MPAA ‘Castrates’ World’s Biggest FanEdit Movie Site
Written by enigmax on November 23, 2008Fanedits are fan-created versions of officially available movies. Fans spend huge amounts of time with sophisticated software to add, cut or alter scenes to improve the original or simply create different versions of a movie. Fanedit.org is the largest such community in the world and the MPAA has, in the words of the admin, just ‘castrated’ the site.
Faneditors consider what they do to be an artform. Taking famous movies as a base, faneditors spend huge amounts of time editing with sophisticated software in order to create improved or just plain different versions of existing movies. Most of the time, faneditors try to improve what is wrong or bad with a movie, using advanced techniques to create a new piece of art based on the original. Of course, faneditors love to share their work with others in the community, something the movie industry wants to bring to an end.
In existence since 2006, Fanedit.org is the world’s biggest fanedit site and the people there clearly have a passion for what they do. Visited by around 2000 people every day, members of the site have created dozens of new versions of existing movies such as sci-fi greats Alien, The Matrix, Terminator and Star Trek, and regular movies like Titanic, Harry Potter and Pulp Fiction. However, things started to turn sour for the site recently. TorrentFreak caught up with the admin of Fanedit.org, boon23, for the lowdown.
TF: Please introduce yourself to the readers
boon23: I am boon23, faneditor and administrator of the biggest fanedits website in the world. I’m a preschool teacher from Europe and as faneditor I post under the name CBB (created by boon) and have so far created 29 fanedits, which is quite a lot. It is my hobby, my art, the thing I really love to do and will continue to do.
TF: Tell us a little about fanediting.
boon23: It’s actually a bit like creating a mix music CD or deleting tracks from a music album, but even more like remixing music to your own liking. Creating fanedits is a desire as old as movies themselves. People love to make things more their own or enjoy a variation on the original.
TF: How long have people been sharing fanedits online?
boon23: The online sharing of fanedits started 2004 with the fanedit: The Phantom Edit, a fanedit by Mike Nichols based on The Phantom Menace (SW Episode 1). It was shared millions of times, because people had such a big desire for a grown up version of that movie. The latest incredibly successful fanedit is Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited, which corrected every little flaw from the 2004 release of A New Hope. New special effects, sharper image, better and corrected coloring, new and improved scenes, new music, additional and corrected sound effects. It was created by one guy in 2 years, in which he did nothing else but work on this project.
Fanediting is strictly non commercial (on fanedit.org). We expect everyone interested in a fanedit to buy and own the original movie, have links for that on every page and ban and report everyone that tries to sell a fanedit. With this we are trying to keep it as legal as possible.
TF: The MPAA don’t like what happens on the site. When did you first hear that they had the site in the cross-hairs?
boon23: Three days ago I heard for the first time from them through my webhost, who was contacted by them. They filed a DMCA complaint and wanted two pages containing loads of Rapidshare download links removed. They did not get into detail, or say which fanedits were concerned. Both pages contained links to five or more fanedited movies.
TF: What exactly is their complaint?
boon23: Their problem is that people are sharing movies for free and they do not earn money from that, even if those movies are not the original versions. They see a copyright infringement in this, despite our warnings and disclaimers for legality. The MPAA demands are not clear yet.
TF: Not all studios have a huge problem with the site – tell us about Lucasfilm.
boon23: Lucasfilm tolerated and accepted fan films. A year ago we were contacted by their anti-piracy department regarding one fanedit they wanted to be removed, but they clearly stated that they had looked through the entire website and did not find anything offensive – and fanedit.org has about 80!!! Star Wars fanedits!
TF: You had a BitTorrent tracker on Fanedit.org, could you tell us more about that?
boon23: We used TorrentTrader but linked from it to external torrents only. No torrent was ever transferred by our own tracker. On the tracker we had about 400 torrent links to fanedits.
TF: Is this the first threatened legal action against the site?
boon23: Fanedit.org started in 2006 and we have not had any kind of legal problem before (except for the small and rather positive incident with Lucasfilm). The page was never private and open for all search engines.
TF: What steps are you taking in the face of these MPAA threats?
boon23: Dreamhost has informed us of the consequences – being shut down, lawsuit filing etc, so that is why we are taking down all the download links from Fanedit.org and the according forum now, which is an incredible amount of work. We deactivated our tracker yesterday and cannot bring it up again on this webhost.
TF: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, and good luck in the future.
Boon23 told us that he feels this MPAA action is a serious blow against an artform that is not harming the industry and was certainly never based on anything commercial, and he is saddened that this previously-tolerated ‘gray area’ (such as with Lucasfilm) has now come to an end.
Time will tell what the future is for Fanedit.org and fanedits in general. In the meantime, it seems clear that a US-based host is causing difficulties for the site, which may have to relocate in order to survive. Any offers of hosting will be gratefully received.
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47 Responses
This is confusing. I wonder what legal grounds MPAA were using for these actions. Most European copyright law would consider these works to maintain a copyright of their own independent from the previous copyright of the Hollywood productions of the movies.
It’s also more than just a bit contradictory considering the amount of money the MPAA-financing producers make by remaking classic movies.
You rule Boon! Keep up the good works!
star wars remakes were great and so were several others. that’s too bad about the site.
This really saddens me. FE.org is an amazing site. I just discovered it back in May of this year. I hope a resolution will be coming soon and FE can be back in business soon :)
just for that i am never paying to see a movie again, unless it is an independent flick.
Lol, i remember back in 2002 i hit the kid of Paramount’s Media Director.
The kid was in the same school as me, and he tried to nag on me for some odd reason. I hit him in the face, and he started to cry quietly. I think he was around 13-15 back then.
My friends did warn me he was an “important kid”, but i didn’t care.
@Jake: wow, aren’t you cool.
Just wait and you’ll see a page called “fan-edit.com” by the MPAA that sells you movies which you then have to re-upload with DRM once your changes are made.
Can’t you see the pattern?
They punish people for being creative, not making money out of something and enjoy to work on something they love?
When will people start to see this social system is not something we want to continue any further.
We don’t even have the option to step out of this, it’s forced upon us, it’s just horrible to read things like this.
MPAA – Bad as the RIAA but just more in the shadows.
The MPAA is a terrorist organization.
Each time that you buy a MPAA movie (DVD, cinema) you are supporting terrorism, remember that.
This is so lame…
Watch and enjoy the original or make your own original, but leave other peoples work alone for crying out loud. It’s their work and their pride, it’s their LIFE. What the hell is wrong with you people, anyway?
although ive never heard of this site or fanediting i think its bullshit that the mpaa what to take down these user created videos
shitty site
like ive said they gonna do it and when we have no use for the net they will learn that
A) its nto going to get them ANY sales,
B) quite the reverse this is like adverting the movie industry and getting people into it
So muscians suiing fans and actors suiing potential future actors and staff that make them BRILLIANT MOVE!!!
C) stiffles innivation , perhaps we should be using a new word for the mpaa/riaa. Genocidal traitors.
They are systematically wiping out whole communities and doing so against the wishes of the general populace.
YOUR TRAITORS TO MANKIND MPAA/RIAA
Parody and Fair use Clauses
FUck you MAFFIA
Those folks did some really clever stuff. Fortunately, it can still be found all over the web.
http://www.fetchmp3.com/search.php?Term=fanedits&searchbutton.x=0&searchbutton.y=0&Module=YouTube
simple as that.
J.
jack: “simple as that.”
Not to mention this.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fanedit+torrent&btnG=Google+Search
So, MPAA, tell me again. Where exactly is that lawsuit against Google…?
Retarded Mind: “Watch and enjoy the original or make your own original, but leave other peoples work alone for crying out loud. It’s their work and their pride, it’s their LIFE. What the hell is wrong with you people, anyway?”
What’s the matter? Does the notion that amateur hobbyists can deliver a better version of a film in their spare time than paid Hollywood professionals can as a fulltime career, make you uncomfortable?
Aww. Poor baby.
I wish I’d known about this earlier, I’ve been trying to find the Terminator 2 ADM 4th Option fanedit for quite some time now. All the torrents and links I’ve found are dead.
if someone would PM me the RS.com links for the xvid, that would be great thanks
If anyone knows where the torrent for 27 minutes later is hosted could you post a link to the torrentfile, I really want to see it, wish I knew about this site before.
i own a similar site to fanedit, sharing specific releases of previously made artforms, just edited.
i host the site offshore, and also in the netherlands in a beautiful datacenter. keeps me out of trouble i hope.
x
Die MPAA you are making hobbies and life useless. Pirates always win, face it.
Figured anyone would know not to use a US host for even potentially copyright infringing sites.
#23 knows.
Why not ask the pirate bay to host?
Is this not proof enough that copyright prevents freedom of speech? Copyright here is used to silence and censor people for making their own take on other’s movies. Purest form of the lack of freedom of speech. Surely, something needs to be done.
Perhaps we should get as many fan-edits as possible, burn them onto CDs or some other media, and drop them on random places in the streets.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
mpaa/riaa are blinded by greed
Because this just makes me want to go and buy more movies, doesn’t it?
Yes copyright does prevent freedom of speach. And therefore that makes a great reason to not support copyright. By not suporting copyright i mean we should pretend it does not exist. Also if they want to keep doing this to use we should all move to Sweden where copyright laws are nicer. Yer all 4billion of us lol.
Why can’t studios see this could work to their benifit.
If they saw a fanedit that was great for a movie, they could approach the person who made it, pay them some money and put it on their DVD’s or Blu-ray discs as an extra. Most extras are crap, but fanedits would make extras a whole lot better.
Of course they’d have to released on later DVD’s as fans would need the DVD first before they could edit it (legally). This could extend their shelf life.
Wake up studios and learn to adapt!
As kids they tell us to explore our creative side and force us to take art classes. Well WTF. This is creative. Blah, the world is coming to a dark, dark, depressing end…time to turn emo >.>
http://bluehumor.co.cc
PLUS 1 for being a preschool teacher!
Boon should talk to the guys from the pirate bay for some hosting and a category on their search engine for fan edits.
As for the content itself, contact Lucas again, confirm you can keep the SW content.
Do the same with the others.
From my experience, the MPAA goes after everyone and everything, while if you contact the actual studio or publisher, they are much more friendly and often have no clue what the heck the MPAA is saying in their names.
Great…. Sue your customers.
If Lucasfilm really was ok with those Star Wars fan edits, then perhaps the site should contact them and get explicit written permission from them to restore those films. And if that works, perhaps some of the other studios would follow.
@38
The thing is, one shouldn’t need any “explicit written permission” to make one’s own take on films that others have made. It is freedom of speech, and one shouldn’t require permission from a person for one to talk about that person. Same here. One shouldn’t need permission from someone else in order to express their own take on that person’s movie. People should be free to say what they want about other people’s movies in the form of their own movies.
Roze
Most “blockbuster” movies these are a pile of derivitive crud, the studios trip over themselves to be the next one to rehash an old idea, butcher it and make a mint. Tron2 anyone?
A load of people do it for nothing more than their own a amusement, no profit, and these spawn of the Satan’s hairy bits, come down and act like they’re saving humanity rather than propping up a dated and broken revenue system!
The fact is that the site takes in donations. In the eyes of the MPAA it looks as if they are making a profit off of their copyrighted works. Though the donations are typically used for site hosting, ect. they show a “profit.” This is one of the things that could get them into a lot of trouble. After site hosting is paid for they show a profit. How do you explain that? You can’t in the MPAA’s eyes.
Let’s set the record straight. Fanedit.org was not the original fan edit website. There were a few others which I will not list here as I don’t want any legal action to befall them as it has fe.org.
Also, though there are a few really good fan edits out there there are hundreds that a plain horrible. Do your research before downloading any of them. The last thing you want to do is waste your time on a bad fan edit of a bad film.
We really need to ban together worldwide and go after these mpaa riaa jerkwads….maybe even personally!
wnat new torrentsite?
http://norgestorrenten.org/signup.php
In regards to responce #19.
“What’s the matter? Does the notion that amateur hobbyists can deliver a better version of a film in their spare time than paid Hollywood professionals can as a fulltime career, make you uncomfortable?”
LOL, this has to be the single most ignorant statment I have ever heard. Its pretty easy taking high qualiy software and rediting films. Hell anyne with the software can do it. However with that being said I would love to see these people organize and make a full hollywood level film. Sorry but 99.9999999% of them would either fail horribly or come up with a vastly inferior product.
I appreciate fan edits just like the next guy but I also respect the original film makers and understand fully that they did all of the hard work. Re-editing is the easy part.
Even suggesting tha these people are more talanted than the original director;s is the biggest load of BS I have ever heard!
Fanedit.org deserves all of the crap they get from the MPAA and everyone else. They are rude people on that site. They break MANY LAWS and make special features for BRAND NEW THEATRICAL MOVIES available to the public, not to mention the countless STAR WARS edits that DID actually hurt the sales of the official DVDs. They are mean, critical people that think they are the next best thing in movies. Boon23 is really full of himself, and if he didn’t want this to happen maybe his dumb ass shouldn’t have advertised his HIGHLY MAINSTREAM “fanedits” all over the place. Sites like “Retro Horror Remix” and “Original Trilogy” (both F.E. sites also) are still able to exist because they choose to release edits of obscure flicks, (not the newest 007 or Star Wars film) and follow all of the laws…maybe fanedit.org should take a hint from them!
Maybe “fanedit.org” shouldn’t take money from their downloaders, and then the MPAA wouldn’t have anything to hold against them. Too bad, I guess boon’s greed finally caught up with him! I guess there are still much cooler sites around I can still get movie edits from that doesn’t charge money!
MPAA DOCUMENTARY
This film IS worth watching:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated
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