Indeed, which was my whole point! I'm much better off just using the Netflix or Paramount+ streams for convenience and improved audio.
DS9: Redefined 2.0 - The Ultimate DS9 Upscale Project
- Thread starter Cryogenator
- Start date
If you are really familiar with all four factors, you should have little trouble applying them to the proposed fan remastering and distribution.
1. Purpose and character of the use. To favor a use being fair use, it would be for educational, scientific, or preservation activities. Remastering by and for fans would be a recreational use. Not as bad as if the remasterers planned to make a lot of money from it, but definitely not an automatic okay.
2. Nature of the copyrighted work. Star Trek is a commercial work. Primarily, it was created to make money, pay its expenses at creation and pay its investors continuing returns on their investment.
3. The portion of the work being used. The talk here is of entire episodes, or even the entire series. If it was a few scenes as a demonstration project that would have a stronger case.
4. Effect on the value of the work or the potential market for it. A fan remaster, if it were allowed to remain on Youtube or wherever, would be devastating to the market for the series. The DVDs are still easily available, and Amazon claims to have sold 200 copies of the full series within the past month. (Hey, not bad for a series that's been off the air for a quarter of a century! Maybe everyone's DVDs are wearing out.)
None of these factors strongly favor fan remasters falling within free use. (And all four factors have to be considered, even if one of the factors was strongly in favor of it being free use.)
As I said, a sufficiently transformative work is fair use.
"Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work."
This is sufficiently transformative because it adds something new by creating a substantially sharper presentation than any official option, giving it a further purpose of not looking utterly atrocious on large high-definition screens and a different character of eliciting greater emotional response and engagement due to increased visual clarity providing a substantially increased ability to examine and appreciate the actors' facial expressions and body language and costume and set designers' creations, and does not substitute for the original use of the work because, for many, the official presentations are unwatchable on very large screens, and for some, on any screen.
If an official remaster existed, this wouldn't be sufficiently transformative, nor would it even exist, but since an official remaster doesn't yet exist, this is sufficiently transformative and will remain so until the show is officially remastered.
Even so, the idea is to show what's possible and instruct others how to create their own upscales by sharing the workflow.
Wouldn't the lack of an official remaster mean this does substitute for the original work, because presumably people would think it was better and therefore watch it for free rather than buying DVDs or paying for streaming subscriptions?
I also don't see why it's transformative. It's literally the exact same material repackaged with some algorithms that claim invent additional detail.
The viewer can decide if it actually does look better to their eyes, but you would be very hard-pressed to make this claim stand up in court.
But I appreciate that you aren't talking about distributing the full original works and that this is a theoretical discussion.
I also don't see why it's transformative. It's literally the exact same material repackaged with some algorithms that claim invent additional detail.
The viewer can decide if it actually does look better to their eyes, but you would be very hard-pressed to make this claim stand up in court.
But I appreciate that you aren't talking about distributing the full original works and that this is a theoretical discussion.
But the fan remaster would be intended to substitute for the original. Transformative uses are intended to be a new creative process like making a spoof or a fanfic, not just sharpening up some lines.
It doesn't substitute for the original because I'm not interested in watching the original due to it being of too low visual quality for me and many others. I've held off on rewatching Deep Space Nine and Voyager for over a decade because I kept expecting an official remaster. The official DVD boxsets I own of both look terrible compared to my Blu-rays of the rest of the shows, and the DVD upscaling examples I've seen look nearly as bad to me. This project still comes nowhere close to a true remaster but still entails far more than merely "sharpening up some lines" and results in a significantly transformed presentation. Fanedits such as Obi-Wan: Trials of the Master, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - The Siege of Mandalore (4.5 hours!), the Wizarding World Ultimate Definitive Editions, Untitled: The Bootleg Cut (Remastered and Expanded), the Q2 and Blue Rose edits of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Star Trek: Nemesis - The Last Rendezvous which create new experiences by adding, altering, or removing scenes are also transformative, not just entirely new derivative works.
Since Paramount may well continue their idiocy for another decade, I'm now considering obtaining and learning how to rip and upscale these LaserDiscs, although that would still leave out the last two seasons of each show. I'd much prefer to purchase official remasters. I'd prepay up to $500 a season to help crowdfund a 4K Dolby Vision 16:9 or open matte remaster of the fourteen neglected seasons of Star Trek. If ten thousand people contributed the same, there'd be $70 million for a remaster project ($200,000 per episode), double the $70,000 per-episode cost of the Next Generation remaster after inflation adjustment—but they won't take our money (or will they, eventually?).
Yes, this would be the strongest argument against fair use. It is deliberately meant to fill in a perceived gap of supposed visual quality that the copyright owner isn't satisfying. Because of that, regardless of whether or not it is charged for, it has a dramatic impact upon the market itself, and perceived value of what the copyright owner is selling. That could easily be viewed as competitive and impacting their ability to make sales, so it no longer falls under fair use.
Ripping an entire copyrighted video, running a sharpening filter on it and sticking it on the internet isn't ever going to count as fair use no matter how pretty it looks.
A work is fair use if it's sufficiently transformative. Someone could choose to watch a transformative edit featuring a substantial reworking of the original, such as Kenobi: Trials of the Master, which includes new scenes created by the faneditor, substantially altered scenes with new CGI, including switching the battle between Kenobi and Vader to another planet with a completely different appearance, as well as significant cuts to trim the miniseries down to a movie, thus creating a substantively different work. This is clearly transformative and so clearly fair use regardless of its impact on the market, which will be effectively zero because the miniseries is now two years old and will probably be three years old by the time the edit is released, and because the very existence of fanedits is unknown to 99% of the viewing public. It will be viewed almost entirely by a small group who either already paid to view the original or would never have paid, regardless. Absolutely zero data supports the notion that fanedits are commercially harmful.
This project entails substantially more work than "running a sharpening filter on it" and results in a substantially different visual presentation than any official presentation to date, but once again, the blog provides only example clips and workflows to follow so that anyone with legal copies of the DVDs can easily make their own upscales and so those few with the time, money, and dedication can track down the LaserDiscs and learn how to use a Domesday Duplicator to create their own LaserDisc upscales.
Also, Deep Space Nine is in the public domain in Eritrea, Kosovo, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Palestine.
Indeed. Efforts to go skirt the law always fascinate me because of the justifying that goes along with it. Mostly it's the thumbing for nose at the copyright holder while claiming no wrongdoing is were I think it can generate legal difficulties.
I am not in favor of this idea. I've seen it argued before and again and it doesn't sit right.
This project is a preservation effort, attempting to capture the best quality versions of the episodes possible with available material.
A preservation is by definition not transformative.
(That doesn't mean I'm not into it. The LaserDisc transfers should be preserved in lieu of an official remaster.)
A preservation is by definition not transformative.
(That doesn't mean I'm not into it. The LaserDisc transfers should be preserved in lieu of an official remaster.)
Shall we establish an Obelisk for the Preservers?
I am not in favor of smearing the fan editing, restoration, and preservation communities as unethical criminals. I've seen it argued time and again and it doesn't sit right.
There is absolutely zero evidence for fan edits, restorations, and preservations (which well above 99% of consumers don't even realize exist) causing any harm whatsoever to corporate profits or brands. Fan projects are created by very dedicated fans for dedicated fans and their creators almost always emphasize that any prospective viewers should own a legal copy first. This project goes much further by providing only examples and workflows to follow so that people who are dedicated enough can duplicate the results on their own (again, this is very easy and cheap to do with the DVDs, and not impossible to achieve with the LaserDiscs).
Secondly, many works still exist only because they were illegally archived by people who were not legally entitled to retain copies of them. This is why some of the original CGI files for Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and many other productions and many wiped or lost movies and episodes of shows such as Doctor Who still exist. The letter of the law isn't always sensible or even possible to follow, especially when those laws have been repeatedly rewritten to favor narrow corporate interests (real or perceived) at the expense of the public good, to the absurd extent that even though the creation of personal backups and time-and-format-shifted copies is explicitly guaranteed by law, it's also technically illegal in practice if it requires breaking encryption (which it almost always does except for CDs). Does buying legal copies of movies and shows and then breaking their encryption in order to watch them without having to shuffle discs not sit right with you? If I buy a legitimate copy of a show and then break the encryption on its discs so that I can play them on my personal network, am I "thumbing my nose" at copyright holders? I also buy discs from other regions and play them on a regionless player, which also requires violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by breaking encryption. I've thus contributed more money to copyright holders by technically breaking the law than I would have by following the letter of the law.
Thirdly, an undoubtedly huge percentage (likely asymptotically approaching 100%) of people claiming the moral 2020 film directed by Stephen Maxwell Johnson engage in copyright infringement themselves by watching unofficial uploads of old movies and shows on YouTube because they don't exist on home media at all or are long out of print, or who still don't think they broke any laws by sharing mixtapes or VCR recordings decades ago (they did). Some also break encryption to create personal copies or to watch regionlocked discs, which, again, is harmless but technically illegal thanks to the DMCA.
Fan edits, restorations, and preservations are completely harmless and of great cultural value and are created and shared by people who have usually spent more than most on the works being edited, restored, and preserved. I myself legally own two copies of all of Deep Space Nine on DVD, and, as I said, would happily contribute up to $500 per season to crowdfund an official true remaster. Like Tosk and many others, I would also purchase a new release from just the SD master tapes, but even that simple, very low-cost task hasn't been done.
I consider it transformative due to the level of sophistication and effort involved and how different the result looks; direct RF capture followed by stacking followed by skilled manual filtering before AI upscaling means the result looks substantially better than even the LaserDiscs played normally, so this really is creating something for which there is currently no substitute. This goes far beyond preservation or even usual restoration and I'm amazed and impressed by what little's been shown thus far. DVD is a significantly superior format to LaserDisc, so for these LaserDiscs to look so much better than the DVD releases shows how lazily mastered the DVDs are, and the existence of and enthusiasm for this project shows that demand for a true remaster continues to exist and is not being met.
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Though ripping and preserving the laserdiscs in their best quality before they degrade too far is absolutely something that people should be doing.
I'm glad people are enthusiastic. Still violates thr law no matter how sugarcoated the terms are, preservation, etc.
If the law won't allow this activity change the law. I'd support that first. But, having talked to artists and workers who want to get paid inject not seen the argument support them; only fan desire for unfettered access to property not theirs.
If the law won't allow this activity change the law. I'd support that first. But, having talked to artists and workers who want to get paid inject not seen the argument support them; only fan desire for unfettered access to property not theirs.
Doesn't sound like fair use.
If you put content out into the world, it will no longer really completely belong to you in practice ever again regardless of what the law says. As I've repeatedly stated, the Redefined blog doesn't even provide downloads. Instead, it provides brief example clips and a workflow guide to show people what's possible and how they can replicate or at least approximate those results for themselves using their own DVDs or, for the really hardcore, LaserDiscs. Editing content you own a legal copy of is totally legal, and if the artists don't like it, they shouldn't've released it publicly.
Also, as I've noted, Deep Space Nine is in the public domain in Eritrea, Kosovo, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Palestine, so if you live in one of those five countries, you're legally free to copy and redistribute the whole series as you wish within your borders. In fact, you're legally free to copy and redistribute whatever you want in those countries because they aren't signatories to the Berne Convention nor to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). They simply don't acknowledge copyright at all. So, the artists you mentioned who want to get paid don't have to be paid in those countries. People there can view, play, read, use, or listen to any and all works without compensating the artists who created them, but it's not theft because it's not illegal there. So, we see that fairness and legality aren't intrinsically linked.
Now, you don't violate the law at all, right? By this, I mean you never watch old shows or movies from the fifties on YouTube which were never released on home media and can't be streamed, never once shared nor accepted a mixtape of copyrighted music or a VCR recording of a commercial broadcast with or from someone (or are now extremely remorseful for your past criminality if you did), never decrypt any copyrighted disc you own to create a personal backup or format-shifted copy, nor to bypass region locks? Never drive so much as a hair above the speed limit? And you're completely opposed to others doing any of this, too?
All the employees and private collectors who've salvaged material that was ordered wiped or destroyed over the past century, resulting in thousands of works thought lost being returned to circulation (both officially and unofficially) are part of a sinister underworld negatively impacting artists rather than heroes of cultural archivism, praised even by corporations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has repeatedly thanked former employees and private collectors for their technically illegal but now universally (except by you?) celebrated actions, without which the global library of archival material would be significantly smaller? Whoever leaked the 1955 Godard short "Une femme coquette" in 2017 should be hunted down and punished? The story of how The Player (1971) was narrowly saved from destruction by a theater service technician who saved a discarded copy, allowing its unauthorized restoration and distribution half a century later, isn't actually one of dedicated archivists working for free to save a piece of history, but a blatant act of criminal mischief?
If you were a CGI artist who wasn't allowed to keep any of the files you and others spent thousands of hours on after leaving the company, you'd dutifully erase them all instead of keeping copies for yourself, as Robert Bonchune did for Deep Space Nine? He's a criminal along with the artists who secretly kept CGI files from Babylon 5 despite an explicit direct order from the studio to delete everything they had? Even though J. Michael Straczynski himself praised them and the fans who later obtained and rerendered them? Warner Bros. lost all their copies, so these files representing many thousands of hours of work would've been forever lost if not for the technically illegal but completely justified, harmless, and beneficial decision of the original CGI artists to defy a direct order and save what they made.
Again, fan edits, restorations, and preservations are completely legal to create for personal use (DMCA decryption nonsense notwithstanding, and even that can be bypassed through the analog hole), and although, yes, distribution is often (but not always) technically illegal, it is, in fact, completely harmless. Well above 99% of consumers have never even heard of them, even fewer will seek them out, and fewer still will do so without already having experienced the original legally. The artists who want to get paid have already been paid. We're talking about a show which ended a quarter of a century ago.
Changing the laws is extremely difficult when multibillion-dollar corporations spend many millions amending them to their purposes and preventing reform, but law and ethics are not one and the same.
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We can just leave it there then, surely?
I hope anyone contemplating putting a lot of time or money into this gets advice from a lawyer. It could end badly - they have no distribution system except Youtube and Youtube gets a takedown order. Or worse, if they do work out their own distribution system and ignore a takedown order end up defending themselves in court, where just repeating your opinion over and over isn't persuasive.
My career was for a college library, and our state's assistant attorney general briefed one designated librarian about changes to copyright law as it impacted the library, and that librarian gave regular talks about it to any other staff members who wanted to come - especially staff whose job was saying yes or no to instructors who wanted to put their personal photocopies of copyrighted works in the library while their course was being taught for their students to use. (Just because it was instructional use does not mean anything goes.) I've been retired for a few years, so there may have been changes, although the courts are reluctant to make sweeping changes in law that has stood for many years.
I'll emphasize that copyright law is not necessarily what I would want it to be. The term, for instance, is far longer than it should be if the main goal is to encourage the creation of new works. But I wouldn't want some fans to lose their shirt because they think that because they have the technical ability to do a remaster that means they ought to do it. I hope there is a remaster project that can see the light of day sometime, but it would need to be an official project, or waiting for my grandchildren to do it when the copyright expires.
Anyone living in the nonsignator countries is probably too busy dodging bombs to work on remastering DS9, and they'd have to take the finished project out of that country to put it on the internet.
My career was for a college library, and our state's assistant attorney general briefed one designated librarian about changes to copyright law as it impacted the library, and that librarian gave regular talks about it to any other staff members who wanted to come - especially staff whose job was saying yes or no to instructors who wanted to put their personal photocopies of copyrighted works in the library while their course was being taught for their students to use. (Just because it was instructional use does not mean anything goes.) I've been retired for a few years, so there may have been changes, although the courts are reluctant to make sweeping changes in law that has stood for many years.
I'll emphasize that copyright law is not necessarily what I would want it to be. The term, for instance, is far longer than it should be if the main goal is to encourage the creation of new works. But I wouldn't want some fans to lose their shirt because they think that because they have the technical ability to do a remaster that means they ought to do it. I hope there is a remaster project that can see the light of day sometime, but it would need to be an official project, or waiting for my grandchildren to do it when the copyright expires.
Anyone living in the nonsignator countries is probably too busy dodging bombs to work on remastering DS9, and they'd have to take the finished project out of that country to put it on the internet.
How? They don't use YouTube and have posted only a few brief clips on Vimeo.
What were these changes?
Here are some recent changes.
Absolutely! Copyright was originally a totally reasonable 28 years in America.
I've never heard of any fan editors, restorationists, or preservationists "losing their shirts." Thousands of fan edits and restorations have been posted to r/fanedits, for instance, for more than a decade.
Various DS9 upscale projects (Vertag, Project Defiant, JoyBell, QueerWorm, IceCracked...) have been available for years, although none of this quality.
Or moving to a country that doesn't acknowledge copyright!
Who is bombing the Marshall Islands and Palau, and why!?!
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