Epic Fail

[teyla]

After having watched s2 and s3 of Dr. Who, I went to watch some vids. And look what I found.


At this URL, you'll find a very well cut Dr. Who vid to the Muse song "Feeling Good". If you haven't seen the s3 finale and don't want to be spoiled, you should probably not watch it. Anyway. I downloaded it, unpacked it and opened it in my player.

And this is what I found myself looking at.



Uh. What?

She has also put a watermark of her initials in the rest of the vid.



Newsflash for you, vidder: the footage you cut this vid from you used without permission. You stole it. You committed clip theft. What the hell are you on about?!

People like that piss me off to no end. I couldn't even enjoy the vid, which was a damn shame, because it was really a good vid. Is that just me?

Comments

[thelibraniniquity]

And what I wanted to explain earlier was that clip theft among vidders generally constitutes the lifting of scenes that have been re-cut, coloured/otherwise altered and put straight onto another piece of music or narrative. It's a popular topic over on the Kawoosh forum, the link to a particular thread regarding clip theft I will dig out for you when I'm more so inclined ;) but the gist is no, the footage in this vid doesn't belong to HRS or whatever her full username is, but the sequences as they appear in the vid are her product.
It's the same fine line as fanfic, really (I don't own Enterprise, for example, but Miracle Worker has my blood, sweat and tears is mine all mine), only with vids it's a bit greyer around the edges.

[teyla]

I know what clip theft is.

But the people who cut the Dr Who episodes, they didn't just set up a camera and let it run while the actors did their thing. They did essentially the same what vidders do - took footage and worked with it until it looked good/fit its purpose.

Just because the people who worked on the original clip aren't fandom vidders doesn't mean that they didn't put work and creativity into making and cutting the episode.

I'm not saying I approve of clip theft among vidders. I'm just saying that this person *points up* should be aware that the way she formulated her demands is completely ridiculous.

[thelibraniniquity]

the way she formulated her demands is completely ridiculous.
Well, yeah, which is a point I also wanted to make. There's asking people to not use your work, and then there's putting a huge neon sign over your vids reading MINE BITCHES.

[teyla]

Lol, exactly. Couldn't put it any better way ;).

[ignazwisdom.livejournal.com]

Given how rampant clip theft is in fandom, and how totally unrepentant most of the people who do it are (see stop_plagiarism for examples), and how hard it is to actually get someone to stop doing it, I don't think that message is out of line. I'm sure the vidder is aware of the difference between recutting clips from the show and people taking the things she put together and slapping their own name on them.

Yeah. Just my two cents.

[teyla]

I can see how people would be tempted to put such a warning into their vids. I'm not saying that there is no reason for them to do so.

However, for me fandom is about sharing. Sharing your works with the others and trusting them to respect you as an artist. I know that not everybody in fandom does this, there is enough plagiarism to prove that, but I don't think that being aggressive about it and - as in this case - accusing people of the intention of clip theft per default is a solution. I think it rather aggravates the problem, because warnings like this create an atmosphere of unhealthy competition that I don't think we need in fandom, because we already have it everywhere else in life.

So, yeah, while I agree that clip theft and plagiarism should not be tolerated, and while I also agree that a small warning - for example as a part of the vidders' equivalent of the author's note - is completely acceptable, I don't think that aggressiveness of this kind is in any way helpful or justified.

[ignazwisdom.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if she's run into that kind of problem before. Many years ago, a something of mine was reproduced without credit on someone else's site, and I was pretty upset about it, and for several years I put copyright info at the bottom of each page of my website(s), including my fanfiction. I was within my rights to do so (U.S. copyright law is kind that way), and I don't think I was overstepping in terms of aggressiveness, but I've since seen people react to copyright notices on fanfic in ways that remind me of your reaction to this person's vid. I don't know, just some food for thought. Maybe this person was already bitten once?

[teyla]

I'm pretty sure she was. I've thought about this on my way home from uni just now, and came to this conclusion: of course, for me it's easy to say that I would never put such a warning into my vids/in my fanfic, because I never had my work plagiarized. However, I think - don't know, of course - that I'd be spitting mad if someone stole my work, but less because they stole it and more because they betrayed the trust I put in them as a part of fandom.

I don't think fandom could exist without that trust, and that is why I don't think that not trusting - as this vidder is doing - is in any way helpful. I'm not saying that putting copyright info in the bottom of the page is awful and wrong. I myself always put my name on the websites I create, and of course I also name myself as an author of my fiction. What put me off about this vidder was that she is so extremely aggressive about it. It's one thing to mark something as your own, it's another thing to be insulting to the people you chose to share it with.

[thelibraniniquity]

I'm pretty sure she was.
Yeah, she was. There are several posts in her LJ about this guy setting up a false youtube account based on her username and either uploading the vids as they were, or putting a blue bar over the watermark. Can't quite remember which.

[teyla]

Huh. That sucks.

She already did have the watermark then, though?

[thelibraniniquity]

Apparently so, but the actual warnings came after the youtube thing, as far as I can make out.

[wihluta.livejournal.com]

?????

[teyla]

Lol. I know the feeling ;).