Info: FanEdit.org is GONE!!!! — Page 2

They still have images on the site that they don't own the copyrights to.

You can have your site pulled for as little as that.  Never mind rapidshare, or torrent links, or newsgroups.

Under the laws of copywritten motion pictures artists have the right to protect their works from being tampered with or altered, or being used in any way without their express consent.

The law is on their side not the faneditors.  since the rules of the game have changed not making money off of said illegal activities is no longer an excuse to avoid prosecution.

Anyone want to guess when the isp for fanedit.org pulls the site because of infingement?

So by definition any site on the web using content that they don't own is considered infringement.

That includes this site and TFN.  For some reason though Lucasfilm stopped going after the faneditors and people using their images on sites.  That does not mean other companies will be as nice.

Companies like Warners, DC, Marvel, sony and mgm, lionsgate etc.

Lucasfilm lawyers only ceased what they were doing when Fans cried foul of their tactics and they had to consider their bottom line being effected by Alienating buyers of their star wars brand of products.

These are not facts just hearsay from the internet.

dark_jedi said:

boon will set you straight on how fanedits are under the radar Sky,I have heard all his bullshit before,I cannot believe he is not spouting it out now,because he is in the right,fanedits are legal LOL,you bought the DVD and can do whatever you want to it,either in whole or in part.

 

That may very well be the most misinformed, ignorant bullshit I have ever read on this site.

Jay said:

C3PX said:

That may very well be the most misinformed, ignorant bullshit I have ever read on this site.

I think he's being facetious and poking fun at boon.

Oops, my mind read "this bullshit" for some reason instead of "his bullshit". Yeah, he was most definitely being facetious. Sorry about that Dark.

JKP said:

Monroville said:

I think there will be a way around this; c'mon folks!  If the government couldn't stop BOOZE, they can't stop fan edits.

All those rapidshare files and torrents still exist.  They CAN'T take those down.  It's just that the convenience of knowing where to go to get the links has been disabled.  I think if people want to "take a look at Dr. Zhivago (to quote Clarence Whirley)", we can figure it out.

Still, you have to wonder.  What the hell took them this long to finally close shop?  I mean, the place has been up for at least a few years.  Did someone rat out FanEdit.org?

Exactly. The genie is out of the bottle... They're fighting a losing battle. Why not embrace it and use it as a way to promote sales of back catalog or use it in viral marketing of sequels or something creative. Suing, or threatening to sue, your biggest fans is just dumb. Hollywood / RIAA need to embrace the 21st century and let go of the 20th.

 

Biggest fans? Am I wrong in thinking that many fanedits are done by people who think the movie sucks and could be improved by the amateurish efforts of someone editing it on their home computer?

What ways could they use fanedits in viral marketing or sales of back catalog? I really can't imagine. Despite how crappy some of their films may come out, they are edited seemlessly by professional editors, which is a lot more than can be said for the vast majority of fanedits out there. Seems like they should be more afraid of fanedits defaming their products, by hacking them up to often make nonsensical films.

Personally, I think fanedits are such a niche thing, that it really isn't doing anyone any harm. But at the end of the day, you're taking copyright material, altering it, and distributing it online for free. Sure we say, "you MUST own the original" but how many people do you think actually go out and buy the original copy of Batman & Robin just so they can download Deassified with a clean concious? Fan edits are well meaning, but I do not blame the MPAA for not taking kindly to them. And I am no fan of the MPAA.

Kind of changing course here, but it is closely related. I have always been a fan of the philosophy, "information should be free". I don't care about old TV shows enough to pay a lot of money for them on DVD, but if I could access them for free, I might revisit them just for kicks. This is not becomming possible legally with studio websites hosting high res full length shows with limited ads, had they done that sooner, I think the piracy revolution would not have boomed as it did. And Youtube is a great place to search for and listen to that latest hit single that you have stuck in your head, without having to go buy the album or steal the mp3 in order to listen to the song enough to get it out of your system. If information was free, and all movies, music, games, books were free for the taking, it would leave artists with little reason to continue to produce their work, unless they felt like doing it just for kicks. I also think the current studio system is pretty rotten, as the artists don't get anywhere near what they deserve, especially a problem for smaller artists. So the legal way and the illegal way are both severly flawed.

I used to think the pirate bay guys were pretty cool, raging against the machine, bucking the system, fighting the power, and all that good stuff. But then one day I was listening to some interviews with them, and other pirate bay users, and all I saw were a bunch of kids who didn't feel like paying for anything, but wanted to experience those things all the same. The interviewer asked them what other laws they break and think should not exist, and the guy smiled and said speed limits, he breaks the speed limit all the time and thinks it shouldn't exist. To me that completely fizzled away this whole heroic revolutionary fighters of the evil corrupt studios image that they kind of hold onto. I think we can all agree speed limits have an important purpose. Anybody who has witnessed the grizzly mess of a high speed accident would have a hard time disagreeing with this. These guys are not revolutionaries or heroes to be looked up to, they are a bunch of rebellious kids without much respect for rules, and fortunately for them, they had the technical knowhow and the means to make enough money off of it to protect themselves and expand it.

When skimming the FE.org forum I often feel that same "fuckit all, we do what we want and those suites can't touch us!" pirate bayish sort of attutude, obviously not from all members, but a few. Maybe I am wrong on that.

Anyway, hopefully for their sakes they manage to get things back up and going, and perhaps find a way to distrubute their stuff that doesn't attract so much attention. I sound like a pretty harsh critic of fanedits, but I actually am very fond of the concept. Adywan's SW:R was really cool, but it was kind of frightening the amount of attention it attracted. You can't search SW on amazon or imdb without the name Adywan popping up on the message boards or in the reviews boasting about this free edit of the movie downloadable online. With a hobby such as this, staying under the radar is the way to go.

There is another way the industry could use fan edits to their advantage - as a source for hiring potential new editors for future projects.  In effect, any fan-made artwork - edits, song parodies, DVD case covers, fan films, CG renderings, and so on - display that person's talents to the industry.  Why isn't the industry then smart enough to look at this pool of talent and make job offers to them?  Just because a film or TV show was produced by people who were paid to do it doesn't mean it was done well.  There's always room for improvement to some degree.

The existence of a fan edit also doesn't eliminate the existence of the original.  They're not being distributed in stores, selling better than the studio version.  The size of the audience for fan edits is infinitesimally miniscule compared to the general population that buys and rents DVDs in the first place, so it's not like they're a threat from the perspective of confusing the public as to which is which.

The industry has such a selfish, controlling, dictatorial attitude that they manage to piss off the very same people they depend on to buy their wares in the first place.  Coming down on any fan-based work that attempts to improve or build on the original in some way is like doing extra credit for homework and getting detention for your efforts.

I want to make it clear i was not attacking faneditors at all.  There are some fineedits and editors out there.  I am more of a preservation fan than a fan of fan edits except in certain cases where the film is actually improved or an interesting alternate take is produced on the film or its characters.

I hope the community weathers this storm and comes out okay. 

I was in no way attacking Boon or the members of ot.com or fanedit.org just stating how this legal gray area in the past has become such a heated issue.

Almost reminds me of fansubbing which is a niche fandom in animation and anime.  People do it for the love of the genre, and also they get a good learning experience out of it.  Heck even faneditors might come to respect the art of editing that the pros do.  At least the ones who are not hacks.

Still i find it funny the films of these directors and moviemakers are still available it is not as if they are replaced by a fan edit.  Unlike say when George Lucas did his own fanedits of the star wars trilogy and buried the originals.  But it is okay for him to butcher them because thy are his intellectual property.

Using someone's intellectual property these days without paying or getting permission has become the same as Stealing a physical object.  It would be like back in the day kids downloaded mps without paying and they said it was not the same as stealing a cd from a store.  I guess morally you could make an arguement they are the same without paying the artist their fee for use.  Still do these poor kids who eventual get out of school and get jobs buy cds and dvds and eventually the studios make a profit out of it?

How many people who use bitorrent just sample an artists works and if they like it buy it?

Does anyone know what edit was the most objectionable to the MPAA ot was it the whole of fanedit.org site?

I guess the one edit that has been so popular and might have just pissed someone off at Lucasfilm maybe Adywan's edit.  I can see George saying "how dare some fan actually make a better special edition than i did".

I doubt it was Adywan's edit that caused the crack down. Lucasfilm has already addressed the issue of fanedits, and they have pretty much said they'd give it a pass for the time being. My guess is it would be the whole idea of the site, and the fact that they are linking to copyright material.

C3PX said:

I doubt it was Adywan's edit that caused the crack down. Lucasfilm has already addressed the issue of fanedits, and they have pretty much said they'd give it a pass for the time being. My guess is it would be the whole idea of the site, and the fact that they are linking to copyright material.

I WAS COMPLETELY ECSTATIC ABOUT IT.  KARMA'S A BITCH.  

LOL, looking back on the last few years, from the genesis of FE.org till now, this is all pretty funny. I never really paid much attention to the other site, so beyond what went on at this site, I missed out on all the drama. I knew Dayv had some sort of falling out with them, but I had no idea they pissed off that many of you guys. And here I was afraid I might have been stepping on toes with some of the things I was saying. :p

Jay said:
I seriously doubt anybody "ratted out" fanedit.org. They received a cease and desist notice a long time ago regarding a certain fan edit just like we did, so somebody has been keeping tabs on them. It's not like the lawyers delete your file once you comply.
If a site plans on hosting files--even just torrents--they need to have the technical and financial resources of The Pirate Bay (profit estimated at $75,000 USD monthly according to Wikipedia) in order to deal with the legal fallout. And it hardly matters if you host outside the US; The Pirate Bay was raided and had all their hardware confiscated by the Swedish police because of a complaint filed by the MPAA.
Whatever your position on the legality of fan edits, the fact remains that smaller sites like ot.com and fanedit.org are not equipped to battle the MPAA in court. Providing files is a bad idea unless you want your door kicked in and your servers taken

Sigh. I hate to see these rifts.

I know what you mean jay lolZ, This does suck and kill baby's, but we can survive if we huddle together. I've read on both sides, and I don't have much to add to the pot(I hardly do anyways lollolol)

We can cry or we can get some boomshots!

Jay said:

reave said:

Sigh. I hate to see these rifts.

You can't create drama and expect it not to follow you around.

Teh innernets never forget.

I understand and agree with you, I just hate to see the people that I like fighting over old, silly stuff. It makes me a little sad inside.

Whose fighting? Are we reading the same thread? Or are you referencing something else? Because I have not seen any fighting going on in this thread.