2009-02-09, 23:27
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.
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.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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
fekker Wrote:Sounds good, that should calm people down here.
Hopefully API access will be affordable for us little folks doing utility applications.