Forum - View topicNEWS: Otakon Enforces Copyright at Artists' Alley
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
hikaru004
 Posts: 2306 |
|
||
|
(Referring to Colonel Wolfe's long quote.)
In situations like this, cooler heads need to prevail. That guy (original writer of quote and not Colonel Wolfe) needs to chill, review Otakon's official statements on this and wait for the final word. I hope that he/she can have a better Otakon experience in the future. Some of us live too far to go.  
I bet the Inner Harbor and Harborplace really looks great in August! |
|||
|
|||
|
jvowles
Otakon Representative
 Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
|
||
|
(snip Colonel Wolfe's post of Onizuma's public rant on the subject)
I respectfully request that you refrain from this sort of tactic. First of all, this was posted in anger before ANY of our staff had responded with clarification (both Rachel Ann and I, along with a fair number of staffers, were extremely sick last week from some nasty bug that went around at our last meeting). While Onizuma is entirely entitled to her opinion, keep in mind that: 1. Her assumptions are factually incorrect on a number of accounts, starting with the idea that we are banning all fan art. We are not banning all fan art. 2. We also did not make any noise at all about moving for either 2005 or 2006; in fact *I* announced our 2006 dates at closing ceremonies at Otakon 2005. It's *my* signature on that BCC contract, which I'd been negotiating for months. I'm not sure where she got the idea that we were moving in either 2005 or 2006, but it certainly wasn't from anything official and bears little resemblance to anything under serious discussion by our staff. 3. Regarding the attendance cap, I'm not sure what she'd have us do -- or why paying a relative pittance for access to more than twenty thousand members of your target audience is "putting a squeeze on vendors and artists". And aside from the safety concerns, we've been struggling for several years to come up with enough staff to handle our growth. We've invested serious effort in making the con better run, rather than merely larger. 4. Suncoast is not dropping Anime. They are in some serious trouble financially, and they owe a buttload of money to distributors like Funimation. They pulled *manga* from their stores, and a fair amount of related merchandise; I suspect that you'll see a fair amount of that stuff returning to their stores once they're dug out of the hole a bit. 5. Dealers always say their profits are down. I've seen some of their cash drops. I don't doubt that some of them are suffering (if nothing else the distributors aren't as generous with discounting, because *they* are hurting), but the attendance cap has very little if anything to do with their woes. It has everything to do with competition and far broader general availabillity of what used to be a tiny specialty niche market. Sure, the average dealer is turning less profit on items because he's no longer the only game in town, or because customs is more aware of legit vs illegit items and more willing to crack down on those hong kong ripoffs that they used to routinely sell. But honestly, the whole industry had a crap year -- ADV laid off a lot of its staff (though they later rehired many of them), for example, and they're one of the biggest. Nobody in the industry is blaming conventions for that because it's a ridiculous notion; they're blaming oversaturation of the legitimate marketplace, as well as piracy and bootlegging. The mom and pop shops are now competing with Borders and Best Buy and Target. The average consumer can watch more anime on Cartoon Network on a single weekend than was available for commercial sale ten years ago, and he doesn't have to learn another language to do it. 6. I"m afraid I have to just laugh at the idea that Otakon is "becoming the big business convention", as I laugh at the idea that the attendance cap is "devastating" to businesses. Big businesses don't consider us that, I can assure you. They consider us a great test market and a concentrated way to reach their best demographic. 7. There are a lot of accusations from this particular individual about alleged staff actions that, if they happened, are certainly worthy of complaint and redress. Not one of them has ever been reported to us, as far as I know. (And I've been involved at a pretty high level for several years now, and goodness knows I've been involved directly in all of Otakon's public forums, so it's not like there wasn't any opportunity.) We take that sort of thing pretty seriously. |
|||
|
|||
|
jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
|
||
It usually does look quite lovely, especially at night. During the day, however, it's usually REALLY muggy. |
|||
|
|||
|
burzmali
Posts: 143 |
|
||
|
Man, I'm kinda surprised that no one has managed to figure a way to turn a profit on this situation. Let's see, you have a bunch of people willing to make "unlicensed" art at their own expense and the people who hold said licenses not a hundred feet away. Heck, I wish my industry were that easy.
There has to be some way to issue some sort of limited licenses for a couple bucks an item (for a limited number of items) that would make the fan art legit, while making the license holder some money and forcing the fan art closer to the price of offical art. |
|||
|
|||
|
hikaru004
Posts: 2306 |
|
||
|
If fan art was closer to the price of licensed artwork, the incentive to choose fan art might decrease. You are talking about people on limited budgets. Also, paying similar prices for an unknown artist is not practical imo.
(no intention to offend any artist out here.) |
|||
|
|||
Abarenbo Shogun
 Posts: 1573 |
|
||
|
Okay, I have to ask this stupid question:
Would ANY of the Anime or Manga companies out there even commit such resources to slapping the wrists or suing the pants of the artists that would take decades to get settlements from? The time and effort to push the lawyers on these folks or anyone would be better spent maybe aquiring Epileptic Seizure Robot Fighting Force. |
|||
|
|||
mufurc
 Posts: 612 |
|
||
I think not, unless the artists are charging a VERY high price for their fanarts and/or the company wants to create a precedent. Otherwise, as I already said, it's just totally not worth it. |
|||
|
|||
Mekairinek
 Posts: 5 Location: Someplace cold |
|
||
|
Ehhhh, it's a little dissapointing, but it's not like I was going to sell my artwork there anyways.
I'm still going to the convention regardless of whatever the final decision is. |
|||
|
|||
|
John Booty
Posts: 12 |
|
||
I see where the misunderstanding arose from. You're correct that litigation was not a last resort in the Racine case. In recent years, the MPAA and RIAA simply litigate with no warning. I was referring to the fact that the MPAA and RIAA tried milder forms of legal action for years (cease-and-desist letters to universities in the Napster days, etc) and have only adopted the "litigate first" mentality in recent years. In that broader sense lititgation was definitely their last resort. My point, going back to the start of this conversation, was that I don't envision anime companies suing producers of fan art. I think they'll exhaust all other options before resorting to litigation, although I don't see the probleme escalating to that point. Even the "evil" MPAA tried to avoid litigation against consumers for years... |
|||
|
|||
|
hikaru004
Posts: 2306 |
|
||
|
I wouldn't want to exhaust other options if I was them. The lawyer has to be paid whether he/she does a Cease and Desist or lawsuit. It all depends on what I'd loose or gain from the action.
Besides, I would go after the big bucks if I could and use the little guy as an excuse. List little guy plus Otakon Corporation in a lawsuit. Even a Cease and Desist sent to Otakon's domain holder would effectively take them out. (If I remember correctly, that was what happened to Akadot Retail when FUNimation got ticked off.) 
Anime News Network report animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=7786 Akadot's reporting of it http://www.akadot.com/article.php?a=405 |
|||
|
|||
|
ChrisBeveridge
Posts: 162 |
|
||
And therein lies your problem. You're talking about a title that has a very specific issue with it that 99% of the other titles licensed do not have. Gunbuster was originally acquired by US Renditions back in the late 80's when dubbing was hardly done outside of Streamline's releases and most companies at the time didn't bother with any kind of localization outside of the subtitled version. So several of the titles licensed then either had no clause written in about doing dubs or were very specific in saying Japanese language/subs only. And since US Renditions was folded into other entities over the years and Gunbuster and others with it ended up in the Manga library, they had to follow the pre-existing contracts. And like a lot of them they lasted a long time and most of the time couldn't be changed. So Manga could not release a dub for it. The other part is Manga's release plans for it that they informed you of. I have no idea when they said this to you, but as has been pointed out here (and elsewhere as well), Manga was talking about a release for it even after they lost the license for it though it wasn't publically known that it was lost. Gunbuster isn't quite unique in what's gone on with it but it is something that's happened with several titles from that time period of licensing. Using a license condition from 1989 as the basis for how licensing is done in 2006 simply isn't the way to go about proving your point. Because, as both Zac and Tempest have more than eloquently pointed out, your points have been completely off base. And knowing both of them and the kinds of reporting they've done over the years, they are far more likely to be right about it than wrong. |
|||
|
|||
|
harknell
Posts: 2 |
|
||
|
Hello everyone, this is Harknell from the website Onezumi.com. We've been involved with this Otakon issue as it's been developing, and we broke the story out of their forums when it became obvious that they were attempting to delete their way to silencing the issue by modding all discussion of it. We decided to allow open discussion of the subject at our forum site harknell.com so as to let the actual artists in question speak their opinion of the subject. If you are interested in seeing what the artists have to say, the ongoing thread is on Harknell.com
Onezumi (not Onizuma, uh, yeah, please make sure you know who you are talking about) and I have been in both the Artist Alley and Dealers room of previous Otakons. We are connected with a large number of the Artist Alley Artists. For some time now we have been battling this notion that "Artists are living photocopy machines" and simply try to rip off companies by scribbling bad copies of their original work. Fanart is about respecting the original source, acknowledging the original source, and giving people the ability to see images and scenes of these loved characters in a way that doesn't exist to already purchase. In most cases, the patron defines what they want and the artist draws this original scene for them for commission. Anyone who goes to an AA knows that this is the meat of the work done there. Otherwise the AA is just a cut rate Dealers room. To suddenly worry about the copyright implications of this micro level interchange is basically absurdity, and that's why we called Otakon on this policy change. As has been said many times, the actual owners of the copyrights are at the con, and most certainly take an interest in these sorts of things, and obviously realize that this area increases their sales and exposure. So why this suddenly is an issue is a mystery. To clarify: Churning out tons of copies of someone else's original artwork is infringement, and we do not condone that. This does not happen in the AA, and if it did we would support it's removal 100%. [Post edited, you're lucky I didn't delete it. This crosses the lines between advertising & legitimate linking. -t] |
|||
|
|||
|
jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
|
||
I direct all interested parties to this statement: http://www.otakon.com/news_article.asp?id=158 This is the OFFICIAL statement. You can tell because it came from the con chair and it's posted to the official website. Please remember that OUR forums are there for discussion, but our website is and always has been the place to get official statements about policy. If it's not there, it's not final. (Regular visitors to our forums don't even wait for us to tell that to noobs anymore.) It is patently false that Otakon's staff were "attempting to delete their way to silencing the issue". All of our forums are moderated but it is EXCESSIVELY rare for a post to be deleted. We could just as easily have removed or edited the original posts to make the complainers look stupid; you'll note that we did not, and all those endless pages are still there. What has happened is that after 9 pages of "discussion", and endlessly repeating the same answers over and over again, we began locking threads. Why? Because people were arguing about a policy that did not exist, misinterpreting what had been posted, and ignoring repeated attempts to clarify what was happening. There *was* apparently some post deletion on the Otakon community in livejournal, which is NOT something that we manage. In fact, it has always made that point clear in its userinfo page, but we kept hearing complaints, so I had to post another reminder. And that's really all that needs to be said on this point until the final policy is back from the legal folks. It'll be on the website in the next couple of weeks. |
|||
|
|||
|
harknell
Posts: 2 |
|
||
|
An open letter to those in charge. It has come to my attention that my original post has been edited here. You of course have the ability to do whatever you want with your forums, but let it be known that the whole reason this issue is known at all has to do with the fact that Onezumi.com went to some major news outlets and publicized this issue. So the statement "[Post edited, you're lucky I didn't delete it. This crosses the lines between advertising & legitimate linking. -t]" strikes me as completely unaware of the situation, since the links in question point to where we originally posted our own news story to our readers about the issue along with the forum area that was the formation of the movement to get the word out in regard to this issue. Considering that the entire fire of the Otakon staff is being directed back at us for making it known that they were going in a wrong direction, it seems unfair to not allow people to see where things started so as to form their own opinions.
Do what you will from this point on. (And by the way, altering my first line to "Hello Everyone, this is Harknell from the Onezumi" is ridiculous and alters things to make me sound stupid, at least mod it to retain the original meaning of "from the Onezumi webcomic website" if you want to remove the link) |
|||
|
|||
|
RodimusBen
Posts: 25 Location: Harrisonburg, VA |
|
||
|
I have not had time to read ALL of these posts. But as an artist who had a table at last year's Otakon, and intends to have one this year, I feel the need to chime in.
I was struck at last year's Otakon, and at other conventions I attended last year, at how much Artist's Alleys had changed since I began attending anime conventions almost ten years ago. I remember a time when AAs were a place for budding young artists to show off their talents, promote their original works (perhaps small-run publications), and do commissions for those interested. These days, AAs seem almost like secondary dealer's rooms, specializing in unlicensed merchandise. Everyone's got a get-rich-quick scheme in the AAs these days-- whether it's Cabbage Patch Kids redecorated to look like anime characters or entire assembly lines set up to make customized Naruto headbands. To me, there is very little "artistic" about such enterprises when the main goal is clearly to make money. I have no problem with people making profit from their work (I sell fan art prints and do commissions)-- but to me it crosses the line when the money comes before the art to such an extent that I can't even see the "art" part anymore. I'm glad Otakon is taking this step. To me, it seems to be a proper way to steer their AA back to what it was originally intended to be. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group