Whatever they say...

After all of that nonsense last night with the Official Bunraku trailer that was neither official... or a trailer, I've been thinking about copyright issues.

As soon as Keith Calder said that it was bootlegged material not meant for public viewing, I had no doubt that it should be removed from OGYD and hopefully, purged from the internet immediately. I've noticed that I've been getting increasingly militant about seeing fanclub stuff posted around too... yet a few days ago I posted scans of all the YFC DVDs.

Just as illegal right? (well, maybe slightly better than the Bunraku footage as at least I was legally able to obtain the YFC DVDs!)

I was wondering if that made me a hypocrite or not.

Why do I get so annoyed over some copyright issues yet not care about others? It makes no sense.

Then I realised where I draw the line.

Pretty much everything on the internet is technically copyright material. Unless you took the photo in your usericon yourself (or are using an image that falls under fair use policy) then that's illegal. Most people's LJ layouts probably are. 99.99999999% of everything posted on YouTube or Photobucket is illegal. Yet, we all share it.

I think it's because there seem to be two types of illegal and copyright.

1) It's illegal, but the copyright holders turn a blind eye and don't care
2) It's illegal and the copyright holders do care and will enforce the law.

I think that's where I draw my line.

When I visited the SWEET 10 DIAMOND Exhibit and played with GACKT's expensive necklaces, I posted photos of the exhibit despite knowing that photography wasn't allowed. But, I thought it fell under category 1 - you shouldn't, but we don't care. When, the next day, DEARS posted a message in the DEARS Staff Blog saying "no photography!" it moved to category 2 so I deleted the photos.

There are lots of Bunraku videos on YouTube, mainly of the footage shown around the time of the TIFF premier. It shouldn't be there but as nobody has cared to have it deleted, it's category 1. Keith Calder tweeted that he's asked YouTube to delete that video posted yesterday, so it's a category 2.

Posting scans of DVDs, CDs or magazines is definitely illegal. But record companies and magazine companies don't say anything about them so it's a category 1. DEARS (and other fanclubs - just see the reaction from Heresy, the Gazette's fanclub for evidence!) state FC only material shouldn't be shared and have kicked people out of the fanclub before so that's definitely category 2! I don't think getting some extra LJ friends by posting FC only stuff is worth risking my membership over.

So, my line is that things that fall in category 1 are fair game unless told otherwise. Things in category 2, should not be shared. I think we should respect the wishes of the people involved (especially with Keith Calder as he's been so friendly and awesome towards GACKT and the fandom at large).

I realise that illegal is illegal (and I've actually said that to someone recently... *that* was hypocritical of me!), that this argument would most definitely not stand up in court and that I'm drawing a really dodgy and arbitrary line here, but I just wanted to make all of that clear for myself as much as anyone else.

Sorry for the ramble!

I owe some people some PMs. I'll get to them later.. I'm off to see D soon and just wanted to get this written out while the thoughts were still fresh.