Forum - View topicNEWS: ADV Head Says UK Issues May Be Due to Illegal Releases
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Randompeon
Posts: 18 Location: Scotland |
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I think you are taking that a bit too far, essentially you are saying "if you watch something therefore you must buy it" however i find that to be wrong, if i don't like a show of any kind then i won't buy it since i don't think its worth my money, regardless of how i saw it. The argument you are putting there is everyone must buy everything they watch even if they didn't like it.
It seems you are the only other person who has posted in this thread who has actually realised that imports may hurt the UK market, a factor which alot seem to sweep under the carpet. |
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shadowblack
Posts: 37 |
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No, it's not different. Borrowing a book or borrowing a DVD someone else has bought previously means that I get that book - or that DVD - for free. The "original creator" gets no money from ME. I get it for free. The fact that someone else had paid for it is irrelevant. After all, the person providing the fansubbed version may have also paid for watching the show... Situation 1: I buy a DVD and let dozens of people watch it for free (by borrowing it from me) Situation 2: I buy a DVD, make a DVD-rip, and give that rip to dozens of my friends, who then watch if for free Situation 3: Identical to Situation 2, only this time I use Internet to let my friends get the rip, instead of bringing it to them in person What is the difference between the three? You have a person who had paid for the DVD, and you have people watching it for free. In all three cases the original creator gets nothing from the people who watch it without paying. What's more, those RAWs used for making the fansubs would not be there if someone had not paid to watch the show on TV (or had not bought it on DVD). So "the original was paid for" is not a valid argument here.
Sorry, but I don't speak japanese, so buying the original version is out of the question. And with no local releases I'm limited to watching stuff on TV (which means Death Note and Blood+ only), or downloading fansubs and hoping that maybe, some day, one or more of our TVs would risk airing something other than kid stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh, Shinzo and Pokemon (and that 'something' won't have a dub that makes me wanna change the channel). |
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Top Gun
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I think the argument he's making is that you owe some sort of remuneration in some form for the act of viewing a piece of copyrighted material, whatever form that remuneration may take. Watching a series on television exposes you to advertisements that are paying for the broadcast in the first place, so that would count, as would viewing ads as part of a free legal streaming service. Using Netflix to rent DVDs would be another method. Putting Netflix aside for the moment (I really need to look into getting a subscription one of these days...), the sad fact is that there are scare few anime titles available via TV or streaming services, which is probably what drives at least some people (myself included) to download series before determining whether or not to buy them. I do agree with you in principle, though; there are any number of television series I've enjoyed that I'd never consider permanently buying, and I sorely wish that the same model existed for anime. |
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Randompeon
Posts: 18 Location: Scotland |
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The BBC doesn't have ads in thier broadcast, which is the main reason why you need to pay for a TV licence, however since i live with my parents i don't pay for said licence therefore technically anything i watch on TV is free, since i am not the one paying for it. I can understand where you are coming from, yes most channels have ads in the broadcast which pay for the production etc. On the topic of this thread and things which have been said and some not said, i don't believe fansubbers as a whole are the problem with the UK market, rather it's the leechers who even if they like a show don't want to buy the DVD's when they are released, same with people who only ever import DVD's straight from the US, they don't help the UK market either, yet only the first point is ever brought up in conversation by companies, maybe its because even though some people import only they are still getting sales, which they are happy with. How long would you say would be sufficent time between US release and UK release? in my opinion anything over a year is too long a wait which is what causes people to import in the first place. I know you can't do simultaneous release due to the BBFC but i'm sure 6 months max is more than enough time to see how DVD sales are to have it released in the UK. |
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geowrian
Posts: 15 |
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Sorry, but I stopped reading right there. That is nothing but name calling, flaming, and it is not productive to the discussion at all. As for any others that claim I am not contributing to the discussion: Maybe what I've said has been said in some way before, but so pretty much everything about this topic. So should you just stop discussing it? I stated my information AND my opinion (which were clearly separated), as have those who argue against my conclusion. Just because I didn't join until later or don't have any brand new ideas (I haven't seen any of those on here from anybody) doesn't mean I should just be quiet. But alas, I am saying my farewells. I see this topic heading downward very quickly with the past few pages of comments (especially the rudeness and flaming noted above) and I don't want to be there if it blows up. |
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Goodpenguin
Posts: 457 Location: Hunt Valley, MD |
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Shadowblack wrote:
There's a relevant current in here, but firstly what your describing is less of technical 'added-value', and more of a marketing strategy that focuses on demand (in this case draw some demand away from fansubs). Especially if the 'official' release is offered free of any copy protection, whatever is offered commercially will be quickly pirated, so the question becomes is 'added value' (which was the original point) an effective strategy at this point in time for the industry? What you perhaps unwittingly described in your example may be a more realistic move for companies at the start however, which is to say take various steps to try to reduce the overall demand for fansubs in ways other then 'commercial value' extras/artboxes/plushes etc. . Could good quality, fast downloads, backed by various contests/promotions start to whittle away some fansub viewership? Perhaps that could be combined with some limited-scope legal enforcement aimed at certain supply sectors? Maybe even toss in some 'asymmetrical warfare' style maneuvers as Tofusensei suggested by 'buttering up' (or in other words toss them some freebies/perks like they do with media sources)some of the more 'established' fansubs players, getting them to stay away from particular properties and using their large 'social fansub community' influence to stigmatize those who don't follow suit. Those are all hastily written examples that obviously aren't 'fleshed out', and no one thing by itself is a magic bullet for the problem. However, what it roughly illustrates is a mind-set of addressing demand (or in other words start to erode fansub viewership/habits, however limited at first) as opposed to concentrating on 'value-added'. The industry obviously isn't ever going to see the raw numbers involved in downloading/streaming turn into a 'one to one' sales ratio, but if they could see a return in sales levels back to where they were before the rise of the 'easy-use' fansub (or, if factoring in a new 'download' model a 'net profit' level that equals that) it would be a great start. geowrian wrote:
Let me be fair and say there are posters with ten times your post amount who write things one hundred times more foolish then you have in these fansub threads, so the issue isn't about how long you've been posting. The issue, especially in fansub threads which attract a lot of eyes and tempers, is does an argument have core relevancy to the issue, or is it more of a marginal side-debate point which is essentially irrelevant to the overall matter. I'll try an example: At your fall dentist appointment she (the dentist) tells you to watch your 'sweet tooth', you've got some soft spots forming. Perhaps you don't follow that advice as well as you should, and by summer you wake up one morning to find you've got a terrible toothache, courtesy one new cavity. Now there a some 'side issues' that may have some very general bearing, but reality dictates you've got one major relevant issue, the painful hole in your tooth and how it's going to get fixed. -You don't expect your dentist to wag her finger at you, say 'I told you say', and toss you out of the office. She may have been correct on her 'hygiene/eating habit' ethics, but that's irrelevant to fixing the issue of the painful hole in your tooth. -Similarly, maybe you feel you have good reasons for eating how you do. Are you going to sit there and debate your dentist for hours? No, it's irrelevant to the pressing issue, the painful hole in your tooth. -Maybe you think floss/rinse/etc. are all scams perpetrated by the dental industry to make money off of you, and that you don't believe in using them. Does your dental ideology help you? No, you've got a painful hole in your tooth that has to be dealt with, your personal ideology is irrelevant to that matter. In the case of fansubs, here in 2008 we've got a primary relevant issue, just like the cavity:Fansubs impact on the commercial market and the consequences for the industry, and ways/directions/strategies the industry can take to try to get healthy again. Everyone is going to have their own views, but conversation along those lines (in dealing directly with the severity/roots of the problem and possible solutions) is constructive (in a theoretical sense) and relevant. Like above, other issues can be relevant at specific points in specific places, but in general whether a person thinks fansubs are terrible or great is irrelevant in the big picture. That a person thinks it's okay if you can't afford anime/doesn't come out quick enough/free for Japnese on TV etc. is completely irrelevant to the main problem. Whatever a persons thoughts on IP/copy-right laws is irrelevant to the primary issue. Ethical/technical/moral issues have their time and place, but they don't 'address the cavity' so to speak, and there always what ends up filling every thread. I don't by any means wish to codify what's 'right or wrong' to say, but specifically in these fansub threads I wish more people would 'filter' a bit, and judge before posting whether they are addressing/arguing a position that has to do with fansubs impact/industry solutions/commercial demand etc., or whether it's a more 'Here's how I generally feel about fansubs-Here's why I think there okay/wrong' style argument. The latter has it's place, but it doesn't ever advance the conservation and is often completely irrelevant in the big picture. |
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Randompeon
Posts: 18 Location: Scotland |
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Having this arguement over fansubs being "a problem" or not isn't helping at all, do fansubs hurt the industry: in some cases yes, do fansubs help the industry: in some cases yes, you can't put the whole fansub debate into being black or white, but the same can be said about importers aswell, someone else said its ok to watch a fansub for say the first 6-7 eps then wait for the DVD releases but i have saw a few shows where after that amount of eps it started to go downhill in quality of story, comedy, action etc, i have also some shows which was the exact opposite, the other problem which some have touched on and most haven't is the format of anime that people want, some want it in a digital format others want it in DVD format.
Other factors which i have mentioned before but many ignore is: how much do import only consumers hurt the industry, how much does long gaps in release time between US and UK hurt the industry, which shows do the companies licence and how popular will they be in the US/UK. Instead of trying to jump straight into fixing the industry, perhaps actually finding every problem first would help more, focusing on one problem won't fix it. (off topic but still a question i wouldn't mind an answer to) One thing i have always wondered is how do companies chose which shows to licence, is it by the popularity in japan? is it random choices? |
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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"If I was forced to pay to watch it, I wouldn't watch it"? Wow. You watch shows without paying a cent for them. and then you say you wouldn't watch them anyway if you had to pay for it? What a leech. You are proof enough. Without any notification or credit to the manufacture that their show was watched. If you can't see the problem with that and how it does lead to the industry losing money fairly directly, then I feel sorry for you. I am sick of this logic of buying accessories or hardware or black CDs to make up for not paying for a show. That digital video you downloaded didn't make itself. It took time and money. Those companies are losing out and you're not paying them a cent. Again, if you can't see how that hurts the industry, I feel bad for you. "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" is NOT an excuse. It's pathetic. Maybe you should watch something worth spending money on instead of wasting time on meaningless freebies. Geez someone I know does that. THey download fansubs and tell me how horrible the show is. Horrible harem dating game based anime. I make fun of them for it. I ask why they watch it and they say it doesn't matter because it's free. Geez. |
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kazana144
Posts: 30 |
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Eh, some people feel a sense of entitlement, like how people like to download bootleg movies off the internet and watch them. Why more people don't get on their case I'll never know.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Another quote regarding illegal downloads from the same magazine that I posted elsewhere earlier:
And to address a few points from above (a UK-oriented thread really shouldn't have so much dreck to skim through but hopefully I'm not re-treading too much, but this post itself will probably be another tl;dr by the time I've finished)
Not sure it counts as 'streaming', but ADV were in fact the only UK company that made episode available online, through Vizumi. Some series not deemed viable for DVD release, e.g. Air Gear, were only available this way.
They haven't. They have closed their UK office and entered into a distribution agreement with LDMS, who have been their sales partners for years.
DVD fixes can be quite extensive, down to whole scenes or even episodes being re-animated later outside the the pressure of a TV schedule (Negima being the poster boy here[/url], but other examples are Moonphase and R.O.D the TV).
Azudai has been out in the UK for years. It just happens to have had a recent box set release (which was advertised fairly heavily) and was, I think, a UK exclusive in terms of package etc.
To quote the Red vs Blue Real Life vs Internet skit "I don't want it to be illegal, therefore it isn't".
Youtube already have this working (at least in beta form) and Kadokawa are planning to use it to not just remove content from youtube, but to use if for revenue and advertising: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080128/146366/ http://www.digitalworldtokyo.com/index.php/digital_tokyo/articles/japanese_copyright_holders_embrace_youtube_uploaders/ http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/internet-and-broadband/news/youtube-debuts-video-id-to-guard-copyright?articleid=869000855
If the full cost is written on the package as it should be, then they don't even need to inspect the package they will just charge you. If I order from Amazon Japan or even CD Japan I am almost certain to be charged (or maybe I'm just unlucky..) and have to traipse down to the local sorting office which is why I mostly buy Japanese DVDs from Yesasia and R1 DVDs from Otaku, who both reship from a UK office. And finally, I thought I've include this email regarding an order someone placed in the final ADV clearout sale where lots of titles were down to as little as £1 a disc:
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Fallout2man
Posts: 274 Location: San Diego, CA |
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The point was an examination based on the most commonly used analogies. People who compare copyright to physical commodities will simply refuse to accept, even with presented evidence, that an infinitely reproducible intangible good is in any way even the slightest bit different from a finite, tangible good. If you understand and acknowledge the difference then I suppose it's really not an article aimed at your views especially. I wanted to bring it up though because there are some who refuse to make that distinction and consider copyright as automatic as one's right to live.
Some fun facts to consider, as far as social engineering (by government) goes. Right now the majority of this nation is against it. Yet back when interracial marriage was legalized a far larger majority of people in this country opposed it, and it wasn't until the 1990s that for the first time more Americans supported the idea of interracial marriage instead of opposing it, some fifty odd years since it was made legal. The point? That sometimes if something can academically/intellectually be realized as a greater right or good, then sometimes even if the idea is not supported it is in the best interest of society to push it forwards. This is why such debates are often so important, since if it ever reaches a point where there is no way to refute one side's argument for a long period of time, it can be assumed within reason that one side has shown whether or not something is moral or immoral.
No, you didn't, my point though was you used a Robin Hood analogy to attack the practice of any downloading, which seemed to say that even if it sounds noble it's still wrong because he's a thief. I was attacking the idea that such things are intrinsically wrong by using taxation as a counter example. Taxation, at its core, is government sanctioned thievery of wages. They literally steal money with their power and redistribute wealth, as Robin Hood did, from rich to poor. Yet we acknowledge in some capacity, as you did, that such redistribution for services we will never ever see or receive even a hint of are worthwhile. Which means that at some point such things can be right, which means now you must argue more directly why such a thing is wrong in this context, without simply reverting to "but, but, but, it's stealing!!!1" as an argument. The ends may not always justify the means, but why or why not in this situation?
Here's the thing though, and this is key. The dispute over downloading is largely an issue of hearsay. As much as Zac or whomever else would like to say to the contrary, all company A, B, C, or D can say is this: "Well, we saw 10,000,000 downloads of Series Z on bit torrent but we only sold 5,000,000 copies!" They then, after that, jump to their own conclusions as to how much income they lost because of that. They can't actually prove anything though as far as lost sales goes because the fact is they can't prove how many people actually ended up not buying merely because a free alternative was available. Are there some people who did? Obviously, but the argument often presented that such downloading represents and obvious fatal danger to anime is really just people's subjective assumptions about the issue. They can't know anything beyond download and sales statistics and that alone is not enough to assume anything given the complexity of the issue and the variety of possible circumstances. To which, the response often is: "What are you smoking?! it's common sense downloading is killing anime!! don't agree? Then stop talking or I'll ban you!"
That's a lofty view but not really true. Every nation has taxes, unless you want to live on a desert island and isolate yourself from the world. Furthermore most people don't have the capital to simply move to another nation, to live without taxes is to make less than 10,000$ a year and that is really not possible to live by yourself off of that in America, lawyers can only reduce taxes, not eliminate them, and it is a political near-impossibility that anyone would ever get voted into office who would oppose the concept of taxation. To put it simply, taxes are an unavoidable constant aspect of life no matter where you live. You will always lose some of your hard earned money to the government. There is no real way they will ever disappear. You can work to minimize their negative impact on you, but to do that you must first accept that taxes are inevitable and then move forwards, much like our current copyright conundrum.
You've already brought up the big issue though, when you're alone in your living room how is it harmful? A large number of downloaders have never and will never pay for a single bit of material they download and would never have even if they had not had a free alternative available. They simply want to consume free material in a convenient manner and will do that however they can. The economic effects of copyright infringement are incalculable for that reason amongst others. They're simply making a copy, at no cost to anyone, of an established work that would never see money from them anyway. How is that any different from drinking in the comfort of your own home? You've had no direct negative impact on anyone. In legal terms all you've done is violated someone's government granted monopoly on an intangible thing. You haven't cost them anything, just denied them a right to control that never existed naturally in the first place. Copyright is important, both in maintaining a viable economy and in promoting the progress of the arts and sciences. However, until the law is revised to be in line with the prevailing views of the people, it simply will never be respected. The genie is out of the bottle thanks to the internet and short of a totalitarian revocation of our rights, it'd be impossible to stop even a significant amount of it. There is no solution here but to change the law, and until such a time as it is changed, violation of it will be common place and viewed as a legitimate act of civil disobedience.
This same sort of argument can be used by people of either side though. I could also say in a similar but less iconic jest “I believe you are wrong because I say so, and therefore you should be tortured to death since I believe that is the punishment for wrong things. So let's all torture these people to death because their thievery is something horribly wrong!” The moral? dogma is bad no matter who uses it. |
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LiuXuande
 Posts: 201 Location: Chicago |
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You're completely ignoring the fact that after one company starts doing this, sure there is no VA by purchasing a 1.99 episode..maybe a slightly improved quality or some other minor feature. People will still prefer free. However, one of two results will occur: a) Fansub groups, that generally stop subbing licensed shows, will stop. This leaves the main alternative as the prescribed service. I don't know if you are aware of it, but most of the prominent quality fansubbers follow this rule. The ones that DON'T, are usually low quality, and in this case there is value added by purchasing the episode: quality, as opposed to low quality subs by groups like "Anonymous". b) But what happens if the fansub problem persists? Groups I respect stop subbing after shows have been licensed, but groups that subbed Naruto and Bleach continued even after licensing. In this case, all I have to is cite some famous examples: music industry/RIAA v. Napster. They bust out their legal army and show that they're doing something legally, for profit, while there still exists a black market that distributes these for free (like the sub group "Dattebayo", as a famous example). Fansub groups are not impeccable, they leave a trace and most even advertise with their own websites. It only takes one scapegoat to cause some unrest and panic from these "2x illegal" fansub groups (where groups that sub only unlicensed shows are slightly better in the area of legality...supposedly). Of course I would like for this witch hunt to go after only those groups that persist in subbing licensed shows, but essentially if companies head down that hell's road, it will affect a few of the more honorable groups that actually care about the industry. In that case, I should hope that they too would move on anyway, and perhaps become employed and earn a living for this online distribution portion of the industry, using their talents for subbing within the industry using this new model. |
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OneHotAlchemist
Posts: 85 |
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The argument I'm putting forth is, if you don't truly like something, you're not going to download more than a few episodes. If you have every episode of BLEACH on your PC, obviously you should be purchasing the official releases.
The difference is, you're not giving it to dozens of friends. You're giving it to dozens of thousands of friends. Furthermore, if your friends enjoyed that series, would they go out and buy Volume 2, or would they wait for you to burn them all copies of it? If they supported anime, they would, ya know, buy it.
So, for instance, I pay for a videogame, say... Orange Box. I make millions of copies of that game and distribute them freely on my website. You wouldn't see a problem with that? The difference is the "scale" of the argument. Furthermore, if people truly supported the ones making the shows, they would be supporting them monetarily. Simply "liking" a show and "being a fan of it" doesn't mean diddly, because you are not helping that creator in any way.
You see, this would be a great example of "good" that fansubs can do. Unfortunately, people don't purchase a japanese release. If everyone purchased a japanese release of the fansubs they horde, then fansubs would be viewed as totally harmless. So you're essentially saying that because you don't have access to the goods you want you deserve them for free. No, no you don't. I think the greatest question a fansub leach can ask themselves is "What am I doing to offset the free anime I'm getting? How am I compensating ?" If you're buying Naruto plushies and Naruto headbands and Naruto gear, that's one thing. But if you're buying items not related to a favorite show, what incentive does that creator have to keep making it? On another note, perhaps (in UK and the US) a free streaming service, based primarily on ad-based revenue would work best. Translation times would have to be increased. The only problem being, attaining the rights for the various shows. I'm also unsure as to how much revenue an ad-based service could provide. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Here is the problem with what you're saying here. You are insisting that there is something wrong with someone being unwilling to buy anime in DVD form. That is just ridiculous. I guess by your logic anyone who ever watched a TV show and liked it but wouldn't have been willing to just go out and buy it on DVD is also a problem? You can call them leeches or whatever other nasty little insults you can think of, but the reality is that a large contingent of fans of anime don't value anime enough to pay 25 bucks for 4 episodes. I'm sure these people would love to support the industry if they could do so without paying or at least while paying less than DVD prices. However, if their willingness to buy is less than the price created by the industries chosen distribution method, they have every right to say: No, I'm not willing to pay that much so I'm not going to buy that. It doesn't make them a leech any more than you would be a leech every time you decide not to buy something because it costs more than you are willing to pay.
I don't doubt that this does cause a problem. Obviously the industry needs to make money. However, you are blaming it on people for not being willing to buy. If they aren't willing to pay the price then they have every right not to pay it. Whether they should then go and download it illegally is a separate issue. Whether they do that or not though, then end result is still that they don't buy it and so the problem really comes down to that they aren't willing to pay what the industry charges. They are in no way obligated to be willing to pay this though. The reality is that in the end the industry is in trouble because there is a lack of demand for anime at the current price. It's not peoples fault for being unwilling to pay. It's just simple economics.
Yeah, thats brilliant. Lets have everyone who isn't willing to pay for anime DVDs just forget about it and go do something else. Then, the small group of people who is actually willing to buy DVDs who of course are already buying them can keep doing so and the industry can keep losing money because this group of hardcore fans is nowhere near enough to support it. If the industry needs to find a way to gain from these fans who aren't willing to buy DVDs. That is just the way it works if any product hopes to break into any sort of relative mainstream. If they industry wants to be as big as it is now it has to realize that a big portion of it's fans are going to watch anime because they enjoy it but not enough to go out and buy DVDs.
Well I agree, thats just stupid. However, there is a massive area between not being willing to pay for something because you think it's stupid and liking something enough to be willing to buy it on DVD. You may still enjoy something, you might even enjoy it a lot. That doesn't mean you must automatically be willing to pay to buy it on DVD though. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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Alright, unless this is going to go somewhere besides the anti crew saying it's wrong and the pro crew saying "tough" then I'm going to have to lock it. There are already other fansub threads going, with the same people saying the same thing (surprise surprise), we don't need 20 of them. This one is starting to generate reports, including some flaming going on now. If it's going to degrade and there's other threads open then this one has outlived its usefulness.
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