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Dealing with People Selling Fan Projects — Page 3

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SilverWook said:

JohnStewart said:

You people crack me up. You F* around with copyrighted material then you cry when you see people selling the s*! Just stop, ok you make yourselves look stupid. Maybe if you made the “free” versions easier to get the masses out there would not resort to paying for them. Not to mention it might not be wise to keep brining undo attention to this site as well. I had no problem getting these but to your average non computer person its a pretty difficult task.

“You people”? That’s odd coming from someone who’s been on the site for several years and was recently praising Harmy.

I wouldn’t mind if someone was only charging for the material costs of making a copy. MST3K fans have done this for years with the unreleased episodes. And tape traders since before the internets only asked you send them a blank tape or something they were looking for in return. But that guy on Ebay cleared around 4k in a month doing this. Not cool.

I haven’t downloaded that much in the way of projects, since the people I’ve partnered with are good about mailing me a copy, but it’s a lot easier now than 16 years ago when I was trying to download a movie off of usenet. Finding that one missing file that didn’t propagate to the newsserver you were on was sheer joy.

If you have suggestions as to how to make projects easier for the computer novices out there to find, by all means fire away. But a friendlier attitude might be nice too.

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NeverarGreat said:

While we need to do a better job at directing new members towards important information (see here for my suggestion), there will still be the problem of people unwilling/unable to burn the blu-rays and create custom sets. For those people, buying these things may be the only way they get their hands on them. And that’s a big problem.

Any solution not involving money would be quite a hassle, and the best thing I can think of is a system wherein the party requesting the blu-ray would be required to purchase their own blank blu-ray discs and send them in a package containing their copy of the relevant 2011 Blu-ray discs (as proof of purchase) and enough postage for sending it all back.

This a great idea, or at least the star of one. You have given us a starting place, we have to brainstorm a system that makes fan edits easy to access and custom sets are easy to acquire without abuse of control and money gain out of them.

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I’m really young so this is probably stupid but I came up with this “possible” idea for solving this.

Ahh, …I’m gonna get so roasted, well, here it goes…

First, what we want to achieve:

-Easy access to Fan Edits, so non good computer users can watch them.
-Make custom sets easily acquirable without selling the fan Edits themselves.

What we need:

A (maybe several) great, honest and committed programmer.

What it would be:

-Program
-Online Store

An easy to download free program like popcorn time to watch and download Fan Edits of movies, at this point it’s the same as popcorn time but with fan edits instead of movies and the ability to download. This is where it gets good, I think…

It would also have a link to a page (that would also need to be created) in which “custom box-set kits” are sold. This would include Blu Ray boxes, art, custom crafts,BLANK discs, etc. BUT NOT THE FAN EDITS.

This page could be like a marketplace in which artists could create an account on the store and sell their box sets, making it more vast and independent. NOTE it should be well moderated and managed to make sure they are only selling “Custom Box set kits” and not the edits.

Back to the program, it would also have an easy to use disc-burning feature that, with their “Box Set Kit” people could get the Edits on custom box sets ONLY paying for for physical stuff and not the film.

People would still need a disc burner, though.

Problems:
I guess it could get shut down but somehow popcorn time is still active.

A lot of work, if done, it’s a long term solution.

Could be abused. Especially the store if not managed correctly.

Any other technical problems I can’t think of.

Maybe I’m crazy and this is imposible, I know nothing about programming , as I said, It’s just an idea I thought would be cool.

Let me know if I’m crazy or if my idea has at least a drop of possibly. Please don’t be too harsh.

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Ok. First off HI! I haven’t seen you before and it looks like your pretty new, so welcome!. I like you, you have creative and interesting ideas, which you write out well. We need more users like you.

Your idea is great and would be fantastic and I would love to see it. Like really ❤️. However it’s legality is extremely murky, so no real programmer would help us with the complex task you propose. I don’t know if there’s any programmer that good willing to do it for free either. However the other part of your idea the box set kits would be a great eBay store.

Again, great concept but sadly not likely to happen

Have a nice day

I decided to add a signature

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Thank you, I see your points. My idea is of the program practically impossible but maybe the store could work.

Yes, I’m pretty new, I’ve been a user for only about a couple of months. I love all the things I’ve been able to get thanks to me finding this site and it was all free and not that difficult. I mean I only asked for a MySpleen invite and got it, I guess One has to be lucky.

There are many tutorials in YouTube of how to get fan edits, but I couldn’t find one that mentioned asking for a MySpleen invite. I think it’s the easiest way and normal people should know how it works.

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ADR14NAT1ON said:

Thank you, I see your points. My idea is of the program practically impossible but maybe the store could work.

Yes, I’m pretty new, I’ve been a user for only about a couple of months. I love all the things I’ve been able to get thanks to me finding this site and it was all free and not that difficult. I mean I only asked for a MySpleen invite and got it, I guess One has to be lucky.

There are many tutorials in YouTube of how to get fan edits, but I couldn’t find one that mentioned asking for a MySpleen invite. I think it’s the easiest way and normal people should know how it works.

“Normal people” should probably know how to torrent, and how to do so relatively safely. But I do not think myspleen wants to be the default way that normal people find Despecialized. In fact I think they had a problem with us having the invite thread here, which essentially just becomes a means of making users who leech for 2-3 days and never visit again.

I did my share of inviting strangers to spleen, as well as inviting regular OT members. OT members are still registered there and have good ratios. The strangers have 0 bytes uploaded and abandoned their accounts almost instantly once they got what they wanted.

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I feel like TUIG was great but the thing that threw me off for the first time was the multiple downloads and having to setup a download manager without getting copius amounts of adware.

I think we should move from uloz to mega and have it as one file so it’s not confusing for new users and they only have to follow one link from TUIG, we should also setup a donation service to keep the mega account up and running, hell I would pay for it to keep it up.

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 (Edited)

towne32 said:

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Thank you, I see your points. My idea is of the program practically impossible but maybe the store could work.

Yes, I’m pretty new, I’ve been a user for only about a couple of months. I love all the things I’ve been able to get thanks to me finding this site and it was all free and not that difficult. I mean I only asked for a MySpleen invite and got it, I guess One has to be lucky.

There are many tutorials in YouTube of how to get fan edits, but I couldn’t find one that mentioned asking for a MySpleen invite. I think it’s the easiest way and normal people should know how it works.

“Normal people” should probably know how to torrent

Really? Obvious incoming joke aside, I don’t know how to torrent, and I’m hardly in the uneducated internet demographic.

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 (Edited)

TV’s Frink said:

towne32 said:

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Thank you, I see your points. My idea is of the program practically impossible but maybe the store could work.

Yes, I’m pretty new, I’ve been a user for only about a couple of months. I love all the things I’ve been able to get thanks to me finding this site and it was all free and not that difficult. I mean I only asked for a MySpleen invite and got it, I guess One has to be lucky.

There are many tutorials in YouTube of how to get fan edits, but I couldn’t find one that mentioned asking for a MySpleen invite. I think it’s the easiest way and normal people should know how it works.

“Normal people” should probably know how to torrent

Really? Obvious incoming joke aside, I don’t know how to torrent, and I’m hardly in the uneducated internet demographic.

Ah. What I mean is, “It’s probably a good idea to make a tutorial for torrenting aimed at normal people.” - with the caveat that such a tutorial should not be made showing the uninformed how they can quickly get myspleen access.

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towne32 said:

TV’s Frink said:

towne32 said:

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Thank you, I see your points. My idea is of the program practically impossible but maybe the store could work.

Yes, I’m pretty new, I’ve been a user for only about a couple of months. I love all the things I’ve been able to get thanks to me finding this site and it was all free and not that difficult. I mean I only asked for a MySpleen invite and got it, I guess One has to be lucky.

There are many tutorials in YouTube of how to get fan edits, but I couldn’t find one that mentioned asking for a MySpleen invite. I think it’s the easiest way and normal people should know how it works.

“Normal people” should probably know how to torrent

Really? Obvious incoming joke aside, I don’t know how to torrent, and I’m hardly in the uneducated internet demographic.

Ah. What I mean is, “It’s probably a good idea to make a tutorial for torrenting aimed at normal people.” - with the caveat that such a tutorial should not be made showing the uninformed how they can quickly get myspleen access.

I’m a fan of well-written tutorials, since I can apparently get into trouble with even the simplest of instructions. 😛

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

The process of downloading a file from a torrent is relatively easy. Just download a good torrent client, click on a link from the tracker, and you’re off to the races.

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The problem is some people really have no idea what a Torrent is, and nevermind a Torrent Client.
A tutorial would be really helpful!

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ADR14NAT1ON said:

The problem is some people really have no idea what a Torrent is, and nevermind a Torrent Client.
A tutorial would be really helpful!

Really? I mean it takes like 5 seconds to find an answer for that on google

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Darth Lucas said:

Because “f*ing around with copyrighted material” is not a crime. We own the movies, we can do with them what we please, so long as it is for personal use. It is, however, a crime to sell duplicates of that copyrighted material, altered or not.

It’s a crime to distribute duplicates of copyrighted material, even for free. As you say, no problem as long as the work on the movies is for personal use, but there are legal issues as soon as it is distributed to third party people -whatever the way it is distributed. So in theory the fans who are distributing any original/restored/whatever version could be in trouble too.

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I feel like an ultimate solution to this problem is like many people have said, which is to make it clear that you can enjoy the Despecialized Edition for free. This could be achieved by setting up a simple, professional-looking website that gives an introduction to the project, links to TUIG, the introduction documentary on YouTube and this website, and clearly states that the DeEd is available for free and easily available if you are willing to put the work in. Maybe we could even provide the torrent files on the website? It probably won’t bring people selling the DeEd on eBay to a complete stop, but it will certainly slow it down considerably if people realise how easy it is to get the DeEd for free.

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Sherman said:

Maybe we could even provide the torrent files on the website?

You registered that domain? You’re braver than I thought.

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towne32 said:

Sherman said:

Maybe we could even provide the torrent files on the website?

You registered that domain? You’re braver than I thought.

I don’t get it.

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I’d say just to link an updated TUIG that links to a pastebin that links to the ULOZ or (possibly) MEGA link.

Just to be safe.

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NeverarGreat said:

Running torrents off of your website is a good way to run into legal trouble.

Even though you aren’t hosting the illegal content, hosting the torrent can be bad enough if you’re up against Disney and the MPAA. It’s a really bad idea to make yourself a target like that, in my opinion. And I thought it was a funny Leia misquote.

New people like to complain about how decentralized things are around here. Some people complain because they’re too lazy to figure it out. Others make the reasonable claim that it drives people to places like Ebay.

It’s a reasonable claim that having things a bit decentralized thwarts some of the less technically inclined and probably drives them to ebay. And that having higher visibility (apparently more than a very obvious facebook page) would prevent some of those sales. Others would still buy because they are either lazy or don’t have the internet connection or ability to burn BD-R and make pretty cases.

But I would argue that besides the problems that A) some jackasses are profitting and B) some dumbasses are losing money, the major issue with the ebay sales is their extreme visibility. And when we get newcomers saying that we need to just have a website such as “SWdespecialized.info” or such, with a big red button to download the film, they’re asking for “us” (whomever) to take on that visible and risky role. Drawing too much attention to it all is a bad thing, in my opinion, regardless of whether there’s the extra aspect of profit or not.

I’m sure some people disagree, and will say that we’ve somehow managed to survive despite many articles about these projects in the press. But I don’t think that’s something to take for granted. We’re fortunate that things have been as light-hearted as they have been. If they decide at some point to take the approach of, say, Nintendo (or better yet, Disney with their animated properties in years past), and treat us like complete trash, things are going to change drastically.

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Thinking outside the box here.
This might be a bad idea.

How about…hrm, not flooding, but putting on a few Ebay ads ourselves. Title it (them?) something along the lines of “Absolutely Free Despecialized Star Wars Set” and in the description explain how to get it free.
That way if anyone ever goes to Ebay to search for where they can buy a set, this result shows up.

Not sure how Ebay works, but it would be nice if we could make the auction without accepting any money. But chances are we’d have to make it with at least a $0.01 ‘buy it now’ option??

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EBay auctions that don’t have n actual product are against the rules for scam and pyramid selling related reasons. It’s a nice idea though.

People used to sell “how to copy DVDs” guides on eBay. If you bought it, they’d email you a link to DVD decryptor or other free things. EBay was absolutely flooded with this stuff because they could make as many auctions as they wanted with no actual product involved. So even a well-intentioned version of that won’t fly now.

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towne32 said:

NeverarGreat said:

Running torrents off of your website is a good way to run into legal trouble.

Even though you aren’t hosting the illegal content, hosting the torrent can be bad enough if you’re up against Disney and the MPAA. It’s a really bad idea to make yourself a target like that, in my opinion. And I thought it was a funny Leia misquote.

New people like to complain about how decentralized things are around here. Some people complain because they’re too lazy to figure it out. Others make the reasonable claim that it drives people to places like Ebay.

It’s a reasonable claim that having things a bit decentralized thwarts some of the less technically inclined and probably drives them to ebay. And that having higher visibility (apparently more than a very obvious facebook page) would prevent some of those sales. Others would still buy because they are either lazy or don’t have the internet connection or ability to burn BD-R and make pretty cases.

But I would argue that besides the problems that A) some jackasses are profitting and B) some dumbasses are losing money, the major issue with the ebay sales is their extreme visibility. And when we get newcomers saying that we need to just have a website such as “SWdespecialized.info” or such, with a big red button to download the film, they’re asking for “us” (whomever) to take on that visible and risky role. Drawing too much attention to it all is a bad thing, in my opinion, regardless of whether there’s the extra aspect of profit or not.

I’m sure some people disagree, and will say that we’ve somehow managed to survive despite many articles about these projects in the press. But I don’t think that’s something to take for granted. We’re fortunate that things have been as light-hearted as they have been. If they decide at some point to take the approach of, say, Nintendo (or better yet, Disney with their animated properties in years past), and treat us like complete trash, things are going to change drastically.

Could it be a big blue button then?

In all seriousness though why can’t Harmy just update TUIG with links to the MKV, DVD ISO, and Njvc’s Blu-Ray ISO hosted on Mega or something similar, all people have to do is copy/burn the file to a USB drive or a disc and call it a day.

No hassle, no begging for invites, no downloading a shady download manager with adware, all you have to do is download and put it on whatever media you want and your watching Star Wars the way it was meant to be.

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I’m a little confused… I just downloaded the latest despecialized editions myself using the instructions on the first post of Harmy’s thread, via Uloz just following his steps. It was extraordinarily easy and didn’t require understanding torrents. There’s not much easier anyone could make it given the size of the files.

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