Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Anime Torrent Sites Disappearing?
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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To clarify, each of these smaller markets might not be large enough to make translating, various other production work and maintaining infrastructure in parallel to Crunchyroll's efforts worthwhile, but probably would be large enough for it to be worthwhile for Crunchyroll to simply offer what they're already doing to an additional market, even if it does mean adding a little more to the licensing costs. And even if it's not the distributor's "fault" that so many people speak English and want to watch anime, it still winds up their problem, and the old-fashioned "regional" approach to media licensing is something that really needs to change if legit media hopes to survive in a world where global digital distribution is otherwise incredibly easy. Region-locked content is an artificial barrier to legit customers, but meaningless to pirates. And customers really don't care which company insisted on the barrier, they care that it's there. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Ah, all right then. I remember coming across illegal streaming sites for western animation translated into various languages, which is why I had this thought. And I see--this is temporary for that other side, and they're in a sort of lockdown time so they could recuperate. I had the impression they would permanently cut off members, either in a kind of withdrawal from the rest of society, both online and off, or as a way to slowly whittle themselves down until only the most dedicated remain.
I'm sure there are too, but sports broadcasts are more resistant than normal to piracy, due to their appeal in watching them live, the proliferation of social places where groups of people watch the game together, and the ease of learning a game's final score at the end through other means (which this service cannot monopolize). To that end, a lot of sports bars bit the bullet and switched to Spectrum, then put up signs in front of the establishments showing that people can watch games in there, which has been working very well. |
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aereus
Posts: 574 |
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I'd rather you support legitimate companies like Funimation, Viz, or Daisuki.net—Viz is owned by Shueisha (Shounen Jump people) and Daisuki.net is a coalition of Japanese publishers. Crunchyroll is basically a cancer on the health of the industry and has a really unsavory history of piracy and exploitation. Crunchyroll has its roots in massive amounts of illegal streaming which were used to build their "brand name" before using that ill-gotten site traffic to secure their initial funding. It was also built on the backs of hundreds of volunteers on the site maintaining the series pages, forums, etc. Now they get to personally make millions off everyone elses efforts. (Considering it was basically double piracy: They were trafficking fansubs, but didn't make any of them themselves.) IE: They sold out and stayed on with the company while pocketing $100M USD in 2013. They have ties to the former News Corp president and have major investment by AT&T. That large nest egg of cash has been used to once again drive up licensing costs to unsustainable levels like we saw shortly before the US industry crashed in 2006-8 when a large number of anime-related companies went bankrupt. (Geneon formerly Bandai Entertainment, CPM, ADV Films, etc) It explains in part why Funimation was forced to partner with CR now, seeing as their profit last year took a massive plunge. Licensing costs for streaming can reach upwards of $2M USD now, which is as much money or more as an entire 1-cour series costs to produce. |
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aereus
Posts: 574 |
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On a separate note: This changes nothing, honestly. When there is a will, there is a way, and lacking even that—there are magnet links that work just fine even without an associated tracker. Besides, someone else has already taken up the reigns of being a successor to the site AFAIK.
Word on the grapevine is indeed that its related to the new EU legislation, but also the person running the site also had a kid recently and doesn't want to expose his child/family to possible litigation. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Funimation has only recently become an option. Viz isn't an option in the UK (Kaze did provide the content for Animax, but they've not licensed anything new in a long time) and Daisuki's subscription is not available in the UK (and if it was, with no apps they'd need to have something I really wanted for me to consider it). |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3448 Location: Finland |
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Wait, not available in the UK? I have an account on it, and being in Finland I thought it was at least Europe-wide. Wasn't Daisuki meant to be a global* service? Also, did Daisuki have a subscription service, I can't find any hint of it on their site at least? *well, 'global' as in parenthesis as some stuff isn't available in all regions, like Eromanga Sensei. Not that I use their services to watch any of the stuff, including the aforementioned... Edit; Something strange is going on?... While starting to write this post I checked a few things on Daisuki, like regional availability. However, went to double-check a few things there, and after opening my account in another tab and rummaging through a few things, back to front page, and clicking Eromanga Sensei, and after clicking a few options like allow flash, and suddenly I CAN watch episode 5 of that, no prob, no 'blocked' message...? 
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omiya
 Posts: 1827 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Isn't that what libraries are or should be for? (Moreso for archival libraries than lending libraries). In the digital age it should be possible for libraries to archive digital copies legally, and for these to be available to the public, at least after they are no longer available from the entity with publication rights. As mentioned in another thread there is the problem of some franchises not having early works available but still having later works released (for me in Australia that includes Fafner). |
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1871 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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No apps?: http://www.daisuki.net/app.html Are these not available in the UK in their respective stores, or did you actually mean "no apps I'm interested in"? |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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If they exist, I suspect most are in private areas and closed off to the public due to the rights holders still existing. One thing I had in mind I'd like to watch again, for example, is Donald and the Wheel, a documentary about the history of the wheel in which a Stone Age Donald Duck is visited by the Spirit of Invention and his apprentice. The heavy hand of Disney would make finding places to see this a lot harder and riskier. It was released on DVD once (one of the Donald Duck collections) and never on Blu-Ray, and that DVD had a pretty limited and low-key run. I didn't know Donald and the Wheel was on it until it went out of print, and by then, collectors had snatched them all up. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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We all know sports require live streaming otherwise nobody would want to see them. But my point is that it is not limited to anime fandom: 1) Dislike of price hikes. Getting $port$net for a fortune and then asking the fans to fork the bill is a dead ringer of Anime Strike. 2) Dislike exclusive deals where you have to subscribe to x service to get access to popular media.I hope there will be a day when there will be two or three crunchyrolll like services competing with each other with about the same catalog (maybe one will carry oldies, other might have hentai, another one will have dubs, other might carry stuff made by japanese studios for american television like Avatar, etc.), because atm the problem is not that we have several streaming services, but that they don't share the basic "new stuff of this season" catalog. For this to happen the japanese anime industry would need to have a more hands on approach, being in charge of subs and dubs in other languages and then selling them as part of the package. In both cases many fans will look for free alternatives, be it a streaming webpage shock full of web advertisement or an establishment where they can also consume alcohol (whether their team wins or lose the sport fans are going to drink at their heart content, so the live stream then does not cost them extra). |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2421 Location: Germany |
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@omiya Libraries aren´t an archive. Source: Me being a librarian.
No one is stopping anyone to start an anime preservation society, or whatever, IF the IP rights lapsed. No one could legally touch you if you start a torrent network for such things either, as the concept of a peer to peer network is legal too. A bunch of Orson Welles productions are owned by no one, the 40s Superman toons come to mind too, etc. Set up a donation hotline and get to work. https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/ is a thing too. Note the .com address. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Absolutely nothing stopping anyone from forming a preservation society, at least for physical media releases; no legal issues with just gathering things and keeping them together. Allowing members of the society to view them should also be okay. Screening them to others is an issue, but in almost all cases the rights holders are willing to allow it, sometimes even without charge. Reproduction and distribution on the other hand, then you need to wait for the copyright to expire. |
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omiya
Posts: 1827 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Thanks for that piece of information. Is anyone aware of the extent of any official archiving of anime and sound recordings in Japan? |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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In my view, there's nothing wrong with getting around a system which unfairly and artificially controls your behaviour and options. Even if it's illegal, I don't care, because it's certainly not immoral. I'm not that big on software freedom (I use Windows, for example) but I have no respect for unjust and arbitrary practices like region restriction. That's a bummer about the multi-region players where you're located. I bought mine from an online retailer here in Australia. I wouldn't invest in a technology that controlled me rather than vice versa. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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That is precisely the problem. You won't see the subscription service because you are not in the US.
OK, I should have said no non-mobile apps. I don't want to sit in front of my TV watching anime on a phone or tablet any more than I want to fuss around with booting up my laptop and fiddling with dual screens. |
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