Just found out a bunch of stuff I added to TMDB got deleted. They are not as flexible and accepting of YouTube stuff as TVDB. TVMaze isn’t either.
So, am I out of luck as someone who tracks the YouTube channels I watch? What to do if a series is accepted on TVDB but not TMDB?
What stuff got deleted and what was their reason?
TVDb isn’t accepting either. It’s probably they haven’t noticed. I don’t bother reporting stuff that shouldn’t be there anymore either. I’ve lost all hope for them.
Over on TMDb I know for a fast recently added content (as in new shows and movies) is looked at way more throughly. It doesn’t need to be accepted before being added but still. They look at it. I doubt TVDb does.
Linus Tech Tips, Shortcircuit, Todd in the Shadows, MrMobile, Jeremy Jahns, and Hermitcraft.
Some of these have been posted about in the TVDB forums so they are allowed. Todd in the Shadows was specifically ruled on recently too.
when i used to update data on tvdb they expect to write the summary of the episode by your heart or take an image from the set as screenshot. Do not copy-paste from IMDB the summary, that was ridiculous for me. I do not know if this is the case here but how do they expect to update data? its the internet, the information flow, its a SUMMARY OF AN EPISODE not Obama’s exclusive interview with copyright.
I will continue to update tmdb now, so far i have no pullover of any of my updates.
Unfortunately copy/pasting like that is still a violation of copyright. Since the market value of one episode is tiny, it is not likely anything would happen, but the cumulative effect would be worth pursuing if IMDB wanted to knock a competitor out of the market.
I will tell you now that they probably haven’t seen it yet, but please don’t copy overviews from websites like imdb. Only from the official source or press release. IMDb is even mentioned by name in the guidelines.
If you haven’t received any complaints yet, you’re bound to get them.
ok, so explain a bit more.
You say only from official source , which is what ? what is an official source ? the website of the cable or streaming service ? don’t they have copyright on that ? press release, ok, so IMDB i assume do not copy paste from that press release they have 100 guys who are watching the episode and writing a summary on their own. IMDB copying the press release is ok but me copying IMDB summary is not.
Why ? how can they tell if it comes from the press release or IMDB ?
can you see my point ? its a damn summary text , why all the fuzz ? we are not copying the movie or a whole book and post it online.
Exactly, the network’s website usually has episode overviews. And for US shows, sites like the http://thefutoncritic.com contain lots of press releases. Instead of searching the individual networks websites for press releases, you can look there.
You can also get good descriptions from physical media sometimes. If you do end up writing a summary yourself just keep it simple, I have seen descriptions that tell everything about an episode and I do mean everything.
I agree and I feel your pain. But don’t you think that IMDB(Amazon) would go after a direct competitor that used the info that they payed someone to write?
The difference between IMDB(Amazon) and any other service/press releases is that to a content creator TMDB is free publicity. That is why they also have press releases. It would be a bad business decision to not allow copying of descriptions that they wrote.
Whereas with IMDB(Amazon) TMDB would be taking potential customers and using the database they are paying for to do so and as such they would have motivation to sue for damages.
Basically it is a liability issue for TMDB.
I build a new site to track episodes, i have a summary of an episode pulled from API from trakt, trakt has the summary puled from API from TVDB, tvdb has someone almoste certain copy it from a site, the site has it from a press release which is public domain. tvmaze does the same, tvtime does the same.
rinse and repeat
who get sued by whom ?
If the summary is “the boy plays in the house”, and i write “the kid plays in his home” is it ok ? isn’t this stupid ?
Take an episode and go to all the sites, 99.9% the summary is the same to the dot. i think its a moo point.
Sorry for the off-topic chat.
By whoever copyrights and sues first. More importantly, not all lawsuits need to win to be successful, Bob Murray v. John Oliver is a perfect example. In this context, imagine IMDB or TVDB decides to sue TMDB, TMDB needs to come up with the money for a defence. If they win, they might be able to claim some of those costs, but only if they win, and not always (rarely in American law in general, although copyright has some fee-shifting provisions).
As for who would actually have a legitimate claim, collecting the data is sufficient to generate a copyrightable product, so TVDB’s entire database clearly would be copyright protected, subsets too although the exact degree is where it gets murky, and where you start writing $100K+ cheques to lawyers to figure it out in court.
Ultimately it just isn’t worth their risk, therefore they need a business model and policies which prohibit such, and to remove any case where they have actual knowledge, to try and wiggle into the DMCA safe-harbour protections, because outside of the DMCA, copyright violations do not require intent, just action.
If you copy from an original source which is actually public domain, then that particular item is fine and cannot be copyrighted. But, press releases are not necessarily public domain. Nothing created by an individual or corporation is public domain automatically, some sort of affirmative action is required to release rights in this fashion.
Also, a collection of public domain works can be copyrighted as a collection, and you cannot copy from that collection even though you might be able to copy from the original works – The selection of public domain works provides the added creativity that makes this copyrightable.
An example: The phone book is copyrighted. No one name/number/address is, and you can build your own list from scratch if you want, but if you copy the data from the phonebook directly then you are copying a copyrighted work. How do they know? Well, they insert bogus entries, and if they spot these entries elsewhere they know you copied their work specifically. There are other examples of companies getting caught.
Another example, take a book written 200 years ago. Due to age, it will be in the public domain. However, if I type up the book and publish it (which I can do, because it is in the public domain) you cannot copy my book. You can type the original up yourself, that’s fine, but you can’t make copies of the copy that I created even if I publish it online. How I would prove who copied what really depends, but the link above shows how it can be done.
The liability issues are huge, and getting it wrong can kill a company so they must take care, have policies in place, and enforce those policies when it is brought to their attention.
I think there was a slight miscommunication on my part, we and others can have the same summary as IMDB because IMDB often uses the same sources that we would such as streaming services/press releases etc.
We just can not copy paste from IMDB because you may end up copy pasting an original summary written by IMDB or a copyright trap.
We can definitely use IMDB as a reference though…
Precisely.
It’s ok, but it may be better as a separate thread, it also may be better explained over on the TMDB support forums as they have the rule/database and Trakt just uses the api.
@arcreactor Lmao. Nice 
I think this is great, because I have done data entry at both TVDB and TMDB, and TMDB is far and away the better interface, gave up putting any data into TVDB almost a year ago. I update information on TMDB for TV shows daily.
So is there a solution for the YouTube stuff? Or am I out of luck for tracking YouTube channels if they’re not accepted by TMDB and TVDB?
@Justin is the move to TMDb already slowly happening for stuff that’s good on TMDb?
Asking because I posted a first bunch of a wide range of shows some weeks ago, see quoted post.
I’ve moved some things over as they come up in support, but we have a large backlog of support tickets we are still working through. I am hoping to get a lot of support tickets completed this upcoming week.
Thanks! Great to hear. I shall make a post with some more shows which can be moved over.
Yeah that is fine to make additional posts. I do prefer having one 1 or a small amount of shows in a single support ticket, just to make it easier to complet the ticket. Sometimes people send like 50 shows and its tough to verify and fix all 50 shows in a single sitting 