VidAngel Keeps Streaming Videos, Defying Movie Studios and a US Judge (deseretnews.com) 163
The Deseret News reports that Hollywood studios "aren't happy with VidAngel, saying in a statement Wednesday that the Utah-based streaming service 'continues to illegally stream our content without a license and is expanding its infringement by adding new titles' despite a judge's recent injunction." Or, as VidAngel explains on their blog, "We say we're legal. Disney says we're pirates." Long-time Slashdot reader goombah99 writes:
VidAngel...will edit any major movie of objectionable content exactly as you request (and no more than you request), then stream it to you for $1. Such bowdlerizing and DVD streaming services are expressly written into section 110 of Title 17, the copyright act (paragraph 11 added in the 2005 Family Viewing act). Therefore both aspects that the studios are suing over, the streaming of a DVD and the editing of it by a third party, is plainly legal... There's a petition to save this act from encroachment [signed by more than 30,000 families].
In just five days in October, VidAngel raised $10.1 million in a "mini-IPO" -- reportedly the fastest one ever -- to fund their ongoing fight against the movie studios. VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon says "We'll take this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. We're happy to pay more. We're happy to rent more. We're happy to pay the prices the studios want us to pay. Just give us filtering."
In just five days in October, VidAngel raised $10.1 million in a "mini-IPO" -- reportedly the fastest one ever -- to fund their ongoing fight against the movie studios. VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon says "We'll take this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. We're happy to pay more. We're happy to rent more. We're happy to pay the prices the studios want us to pay. Just give us filtering."
Videos to edit and stream to me please (Score:4, Funny)
Dear VidAngel,
I have the following video I would like you to edit, then stream to me. Could you please cut off the dialog parts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Well, I know what Postman and Waterworld would look like if they remove all the cringeworthy scenes.
Ok, I don't really know what it would look like, but I do know that watching both movies back to back wouldn't take more than a minute.
More info needed (Score:3, Informative)
Had to research:
VidAngel buys a bunch of DVDs.
VidAngel sells you the DVD stream for 20 bucks (this can't be legal but ok).
You then watch the stream and sell it back to VidStream for 19 bucks (or less, based on a ticking clock)
Again, I don't see how buying one physical disk allows you to stream that movie to an infinite amount of people, but here we are. They have no shot of winning in court.
Re:More info needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, I don't see how buying one physical disk allows you to stream that movie to an infinite amount of people,
They don't. It's an attempt to streamline the (older) Netflix model. They buy multiple DVDs, and send them out. When you are done, you send them back.
Except, they realize a lot of people (basically, everyone) don't want the physical DVD, so they also offer the option to stream the video for you, and keep the physical copy in a 'vault' until you want it. As an added service, they also ship you an EDL file of your choosing, which the user can apply at their home in their personal player (I believe they do this automatically if desired as well, but it's a standard feature: mplayer supports EDL, for example).
So basically all the parts of their plan, selling DVDs, re-buying, ripping for personal use, personally using an EDL, etc are all legal. No one has ever combined them together, though.
From a moral standpoint, I don't think people should be forced to watch things they don't want. From a practical standpoint, the movie studios are more than happy to offer censored movies to airlines. It's not about 'censorship', it's about money.
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Except, they realize a lot of people (basically, everyone) don't want the physical DVD, so they also offer the option to stream the video for you
This part may be in legal grey area as it's format shifting (not sure what US law had to say about that but it's certainly been discussed a lot), especially if they never physically ship the DVD to the renter/buyer where plaintiff may argue it's effectively just a streaming service, and that vidangel doesn't have the license to stream the content - even if it's to just one customer per physically available DVD at the same time.
Re:More info needed (Score:4, Interesting)
MP3.com tried this with audio CDs. Aerio also tried it, in a slightly different way. They will lose this in court. MP3.com had a ton of lawyers go over their plan and said it was legal. When they lost everything in court, MP3.com ended up suing the law firm that told them it would hold up in court. I never heard the outcome of that lawsuit. These things that are sort of legal for you to do, they don't hold up when a third party tries to make a business out of them. Not going to work.
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The difference is that Aero was format shifting licenced broadcast TV that viewers never "owned".
When you own a DVD you have the right to format shift it, which is not "distribution" because it is for your own use.
Here there are actual DVDs "sold" by studios, and the stream count is limited to # of legit DVDs.
This isn't different than if a VHS rental store in the 80s had a VCR/TV in their store monitored by a CCTV that piped it to your house.
The fact modern technology allows to do this che
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ripping for personal use
As much as I hate it, ripping for personal use is illegal under the DMCA (anti-circumvention). Ripping for the content editing I think is explicitly separately allowed, but I'm not sure if that's what makes it legal for them. They may be playing the physical disc with an EDL - I don't actually know.
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As much as I hate it, ripping for personal use is illegal under the DMCA (anti-circumvention). Ripping for the content editing I think is explicitly separately allowed, but I'm not sure if that's what makes it legal for them. They may be playing the physical disc with an EDL - I don't actually know.
As much as I hate to say it, you are correct [arstechnica.com] (at least as of October of 2015). The legal wrangling came to the conclusion that because CDs were never encrypted, consumers can format-shift. But DVDs and Bly rays? Not so much. However, it seems to me that given the vast number of people that do this "under the radar" it can't be long before an "exemption" is granted to bring this in line with Fair Use.
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Yes. I have 200+ DVD and Blu-Ray movies and I knowingly circumvented and format shifted to network storage. The whole idea of anti-circumvention as a way of preventing fair use is a terribly exploited loophole for studios.
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Yes. I have 200+ DVD and Blu-Ray movies and I knowingly circumvented and format shifted to network storage
But that's legal as long as you still have the DVD/Blu-Ray. What is not legal is someone else doing it for you and sending you the copy. It is expressly legal for you to do this yourself, but of course there's a catch -- it's not usually legal to sell tools for the purpose of circumventing access controls. So no one can legally help you.. but you can do it yourself.
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Not in the US, it's not. You cannot decrypt DVDs for personal use without violating the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA.
The law explicitly has exceptions for what these people are doing, and the LoC has made exceptions for criticism/commentary. Personal, fair use decrypting is still prohibited under the DMCA.
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That's what they claim happens. You buy one of their DVDs for $20, and when you want to watch it, you have them put your disc in their DVD player and the output of which is streamed to you. The objectionable par
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Are you saying that they aren't reusing the same DVD for streaming? Because that's the only way it could be legal.
They re-use the DVD when someone 'sells' it back to them. As long as they are 'storing it for a customer who bought it,' they don't sell it to anyone else. Result is you can't always get the movie you want, but that's the tradeoff, I guess.
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Not going to happen.... (Score:2)
Hate to say, they will not win. Once that 10 mil is gone to paychecks and lawyers, there will be some people looking for work...
Good legal argument, but not a bonafide sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Their legal argument is better than I expected it to be. However, there are two big problems with their argument:
As another commenter pointed out, they claim to sell the video for $20, then immediately buy it back for $19, they also stream it the customer (bandwidth costs) and edit it (server farm / cpu costs). It's quite obvious they're charging $1 to stream it to you, the "sell it for $20 and buy it back for $19" is a gimmick, it's bullshit. Nobody is buying movies from them, they're paying $1 to stream it.
Their fair use argument regarding DMCA is bogus. They claim that bleeping some words is "transformative", but the relevant portion of the fair use test is if they transform it to a different type of work that DOES NOT COMPETE with the protected work. For example, one may make a sculpture from CDs, or use book pages as wallpaper - nobody is going to buy your wallpaper *instead of* the original book. People WILL choose to stream from Vidangel *instead of* an authorized source such as Netflix or Amazon.
Lastly, the transformative aspect is only *one* part of the four-prong test for fair use. Other considerations include "is it commercial?" They are indeed selling the streaming, doing it commercially, so on that basis it's unlikely to be fair use. It's not educational, etc. It really doesn't match the definition of fair use well.
Re:Good legal argument, but not a bonafide sale (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly how the videotape rental market worked. A store would buy the videotape of the movie, you'd borrow it from them, give them a deposit for $20, take it home, and watch the movie. Then you'd return it to the store and get your deposit back, minus a $1 rental fee. The dollar amounts are different, but the concept is the same. (Deposits were later moved to a hold against your credit card if you signed up for membership at the store.)
The studios sued the first video rental stores about this too. They claimed it was going to destroy their income stream, but within a decade something like half their movie income was coming from rentals. The compromise which got them to drop the lawsuits was that the rental stores had to buy "special" rental videotapes. These were identical to the movie videotapes you'd find for sale at a retail store, but typically cost 3-5x more. That was their way of getting a bigger slice of the rental market pie. (This was also why if you lost a tape, the fine was substantially more than the cost of a new tape or DVD at a retail store. The store wasn't overcharging you as many people believed; they were charging you exactly how much the tape cost them.)
Where I see them running into problems is that buying a DVD doesn't give you streaming rights. I think the distinction between the two is BS (probably why they're doing this), but copyright law as it currently stands gives distribution rights to the copyright holder. So a physical copy sent to your home is different from a software copy streamed to your home; even though they both result in sending the exact same bits to your home.
Also, wasn't there a Supreme Court case where a company offered to censor your movies if (say) you wanted all the swearing bleeped out? The studios sued saying they hadn't authorized this alteration of their copyrighted work, and the SCotUS agreed.
Re:Good legal argument, but not a bonafide sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, wasn't there a Supreme Court case where a company offered to censor your movies if (say) you wanted all the swearing bleeped out? The studios sued saying they hadn't authorized this alteration of their copyrighted work, and the SCotUS agreed.
The primary difference here is that VidAngel is not editing anything. They send you an EDL, and you fast-forward automatically through the parts you don't want. VidAngel still sends all the bits to you.
Where I see them running into problems is that buying a DVD doesn't give you streaming rights.
Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them. The end-user has the option to take physical delivery of the DVD, have VidAngel store it forever, or sell it back as a 'used' copy for slightly cheaper.
That's their way of attempting to get around the legal problems. Presumably if they lose this case, they (or someone else) will try to find yet more loopholes in the law until they finally find something that gets through a court. Maybe a supreme court stacked by Trump will be more amenable to censorship? I don't know.
Re:Good legal argument, but not a bonafide sale (Score:5, Interesting)
\
Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them.
This is exactly where I see this may go wrong for VidAngel. It's not you (the DVD owner) doing the format shifting, but someone else. Probably no-where in the law is written explicitly that this is OK so there may be room for legal argument, especially as the physical original never gets shipped to the new owner. Gotta be interesting to see what happens, even more so if they start to ignore national borders and go worldwide (why wouldn't they be allowed to sell a US original disk to me living in Hong Kong?).
Re:Good legal argument, but not a bonafide sale (Score:4, Interesting)
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In that case, Congress, for better or for worse, specified that cable redistribution required a negotiated payment and that cable companies couldn't use the "we're just a fancy antenna" argument, which otherwise would work. Congress granted broadcast networks a slice of the cable dollars. (Back in the day, they were the only real content aside from reruns and movies, covered by premium movie channels.)
I don't know any such thing exists here. If you ask me, as soon as the initial $20 was sold, they owed Di
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Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them. The end-user has the option to take physical delivery of the DVD, have VidAngel store it forever, or sell it back as a 'used' copy for slightly cheaper.
Not according to this [arstechnica.com]. Granted, it's just a year-old article on a tech site, but according to them, the DMCA forbids consumers from decrypting discs to format shift. Stupid? I think so, but unless the courts change their mind, VidAngel is headed for a world of hurt.
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This is exactly how the videotape rental market worked.
Not exactly...the videotape could only be rented to one person at a time. That's the key thing here, I believe. The DVD data can be streamed to as many customers as needed. There's no limit unlike with a physical tape.
Although I think what VideoAngel has done is creative (and probably useful) I'm not sure they'll win in court. I kind of hope they do, even though I think what they're doing does violate copyright. There are a number of arguments why what they're doing could be legal, but also more than a few
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Their model seems to be to limit the number of concurrent streams of a title to the number of DVDs they have. Whether they cheat is a different question.
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If state sales tax is actually paid on the $20 then it is not BS.
They could then re-credit on the 2nd stream of $19 and pay 10 cents odd state tax on that.
Either way the state gets a chunk of change, not pretend money the movie studios do not pay.
Holding the physical property and remotely serving it is no different than SaaS cloud services.
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Unless the provider is in the same state, they are not required to collect the sales tax. The buyer is required to report it on their annual tax return.
For the return, if the provider is not in a state with sales tax, there would be no tax on the return.
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It's quite obvious they're charging $1 to stream it to you, the "sell it for $20 and buy it back for $19" is a gimmick, it's bullshit
Legal reasoning doesn't have place for gimmick or bullshit. Only for how the letter of the law can apply in a specific case. If it wasn't then we wouldn't need lawyers arguing at all.
Lawyers saying "bonafide sale" for hundreds of yea (Score:3)
Those lawyers you mentioned have been arguing about what is and isn't a "bonafide sale" since at least the 1800s. Why? Because it matters. This looks a heck lot more like paying $1 to stream than a bonafide sale.
In general, judges tend to not like smartasses who try to make claims like this that they know, and everybody knows, are bullshit.
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It's really hard to guess how this court case will go. Copyright law is vague enough that it could go any way.
God is on the side with the largest legal budget.
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A judge who doesn't like someone making a comment should be disrobed. They are there to rule on matters of law and not on smartarsery or bullshit. If something is bullshit but legal then the former doesn't matter.
You said it yourself arguments have been made since the 1800s. Why? Because the law isn't clear enough in this matter, and the fact that this is still up for debate and wasn't thrown out with prejudice shows it isn't clearly decided one way or the other.
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Everyone should brush up on the story of MP3.com:
http://www.npr.org/sections/th... [npr.org]
They will lose badly in court.
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I live in Utah (raised in Hawaii) and have been LDS my entire life. I never used VidAngel because I thought this lawsuit was coming. I see a better legal argument for ClearPlay [clearplay.com]; they send you a patch file to apply to their proprietary player. You need the physical disc to watch the edited version. This has allowed ClearPlay to exist since the 1990s.
Their legal argument is better than I expected it to be. However, there are two big problems with their argument:
As another commenter pointed out, they claim to sell the video for $20, then immediately buy it back for $19, they also stream it the customer (bandwidth costs) and edit it (server farm / cpu costs). It's quite obvious they're charging $1 to stream it to you, the "sell it for $20 and buy it back for $19" is a gimmick, it's bullshit. Nobody is buying movies from them, they're paying $1 to stream it.
It is a way to try skirt copyright / broadcast rights on a technicality. Customers do think of it as $1 to stream the movie, and VidAngel highlights this net cos
Legal reference (Score:5, Informative)
Since most commenters have not read the legal reference, here is what it says:
"...the following are not infringements of copyright: (11) the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture, or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household, for such making imperceptible, if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created by such computer program or other technology."
That's pretty clear. They are allowed to make temporary changes to audio or video content during transmission for private home viewing, provided only that they are modifying an authorized copy.
It sounds to me (IANAL) like they have a very strong case.
Of course, their record keeping needs to be spotless, guaranteeing that they never sell more copies than they have in stock, and that any specific streaming instance can be traced to a specific authorized copy.
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That's pretty clear. They are allowed to make temporary changes to audio or video content during transmission for private home viewing, provided only that they are modifying an authorized copy. It sounds to me (IANAL) like they have a very strong case.
Among the three exclusive rights of copyright holders are reproduction, distribution and creating derivative works. This modifies the last right, but not the two previous ones. Those who create the DVD have a license under the reproduction right, as a buyer you have none. Obviously they can't buy a DVD and set up a TV broadcast of it. So the argument is that VidAngel is not doing distribution from them to the user, it's the user watching their own copy under fair use. That argument has been tried many ways
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Whether the amount the company is charging is an accurate reflection of their costs, or whether they are able to make a profit at it are irrelevant considerations. Whether the business model is a potentially successful one is not a legal question. And the simple counter-argument is that many, many, many businesses offer below-cost services in order to seed growth, especially early on in their existence. Even mature businesses offer so-called loss-leader specials that are intended to attract customers, e
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Or their intentional running at a loss for market share/ brand building/ etc...
MANY perfectly legal companies run at a loss for various reasons.
A headache for the RIAA...lovely Xmas present (Score:4, Insightful)
So assuming their legal argument is sound (and it's certainly better than I expected), if I were to request that they edit out just a few irrelevant seconds, and maybe that annoying copyright notice, we're good to go?
Sweet!
Re:A headache for the RIAA...lovely Xmas present (Score:5, Informative)
Being a non-believer, I edit out at least one instance of Blashpemy (G*d), most movies on VidAngel have such references. One or more filters is required for viewing (not the case a few months ago).
I would not recommend removing video content, I've had problems with audio/video synch when I tried that.
I donated about $10 to their legal effort (they made it easy, integrated into the purchasing process).
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Thanks for that. Obviously I can't give you mod points, but I'd have given you "Informative", if it were possible.
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Non-believers can be superstitious or respectful.
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I'm not trying to speak for turp182, and (s)he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I read the post this way:
I generally have no reason or desire to have filters apply to the movies I watch, but I support VidAngel's right to do what they are doing and I respect them for taking the stand that they have. Therefore, to demonstrate my solidarity, I threw a few bucks their way and rented a movie. When you rent a movie, you are also given the option of donating to their defense fund, and I did that as well. It use
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Irony (for myself).
I find it the most comical thing to filter, and a filter is required.
I really don't give two shits what I filter (as long as it is audio), I just find the category comical.
$1? What's the catch? (Score:2)
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Streisand effect (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can always just torrent the movie you want to see and run it through final cut and edit it yourself. It's ridiculously easy. I don't know how many movies I've seen that are fine for kids to view if you just remove the 60 to 90 seconds of "adult" content they slapped in to get an R rating.
This is like the 3rd company to try this (Score:5, Informative)
I was about to post how every prior company that did this died, but apparently not. There are a few still around! OMG! I am buying one, because there's loads of movies I want my kids to see, with a few slight alterations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks [slashdot.org] and ClearPlay [wikipedia.org]
Here is a Slashdot article about ClearPlay and CleanFlicks [slashdot.org]. The zdnet article link is dead, so use the wayback machine. [archive.org]
Here is another Slashdot article about ClearPlay [slashdot.org]
Trilogy Studios Movie Mask looks like it never actually came out. [slashdot.org]
However, everyone who tries to stream DVD or live TV content gets shut down. Here's a few:
Slashdot on Kaleidescape [slashdot.org]
Slashdot on Aereo [slashdot.org]
This is going to be a tough one... (Score:3)
A friend of mine told me about VidAngel a few weeks ago, and my feeling is that they're trying to do a tightrope walk, blindfolded, while wearing ice skates.
Their business model hinges on the sell/resell gimmick that solely exists on a balance sheet. It's shaky ground to stand on.
CleanFlicks lost out because they altered the movies, which either fell under "derivative work" or "CSS decryption", either way not a good idea. They lost in court.
RealNetworks (still a thing, apparently) tried having a product that allowed movies to be ripped to one's own computer, but included more DRM than the original DVD. They lost in court.
Aereo distance-shifted OTA broadcasts, limited to one viewing per antenna, and one antenna per user. They lost in court.
Zediva bought DVD players and DVDs, paired them 1:1, and allowed one user to stream a movie from an available DVD player. They lost in court.
Vidangel is walking a trail blazed by dead bodies, forged by lawyers who have no intention of providing a compromise that reflects reality. Once they get big enough, the MPAA will come after them as well. They might win against Miramax and MAYBE Universal, but once the sleeping Mouse is awakened by their family-friendly edit of Rogue One, I wouldn't bet a counterfeit wooden nickel on them willing that court case - Disney will win on attrition alone.
After all, it is power, not money, that perpetuates this behavior.
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Still wondering why so many such companies insist on setting up shop in the US, instead of other (more copyright-friendly) parts of the world. Thanks to the Internet they can serve the rest of the world (including USA) just fine.
And if it's to do with payments, well, time to release the stranglehold by that one country over the rest of the world as well.
The FMA sucks (Score:2)
In reading a Forbes article on VidAngel, they make reference to the 2005 "Family Movie Act" (FMA) that vidangel is using as it's primary defense. The fact that the FMA exists at all is horrible. According to Forbes [forbes.com]:
The FMA, as it relates to filtering technology, provides an exemption from copyright infringement for the use of technology in the home that can edit a DVD or an “on-demand’ streaming film on the fly, resulting in a temporary “censored” version of the film. From a copyright standpoint, this simply means that the companies offering the technologies are not required to obtain a license to create the “derivative” censored version of the film.
The frustrating part about this law is that Americans ALREADY had the right to do that. I bought the DVD, I have a license to it, and I can create all the derivative works I want SO LONG AS I DON'T DISTRIBUTE THEM. I am sick of laws saying "You can do X with copyrighted content" because it im
Re: Fuck VidAngel to Death! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is censorship in the same way Slashdot moderation is censorship. While it technically meets the definition, I don't see any harm here. It's not much different than simply choosing to look away and mute the volume when there's content you don't want to see or hear. The customers are in full control of what gets removed and what doesn't. Where censorship can become a problem is when authority decides to make it impossible or extremely difficult to view content. The service being offered here really isn't any different than moderating posts and letting the user decide whether to browse unfiltered at -1 or read at some higher threshold that removes some potentially objectionable content.
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This is censorship in the same way Slashdot moderation is censorship. While it technically meets the definition, I don't see any harm here.
Censorship that is an Optional choice made by the person buying and consuming the content, Which they pay extra for, Is actually good censorship.
It's censorship in the same way that AdBlock is censorship. It's censorship outside the control and desires of any 3rd party, including without respect to the wishes or the knowledge by the content creators, distributors
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This service is the result of you "moving the slider"
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I'd prefer a bowl or a joint instead.
so? this is NOT censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Their customer base is largely families who want to watch stuff but want certain bits they consider inappropriate jammed into their ears or eyes or presented to their kids. NOBODY is censoring anything to prevent YOU from seeing/hearing it. NOBODY is preventing you from consuming the content you want. They are just helping people who want 90% of something from being forced to absorb the other 10%.
If you order a meal at a fancy eatery because you like the meal, but it has green olives which you hate, do you have the right to simply remove the green olives before consuming the meal, or is it a terrible offense against civilization and the artistry of the chef? You're not removing the olives from anybody else's plate. You're not even inconveniencing the chef directly by asking him to remove the olives, nor are you asking him to remove olives from his recipe or to keep them out of anyone else's serving. Now, if this is ok, then why is it bad if you ask a third party to discreetly remove the olives from your meal for you, because they're better at it than you are and they'll even do it for you before you sit down to eat the meal? That's what's happening here.
Since when did filmmakers get the right to demand that you watch every moment of their films or you may not watch any of the films? People are free to turn away from a TV, or fast forward a video disc, and most on Slashdot support people being able to skip commercials (the HORROR! do you have a right to skip the "artistry" of that latest Viagra ad??)
Reminder: When the film Amadeus hit the big screen, the studio released it without the scene of Mozart's wife being assaulted. It was released on VHS tape years later also without that scene. Years later when released on BluRay, the only version released was the "director's cut" where that scene was added back in. This is one example and far from unique. Was the audience wrong to view the theatrical or VHS releases with the scene removed? Wrong to view the BluRay with the scene? Why was it OK for the studio to cut the sexual scene from the theatrical release, but then presumably wrong for some service now to come along and re-remove that scene for a family who wants to expose their children to the great film and the composer it is about while not exposing them to the actress's nude scene?
Get a life. Live and let live. Watch the media you want to watch, and tolerate others watching (or not) the parts they want (or don't want) to watch.
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Since when did filmmakers get the right to demand that you watch every moment of their films or you may not watch any of the films? People are free to turn away from a TV, or fast forward a video disc, and most on Slashdot support people being able to skip commercials (the HORROR! do you have a right to skip the "artistry" of that latest Viagra ad??)
Filmmakers don't have the right to force you to keep your eyes open for every second of their film. But they do have the right to control how someone distributes a copy of their work. Because copyright, dammit.
Reminder: When the film Amadeus hit the big screen, the studio released it without the scene of Mozart's wife being assaulted. It was released on VHS tape years later also without that scene. Years later when released on BluRay, the only version released was the "director's cut" where that scene was added back in. This is one example and far from unique. Was the audience wrong to view the theatrical or VHS releases with the scene removed? Wrong to view the BluRay with the scene? Why was it OK for the studio to cut the sexual scene from the theatrical release, but then presumably wrong for some service now to come along and re-remove that scene for a family who wants to expose their children to the great film and the composer it is about while not exposing them to the actress's nude scene?
Yes, the copyright-holders altered their own work. Which they could do. Because they held the copyright. Someone else who wants to do that needs to get permission from the copyright-holder.
Copyright, in part, protects an artist's expression from tampering by others. But they're free to "tamper" with i
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Filmmakers don't have the right to force you to keep your eyes open for every second of their film. But they do have the right to control how someone distributes a copy of their work. Because copyright, dammit.
I think this will be the salient point of the legal argument. Is VidAngel a distributor? Or are they only reselling discs with filters and letting the consumer apply them as they please?
Yes, the copyright-holders altered their own work. Which they could do. Because they held the copyright. Someone else who wants to do that needs to get permission from the copyright-holder.
Copyright, in part, protects an artist's expression from tampering by others. But they're free to "tamper" with it themselves, because it's their expression.
The only gotcha to this argument is the Family Movie Viewing Act, which is part of the Copyright act, specifically allows a person in their own home modify movies without consent of the copyright holder. VidAngel is arguing that this is exactly what is going on with their service. They provide the movie (unaltered), the filt
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Frankly, I hope VidAngel wins if only so that media producers run into some kind of limit to their seemingly unending power over the consumer.
Be careful what you wish for. Copyright protects the big guys, but it also protects the little guys from the big guys.
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No it doesn't. Just look at this case - it took eight months, and that was remarkably quick. It's likely to go on some time longer yet, as appeal is inevitable. They've had to hold an additional round of fundraising just to handle the legal costs - and vidangel are not the little guy, they are the medium guy, still dealing with millions of dollars in funding. Law is an expensive business, and even if an individual or small business wins in court they will often be crippled by the legal costs afterwards. Som
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My point was that copyright law protects the copyright holder, be they big or little.
VidAngel is not the copyright holder. They are trying to exploit what they see as a legal window that gives their business model a pass. Good luck to them, but I think they will fail unless they change their attitude. I think they'd be far better off co-operating with copyright-holders rather than trying to incite their enmity.
Remember Aereo? [wikipedia.org] They similariy tried to exploit what they thought was a legal loophole for redistr
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So, you're saying you don't use an ad blocker in your browser, because copyright? This is exactly the same: a service that removes a few seconds of offensive or annoying "content" that matches some filters.
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So, you're saying you don't use an ad blocker in your browser, because copyright? This is exactly the same: a service that removes a few seconds of offensive or annoying "content" that matches some filters.
No I don't, and no it is not the same.
Blocking an ad is not the same as altering and redistributing an artistic work.
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I see you don't read /. that often. There are constant stories about ad companies claiming that ad blockers are every kind of evil, and copyright is certainly one of their arguments. You remind me of those guys.
Are you seriously trying to claim that it is somehow morally wrong for someone to press the "skip 30" button on their DVD player? That an artist has some moral right to force you to watch the movie the way the artist wants, or not at all.
OK, enough dancing around the real issue here. There's only
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You, and the others on this thread, continue to misunderstand my position.
People can watch content in whatever manner they want. My point is about the distributors of copyrighted content having (or rather, lacking) the right to alter said content.
BTW, you and I have been around here about the same amount of time. And yes, Han Solo did shoot first.
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How can you say Han shot first, yet also say that Harmy had no right to distribute the unspecialized edition? Either you say the artist's "integrity" dominates, and no one has the moral right to make a DVD or BluRay where Han shot first, or you take the position that copyright is just about money.
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How can you say Han shot first, yet also say that Harmy had no right to distribute the unspecialized edition? Either you say the artist's "integrity" dominates, and no one has the moral right to make a DVD or BluRay where Han shot first, or you take the position that copyright is just about money.
Nonsense. An artist is perfectly entitled to distribute two versions of a work that contradict each other. Because it's their art.
The point is that the copyright-holder can alter the art, but someone else cannot.
And I choose to take the original Star Wars Episode IV version as canon, but that's just me.
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The artist is not distributing two versions of his work. That's the entire cultural point here. Lucas's call is that there's only one version that can be distributed, and that's the special edition.
That's where I call bullshit. The artist has no moral right to prevent fan-edits, or any other case of someone distributing a modified version of his work. From Episode 1 sans JarJar, to Harry Potter with "wand" replaced by "wang" throughout (to quite humorous effect). There's just no good argument that soci
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The artist has no moral right to prevent fan-edits, or any other case of someone distributing a modified version of his work.
Moral right? That's not what we're talking about here. The question is whether someone has the legal right to modify and redistribute a copyrighted work without the copyright-holder's permission. And the answer is no.
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Ah, so you weren't actually reading my posts. Figures.
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The [content-providers] are not offering a service those families require to consume the product.
The content-providers are not required to provide such a service to these families, although some do -- e.g., they create a PG version.
These families are not "required" to consume their product, therefore it strains reason to suggest they "require" a service to scrub that product.
It's interesting that the families are willing to front the legal costs. This may take a chip off current understanding of copyright law if it goes up.
Imagine a not-too-distant future in which anyone can hire a third party to scrub all broadcasts to fit whatever world-view they wish. That can be done now by selecting your own news media. But what if one can order such filtering f
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Yes, advertisements are works of art, and they are (rightly) copyright. But blocking or ignoring ads is not the same as altering and redistributing them.
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Blocking an ad from within an overall TV show or from where it belongs on a web page is EXACTLY the same thing. It is excising a bit of (admittedly commercial) artistic content from within an overall work (which is, itself, also commercial artwork) before the viewer of the overall work is forced to watch the part to which he objects.
No, I reaffirm that it is not the same thing. A TV show and the ads it contains are copyright by separate entities. Removing the content of one does not violate the copyright of the other.
It's quite odd that so many people who support snipping out advertisements for their own convenience and/or pleasure are so upset by the idea that somebody else might want some cursing or soft-core pseudo-porn snipped out of content their families will consume. Is there some unwritten rule that says everybody must subject themselves and their kids to unnecessary expletives, over-the-top violence,and/or simulated sex and nudity? Why must people subject themselves and their kids to these things if they prefer not to, yet it's ok to excise an ad for a car or a river cruise? Why are some people so insistent that others (and particularly kids) must be forced to see and hear cursing/sex/violence?
Nobody is saying that an individual, in the privacy of their own home, can't choose to watch or not watch portions of a broadcast. What is at issue here is whether a separate party can alter and then distribute copyright material. Even if that altered copy is streamed to one single individual who requested the alterations,
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I just ripped a page out of a book and blacked out a word three times on a different page. I'm a terrible human being for meddling with so.eone's artistic expression, aren't I?
No. If that's all you did, you would not be a bad person.
However, if you redistributed that copy of the book with the alterations, you would be violating copyright. See the difference?
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If you order a car from a dealership because you like the car, but it has hub caps which you hate, do you have the right to simply remove the hub caps before driving the car, or is it a terrible offense against civilization and the artistry of the car designers? You're not remove the hub caps from anybody else's car. You're not even inconveniencing the dealership directly by ordering without the hub caps, nor are you asking him to remove hub caps from his lot or keep them off of anyone else's car. Now, i
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If you order a car from a dealership because you like the car, but it has hub caps which you hate, do you have the right to simply remove the hub caps before driving the car, or is it a terrible offense against civilization and the artistry of the car designers? You're not remove the hub caps from anybody else's car. You're not even inconveniencing the dealership directly by ordering without the hub caps, nor are you asking him to remove hub caps from his lot or keep them off of anyone else's car. Now, if this is ok, then why is it bad if you ask a third party to discreetly remove the hub caps from your car for you, because they're better at it than you are and they'll even do it for you before you sit down and drive the car? That's what's happening here.
Re-written per request.
Your analogy would apply if it were the dealership switching out the hubcaps. And if I were the auto-maker, I probably would want some say in what they did.
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There are such things as dealer options and as long as the auto makers get their money they could care less. I know if Chevrolet tried to tell me I couldn't get rid of the ugly wheels that came with my Yukon I'd tell them to kiss my ass.
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Architect rights locally are exactly that: the architect can actually forbid you to change anything, unless those rights were signed over. Never let an architect do anything without having them give you the right to modify the building, or you may be in for a nasty surprise.
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I thought car analogies on Slashdot were supposed to only be really bad analogies.
And speaking of which, whatever happened to BadAnalogyGuy? Haven't seen him post in ages.
(Then again, it's not like I read this place daily, and when I do, it is not like I check out every single article and every discussion.)
Re:It's absolutely censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Censorship, under some common definitions, implies that it is imposed. This is not the case here.
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Except for those in the household. While I would certainly censor a 10-year old (No ISIS decapitation movies seems like a good start), what about when they're 18? Aren't they entitled to make their own value judgements?
I'm not against this service, and I fully support them in this fight because every enemy of the studios is another head of the hydra they fight (although not necessarily a friendly head). But I don't share their POV.
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I am allowed to censor what I see. I can choose, I have that right. You or the studios don't get to force me to watch what I don't want to watch. The first amendment limits the government from censoring. You can't really be that fucking stupid so I assume you're just trolling.
Re:Fuck VidAngel to Death! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as much censorship as you not watching certain YouTube videos.
The important part here is YOU. YOU decide. YOU and YOU alone say what you want to see and what you don't want to see. I hope you can see the difference, if not, allow me to point it out:
YOU deciding what you get to see: good thing
ANYONE ELSE deciding what you get to see: bad thing
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This isn't SJWs forcing their tastes and opinions on others, they're petitioning to preservce the OPT-IN service. It's post-distribution, the original distro is untouched, the individual gets what they want without compromising everyone else.
Maybe your post was simply lazy can't-RTFS ignorance, but hey, maybe it was cleverly orchestrated, maybe you deliberately posted something thick so everyone (incl myself) would come out and make the dist
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I've heard the vulgarity of our entertainment defended with the claim that it reflects society - I wonder, then, why those in charge of Hollywood fight so hard against our desire for cleaner entertainment?
Because, why YOU think you're special and righteous in your desire for "no naughty words". The fact is, NO ONE ELSE CARES. Either they like gore and naughty words (like myself) or the just don't care. Your "fight" is one sided, Hollywood is driven by profits, and no matter how important you think you are. The blunt fact is you and those 5 people like you make up a miniscule part of the "viewers" that it is not even worth their time money wise. In fact you're so insignificant, it is not worth their time to p
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That's a lot of outrage over ... I'm not exactly sure why you're outraged.
Let's look at the only point you made:
it is not worth their time to put out "edited" versions of popular movies for you.
That's probably true. So what's wrong with allowing a third-party to do something like offering a special player and filters like ClearPlay [clearplay.com]? Do you also find that objectionable?
If so, I'm curious as to why. It doesn't affect you in any way, so I'm guessing you have some moral reason that you feel you must impose on others.
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I've heard the vulgarity of our entertainment defended with the claim that it reflects society - I wonder, then, why those in charge of Hollywood fight so hard against our desire for cleaner entertainment?
Because, why YOU think you're special and righteous in your desire for "no naughty words". The fact is, NO ONE ELSE CARES. Either they like gore and naughty words (like myself) or the just don't care. Your "fight" is one sided, Hollywood is driven by profits, and no matter how important you think you are. The blunt fact is you and those 5 people like you make up a miniscule part of the "viewers" that it is not even worth their time money wise. In fact you're so insignificant, it is not worth their time to put out "edited" versions of popular movies for you. (hint: if they thought for a second they could increase profits, it would exist)
So basically, you thinking their "fighting" against is akin to the Ants in a mound thinking I'm fighting them when my boot lans on them while I walk through the woods.
After the tech bubble burst and I lost my job, I had to work in the call center for a studio which produces family friendly entertainment. I was given a list of people "probably interested" in the product, as referred by friends and family. My job was to raise awareness of the company and obtain names of more people to contact. I was not in sales. I didn't stay there for long, but that's beside the point. Your rant brought to mind some of the abuse and misunderstanding I suffered at that position.
That parti
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My wife hates gore - I think we'll be trying VidAngel soon.
We all hate him. Suggestion: Don't watch “An Inconvenient Truth” (spoiler: the cause and effect graphs clearly show the effect coming before the cause) or its new sequel and you should be fine.
Awww. But he is super serial. Who else is going to carry on the fight against Manbearpig?
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Here's how you do it. And before you scold me for teaching pirates something, this is pretty much how copyright trolls work, so turnabout it fair game.
1. Set up a shell company. In this case "VidAngel"
2. Let the shell company do some questionable business.
3. Siphon all the money the shell company makes to a safer place by selling it "patents" or "licenses" or whatever.
4. When (not if) your get-rich-quick-scheme blows up and the shell company is sued for billions, it will go "poof".
5. Profit.
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> VidAngel will only lose if their legal arguments are inaccurate
You mean they'll loose when they can't pay all the lawsuits anymore. Hollywood is good friends with the current administration, that doesn't eactly help VidAngel.