Forum - View topicIs there a pirater's fund?
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Zade
Posts: 79 |
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Please don't turn this into a moral debate on piracy.
It's been pointed out a lot of times the problems leading to piracy: the price, the translations taking too long, and for some, just not wanting to deal with paper/CDs/DVDs. So, has anybody tried asking for the mangaka and development studios to just open a paypal accounts, where people can just deposit money for when pirate stuff but still feel like giving back? The best part is they would be giving 100% of their money DIRECTLY to the creators and not the publishers. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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And since the publishers wield pretty much all power in Japan, I think you can understand why it will never ever happen. |
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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Well what your essentially asking is a form of begging that is called busking. Now for some creative fields you can certainly try your own thing however you are ignoring the publishers role as publicist, which would make sense, they want their creative authors that they have contracted with to be successful and will do their best to try and sell what they have created (as well as giving editing and resources and contacts with other creatives, which is important, you know networking.) But busking as a method of payment is something that is.. frowned upon in most places, sure putting something up with advertisements and such is okay and charging a nominal fee for a book, download, DVD, whatever doesn't fall under that form of begging.
Busking definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/busk Some legal considerations here: http://www.balloonhq.com/faq/twister_busking.html So... it may be kinda illegal, especially considering that most of these are goods with set prices usually... |
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einhorn303
 Posts: 1180 |
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Charles Stross (the British SF author) provides a unique perspective on this issue, equally applicable to manga, in his blog.
Short Summary: "Publishers and editors are actually pretty important to the artistic process, a lot more important than most people give them credit for."
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/03/reminder-why-theres-no-tipjar.html Also, such a system of donations might make sense for manga, but it makes much less for anime. Perhaps this post should be in the Manga forum. |
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Zade
Posts: 79 |
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Publishers can't stop people/groups from making paypal accounts public. @LordRedhand No, that's not what I meant really. The fund would be created BY piraters, the studios and people would just make their accounts public. It should be the same as mailing them money, but easier, and hopefully more attractive to your average Joe. I figure it would be like a website where you could go, and it would contain all the info you'd need to know, to decide where to donate and how much. |
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1674 |
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It uhhh still wouldn't work that way... I wouldn't think an artist pays for all those sheets of paper and ink etc out of their own pockets. If you aren't paying for the one who sponsers them, then they have NOTHING to work with.
Bottom line: I understand what you mean and how many people think that publishers are this evil presence, but without them, the artists wouldn't be able to do what they do :/ So, no, it wouldn't work. You have to actually BUY the product which it turn PAYS the artist.... It's just how it works. |
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TatsuGero23
 Posts: 1277 Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!) |
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I think for all legal purposes, they can not accept that money since it would violate their contract terms since it would be circumventing either the publishers or whomever. The same reason you can't accept a paycheck from some other company in a similar market without the risk of getting fired. Especially if its for the same product. But that varies from company to company and job type to job type etc etc. Odds are even if you did send them money, they probably wouldn't accept it or direct the money to a charity of some sorts to avoid any legal troubles. Also doesn't the whole idea sound like "hush" or "bribe" money to you when you really think about from their point of view?
Even if a mangaka or Anime Studio didn't have a publisher or contract agreement to abid by, you couldn't expect the same quality or output you get with normal manga or anime. You couldn't expect the fanbase to be able to solely support a normal anime or manga schedule nor generate the start up funds needed for new, untested series. They would probably be on a schedule similar to web artists where it'll be 1-5 pages a week and maybe a 2 - 10 minute episode every 1 to 3 weeks to 1 month. It's also alot of "promised" money or investment type income or a pool of money and income from past projects or other creators within the same publisher, is needed to get the output of anime and manga we get now. Not nesscarily the profit afterwards when the product is complete. So in order for this "fan funds" idea to work, the creators will have to take a bit financial risk and use their own money or build up a large revenue from the fans before starting any kind of production. And I'm sure fans are less likely to donate for a product they don't even know they will like. At least not enough of them. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Only works if there is an actual legal product to buy. I don't have the exact figures, but I can confidently say that more than half of all Anime never get licensed into English. Which means that there is no way to watch it without help from fansubbers, unless of course you can watch raws or are wealthy enough to import the R2 DVDs. And therefore there is no easy way to get money to the creators. A "piraters' fund" lets people ease their guilty conscience even when the only other option was to not have watched the show in the first place. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm glad I watched Macross Frontier (a great show) even though there was never any chance it would ever get licensed into English. And I would like a way to reward the creators with my money without me having to spend inordinate amounts of cash on importing. |
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TatsuGero23
Posts: 1277 Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!) |
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Another thing I should add is that even if anime and manga artist went a similar route as a web artist. Most to all of the successful web comics or web shows make their revenue through sales of products like DVDs or merchandising, hold a seperate job, work in a low volume/cost effective style (meaning 1 or 2 pages a week or an episode a month or an in expensive manner) or get lucky and get a big ad sponsor like google or verizon. Ads, donations, and membership fees can help with maintanence and whatnot but its slow money and alot of times is cut into or negated by other cost. The real profit comes from the merchandising if a creator hopes to be able to live off of their creations.
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Sheleigha
Posts: 1674 |
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Of course. However, the most popular downloads ARE ones that have been licensed. As far as I'm concerned, I am all for subs of unlicensed products. Many supporters are as well. This includes series that are licensed, but ONLY the dub. And for those series, a sub may never EVER exist. I support these subbers the most, because they have the original subbing intention: giving the english language something we do not have. Things have certainly changed since then, and subs continue with licensed products... Oh, and with re reading the main topic, seeing as how it's also against physical copies, digital downloads DO exist, but guess what? The publisher STILL gets a cut. Once again, the artist is barebones without the publisher printing the material etc. I don't think people realize how important they actually are... |
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cloud1989
 Posts: 274 |
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you would then be kind of "legalizing" the whole situation by doing that, when the publisher gets directly involved with someone who illegally distributes their work and are involved in a way that allows the publisher to get paid( though voluntarily) for that particular download then the illegal media kind of becomes legal since the publisher is somewhat involved that doesn't include taking the site owner to court. well Maybe not legal, but certainly taking the "obviously not legal" download to a "gray area". If it has the potential to do harm( which most publishers feel it does) then its harder to do something about it if it becomes a situation they want to get rid of.
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wahr
Posts: 8 |
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Exactly. The sad truth is official channels have been left behind. Superior formats in both convenience, overall functional capacity, and potential quality have been around for nearly a decade now, and something should be done to free people to choose those options with a clear conscience. |
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Mistmanov
 Posts: 27 Location: Belgium |
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I was hoping that something like this existed when I first started watching anime - a method to just directly support the Japanese companies that actually created the product that I'm interested in.
Currently, the only way for me to support specific series is to buy $50 fancy coasters, with the vast majority of that $50 going to the shop that sold them to me, the company that shipped the coasters across half the planet, some American company that prints/advertises/dubs/etc it (all things I'm not interested in..), with maybe a few cents or something actually going to the Japanese publisher. And even after all that trouble, I'd feel like I'm in a somewhat legally grey area (why all the region locking on DVDs if it's no problem to import DVDs?) The old fashioned system of selling media is just extremely wasteful. I understand that the Japanese publisher actually does things that are worthy of my money... but all the other companies in the chain (that receive the vast majority of the money) aren't providing any services that I'm interested in. I'd be happy to just pay $10 for a fansubbed series that I got via BitTorrent. And the Japanese publisher would then earn a lot more than if I paid $50 for the legal DVD. |
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Zade
Posts: 79 |
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Hmm I think I should clarify more what I meant. I'm not gonna use direct quotes cause I hate that kind of crap. I'll just do a for/against list.
I was also (probably incorrectly) thinking of companies that license anime as "publishers". For: 1. Japanese publishers/studios are run by idiots. It was pointed out on the news feeds, multiple times, that they don't pay their animators (not sure what job for manga) enough to live. I would rather my money go directly to them and only them if the fund was created. Honestly, I would almost consider that a moral obligation and a form of protest against slave labor. 2. None, or almost none, of your money goes to creators when we buy related products. 3. Pirates don't use their services, ever. 4. Pirates are pirates. This would probably be the only way they would ever support anything. Disregarding the legal/moral/monetary implications (remember pirating is still illegal, no legal precedent would be set here) it would probably still do good. 5. Often pirates at the time don't have the income to actually pay for anything. If the creators of the fund made it so you could transfer money to people directly then you could watch/read the stuff now and pay them in the future. That has never even been attempted before. Against (responses) 1. None 2. Licensees pay the Japanese large amounts to be able to sell the products. 3. They do use Crunchyroll and other free streaming services. 4. There is a chance that people who buy from licensors would switch to the fund method, and it could have a negative impact. 5. None Perhaps it should be called the "enthusiast fund" instead? Instead of the ****ing useless quoting bs the Internet at large seems to love so much, if you wanna debate, why not try to add-to/correct/update my list? As a heads up, I don't think I'll be responding to this thread anymore, sorry. |
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Sheleigha
Posts: 1674 |
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Uhh wouldn't that be considered a "quote" then? Or are you refering to quoting for source references? In which, it shows that people did their homework, and adds a valid point to the debate 0_o I'm actually rather lost with your for/against list, but hey, it's not like you'll be posting in your own topic anymore anyways :/ Besides, we made points saying our thoughts and how we logically thought if it would work or not. I take it you didn't like the answers? And sorry you don't like quotes, it's kind of... how people reference to others without getting lost with who is saying who. Once again, I don't understand :/ Oh, and your comment about publisher not giving the creator money, I think you missed the part about how a publisher kind of funds the artist, rather than the artist paying for materials themself... |
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