Yah yah yah, you guys won.. MKV is good >_>

[hooliganj]

I seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest - I suppose it says something about the potential of MKV that its defenders are so dedicated.

To start - I didn't call anyone a republican, I compared someone to a republican, in respect to the practice of using ad hominem and straw man arguments to make a point, and the ineffectiveness of such points upon myself. Liberal vs conservative wasn't really what I was aiming at or talking about.

There seem to be two assumptions here that I operate from, and yet aren't being applied generally. So I will explain them here, in the hopes of better defending my position.

First, at least in an American court, a verdict is not a yes or no thing. It is true that it starts with guilty or not guilty - but the charges offered in the first place and the sentence that ultimate results are based on a sliding scale that allows the judge to take into consideration all of the elements of a case when making the final decisions. As an example - if you get arrested for carrying drugs, you can be charged with possession of an illegal substance - generally a misdemeanor. If you were planning to sell it, then that results in a more severe charge (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute - a felony charge), and if you were planning to sell it to kids, then you're in even bigger trouble (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute to minors - a major felony). That's a sliding scale that applies even before the trial has begun. Once found guilty (there's considerations there, too, BTW, that can get you cleared even if the state can prove a crime was committed) the judge has to pass a sentence, which is generally within a preset range of fines and penalties. Among the things a judge considers when deciding your sentence is what kind of drug it was, whether you'd actually managed to sell it, where you got it, how well you cooperated with the police, and even how remorseful you are that you committed such an act in the first place. This is just an illustrative example, but it demonstrates my point - there is no black and white standard in the legal world, for anything. Even murderers get subjective sentencing.

Also at stake here is potential future rulings. IP law is still in its infancy, especially with respect to the internet, so many of these issues are undecided as of now. Future rulings will depend in part on the intent and degree of criminality practiced by the defendants. It's not implausible that choices made by the fansubbing community today could have unforeseen results in the future. In such a case, I can't help but preach caution and responsibility.

The second point is that the consumer deserves respect - even leaches. I deliberately said "consumer", not "customer", the key difference being that no money was exchanged - one doesn't have to have paid for something to consume it.

Consumers are the reason for this whole setup. Without consumption there is no demand for the product, and as a result no underground cottage industry to produce it. If you really make fansubs just for yourself, then why distribute. You can obtain recorded copies of things for yourself and even translate and sub them for the enjoyment of yourself and a few friends under the fair use standard - otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to record television. The critical point that makes this illegal is mass distribution - so why break the law if you don't care about the general consumer?

As I said, those are the assumptions I start with. The end results I have already posted, so I won't repeat myself. I respect the differences in opinion sited in the previous posts, but I continue to worry about the careless decisions made for the sake of new technology and the directions it could lead in the future.

BTW, TheFluff - the whole video quality issue is a long established legal test, going back to the Sony VCR ruling, and more recently applied against Napster and Grokster. You may want to check out the case law, if you want to continue to imply that people are stupid for using it.

[Dnous]

So... how is downloading a raw and/or uploading one legal? And seeing how it is a part of the whole 'process' I find it hard to believe fansubs can be legal at all.

[epic59]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Wait, did you just call me a republican?
I think you did.
And in that case, I don't think I have ever been so insulted in my life. :V
Dude, on the American scale I'm so far off to the left you'd call me a communist. I also happen to believe that warez are not a bad thing (member of the Swedish Pirate Party, what up yo).

so i hear u liek mudkips... i do believe that this "fool" has insulted a very large percentage of the community by calling them rebuli-- bleh must not say the word....

Originally Posted by hooliganj

First, at least in an American court, a verdict is not a yes or no thing. It is true that it starts with guilty or not guilty - but the charges offered in the first place and the sentence that ultimate results are based on a sliding scale that allows the judge to take into consideration all of the elements of a case when making the final decisions. As an example - if you get arrested for carrying drugs, you can be charged with possession of an illegal substance - generally a misdemeanor. If you were planning to sell it, then that results in a more severe charge (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute - a felony charge), and if you were planning to sell it to kids, then you're in even bigger trouble (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute to minors - a major felony). That's a sliding scale that applies even before the trial has begun. Once found guilty (there's considerations there, too, BTW, that can get you cleared even if the state can prove a crime was committed) the judge has to pass a sentence, which is generally within a preset range of fines and penalties. Among the things a judge considers when deciding your sentence is what kind of drug it was, whether you'd actually managed to sell it, where you got it, how well you cooperated with the police, and even how remorseful you are that you committed such an act in the first place. This is just an illustrative example, but it demonstrates my point - there is no black and white standard in the legal world, for anything. Even murderers get subjective sentencing.

in either case, if its "high quality" or 160x120 .rm stuff that is blurry as fuck, the licensing company is most likly going to rape you for all you are worth.

Originally Posted by hooliganj

Also at stake here is potential future rulings. IP law is still in its infancy, especially with respect to the internet, so many of these issues are undecided as of now. Future rulings will depend in part on the intent and degree of criminality practiced by the defendants. It's not implausible that choices made by the fansubbing community today could have unforeseen results in the future. In such a case, I can't help but preach caution and responsibility.

Lets take the interwebs out of this for a second. http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf weither distributed on the tubes, or by drunken carrier pidgeon, carrying 4gb sd cards, its still against the law. They dont go on the fact that it was done on the tubes. You still get boned. they call it a digital crime or some shit like that, but it still has one very important word in it. C-R-I-M-E.

[Unearthly]

-EDIT- was already said.

I'm not sure how this is really relevant to MKV though. Because it allows more things, which could or could not be illegal, it's bad? If you want to relate it to a case of US law so much, look at the BitTorrent case.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by hooliganj

First, at least in an American court, a verdict is not a yes or no thing. It is true that it starts with guilty or not guilty - but the charges offered in the first place and the sentence that ultimate results are based on a sliding scale that allows the judge to take into consideration all of the elements of a case when making the final decisions. As an example - if you get arrested for carrying drugs, you can be charged with possession of an illegal substance - generally a misdemeanor. If you were planning to sell it, then that results in a more severe charge (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute - a felony charge), and if you were planning to sell it to kids, then you're in even bigger trouble (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute to minors - a major felony). That's a sliding scale that applies even before the trial has begun. Once found guilty (there's considerations there, too, BTW, that can get you cleared even if the state can prove a crime was committed) the judge has to pass a sentence, which is generally within a preset range of fines and penalties. Among the things a judge considers when deciding your sentence is what kind of drug it was, whether you'd actually managed to sell it, where you got it, how well you cooperated with the police, and even how remorseful you are that you committed such an act in the first place. This is just an illustrative example, but it demonstrates my point - there is no black and white standard in the legal world, for anything. Even murderers get subjective sentencing.

Uh. The "you are guilty" part doesn't slide at all, that was kinda the point. I guess you think that if the quality is shit you can get away with distributing full-length movies too; but somehow I doubt the general warez scene thinks the same (their XviD rips ARE pretty much shit all the time anyway).

Originally Posted by hooliganj

Also at stake here is potential future rulings. IP law is still in its infancy, especially with respect to the internet, so many of these issues are undecided as of now. Future rulings will depend in part on the intent and degree of criminality practiced by the defendants. It's not implausible that choices made by the fansubbing community today could have unforeseen results in the future. In such a case, I can't help but preach caution and responsibility.

Hahahaha, you are actually serious, aren't you? "caution and responsibility" when it comes to something that is already highly illegal today (and it has been repeatedly proven in courts that you will not get away with distributing lower bitrates or shittier encodes) and looks like it will most likely be even more illegal tomorrow? Somehow I don't understand the logic there.

Originally Posted by hooliganj

The second point is that the consumer deserves respect - even leaches.

Possibly the most beaten-to-death argument ever: I, as a fansubber, has exactly zero obligations towards whoever downloads the fansubs.
Whether I "respect" them or not doesn't matter in the slightest. I don't fucking care if you only have an extremely shitty computer or if you are so poor you can't afford a HDTV or whatever. There are numerous guides that explain how to re-encode, demux, transcode etc. etc. ad nauseam. If you can't figure out how to do it, that's your problem, not mine. I don't do this for you, I do it for my own satisfaction. I guess that by "deserves respect" you really mean "leeches should decide what fansubbers should do because they are so many more and they are the ones who are watching the stuff anyway", but I'm sorry, I don't think I can agree with that.

Originally Posted by hooliganj

Consumers are the reason for this whole setup. Without consumption there is no demand for the product, and as a result no underground cottage industry to produce it. If you really make fansubs just for yourself, then why distribute. You can obtain recorded copies of things for yourself and even translate and sub them for the enjoyment of yourself and a few friends under the fair use standard - otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to record television. The critical point that makes this illegal is mass distribution - so why break the law if you don't care about the general consumer?

1. It's fun
2. As I said, I think copyright law as it is right now is really really stupid, and since the risk of getting caught is approximately zero at the moment I'm going to ignore it
3. I believe free enjoyment of anime for more people than just myself and my select few friends is a good thing
Although, sometimes people like you makes me wonder why the heck I bother at all. :V

Originally Posted by hooliganj

I respect the differences in opinion sited in the previous posts, but I continue to worry about the careless decisions made for the sake of new technology and the directions it could lead in the future.

Dude, the border of "careless decisions" was crossed with the first widespread VHS fansub. AVI fansubs are on a so much grander scale that it truly boggles the mind. I mean, I guess you could get away with a slap on the wrist if you illegally distributed a VHS tape to 200 friends or so, but happily make 50000+ copies and spread them on the internet? No, you are not going to get away with that. Not now, not yesterday, and most assuredly not tomorrow either, if the IP lobby get what they want.

Originally Posted by hooliganj

BTW, TheFluff - the whole video quality issue is a long established legal test, going back to the Sony VCR ruling, and more recently applied against Napster and Grokster. You may want to check out the case law, if you want to continue to imply that people are stupid for using it.

Please provide the appropriate citations, because despite actually looking for them, I can't find them.
Also, I guess that by this argument you mean that by established case law, you can get away with "a slap on the wrist" for distributing illegal full-length movies, musical albums or anime episodes, as long as the quality is shit. Well, I've seen weirder interpretations of the law, but not many. :V


EDIT:
Summary: your entire argument is completely absurd. Fansubbing is already (and has always been) highly illegal. Adding or subtracting small things like softsubs or HD resolutions from the current XviD/MP3 fansubs may possibly make a difference of a few million in fines... but when you're going to have to pay at least $50 million or something absurd like that anyway, why the heck would it matter?

[Farix]

Everyone else has taken care of the other parts of this post, but there was something left untouched.

Originally Posted by hooliganj

To start - I didn't call anyone a republican, I compared someone to a republican, in respect to the practice of using ad hominem and straw man arguments to make a point, and the ineffectiveness of such points upon myself. Liberal vs conservative wasn't really what I was aiming at or talking about.

And this is total bullshit as all sides of the political debate frequently use ad hominem and straw man arguments. So trying to state that people who use ad hominem and straw man arguments are Republicans only demonstrates your own hypocrisy by using an ad hominem and straw man argument.

[Eliath]

Originally Posted by hooliganj

First, at least in an American court, a verdict is not a yes or no thing. It is true that it starts with guilty or not guilty - but the charges offered in the first place and the sentence that ultimate results are based on a sliding scale that allows the judge to take into consideration all of the elements of a case when making the final decisions. As an example - if you get arrested for carrying drugs, you can be charged with possession of an illegal substance - generally a misdemeanor. If you were planning to sell it, then that results in a more severe charge (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute - a felony charge), and if you were planning to sell it to kids, then you're in even bigger trouble (possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute to minors - a major felony). That's a sliding scale that applies even before the trial has begun. Once found guilty (there's considerations there, too, BTW, that can get you cleared even if the state can prove a crime was committed) the judge has to pass a sentence, which is generally within a preset range of fines and penalties. Among the things a judge considers when deciding your sentence is what kind of drug it was, whether you'd actually managed to sell it, where you got it, how well you cooperated with the police, and even how remorseful you are that you committed such an act in the first place. This is just an illustrative example, but it demonstrates my point - there is no black and white standard in the legal world, for anything. Even murderers get subjective sentencing.

Well, in MY country(Singapore), as long as you carry more than 15g of heroin with you, you are charged with a compulsory death sentence, no matter what you plan to do with the drugs.

By the way, do you know that there are established copyright related laws pertaining to Japanese song lyrics? JASRAC has shut down several sites over the years which post kanji lyrics etc...

Guess what is found on practically all the anime being fansubbed these days?

[dj_tjerk]

I guess we should just redraw the episode, re-sing the OP and ED, and use our own voices for voice-acting Or is that still illegal, stealing the plot of a series :P

[Harukalover]

What a horrid topic this became...

My responses:

1. mkv can be viewed on a PC that can view avi as long as the right software is installed. (There is no hardware limitation between mkv and avi)

2. Fansub ethics? Caution and responsibility?... lol?

Originally Posted by dj_tjerk

I guess we should just redraw the episode, re-sing the OP and ED, and use our own voices for voice-acting Or is that still illegal, stealing the plot of a series :P

Which recent animes have a plot? One that hasn't been recycled for the billionth time?

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Does anyone else notice that whenever anyone mentions "fans" the "flames" follow soon after?

The world DOES make sense, if you think about it for a while.

And I made this post as a joke, only to see it become prophetic.


Actually, I'm no legal scholar, but I suspect that the issue of generational copy degradation is one that will quickly go into the annals of legal history. I don't think any court has had the balls to rule against previous precedents in that respect from the VHS days, but once they do, it'll be out the window.

I mean, in this world of perfect digital copies, the lowering of quality is a CHOICE, not a NECESSITY. If I wanted a perfect copy of a DVD, that's easy to make. In the VHS days, making nearly perfect copies was almost impossible except with multi thousand dollar professional equipment (and even then, it's impossible to make PERFECT copies). So then, where does a court draw the line in terms of today? If I lower the bitrate by 10%? 50%? It's an arbitrary decision and the only reasonable definition would be to declare all copies, no matter now degraded in quality, as illegal duplications.

All those rulings from the VHS days will eventually be overturned and they will not matter one whit in how current day intellectual property law is applied. That's my opinion, anyway.

Now, wasn't this discussion supposed to be about how "great" mkv is? (Yay mp4!)

[Maceart]

I"ll just throw my hat in and say that .avi is still the easiest to work with in Virtual Dub. Takes around 30 minutes to do a 2 pass Xvid on a Core solo laptop.

Then again, I don't use any filters at all and I don't see many people complain anyway.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Eliath

By the way, do you know that there are established copyright related laws pertaining to Japanese song lyrics? JASRAC has shut down several sites over the years which post kanji lyrics etc...

Guess what is found on practically all the anime being fansubbed these days?

Hmm, now wouldn't THAT be ironic? Fansubbers being sued out of existence, not by anime production studios, but by the Japanese equivalent of the MIAA suing over lyric copyright infringement for the karaoke!

Hah! I wouldn't put it past them, either. Japanese record companies are scary.

[Medalist]

Originally Posted by Maceart

I"ll just throw my hat in and say that .avi is still the easiest to work with in Virtual Dub. Takes around 30 minutes to do a 2 pass Xvid on a Core solo laptop.

Then again, I don't use any filters at all and I don't see many people complain anyway.

funny how virtual dub wasn't ment for mkv anyway until VirtualDubMod which is still no excuse.

30min? Fast indeed. 47-54min on average here.

[hooliganj]

Originally Posted by Farix

And this is total bullshit as all sides of the political debate frequently use ad hominem and straw man arguments. So trying to state that people who use ad hominem and straw man arguments are Republicans only demonstrates your own hypocrisy by using an ad hominem and straw man argument.

I concede the point - my own biases make me focus on one specific side, but I'll admit to the proliferation of such tactics on all sides. My apologies.

[[darkfire]]

Omg Prepositions and nomilizations.
Due to the continuation of such flaming, I think we should come to a decision to stop this humiliation of person in question. and go back to the topic on hand. Mkv is good

[Bot1]

Originally Posted by Maceart

I"ll just throw my hat in and say that .avi is still the easiest to work with in Virtual Dub. Takes around 30 minutes to do a 2 pass Xvid on a Core solo laptop.

Then again, I don't use any filters at all and I don't see many people complain anyway.

no offence ment but that is largely because the poeple who download your releases know what they are walking in to

[DryFire]

I thought he only did 1 pass as well. yummy.

[Power2All]

heh.
Keep the discussion clean now eh people

Meh, had some help from TheFluff on IRC regarding encoding in H.264 with MeGUI.
I'm confronted with another issue.
Whenever I encode in H.264, the only result is either, blocking, blocking or lots and lots blocking.
And I still don't know where the @#$% the blocking is coming from since I use pre-defined settings, which arn't working either >_<
So for now I encode to AVI (h.264) and mux that in MKV until I find out why meGUI is making such a crap out of my encodes.

Vdub I still use for XviD btw ^^

[martino]

Blocking? Mind pasting the command line from MeGUI that you used for encoding that video?

[LS5]

Blocking in dark areas is a known issue with x264, but I have no idea why this does not happen to you when using x264 in VFW mode, and it should not be that noticeable. Do you see the same artifacts in x264 encodes done by others? Try going to the Zones tab in the Video configuration tab, selecting your favorite profile and typing in --aq-strength 1.1 in the Custom Commandline Options text box. Press Update to confirm the change and encode another video. Did this fix your problem? Most likely not, but I'm trying to narrow down the problem.