Forum - View topicAn interesting view on fansubs from ADV founder
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I was at Anime North yesterday and attended an industry panel hosted by one of the co-founders of ADV, Matt Greenfield. During the panel, the question about his views on fansubs was asked and he gave a very interesting answer (he's a very good speaker so I suggest that if anyone has the opportunity to go to anything like this that he runs to go to it. He answered lots of questions and his answers were really interesting. And he was also funny when there was a question that he couldn't answer, like when he was asked to give a hint about licenses that haven't' been announced yet and he told us they were "made in Japan"
 ).
Essentially, he says that he does understand the fansubbers reasons and actually doesn't mind when a fansub is created to be shown to friends or at conventions, which was how the whole trend started. What does cause problems however is that the fansubs are digitally distributed and once something is up on the Internet, very shortly it is being used for bootlegs. And, once a bootleg is up, then the Japanese studios suddenly lose entire markets, like Hong Kong and China, where it's already hard enough to sell DVDs as it is. I thought it was interesting to look at fansubs hurting the Japanese industry rather than the North American one, because I think we tend to believe that English fansubs only would effect NA audiences (or those in other English speaking countries). The only problem I do have is that I've never seen a fansub made into a bootleg myself, but I also don't buy/watch bootlegs so I really don't know much about that. But I thought it was a really good answer and one that really made the negative effects of fansubbing on the industry show up, since when it comes to myself and English DVDs, fansubs actually help the industry because I generally won't buy anything I haven't already seen in fansubs. |
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Supersonic Master
 Posts: 20 |
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I was expecting him to say what is usually said by dubbing companies: "They're evil and deserved to be destroyed!"
It is a rather interesting view on fansubs, especially since they obtain money by translating Anime. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Fansubs are not necessary to be in English, you know. |
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
 Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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Fansubbers don't make money. The ones who make money are bootleggers, who often just outright steal fansubbers' files (although I guess technically you couldn't call it "stealing" because the fansubbers were technically "stealing" as well), make hard copies of them, and then sell them for profit. |
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10円
Posts: 605 |
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Fansub Land... The birthplace and eventual graveyard of the foreign anime market.
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Supersonic Master
Posts: 20 |
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I was referring to ADV. |
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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Ah, I misread your post then. Sorry. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Yes, I realize that, though I'm going to take the risk of being wrong and say that I would be the majority of them are, since English is such a dominant language worldwide. But I know there are others out there too, of course. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Yes I enjoy panels held by Matt Greenfield. I attended one of his, co-hosted by Jonathan Klein at Anime Detour in 2006. It was one of the programming highlights of that con for me.
Also I am a bit skeptical about the claim that bootleggers that sell DVDs are using fansubs as a resource. Two reasons for this, when they actually obtain the video material itself they usually copy the DVD since they also need the artwork from the disk and packaging itself. Also translations on bootlegs are usually atrocious compared to fansubs so I think they are translating them directly from Japanese to Chinese and then to English (that's why you get so many discrepancies between people and place names). So with those two in mind I don't see how fansubbers are contributing to the sales of bootlegs and I would hope at least they distract from them. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Mr. Greenfield has just highlighted the points that I too have always been banging on about this issue. These fansubbers only think that they are helping their mates, or the fans in the US, never realising that once on the intarweb it's available to the world to do with as they wish, including the Chinese mafia. Those people just love it when a bunch of high school, or college kids do all their work for them and all they have to do is download it and make many hard copies to sell back on the world wide web. Sure fansubbers don't make any money, but nor do they care if anyone else is either. They also don't care that the Japanese originators are the one's getting it between the groin for it, as long as they are alright. So selfish.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Have you ever heard anyone from any R1 company ever say that about fansubs? Normally they dance around the issue or make some kind of vague statement about them. There's never outright condemnation. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16961 |
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Well, if as you said English is the dominant language worldwide then watching English fansubs/fandubs isn't that strange an idea now is it? As mentioned they do come in a variety of languages for your personal thieving pleasure. You mention you've never seen one of these fansubs or fandubs turned into a bootleg. I can give you one easy way to find some. Go onto eBay and type in a few of your favorite shows. Just look at the dvd results and see if you notice any items along the lines of "Full season of title" only 20 bucks!" Almost any of those full sets you see for that cheap of a price is a bootleg. Also be weary of such low prices at conventions. While illegal, and a sure fire way to get a ban, some stores still try and slip them in. |
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10円
Posts: 605 |
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I don't think they'd care if their fansubs fell into the hands of mafia folks, regardless of the country. Fansubbers are living in a world where they're convinced that their own actions don't negatively impact anyone who didn't already have it coming to them. I'll admit that fansubbing is a rather mild crime in today's world, what with genocide, ethnic cleansing, child soldiers, blood diamonds, human trafficking, terrorism, the poisoning of our environment, etc. all allowed to take place free of any serious constraints. I'll also admit that the potential penalties for fansubbing are simply way off the chart of reason, but that still doesn't change my position on any of it. We are anime fans, or so we claim, and yet the majority of us seem willing to undermine what we claim to love over and over again. It would seem to make more sense to pirate something you hated, or at least something you didn't really care for. For instance, when people who hate Microsoft give away free copies of Windows I can kind of understand their reasoning more than I can understand most fansubbers.
As someone who has seen both domestic and Asian bootlegs firsthand I can can confirm that they are sometimes sourced from the same content that our proud pirates back home release without a second thought. Outside of AoD, I've yet to come across any other online forum where piracy is any sort of concern. Even here on ANN you can tell the official 'no piracy' stance isn't shared by most members, including some of the staff. Most of threads about ongoing Japanese series would be nearly impossible for ANN's monolingual membership to ever comment on if it wasn't for rampant uncompensated piracy. I understand that in some countries in Europe they have imposed a tax on blank media to help compensate the copyright owners. The current system seems to be rather flawed with it's first iteration, but I'm still curious what y'all think about something like that being done in North America 
Assuming that it could be handled a bit more transparently then I might be willing to back it. Maybe the proceeds could also be spent helping people break into the market instead of only rewarding those who are already millionaires several times over. |
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DKL
 Posts: 1960 Location: California, USA |
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OH MAN...
I've seen a TON of Fansub rips when I was still living in the Philippines... (VCDs) Yeah, they pirate the HELL outta that stuff... Still... I kinda feel bad for the store ladies I never bought from (it was like inside the place I bought manga from on a regular basis)... they had to make a living, after all. |
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Supersonic Master
Posts: 20 |
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You're taking that a bit too literally. I was putting their words into a bit more blunt fashion. |
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