A theme of many threads on sharing through Newsgroups is popping up, and I'm sure there's more than one person considering a new site / forum for sharing covers. (I know I just registered a new domain and sorted a new host to look into doing this).

But to try to simplify things (to save every author being contacted by every person considering sharing covers) how do you feel as the cover artist about your work being redistributed?

How do we deal with covers where the original creator isn't known?

At this point (considering the fact that Im going to hang my all hats everywhere), I don't really care anymore either way because having been in a position where I had try and do my best to protect artists from this very thing (and having failed IMPO), I see that there is really no point in trying to even bother policing it anymore and will just hope that individual have some sort of personal integrity to do the right thing, but even if they dont thats something to be left to the individuals involved.

I know that anything I might acquire down the road as something that I find particularly interesting, is something that I would get purely for personal use and dont intend on distributing in any way, and hopefully the same can be said of anything I have made or continue to make that winds up out there somewhere.

I was thinking of making my own personal online gallery (should I find the time to be inclined to do so) and let the covers fall where they may, as it were.

as far as the issue about the original artist not being known, well...most anyone who has gotten anything I have made over the last year or so, knows that I "mark" my covers in some way shape or form, and quite honestly, thats good enough for me...any place that may wind up distributing them, yeah, a little honorable mention would be nice, but as far as Im concerned, its not something im bothering to harp on about anymore.

It's the internet ... so one can't really stop people from redistributing things anyway.

However I appreciate it if people ask for permission first, or at least mention who the original author is when they make something available.

A bad side-effect of redistributing is often that the files tend to get resaved over and over again, thus ending up with a cover in much worse shape then out originals. That's a shame because then it looks as if what we make is downright crap.

When you're distributing the covers yourself or through 1 or 2 reliable sources you don't have that kind of problem.

Credit where credit is due is my motto. But I found it's one not to many people online share. Everything on the internet needs to be free for those people and should be available at an instant ... again that's a shame ...

So in the near future I'll set up a gallery of my own to which only people I know I can trust will have acces. They'll be able to get what I consider my best work without limits. Anyone else will have to ask first. Don't like doing it that way but it helps keeping bandwith under control and keeps the covers from falling into the wrong hands too.

I admit to being quite surprised that among the cover makers that presumably frequent these forums thy have no opinion on this matter.

This is an issue that is going to effect your work. A lot of people with good intentions to 'get one over' on the cause of the troubles at DVDCA are taking it upon themselves to continue the ditribution through other channels.
These folk will have:
(a) covers they know are by you
(b) covers who they don't know who made

This is an opportunity to say what you think on these two matters.
Make one post in here asking people not to share your work through the forums and maybe people will read and respect.
___________________

I have to admit that I do also have a slightly ulterior motive in that my idea for a hi-res artwork site has expanded in scope to include a desire to showcase a selection of covers and I'm trying to get a feel for how approachable people are.
The covers would be only be accesible to a particular band of users of the site and would be on a free availablity (no credit / purchase basis) to them. The group would be pretty much self regulating based on known custom cover makers being in the group.

I just would like to know where I stand before I get too far in.

Due to the situation over at DVDCA I've completely stopped giving cover to anyone I don't know. All I can do is hope the ones who got my covers at DVDCA will have some decency left and won't start throwing them out there through all kinds of underground sources.

As far as that site idea goes ... i'm working on a system like that in php. Complete with build in bandwith control and everything

Just like in your idea it will be kind off a showcase for a selection of dvdcovers accessible only to a select group of people I can trust or who are respected artists themselves.

mmm..bandwidth control...nice

tbh I was going tho other route and was intending a trial on a supposed 'unlimited' space / bandwidth site with the intention of moving onto a 1000GB BW dedicated server in a month or so.

depends on how well the site is recieved of course.

I'm really still in two minds on how to release the artwork out to people.
Is it everything open to everyone....(risky)
Is it lower res to everyone, but higher res to selected user base...(should be ok)
or only artwork available to selected users...(safe, but makes the site a bit pointless)

I'd much rather go with the first option as it will really encourage more people into making new movie related artwork; like wallpapers, posters, covers, whatevers. but can see the risks all too clearly.

Well to be honest I've never really believed in those unlimited space / bandwith things. Sooner or later they become limited and then you're in for problems :-(

I'd much rather have it out there for everyone to enjoy, but that's just not doable anymore ... especially with the likes of Coolrider out there, I don't wanna get caught either.

Those who want the art will have to find a way to convince me to grant them access ... it's as simple as that

Besides .... the selected users list is pretty long for me already.

Bandwith control is necessary in my case and php and mysql offer the possibility to actually realise it, up to a given point people will be able to d/l and once a certain amount of volume has been reached d/l will be disabled untill next month, site will remain up, as will previews, just no high-res d/l anymore.

It's not worth getting caught for, cause open to public mean money and money means problems.

well, in this case there's no intent for any money to change hands from the users point of view. even if I do move to a more expensive dedicated server.

I think I recall a post saying DVDCA was on a 1000GB / month server, and if that's the case I'm pretty confident that I won't be reaching those figures for the foreseeable.
Although I wouldn't mind knowing what PC spec the server was just to make sure I don't underpower the site.

With regards to the likes of CR...there's a few people that would never make it far past the registration screen, and if I had their IP they'd never even find the registration screen

100%

Oh well ... to each his own I guess. All I can say is that I'm not willing to spend a lot of hard-earned euros just so peopl can d/l a few covers en masse ...

Considering that most of these covers are made up of photos, pictures, and graphics that were not original to the artist, and that the artist themselves didn't get permission to use...I don't see any problem with free distributing custom covers.

Oh boy ... there we go again :-S

3 key words: RESPECT and COMMON DECENCY.

EDIT: But don't worry, the likes of us have long abandonned trying to make people see why it is so wrong

:: shakes head ::Exactly!

Didn't really want to go down the generalisation of is giving covers out Good or Bad. I was hoping to get more artist specific answers.

Don't forget the question is asked in light of the growing interest in newsgroup sharing of covers.


I appreciate that I haven't gone out of my way since taking a look at the coverart scene to get into the in-crowd, but know I've done nothing to have people think I'd share covers without a fair bit of dalogue with the people who put the time and effort in.

Just thought I'd ask early doors so I could see if I was wasting my time with the idea, and if there was people who were open to having site sub-sections with the cover collections on.

Anyway, back to grabbing the artwork

Look its pretty simple - you made em, you're free to do what you want with them and you're free to decide how and who you want to directly distribute them to.

Me personally, I have a list of a good 30 or 40 names that I know I can somewhat trust to be decent and respectible with my telling them where I am going to put them and how to get them from there - with an enabled login. If I know you, you can get in, If I dont, you can forget it, and that will be that. Doesnt make any sweat off my back whether anyone can get them or not - I will have them for myneeds and quite frankly thats all I really care about at this point.

I will see the login that was used, and the IP that used it and if I find that that particualr login login was being used from more than 2 IP addresses, that login will be closed off to them, unless they can provide me for a very good reason as to why it would seem to me that they passed around a login that I gave to them specifically.

Done.

There are a lot of people in this world without static IP

Not my problem - I must protect myself from baitors and those who would try to cause me trouble - and anyone that I know to consider giving a login to, are people that I will be able to trust and have integrity not only so that I dont have to worry about them, but to also tell me truthfully that their IP may have changed.

but otherwise, ...leave your cable modem on - I've had the same IP for 6 months with no end in sight for now...otherwise? oh well - get it from a friend of a friend of a friend - by then it doesnt concern me anymore.

Well not everyone has cable ...

howay lads, this wasn't the purpose of this discussion.

I was trying to find out how people would take it if I added an showcase of work onto the hi-res artwork site. Seeing which people would want to use the site as a kind of free-host with similar like minded individuals.
I was hoping to really bring the recently lost work back together in one place.
With the benefit of having a group of people willing to share other artwork for the benefit of other wallpaper / cover makers.

Are we to conclude that you received approval from the respective copyright owners to use their intellectual property before you made your custom covers available?!

Or does RESPECT and COMMON DECENCY only apply to individuals and not companies?

I like my covers where they are, gives me more control over who gets them than I had at DVDCA; and better control over finding those responsible for leaking them across the web.

When I decided to re-package my collection in thinpaks, I was dreading the task. Then I found DVDCA. At that point, I decided that if I was going to replace the cover art, It would be with a custom cover. I know that I'm not very talented in the creation of the covers, which is why I primarily paid to download them only. Now, I have the most unusual collection out of anyone I know, simply because I have all of these fabulous custom covers on my dvd cases.

I fully respect the artist's opinions on where thier art should go, and I would hope that the artists continue to create the artwork, and figure out a way to distribute(or just show) it, because it is thier creativity that will spur other artists' imaginations.

Regardless of how this turns out, Thanks to those artists who contributed so heavily to the community--

robyn

I agree with some others that I would at least like to get credit for my "work" In a perfect world, I'd also like to know where all my covers are available, but I know thats asking a lot.

Ric