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Fansubbing ethics from (yet another) pov

If companies decide that fansubs are no longer worth it and decide to crack down, a lot of groups will go quickly. A few letters threatening legal action will put an end to most, and for those that don't, a few court cases will end them. If the risk of legal action becomes too high, most groups will stop, and those that don't will be made to.

"Cracking down" has had essentially zero effect on the warez community. Illegal copies of music, movies software and whatnot are now easier to find than they ever were before, thanks largely to P2P networks and BitTorrent. In addition, all of this is being distributed via public web sites, the URL's of which the forum rules here probably prohibit me from posting.[/b]

But you can bet there will be others to take their place. It will all move underground, releases will be anonymous, and the net effect on the leeches will be ZERO - anime will still be readily available simply because there'll still be a demand for it, and people with the means to deliver.

Also, such actions from the anime companies would probably be interpreted as high treason by many fansubbers.

And the anime industry would have made enemies out of those who would be their best customers (not including the leechers), just like the rest of the entertainment industry before them.

The anime industry should consider itself LUCKY to have a customer base which will not only promote their products for free,

but will largely cease distribution of the illegal copies, no questions asked, as soon as those products are announced in the US.

(comparing warez and fansubs)
The difference is that those are mostly done by individuals, who can just post them and leave it.

With fansubs you have to be more open, as you need to get raws from somewhere, get translators etc. Its a far more open thing, and not something that can easily be made more "hidden"

And then fansubs loose any "legitimacy" they might have had.

Legally, fansubbers have no excuse, if it goes to court all the "ethics" mean nothing. What they do is illegal, and that is how any judge will see it. We have a very tolerant industry, some fansubbers seem to forget that.

(snip)

No, the fansubbers should consider THEMSELVES lucky that the industry is so tolerant of them. As I have said, what they do is illegal, and the industry lets them. Some people dont' seem to realise just how lucky we are about that.

Fansubbers have to act to a code, similar to the one ANN suggested. Otherwise they are very likely to face a crackdown. The code isn't that hard to follow of your a proper fansubber. If your like AJ then it is, but good fansubbers shouldn't have too much trouble

If the commercial releases of an anime are of very low quality (if an anime is released only on VHS, that counts as very low quality) or are in some manner crippled (for example, if scenes have been removed or edited to make the anime more suitable for children, or if the story has been significantly altered, or if the anime is being released only as a dub) then the company responsible for these releases should be contacted and a polite request made that they stop abusing their license and release the series in its true form. If the company refuses to comply with this request, then that is reason enough to continue fansubbing the anime in question.

We really don't need a discussion about current events and political systems in an anime ethics thread, it is way off topic. You are quite welcome to form a new topic on a political board somewhere else called "Why the world is sad - after Sept 11" if you want to talk about stuff like that and leave the 'trivial cartoon' stuff here at a place that focuses on 'trivial cartoons' ie anime. I acknowledge that those events are probably more important, but this is the wrong place.

To put it in perspective, if you were creating a story that you spent 3 years writing, producing, putting your heart into and then released it at great expense on DVD...and some guy down the road knocked off a copy and sold it at a cheap price, would you like us to say "Oh yeah, but here's this other stuff thats happened in the world ..blah..blah.. so your problems don't amount to a tin of beans."

In the scope of anime fansubbing ethics, we need to consider the impact that anime companies have on the market. People are moralising and justifing outright theft of licensed anime in breach of established anime fansubbing ethics and calling anime companies bloodsucking thieves who are screwing over fans. Some people are trying very hard to justify these actions by painting a picture of the grubby anime company that will release their favorite title in a dub-only format with 2 eps per DVD just to annoy us and that we have to use 'people power' to fight back. Ignoring the fact that most of us did not start down the path of anime fandom from fansubs and that these companies are really the ones putting anime in the spotlight.

I get annoyed when people automatically assume that because a certain organisation is a 'company', that it must make mega-bucks and leech as much money as possible from people and screw as many people over as possible. Yes, we have those organisations in this world, Microsoft and Martha Stewart as an example, but there are countless others who do not make big headlines who are actually provide a service at a fair price with respect to the law. Just because some screwball companies hit the headlines doesn't mean we automatically throw them all in the same basket.

If you don't like what an anime company is doing, contact them, sub-license the anime and do it yourself, request a different version, get a petition going, find out why they are doing things they way they are doing them, etc. Just because one or two titles aren't done the way you want them to doesn't mean that you should go behind their backs and knock off a few 'fansubs'.

As you said, your comments are off-topic. I agree.

That's an admirable cause, but your intentions don't excuse you from your actions. Feel free to try to persuade otherwise, but I firmly believe that distributing fansubs of licensed anime is illegal and, more important, unethical. You'll also need to do better than the Seven Excuses.

Quote:

That's an admirable cause, but your intentions don't excuse you from your actions. Feel free to try to persuade otherwise, but I firmly believe that distributing fansubs of licensed anime is illegal and, more important, unethical. You'll also need to do better than the Seven Excuses.

People you are blind the US is not the world there is loads of other countries out there who dosent have anyone that has licensed the serie.
But you guys are selfish think you schould be abel to get it in the us when its not licensed there but you dont think its right for other people in the world to get it when its not licensed there.

Hypocrits is what you are.

Tell me why the US license is to set a stop for none US people to get to se the anime.
Just give me some reasons why.

Here is the law - If an anime company was made aware of someone taking advantage of their copyright, and they did not enforce it, they lose the right to legally protect their copyright in court.