Actually you are wrong; 7898789’s watermark is not for anti-piracy purpose.
He had said it himself; he cannot stop people from selling his videos that he released for free, so he added those watermarks to tell people to contact him directly, so he can tell them where to download his videos for free, so those victims don’t have to buy them in the future.
You may think 7898789 added watermark to prevent others profiting from his work; but if you look at it from another perspective, he is actually preventing people from paying for videos he shared for free.
He added watermark to create an era of free sharing Internet, something he believes in and contributes to, but now you are comparing his hard works with people who are profiting from it??
I did understand the watermark the same way as you(7898789 made it clear on a few occasion in slimedog's thread). By "form of anti-piracy"(form as in a similar way, it's not actual anti-piracy since it's pirated content either way) and "prevent other from profiting from it", I meant that the watermark was there to prevent others from selling them as-is since it would point the clients to where they can get it for free so they would lose most of their business which means they wouldn't be able to profit from his files anymore.
I can't thinks of any other way a watermark could prevent people from reusing the files other than redirecting people to the official release source.
Preventing other from profiting and preventing people from paying for no reason is the exact same thing in this case.
The work itself 7898789 is doing
is the same as the people profiting from it are doing(ripping a video file from someone who doesn't want them to, modifying it their way and redistributing it),
BUT the intention behind it is very different.
7898789 is doing the community a big favor by sharing a ton of video for free and the people profiting from his work are leeches who are exploiting the naivety of many people who don't know better.
Most of the comment from my first post is regarding the former since that's why 7898789 decided to stop sharing so I concentrated on that.
If I'm only considering the latter, I think 7898789 is a saint for putting so much effort in sharing so many movies for our enjoyment(even though my enjoyment is very much diminished by the watermarks so I avoided most of his post, but I'm a minority here and it's better than nothing).
There are a lot of people sharing on the Internet, and you can categorize them into several types.
Some people share so they can trade resources with each other, those people account to how many? 60%??
Some people share so they can profit from it, and how many are them?? 30%??
Some people share just for the sake of sharing, buying from original source and without asking any monetary return.
How many people are like that?? 10% or maybe less??
I'm thinking more 10% trade, 60% profit and 30% sharing for JAV, but that's just my impression and not very important.
Seeing majority of the members in this forum are not living in China, it is understandable that you have no idea how severe the situation is selling piracy contents in China.
When you release videos for free, and then next day seeing your work being sold in Baidu (open membership discussion board), some even without re-uploading and just selling the direct link that you provided, would you still feel indifferent by it?
7898789 has been putting up with this for 10 years before he started countering it by making watermarks, has he not endured enough?
If I were him, I would have stopped sharing the very first time I learned that my work has been re-selling for profits.
Maybe you would be wondering, why doesn’t 7898789 just share on Baidu as well?? So those re-sellers would not have a market.
Well, sharing stuff is still a criminal offense in China after all; he wouldn’t risk being arrested even though he is willing to share.
But there are people out there who would take those risks to make money, especially when they can get those contents for free.
I hate to say this, but I do think 7898789 is a fool, too naive to believe that a free sharing Internet era could be achieved by adding watermarks.
Even though he spent extra time and energies to add watermarks, people who actually benefit from his sharing are unforgiving of it because they don’t know his true intention.
And worse, there are people out there who still can remove his watermark.
Maybe this “Nanamiyusa incident” can let 7898789 understands his own stupidity. And maybe the best option for him is to stop sharing.
I also hate watermarks, but it is hard for me to hate his watermarks.
I still believe he is being a fool, but I truly respect from my heart and deeply appreciate for this…. fool.
I seem to forgot to translate his watermark into English.
Original watermark:
盛宏自购，免费分享，严禁盗卖，QQ：2489416566
盛宏(7898789’s Chinese ID) purchased, sharing for free, forbid re-selling, QQ: 2489416566 (his contact info)
From the watermark’s content, it’s clear those messages are intended for people who paid to watch the videos.
7898789 has emphasized in the watermark that the video should be “sharing for free”, so if someone has paid to watch them, they can contact him via his QQ account.
After all if you can get those videos for free, who would want to spend money to purchase them?
It is also obvious that 7898789’s goal for adding watermark is to help to create a free sharing internet era
Based on these watermark meaning, who would still deem that it is an act of “declaring property rights”?
My opposition to the watermarks isn't that 7898789 intention are bad, it's very clear that they are pure and coming from the right place.
The problem is that it will only work against very lazy people since it's incredibly easy to remove(and with the right knowledge, it could be much less visible than the example from the first post) and, usually, the people having a financial interest in them will take the time to remove the watermarks so the vast majority of the people left annoyed by them are the user who download his work for free and either don't have the knowledge to remove them since they never did any video editing or don't see much gain from putting effort into it.
Also, it's clear that the watermark isn't there to make the files his property, their purpose has been make clear multiple times and I think most understand it, it's the way he acts by asking people not to modify his files that give that impression.
His intention may be very noble, but, in the real world, they do more harm then good in my opinion. Just to make myself very clear, I'm only talking about the fact of adding the watermark here, not about him sharing the video which is a great thing with or without them and the guy himself is a saint for doing such a thankless thing as sharing what he bought for free.
Every time I see threads here populated with watermarked videos, I keep thinking back about 15+ years ago when this was a common thing for rippers to add watermarks in their files but a group of them formed the "scene" which forbade such an act and decided upon quality standards for the good of everyone. These days, I can't think the last time I've ever seen a movie with a watermark outside the IDOL/JAV community. People new to something will always get had by people selling stuff available elsewhere for free, but they'll figure it out soon enough if they simply do a little research, the majority of places are still free and most have friendly people so in my opinion, they'll find 7898789 releases soon enough, even without a watermark.
