Postby 10TimesMan » Tue Nov 19, 2002 4:22 pm
Well, obviously there're a lot of issues regarding copyright to be dealt with but they are a little beside my original point, and I don't think many of them come into play with regards to the kind os shows I'm talking about in the same way they would with Babylon 5 or Star Trek or Buffy or whatever, basically becasue all of these shows (ad their ilk) have structured release schedules, so a VHS and DVD release is planned down to the date, with targeted sale base and income projections and all the associated marketing bunk. On the other hand. with, for example Mysterious Cities Of Gold, despite thousands upon thousands of signatures on a petition stating explicitly that users would buy DVD sets if and when released, still there are no plans for such a release. Implicit in my original point was a swipe at all those people on this site and others like it who criticise people on ebay for doing exactly what they themselves are doing (selling bootleg, unlicensed copies), and, not just stopping there, but actually contacting ebay to "tell tales" on the perpetrators. It just isn't on. Why is it OK for "us over here" to make and sell the VCDs but not for "them over there", who are incidentally, making the items avaliable to a much large fan base and often at a educed rice (I paid £18 for my Starfleet VCDs and currently they’re going for £20 on buy it now, less than people on this site charge). If we take your comments on copyright issues on board then really no-one should do it, which of course would mean no-one gets a chance to watch shows again unless they spend months trawling the web and eventually send a wad of cash to a stranger.So, criticising these people and worse still reporting them to Ebay is hypocritical, it's also damaging because as a result auctions are being closed down, which makes it that much harder to get hold of hard-to-find old shows (I noticed this was happening a lot recently and now I know why. Thanks guys!) Furthermore, it's potentially damaging to everyone involved; I don't know what actual steps Ebay takes and if this includes such measures as contacting copyright holders to inform them of breaches, but I do know 2 things. One, that on my Starfleet VCDs there's a stark warning from the FBI at the start of some episodes, reminding viewers of copyright restrictions which, just in owning a copy, we are all violating. And two, that the Inland Revenue just loves to hear about things like this. I don't know if Simon Coverdale and others are licensed distributors but I doubt it, and if they aren't if they've, say, sold 200 sets at £20 each, that would make them liable for damages up to about £6000 for lost revenue to the copyright holder and probably about £10,000 in legal fees. They would owe the Inland Revenue about £1600 in taxes plus the same again in fines and a potential custodial sentance. If you lot are exposing sellers on Ebay to these kinds of risks then are they not gonna respond in kind? (I'm betting whoever started the whole Ebay thing is someone who reads these boards otherwise how did the things get on Ebay in the first place, they weren't there 3 months ago!)To summarise:Why is it OK for the people on this site to flog bootlegs for profit but not for people on Ebay to do it?And...Shouldn't we all just kep our mouths shut, keep buying and enjoying the classics, and no-one gets hurt?PSAgain, with regards to Mysterious Cities Of Gold, most of the sets out there are the result of a lot of hard work by a guy called Tim Skutt, who spent a long time digitally remastering every scrap of MCOG media in any language (when the technology to do this was not cheap) he could get his hands on and overdubbing it in English. He then put his collected work on an ftp for free download so everyone could watch it again for free (Simon Coverdale if you're reading this...........)
errrrr..........