TheMovieDB.org - discussion on licensing and license/copyright related to its content
#16
So what happens if I copy the info right off the back of a DVD and submit it. In a way I am copying the work of the person who created the DVD right? I am reproducing it and posting it else where.
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#17
Possibly, yes. Whether or not it's covered under copyright law is up to a lawyer to decide.

It's probably best to rewrite it in your own words, with any other knowledge you've gleaned from watching the movie. I find that some of the blurb on the back of a DVD tends to be all marketing and no real content.

Cheers,
Jonathan
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#18
Man why can't we all get along. Good lord. Its going to come to the point where its harder to get the plot of a TV episode harder than actually getting the TV episode. Huh
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#19
kizer Wrote:Man why can't we all get along. Good lord. Its going to come to the point where its harder to get the plot of a TV episode harder than actually getting the TV episode. Huh
That was my point. Just copy the damn 3 sentences from IMDB and quit whining. But TMBD has commercial ambitions. They're the ones making it harder than it has to be.
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#20
I think there has been a slight overreaction here.

Another post on the TMDb forum from the same thread mentioned at the beginning of this thread states:-
Quote:Travis eventually aims to take this site commercial, giving companies access to the data in return for a fee which might help support the running costs

@theophile, i'm not sure what your issue is. From what you are saying, it is ok for a 3rd party company to use the "free" user created content available on TMDb in order to make money. Yet it's not ok for TMDb to get much needed funding from this same these companies.

It doesn't take much of an imagination to see that HTPCs are becoming increasingly common and the demand on resources such as TMDb is going to increase expedentially for some years to come. The cost to run and host TMDb will be enormous.
I think there does need to be some clarification by TVDb as to exactly what there plans are but I doubt there is anything to worry about, but you do need to realise that everything of value has a cost, and to expect the creators of TVDb to pay that cost as it grows, is only going to lead to the eventual demise of such a great resource. Some people might say that donations are sufficient but the unfortunate truth is that most people, given the option, will not donate.

Look at IMDB, for years I have rated it a fantastic (and free) resource, if IMDB had an open access API and hosted backdrops then there would be no need for TMDb, yet that would not change their business model at all.

Just because a website has commercial ambitions then it does not mean for a single minute that the content will not be free for non-commercial use. If someone is using TMDb to make money then why shouldn't they help towards the cost of the resource. Even TVDB have banners and ads on their pages, does this make it commercial, it could since many businesses are using this exact business model.
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#21
billyad2000 Wrote:@theophile, i'm not sure what your issue is. From what you are saying, it is ok for a 3rd party company to use the "free" user created content available on TMDb in order to make money. Yet it's not ok for TMDb to get much needed funding from this same these companies.
My issue is that this is technically illegal. I had wanted to support TMDB and had intended to populate the db with every movie I could think of that wasn't already in there. I had intended to do this partly by finding the best synopsis on IMDB and copying it over. I found a thread on their forum in which there were some complaints about users doing this and I asked why its such a big deal. I was told that they were worried about copyright problems over the movie plot descriptions and it was suggested that I was not properly educated and that I had a poor moral foundation.

The point is this: as long as a website exists solely as a community resource that does not encourage illegal activity (i.e. piracy), copyright holders seldom make a big deal over it. Yet TMDB has designs on commercially licensing their content, which would mean that they're deriving a financial benefit from other people's copyrighted works, which is why they don't want to copy descriptions from IMDB.

But they're overlooking the fact that if copying descriptions form IMDB and selling the information is a violation of copyright, so is getting their iwn users to submit their own descriptions and selling them without permission.

Plus you have to consider the fact that all movie posters are intellectual property of the studio that created them, as are the screen captures that constitute at least half of the fanart on the site. Even the "original" fanart uses substantial amounts of copyrighted material. TMBD would not only need to get commercial usage licenses from all of its contributors (like IMDB does), they would need to have an agreement with the movie studios to sell access to their copyrighted movie posters and fanart content.

All that said, I do not personally care about any of this. I am just a bit peeved because of the way I was treated at the TMDB board and their selective approach to copyright law. If it were up to me, I'd spend the whole day copying and pasting from IMDB to TMDB. But as long as they're going to feign concern over copyright, might as well go all the way, no?
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#22
theophile Wrote:My issue is that this is technically illegal. I had wanted to support TMDB and had intended to populate the db with every movie I could think of that wasn't already in there. I had intended to do this partly by finding the best synopsis on IMDB and copying it over. I found a thread on their forum in which there were some complaints about users doing this and I asked why its such a big deal. I was told that they were worried about copyright problems over the movie plot descriptions and it was suggested that I was not properly educated and that I had a poor moral foundation.

The point is this: as long as a website exists solely as a community resource that does not encourage illegal activity (i.e. piracy), copyright holders seldom make a big deal over it. Yet TMDB has designs on commercially licensing their content, which would mean that they're deriving a financial benefit from other people's copyrighted works, which is why they don't want to copy descriptions from IMDB.

But they're overlooking the fact that if copying descriptions form IMDB and selling the information is a violation of copyright, so is getting their iwn users to submit their own descriptions and selling them without permission.

Plus you have to consider the fact that all movie posters are intellectual property of the studio that created them, as are the screen captures that constitute at least half of the fanart on the site. Even the "original" fanart uses substantial amounts of copyrighted material. TMBD would not only need to get commercial usage licenses from all of its contributors (like IMDB does), they would need to have an agreement with the movie studios to sell access to their copyrighted movie posters and fanart content.

All that said, I do not personally care about any of this. I am just a bit peeved because of the way I was treated at the TMDB board and their selective approach to copyright law. If it were up to me, I'd spend the whole day copying and pasting from IMDB to TMDB. But as long as they're going to feign concern over copyright, might as well go all the way, no?

I've got to agree that I don't understand the sudden concern over copyright issues, particularly the removal of the IMDB scraper from XBMC. While I am no legal expert, it would appear to me that most of the sites scraped by XBMC have T&C's that forbid the use of scrapers. And it is true that even those sites that give permission (TVDB & TMDb etc) host a great deal of copyrighted material without the authors permission.

I also agree that some of the people posting on the TMDb thread were out of order, accusing particular users of plagiarism is just plain ridiculous aswell as rude. Plagiarism is not copyright infringement and none of those people were claiming that the plots submitted were there own creation so plagiarism does not apply. The copyright of such work could potentially be an issue, but while I have little knowledge of the legal ins and outs of copyright, the IMDB T&Cs seem to say that the information is free for use, and even provide a free FTP link where you can download its entire DB.

Just try to remember that TMDb is a good resource we would also be worse off without it, and those who's efforts populate it.
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#23
billyad2000 Wrote:Just try to remember that TMDb is a good resource we would also be worse off without it, and those who's efforts populate it.
I agree wholeheartedly. That's the main reason that I would like to be able to contribute to it without having to dream up an original plot description that I could file with the U.S. Copyright office.
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#24
billyad2000 Wrote:I also agree that some of the people posting on the TMDb thread were out of order, accusing particular users of plagiarism is just plain ridiculous aswell as rude.

theophile Wrote:I was told that they were worried about copyright problems over the movie plot descriptions and it was suggested that I was not properly educated and that I had a poor moral foundation.

All that said, I do not personally care about any of this. I am just a bit peeved because of the way I was treated at the TMDB board and their selective approach to copyright law. If it were up to me, I'd spend the whole day copying and pasting from IMDB to TMDB. But as long as they're going to feign concern over copyright, might as well go all the way, no?

We are talking about one ordinary member on a forum. ONE.
Try contacting Travis or any of the actual creators before getting to worked up. I'm not saying your concern might not be legit, just that you are jumping the gun a little.
Taking every single posts on forums to heart will make it explode. Wink
McQ
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#25
Hahahahaha... I like how all of this went on without ANY of my chiming in yet.

1) Whichever one of you guys said I was going to be the same as IMDb, you are very wrong. The only thing that's been said on an official basis was that to license the API commercially, you'd likely have to pay for the luxury. It actually has nothing to do with the data at all, and more just to use the service.

2) Yes, there's some licensing issues I need to work out. Jonathan has kindly donated some time to help me figure this out, and I will be sure to do so. Everything will stay as Creative Commons though, I can assure you that.

3) As I mentioned here: http://forums.themoviedb.org/topic/297/t...b-in-2009/ I have full intentions on fixing a lot of this stuff up. We've been experiencing some pretty intense traffic as of late so I've been busy just making our infrastructure faster and more able to handle everything.

4) Since this project is done by nobody but volunteers, some of this will take a while. I will be throwing a donation link up sometime soon and hopefully we'll be able to generate *a little* bit of a regular amount of money to pay for hosting and other infrastructure costs.

5) Uploading data via a .nfo, or other bulk uploader type system is something I'd love to do but the system isn't totally designed to work like that which is why it's a lot more work than it seems. It's on the list though, no worries.

Does all that sound better?
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#26
travisbell Wrote:Hahahahaha... I like how all of this went on without ANY of my chiming in yet.

1) Whichever one of you guys said I was going to be the same as IMDb, you are very wrong. The only thing that's been said on an official basis was that to license the API commercially, you'd likely have to pay for the luxury. It actually has nothing to do with the data at all, and more just to use the service.

2) Yes, there's some licensing issues I need to work out. Jonathan has kindly donated some time to help me figure this out, and I will be sure to do so. Everything will stay as Creative Commons though, I can assure you that.

3) As I mentioned here: http://forums.themoviedb.org/topic/297/t...b-in-2009/ I have full intentions on fixing a lot of this stuff up. We've been experiencing some pretty intense traffic as of late so I've been busy just making our infrastructure faster and more able to handle everything.

4) Since this project is done by nobody but volunteers, some of this will take a while. I will be throwing a donation link up sometime soon and hopefully we'll be able to generate *a little* bit of a regular amount of money to pay for hosting and other infrastructure costs.

5) Uploading data via a .nfo, or other bulk uploader type system is something I'd love to do but the system isn't totally designed to work like that which is why it's a lot more work than it seems. It's on the list though, no worries.

Does all that sound better?

Sounds good, that should calm people down here.

Hopefully API access will be affordable for us little folks doing utility applications.
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#27
fekker Wrote:Sounds good, that should calm people down here.

Hopefully API access will be affordable for us little folks doing utility applications.

If your project is free, open source or community driven then yes, FREE should be affordable enough.

If you're looking at making a living off an app that uses TMDb's API then we can talk but I don't suspect there's that many. ~130 API devs and I've only had one commercial request so far (didn't work out anyways).

That's the great thing about this community, we're all here donating our time for nothing but a better product.
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TheMovieDB.org - discussion on licensing and license/copyright related to its content0