Forum - View topicNEWS: Anime Production Companies, Manga Publishers Crack Down on Piracy
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Every single time a piracy issue comes up, we have people taking up a deontological standpoint - if it's a law, it must be followed. However, have you stopped to think and question? Are the laws outdated? What does that law serve to achieve? Does piracy actually cause any harm?
Honestly, blind obedience without questioning authority is not a smart way of living and just allows people to walk all over you. As I mentioned before, piracy is NOT stealing, no matter how you spin it. The interesting thing about piracy is that it doesn't diminish the amount of product that the company has to sell. Piracy is copying or replicating. Assuming that one has absolutely no intention of buying the official product anyway (be it due to regional issues or a lack of money or whatever), the company gets no sale. If one were to torrent the anime, the company also gets no sale. It doesn't make a difference to the company either way because, as I said, pirating something does not reduce the amount of product that the company has to sell. This means that they will still be able to make the money that they were already going to make off the people who were going to buy the official product regardless. Going into a store and actually taking a physical copy of the DVD/BD Box Set from the shelves without paying? That's stealing. Not to mention, the act of pirating something isn't mutually exclusive to the act of purchasing an official version of the product. Just because I pirate something, doesn't mean that I don't buy the DVDs or BDs, etc... It's not just free, it's free advertisement. In fact, research have shown that pirates are also the best customers as they are the most informed. Whatever your moral stand might be, piracy is not stealing, no matter what those PSAs try to tell you. If you're that upstanding of a citizen, you shouldn't even lend your friends the DVDs that you bought because the "the creators get nothing for their hard work". By right, he should buy his own copy too. If you disagree, that's a double standard. Microsoft tried that bull with the Xbox One and look how that turned out. Laws need to be updated in order to reflect the changing social norms and media consumption. TV didn't decimate Hollywood and MP3s didn't kill the music industry. In order to compete, the industry must adapt, change and advance, instead of forcing people to conform. You think people go to cinemas for the movies? Partly. But what they're selling is the experience - superb facilities with state-of-the-art A/V systems that allow you to have a fun time with friends. That, in itself, is a benefit of piracy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhUMP8uIKvE Last edited by Actar on Wed Jul 30, 2014 8:13 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6455 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I think I can answer that question: Did you know Japan is notoriously downright slow when it comes to adapting new tech?? I mean it took them a while for Japan to adapt to streaming and "over the top" tech?? I'll quote this from the article:
Also if you've been to Japan, you'll be surprised how low-tech it is, the high tech image you've seen on TV and pictures are nothing but illusion, I mean read these articles: BBC-Revealing Japan's low-tech belly Gizmodo-A Land of High Tech Wonder? Japanese Tech Myths Debunked Japan: high tech image, low tech reality The Not So High Tech Japan Japan has a "fear" on the internet, I remember one article saying that internet politic in Japan is dangerous (although until last year a bill got pass allowing campaign over the internet). That probably explain why Japan's ICT development ranking dropped from #8 in 2011 to #12 in 2012 (I'm not sure what their ICT development ranking is now), if Japan was that "advanced" in technology, their ICT development wouldn't have dropped. |
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EyeOfPain
Posts: 312 |
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It's like stealing bread, but it's okay, because you bought a figure of bread. That's a terrible analogy, but that's fine, because most pirates are terrible people. |
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Actar
Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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So, you're saying that you've never borrowed a DVD from a friend or lent someone a book? But wait... people are then "getting enjoyment from a product, without compensating those people who created that product." You're a pirate! 
No. It's like stealing bread, but there's still more for everyone else. Therefore, it's not stealing.
Please wake up and smell the roses. The average Joe on the street pirates. Pirates aren't a select group of people who wallow in filth all day, deal with drugs and don't return a wallet they found on the street. Last edited by Actar on Wed Jul 30, 2014 8:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3580 Location: Finland |
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Your analogy, however, is terrible... |
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EyeOfPain
Posts: 312 |
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Pirate or whatever. Just be aware that what you're doing is both illegal and unethical. If you don't care about that, fine. |
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Violynne
Posts: 128 |
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With so many opinions on how this isn't going to stop piracy, did anyone actually read the article? If not, let me point something out:
Can anyone at ANN get in contact with the Ministry of Economy and ask how they determined this number because it's absurd. In 2012, Hollywood broke an earnings record of $10.7 billion, and the MoE expects us to believe anime lost more than Hollywood? Dpn't forget about the $5.5 billion supposedly lost in China. This kind of crap is one reason the piracy debate will never end. One side lies about losing billions, and the other side justifies the piracy because those billions aren't going to the artists. Just once, I'd like to see actual proof loses are attributed to piracy instead of bloated, unrealistic, and insulting numbers coming from the industry stating billions aren't enough to keep the content coming. The industry has a problem of rolling out 40 series in a season, with most at 13 episodes, for an estimated cost of $150k per episode (I'll even boost this to $200k), the number sits at around $105 million? Even with padded costs, we could throw up $300 million for an entire year This doesn't take into any consideration of the royalties or licensing received for merchandise. Even at $1 billion per year, this would cover just about every anime made for that year, and then some. It looks to me those serving in the Ministry of Economy have been taking their math lessons from the MPAA. All they did with this announcement was throw more gasoline on the raging fire. The MoE should be ashamed. |
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Hunter Sopko
 Posts: 259 |
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Ahhh this ol' debate. Good/disturbing to see that the more things change the more things stay the same. The lengths people go to not to pay for something then justify it never cease to amuse me.
Don't get me wrong, I get some of the arguments, I really do. The flat DL-to-sales damage figures always seem a little inflated and are never quite equivilent. It can suck not getting certain stuff licensed for your area. Pricing can limit how much fans can consume. Licensors can disallow certain aspects of the show to the licensees or put clauses in contracts that hinder the ability for other regions to put out the best quality product. I recognize these as areas that need improvement, but none of these arguments really make it legal to pirate. So you know what? Tough. Grow up. Anime is not a necessary good or a right. It is a luxury item. By definition (most of) it is made with the intent to profit on it. Downloading and file-sharing is piracy, and regardless of how much sophistry you dress up your argument with, it's still illegal. If you're going to do it, for god's sake at least don't delude yourself into thinking what you're doing is somehow right, moral, or just. Just do it, no one really cares why, because that would mean actually caring about what you think. Going to the lengths some do to justify it just makes people look ever more like the whiny, spoiled, entitled people they probably are. If you're gonna sin, sin loudly. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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"Getting rid of them" is not the goal ... so everything that follows from some scenario of getting rid of all pirates as a goal is built on a false premise. The thing is that there is a large slice of consumers of bootleg content who are not prospective customers, which means as far as the market goes, they are phantasms. The wishes and preferences of the phantasms are of no importance whatsoever for a commercial medium and their behavior only matters to the extent that it affects the behavior of those who are prospective customers. If 20% of actual prospective customers are watching on leech streaming sites without being aware that they are parasites that bootleg their content, and its possible to reach a substantial part of that 20% and let them know that there are legit alternatives they can watch which will help support the industry ... that could well be a commercially worthwhile strategy. What matters is that they are a substantial part of the potential market that has been diverted into non-revenue channels. How much that "cuts piracy" is quite beside the point. Whether that 20% of actual prospective customers is 50% of bootleg consumers or 5% or 0.5% is neither here nor there to the commercial benefit of successfully reaching out to them. Its very much like weeds in a garden. What matters is not a census of how many weeds there are ... what matters is whether the weeds interfere with the growth of the plants that are being cultivated. Whether or not "anti-piracy" efforts of various sorts are effective is entirely measured on whether piracy or not is choking off the opportunities for legitimate distribution to generate a positive return on investment. If 75% of "the audience" are a bunch of useless freeloaders who would simply move on to some other content if they were forced to actually pay to watch ... then it follows that only 25% of the audience actually matters. Those people, the ones willing to put down their hard earned to support the people creating the work that they enjoy ... those people that in the area of music would be called "fans" ... those people are not well served by a number of industry practices, and some of the most important "anti-piracy" measures that the industry could take would be to take better care of those people willing to pay, in some way, for the content they enjoy. |
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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When you buy copyrighted content like CDs or DVDs, what you've really purchased is a license to view that work as many times as you'd like from the physical product you bought. That physical copy can be lent to and seen by as many individual people as you want, because the original creator was already compensated for the license and the physical good (though you can't play it in large groups/public viewings without permission of course, the balancing act of intellectual property ownership recognizes that public viewings rapidly increase the number of people who can enjoy the work in a short span of time, so it's not covered by the license you bought). This sort of lending is covered I believe by the first-sale doctrine, which protects a user's rights to distribute physical goods they've purchased. Keep in mind though, you've only purchased the physical good and a license to view its content --- you haven't actually purchased the intellectual property on the disc or the rights to copy it (which would be far and away more expensive than the DVD or CD you bought). And piracy is technically stealing, in that any illegal copies of a work you create don't actually belong to you --- they belong to the original creator. So basically you're in possession of property that belongs to someone else without their permission, which is the spirit of the law that makes stealing immoral/illegal. It's more generally referred to as copyright infringement and piracy, though you've probably heard it referred to as IP (intellectual property) theft before (the FBI even has a page about it  ).
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phifedawg
Posts: 40 |
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I'm more into virtue ethics. I think its virtuous to be an active part of the system that creates the media you want to read. But even as a consequentialist I think you can build a perfectly reasonable case against piracy. Its wrong on every level. Its against the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, its unsustainable, its childish and it shows a lack of understanding of the industry and a lack of respect to the creators. Licensors are less interested in properties that have been scanlated a lot because all the fans have already read it. How many of those fans would honestly buy an English release of something they've already read? When piracy is stamped out, sales go up. This is a fact. The industry would be stronger overall if all these sites were shut down.
You are stealing intellectual property instead of physical property. Its basically the same thing.
Absolutely agree. If you absolutely must read a series that isn't licensed yet, why not buy the Japanese books and then download the scanlation? But we all know this isn't happening. |
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Lili-Hime
 Posts: 569 |
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Thank you for these links! I've heard Japan was pretty backwards technlogicaly as of late, but I had no idea it was this bad  I always laugh at the logic of 'We don't want to put our content online legally- because then it would be easy to pirate'. As if it's easier to capture a stream at a constant bitrate than to just rip a DVD or CD 
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fencer_x
Posts: 281 |
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Learning what the terms mean so that they don't need to be translated or "localized" is where we should be going. No one knows immediately what "dribbling" is in basketball, so you learn what it means, and then you don't have to hear sports commentators going, "And Johnson bounces the ball up and down repeatedly as he heads downcourt..." Localization is babying consumers. |
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Blanchimont
Posts: 3580 Location: Finland |
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That, I can get behind. Fewer region locks, fewer examples of 'crippled' overseas content, fewer shows left without streaming options, making importing more desirable by adding English subs on the original releases, making importing easier overall, and probably a ton of things I can't remember right now. Now, to get the industry actually listening, the Japanese one isn't that famous for changing the status quo... @Kikaioh @phifedawg For the shows I've imported, if I check the discs out, I rip them first. But usually, I just watch the rips I've obtained elsewhere and let the discs rest in their cases. Unless it's a soundtrack that came with the volume that I want to check out, in which case I also rip it first. Then there's streams that are region-blocked (for example 2/3 of shows past Winter that I followed), a fact which I don't care about because I watch them all through other means even though I have a subscription on CR. The few times I've tried CR there's been too many interruptions in the stream. And then there's convenience. I've bought/pre-ordered/subscribed mangas like Sacred Blacksmith, Dragonar, Monster Musume, Oh! My Goddess!, among others. But then again, I also follow all those online at scanlator sites which usually are far further in their releases. I admit none of that is exactly legal. I admit they probably go fowl of multum of laws. I don't make an excuse for it. But on the other hand I can't see any harm in it. And so far nothing in this thread have made me consider changing that stance. There are series like Dog Days or Ro Kyu Bu of which I have discs of, and I admit, several versions of rips in all their BD glory. As for their R1 releases? Don't have them of those. Actually, they don't even exist. |
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ss4chris
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I enjoy free anime but i dont download it. sucks for people like me
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