sense?

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I would agree with Damin that the idea of licensing from the studios can't work due to the sheer volume of elements being used and the thousands of sources they come from. It isn't going to happen.

We have different views on what a person can do with their copy of something.

True, but mine is based on the law, which specifically forbids what DVDCA is doing, no ifs, ands, or buts. There is nothing stopping you from creating your own covers for your own personal use, but the moment you start distributing them, freely or not, you are violating the law, and the owner of the work has every right to stop you from doing it.

 

[Ric Easton]

it's illegal and people are profiting from this illegal activity.

I seriously doubt that there are any profits involved at DVDCA. The cost for buying credits and DVD Depot's printing service are both extremely low.

Ric

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Ric, regardless, funds are being exchanged

 

[John_Berger]

There is nothing stopping you from creating your own covers for your own personal use, but the moment you start distributing them, freely or not, you are violating the law, and the owner of the work has every right to stop you from doing it.

There's the rub! That's exactly where the law shows its level of utter stupidity and where there is a grey area that the law is attempting to force into a black-and-white scenario. Square peg, round hole.

I can make my own cover art, explain to someone else how to make the exact same thing, who can tell someone else how to do the same thing, and so on and so on. So, now 100 people know how to do it and everyone will end up with the exact same item when all is said and done. As long as everyone does it on their own, that's okay -- fair use, right?

But as soon as I give the end result to a friend who would have ended up with the exact same thing based on my instrictions, it's illegal!

WHAT???

We'd have the exact same thing in the end, but if I save him the time by giving him a copy rather than the instructions, that's illegal! Not only is that illegal, it's downright stupid and shows where the law completely steps on the spine of legal owners of DVDs or any other media where this kind of asinine law can be implemented.

 

[GaryEA]

A couple of years ago, when Matt's site was free, I stumbled into an heated argument on his forum with Matt and Shaun when DVDCA started to use DV-Depot to print custom covers.

My argument was whether or not a retail site printing custom covers was going to cause problems for the hobby, or more to the point, how do you plan on getting away with it without getting in trouble with the studios? There's money involved now.

What I got back was the now-tired "Oh, we don't make a profit off of this" and "The money taken is in barely enough to cover costs". Over and over and over.

That. Doesn't. Matter.

DVDCA hooked up with a retail site and money began to exchange hands. Not for authorized goods, but for covers the studios never knew existed.

This is usually followed by the "what's the differenece between buying them DVDCA (insert talk about how great their printing service is), and going to Kinko's?" Again, doesn't matter. Legally and technically, both are wrong, so how are you going to justify it by making it sound like a charity case or a great alternative?

I never bought that argument, still don't, and Fox doesn't either. So why is Fox the bad guy?

I make custom covers. I don't upload them to DVDCA. I use them as something special for my library and if a friend likes them, sure - they can have it as well.

The highest of a profile my covers have gotten are ones that are available on a fan site. Again, no money involved. I had the opportunity to do it again with another site, but I declined because I thought it would be too chancy and would get all involved into trouble.

DVDCA did exactly what I was afraid would happen, and that was getting the lawyers looking at what was once a grass-roots, fun HOBBY that kept to itself, and not a BUSINESS. The fact that the HTF took Ric's covers down further presses the point that there (edit) there's the possibility of (end edit) more studios aware of this than we think, and sites are now going to become cautious.



-g

 

[Damin J Toell]

I can make my own cover art, explain to someone else how to make the exact same thing, who can tell someone else how to do the same thing, and so on and so on. So, now 100 people know how to do it and everyone will end up with the exact same item when all is said and done. As long as everyone does it on their own, that's okay -- fair use, right?

But as soon as I give the end result to a friend who would have ended up with the exact same thing based on my instrictions, it's illegal!

Of course, DVDCA isn't on the cusp of some sort of hair-splitting difference between you doing something yourself and you doing a favor for a single friend. Do you honestly not see the difference between you doing something for yourself and you doing something for tens of thousands of "friends"? Fox isn't sitting around outside your house waiting for you to meet up with a single friend so they can play "gotcha." They're trying to put a stop to something that involves tens of thousands of people engaging in the same enterprise, an enterprise that isn't in any manner of Fair Use grey area. There is no grey area here; a person doing something for themselves and 25,000 people getting together is about as black and white as it gets. It's the difference between singing a song to yourself and renting out Madison Square Garden and charging people admission to hear you sing a song. If it was Fair Use to give away copyrighted material to tens of thousands of "friends" at once, there would only be Fair Use, and copyrights would cease to exist.

DJ

 

[MarkHastings]

But as soon as I give the end result to a friend who would have ended up with the exact same thing based on my instrictions, it's illegal!

While I can understand your outrage, you aren't grasping the larger scope of things. The world isn't black and white. Sometimes you can get away with illegal activities and sometimes you can't.

DVDCA just happened to overstep that line by doing illegal actions on a LARGE/global scale.

 

[Shaun Guidolin]

So what you are saying then Mark, is that lines can be drawn where you want to draw them? And for others lines can be drawn in different places. To some driving 70 in a 55 isn't speading, just the same way you say 58 in a 50 isn't. My point is different people see things differently.

I'm a little confused where the exchange of money means anything in the arguement as long as money isn't being made on the product. The money from the credits attempts to cover the massive bandwidth cost of about 600GB a month in transfer, and has nothing to do with what is hosting. Call it adding to the gray area if you want, but facts are facts.

And I really hate the word illegal being thrown around. I don't believe DVDCA is doing anything illegal in being the middle man allowing users to share their creations with other people.

As stated previously, Fox and any other studio has every right to protect their trademarks, DVDCA's stance is that we think it would be better served to allow the covers to stay and in exchange provide some free advertising for them in many ways -- rather than just drop the hammer on the entire scene.

 

[Ric Easton]

The fact that the HTF took Ric's covers down

As far as I can see, the links to my custom covers are still near the top of the Software forum... For now. And before you get on anyone at HTF about this, remember, no money is being exchanged what-so-ever. No printing is being done. And there are no FOX related covers. When and if HTF decides to take down my covers, I will try to host them, or at least showcase them on my own website.

Ric

 

[Shaun Guidolin]

I don't really want to speak for them, but HTF took their coverart section down, and said to have taken off the Star Trek Covers - which hasn't happened yet - because Matt gave them a heads up on dvdca dealing with Fox.. They felt, rightly in my opionion, that it wasn't worth risking their good relationships with the studios.

 

[GaryEA]

I'm a little confused where the exchange of money means anything in the arguement as long as money isn't being made on the product.

A customer gives DVDCA X amount of dollars for credits, and may Y amount for the printing service. What do they get in the end? A cover, something you market as a product.

As long as money is exchanged and people get something at the end of the transaction, whether a download or a printed cover, money is being "made".

-g

 

[Ric Easton]

They took the Cover Art Section down. Nothing was ever said about the ST cover links. At least if it was, I missed it. Of course they will probably be on their way out soon, because of all the ruckus.

Ric

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Another example: There are local bands out there that play cover songs in bars and make money. This is considered an illegal act, but how crazy would it be for the music studios to go after every local cover band out there? But once that cover band starts playing cover songs on a large scale by producing CD's and gaining popularity by playing large stadiums, then that's where the studios start to attack them.

Actually, the venues where they play are required to log the songs played, and pay royalties.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

To expand on Jeff's note about cover tunes, there is a mechanism in place in the music industry to handle playing covers, which is perfectly legal if the appropriate performance (for live shows) or mechanical (for recorded works) fees are paid. The same goes for broadcasting music, there are performing royalties that the radio station pays. The songs are logged, and the payments go to the appropriate stakeholders. It is a system, but it is far from perfect.

Where this differs greatly from the current topic is two fold. First, unlike covers, the artwork is a direct copy of the original, but altered, not a reinterpretation. Second, cover songs are usually a single entity with a known author(s), so making payment to them can be managed. When artwork is borrowed from a wide range of sources, there is no practical way to track its use, so a blanket licensing agreement (the basis for the music industry) isn't possible.

If you want an idea about what it would cost to produce cover art using someone else's legally licenced source material, take a look at gettyimages.com's pricing. A cover with only ten original elements could set you back $1,000 - $2,500 in licensing fees. This does not include licensing for franchise trademarks, only the raw art elements.

As for being of a commercial nature, bartering is considered a form of commerce. If I am required to give you something (upload) to get something (download), we have a commercial transaction.

 

[FredK]

I don't believe DVDCA is doing anything illegal in being the middle man allowing users to share their creations with other people.

But they're not the "middle man" in the sense of a P2P site... they're physically hosting the files, not the location of files.

I was initially tentative to get into custom covers because I couldn't believe DVDCA had made it this far. That site just feels illegal. Now that thinkpaks have pushed me over the edge I don't know what I'll do.

This is a big hobby and I'm sure it'll survive elsewhere. I can make custom covers but I don't want to have to do my own work for every single one. It's definitely not worth the time.

 

[John_Berger]

Do you honestly not see the difference between you doing something for yourself and you doing something for tens of thousands of "friends"?

Not when the products being offered are NOT otherwise commercially available and it's done strictly from a fan base. This situation is obviously not as clear-cut as it could be by having a commercial printer possibly do the covers for you. That's obviously out-of-bounds. However, I see no problem with the core concept of what DVDCA is doing.

But when will it stop? How soon will it be before fan fiction sites are shut down because these aspiring writers are using copyrighted or trademarked characters? Forget that the fanfic community doesn't charge anything for their writing. They're using copyrighted/trademarked characters, so isn't it time that we demand that all fanfic sites be shut down? The next time you see a fanfic based on a commercial enterprise, I expect you to report it to the copyright owners! (Okay, I'll ease off the dramatics but you get the idea. )

 

[TheLongshot]

This is usually followed by the "what's the differenece between buying them DVDCA (insert talk about how great their printing service is), and going to Kinko's?"

The difference is that DVDCA is a much bigger target than individuals going to Kinko's, and affects a larger amount of people.

It is also the same answer I give to the guy about what's the difference between telling people how to do it, and actually delivering a finished product to everyone. It is much easier to just distribute a file rather than have the individuals do it themselves, and a great difference in numbers of people doing it. (Not to mention quality.)

Jason

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Not when the products being offered are NOT otherwise commercially available and it's done strictly from a fan base.

That is irrelevant. It is still based on elements which don't belong to the new cover artists, and is still being distributed without license.

 

[John_Berger]

It is much easier to just distribute a file rather than have the individuals do it themselves, and a great difference in numbers of people doing it.

Again, so what? The end result is still the same - people are using a cover art that was not included with the original packaging. The whole concept of DVD cover art is not and has never been to steal revenue from the studios. It's purely for aesthetic, personal purposes that does not increase or decrease the value of the DVD (as long as the original cover is retained) nor does it modify the DVD contents.

** sigh ** I hate threads like this. They always end up as the "Damn it, I'm not doing it for illegal purposes so get off my case" crowd vs. the "It doesn't matter - you're breaking the law {genuflects on the word "law"}" crowd, and we end up agreeing to disagree because no one listens to the agruments of anyone else.

:rolleyes