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or on eBay (especially since there's often crackdowns on people selling bootleg movies and such)

Have you BEEN on eBay?
It's harder generally to find legitimate Anime stuff than it is bootlegs

cookie wrote:

I threw out most of my bootleg/fansub VHS/DVDs years ago, and it was incredibly cathartic to do so. The thing was, I didn't realize just HOW much I had been thinking about them until I made the decision to start throwing them out.

I felt much the same when I threw most of mine out about 3 years ago. I had to de-clutter my various hobby collections and the old bootlegs were on the list. I never had many dvd bootlegs as I worked at Suncoast so I got a ridiculously good price via my employee discount on stuff. But before that there were many bootleg vhs tapes. Man those things took up space. So did all those damn DBZ vh tapes that formed those pictures with the ends of the covers. Sons of bitches had to use a different image for the uncut vs edited ones though. Nothing like having that one lone edited vhs tape to ruin the whole thing.

I did get some nostalgia thinking about the good ole days though as I put them into bags for a run to the dump. Renting anime vhs from Tower Records, or borrowing from friends, and then having my one friend come over and hook up his vcr to the tv so we could record on it while my vcr played the tapes. Nothing like a shitty bootleg vhs tape off of a shitty bootleg vha tape lol.

Ah, the good ole days. Back when I was young and innocent and thought a tentacle monster anime must be about some sort of horror monster. That sounds great!! And she's a ninja...awesome!!!! This will be like Ninja Scroll but with a chick as the main character. Look at that little annoying bastard, He's funny! Oh there's the tentacle monster. Kinda cheesy looking but I can forgive that. Time for some good action! Oh no, he's got the ninja girl and is going to killer her!!! He can't do that already, something will happen I bet. Here we go, now she'll break free and.....wait, why is he taking her clothes off.....what's going on? I'm sure the little due will hilariously pop in and save her before he does OH MY SWEET BABY JESUS WHERE THE HELL IS HE STICKING THAT THING!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE! HOLY SHIT THIS IS NOT LIKE NINJA SCROLL AT ALL!! Goodbye childhood innocence. Yes sir, the good ole days.

There is this Studio Ghibli boxset on Amazon that's obviously a bootleg. It looks like it's sold decently too, since it has 123 reviews on Amazon. From the photos someone posted, it looks really legit too, other than cramming 3 movies onto each disc. Anime hyper

http://www.amazon.com/studio-ghibli-collection-movie-dvd/dp/B00AQQ9CG6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1439451288&sr=8-7&keywords=Studio+Ghibli

Ghibli stuff seems common for bootleggers, especially complete sets since there is no complete Ghibli boxset.

Two things I want to say about this topic:

The first is that I have family members who know people who are in the pirating business. I don't know who they are; they just randomly send piles and piles of bootleg stuff to us. Well, until at some certain point I requested them to stop, so they did. But until then, we'd get like 50 to 60 CDs of various random computer games and console games bootlegged onto Windows 95/98/XP (depending on when they were given to us) about once or twice per year. I understand it was my relatives' way of trying to make me happy, and I think they understand why I didn't want them when I asked them to not send any more of them over. My parents come from a country where piracy is absolutely rampant, you see. Home consoles have major problems selling there because every game worth playing gets bootlegged onto Windows (and because of that, Mac and Linux are pretty rare there too). Most people in that country don't really understand why I'd turn down these bootlegged items; they seem to buy them knowing they're bootlegged but don't care because they're cheaper.

Secondly, I've worked at a donation center. We'd receive bootlegged media constantly, karma be damned. They're getting a tax deduction either way, and the receipt wouldn't specify they're bootlegged. What we did with them would vary according to who's in charge, as there are no rules from the corporate level of what to do with bootlegs. Some of them would just get rid of any bootlegged videotapes, DVDs, CDs, video games, and (rarely) Blu-Rays and books. (We got a lot of bootlegs of expensive, high-status things too, like watches, purses, and designer clothes.) Some of them didn't care and would sell them in the store anyway. The customers, on the other hand, are pretty savvy: If they're interested in buying media from a donations store, they tend to already be pretty knowledgeable about identifying bootlegs. From there, they fall into two categories: People who want the real thing and will avoid bootlegs, and people who really don't care either way because every videotape is $2 and every DVD is $3.

ParkerALx wrote:

Like DmonHiro said, why not just keep them? Unless they're taking up a lot of space, I don't really see the harm.

I've asked a number of people who donate large quantities of items. The prevailing reason is because their homes are getting cluttered and they need to clear space. Old media is pretty often the first thing to go.

Some of these guys bring us literally thousands at a time. They've filled up their minivan's trunks with boxes and bags of the stuff. There was one time this one guy brought us 60 office boxes of bootlegged video tapes. They were all different too.

Of course, you also get the tax deduction. It isn't a lot (somewhere around $1 of deductions for every box of videotapes you bring in), but it's killing two birds with one stone.

Cerceaux wrote:

I took my old bootleg stuff to Goodwill, not my problem anymore. They sell advance copy books with "NOT FOR SALE!!!!" plastered all over them, so I doubt they give a hoot about bootlegged cartoons.

I'm sure they made some ignorant 13-year-old happy. Laughing

Yep, we'd sell a lot of For Your Consideration tapes and discs too.

cookie wrote:

As an aside, "not for sale" copies of books/dvds/etc can (often) be legally sold in the US, thanks to doctrine of first sale. The reason reviewers don't (often) sell copies is professional courtesy. If the reviewer sells DVDs/etc, the recourse for the company is to stop sending the reviewer products. There are some exceptions, but for unsolicited review copies that's generally how it works.

Donations are anonymous, so the companies that send these people advance copies don't need to know. At least, that's how I always figured it goes

GracieLizzy wrote:

Is this the same set in which Nami says something about smelting an edge on the goog and Usopp talks about certain parts of the female anatomy? (possibly NSWF but only for what the subs say not for what's depicted in the image) Shocked

To my knowledge, it isn't. It's not nearly as colorful as the one you mentioned (don't forget that Luffy swings like a crazy beef). It just has sloppy sentences with non sequitur dialogue, the result of someone who's learned English vocabulary and syntax but not conversational use and each line seemingly translated separately and in a vacuum.

I still get a kick out of Usopp being called Liar-bu though.

Tempest_Wing wrote:

Justin mentioning this raised a question for me. I remember him saying many times before that Anime companies tend to misplace or simply lose original masters to many animes. If no other copies can be used or found, (assuming it's an anime that nobody bothered making copies of and selling legitimately), wouldn't piracy be the next best thing? Let's say for example that some entrepreneurial or bright individual decided to record an episode straight from the tv to a vhs or laserdisc, make copies and sell it. The show or an episode of the show gets cancelled, heavily censored, or just downright removed from all syndication and future home video releases for various reasons but certainly not including causing seizures. And now in the present day, the only reason anybody can watch this episode now is because of that one individual. I remember reading something similar online that a certain film (I can't remember which, maybe Metropolis), the master film reels were all destroyed due to age, a fire, or something, so the only way they were able to recover certain scenes that were removed, either due to censorship or something else, was from somebody who had the idea to record the film on a vhs tape at home, in Brazil or something that happened to have the missing scenes in it. Technically, what that individual did was illegal, but if they hadn't done that, then those scenes would have possibly been lost forever. The point of my comment is to say that Piracy is a necessary evil in certain situations.

If I recall correctly, what you described is what happened with early seasons of Doctor Who: BBC didn't have any plans to rerun them, nor did home video exist in any popular form back then, so they just destroyed and threw away the tapes. Someone with a lot of expensive recording equipment DID archive them, however. Once they were discovered, even BBC used them for record-keeping. The video quality was not good enough to officially show except to hardcore fans though, and the collection is incomplete.

DaisakuKusama wrote:

I never found out what happened to the pleasant gentlemen and their bootlegging. I'd like to think that, if I could find that warehouse today, there would be no trace of the men or their merchandise -- just an empty, dust-filled room...and a forgotten, damaged bootleg dvd box set of Secret of Cerulean Sand, somewhere in a dark corner just beyond sight.

The End.

Where, exactly, is this location? I've discovered a few abandoned offices around the edges of Little Tokyo. There's one on Alameda and 3rd that still has signs that it's a publisher of some sort, but it's clearly been emptied for a while until a few months ago when a hair salon popped up in a corner.

MrBonk wrote:

Quote:

or on eBay (especially since there's often crackdowns on people selling bootleg movies and such)

Have you BEEN on eBay?
It's harder generally to find legitimate Anime stuff than it is bootlegs

WORD! Policies are only as useful as their enforcement rates.

When I became aware of bootlegs I checked my collection for them and found 6 of them. I threw mine in the garbage after I had replaced them with the legit versions.

If I ever get rid of some of my collection, I would probably try to sell or donate the legitimate stuff and give fansubs away at the local college anime club or Animazement. I got a lot of tapes and laserdiscs (and a player) through the anime club, when someone was culling their collection, selling official releases for a reduced price and just asking for something like shipping or the cost of the blank media for bootlegs. Otherwise I would try to recycle or reuse. It was a sad sight when Robert's Corner Anime Store threw out a lot of legitimate, but apparently unsellable VHS tapes a few years ago.

I think the only time I was surprised by a bootleg was when I ordered an Evangelion soundtrack through Amazon. The music and insert seem to be exact copies, but the disc itself has a different cover and there are labels in Chinese. The seller offered to take it back, but I kept it as an example and later bought the real release.

Gotta confess, I own tons of bootleg DVDs, most of them have pretty atrocious translation (and *sigh* fandubbed), horrible video quality and uninspired covers. The reason is simple, here, in Russia, licensed anime is a rare beast (like 30-40 titles at max). Thank god for Crunchyroll and Hulu or I would've been frequent visitor to shops that sells these disks to this day.

When I replaced my Cardcaptor Sakura bootlegs with the original R1 discs I gave them to someone who wanted to see it but only had an R2 player. Actually wish I'd kept them since the American discs only have translated credits and having the original credits available is always useful for the encyclopedia. Sadly the legit version of the one CCS CD set that I loved was rare and I twice just missed out on a second hand copy.

Calico wrote:

If they're really terrible, take screenshots and post them online. At least that way you'll get some laughs out of it.

There was a cute moment on my CCS discs where, IIRC, Touya said "Sankyuu" and it was subtitled as "arigatou".

OTOH I have some official R3 discs for Gate Keepers 21 that have hilariously bad subs - i.e. evidently translating "Gate Open" into Chinese then back to English and ending up with a whole sentence.

EyeOfPain wrote:

If you really feel the need to steal content, you might as well just go digital. At least then you aren't funding criminal organizations likely involved in the drug and sex trades.

A lot of these probably come from a time when it wasn't that easy to get digital fansubs. The late 90s and early 00s most people still had dial up. Even the smallest video would take hours to download.

The other here as a few people said, they didn't know. There are a lot of bootlegs that look pretty legit and unless you are the kind of person who pay attention to detail it is really easy to miss.

Today though there isn't much of a reason.

I had a lot of fansub VHS tapes that I gave away years go. Some of them were bought a store that used to be on South St in Philly. They had a huge collection of fansubs you could buy cheap. I remember getting the first One Piece movie from there. Though it had some kind of terrible Hong Kong subs or some such because the names were weird and the translation was really awkward.

I did admittedly knowingly buy a bootleg somewhat recently (last year). Night on the Galactic Railroad was one of my first anime. And I had it on VHS, but that got lost at some point. I missed out on buying the DVD when it first came out and it quickly became hard to get. Then these bootlegs of it start showing up on ebay. Which looks like it is from a bootlegger who just specializes in art house films. I wanted to show it at club and just have a copy on hand so I was like "f&^K it" and bought a copy. It is actually a pretty nice looking package.

Now, Discotek is re-releasing it. I'll be picking up the Blu-ray.

I'll probably give the copy I have to my high school friend who watched the movie with me a lot just as a nostalgia thing.

I made the same mistakes as everyone back in the day and purchased bootlegs. Most have been thrown out. Some however have sentimental value, like my Hong Kong version of Orguss. The packaging and discs look superb, totally legit. And the subs for the first 5 episodes are fine except for funny grammar here and there....and then all hell breaks loose.

It's almost as if they Google translated the text (except there was no Google translate back then). Really hard to understand. But the best bit are the unexplicable changes. A character called Athena becomes 'Argentina', a race called the 'Mu' become the 'Timmy' (I kid you not)etc etc...Classic.

There were online translation services before Google Translate though, like Babelfish, that have been around around the same time DVDs became popular. Those discs may have been translated using those.

As for the Timmy people, that makes me think of a bootleg Final Fantasy X that features the Chubby people.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Where, exactly, is this location? I've discovered a few abandoned offices around the edges of Little Tokyo. There's one on Alameda and 3rd that still has signs that it's a publisher of some sort, but it's clearly been emptied for a while until a few months ago when a hair salon popped up in a corner.

Oh Gosh, that was so long ago, in 2007. I'm pretty sure it was around Alameda going towards Olympic, to the east of Little Tokyo. It was literally a five minute drive from Little Tokyo.

Also, it wasn't an office but an actual warehouse building, with trucks and loading docks which I walked past to get inside. I had to walk up some stairs before I found them, so it was on the second floor of the building.

The room itself was pretty huge. Shelves and shelves of merchandise. Everything you could think of. Both impressive and sad when you consider that all of the items were bootlegs.

I tried to do a Google street view search but the only buildings that looked like the one from that day are off of Industrial Street, and they look completely abandoned. I also couldn't find the company or their website. It's like it was never there!

I guess this is what they mean by the term "Fly By Night." They're probably doing business under a new name in a new location, moving everytime they get "busted."

Maybe that's why the guy freaked out when he saw me - He thought I was with THE FEDS!!!

Yes, unarmed skinny nerd guy with Gamera t-shirt and David Tennant glasses is gonna break up a bootleg syndicate all by himself.

At least I got my dvd's, even if they didn't work. Small victories.

Oh, it's a ways off, in the industrial district? I don't go around there much, but I do see a lot of abandoned warehouses.

Maybe they thought you were going to report them, or maybe they were just simply startled that you were able to get into a restricted area. I'm sure these bootleggers, bases of operations are meant for absolutely no one to know about except the people who work there, and they were probably astonished you went as far as to track them down. I would've been interested in how they would've reacted had you tried the replacement DVDs sooner and returned.

In my case, it depends on the quality of the bootleg. If it's something that would be enjoyed by someone else, I'd gift it to one of the other otaku in my life. If it's barely watchable (poor video quality, unintelligible subs), simply trash it.

I dabble in bootlegs, but it's mostly either things that are unlikely to show up stateside (the live action Lupin and Gyakuten Saiban movies, Dancouga Nova, Macross 7/Frontier) or stuff that's impossible to get legally (Yamato 2199). Whenever I can, though, I do the Team Fourstar thing and "support the official release" (I bought the heck out of Right Stuf's Turn-A Gundam and tossed the garbled subbed version I previously had. I will follow suit with ZZ, V, and X when they release). Still, I remember my first (and very accidental) purchase of a bootleg. It was a horribly subtitled version of Gundam 0080. The only thing I remember was Bernie telling Al, "You kiss the ***". Nothing resembling that line appeared in the copy of the Bandai release I bought some years later. Wink

On the other hand, it can be a real pain trying to buy "legit" releases on DVD via Amazon or eBay and finding you spent major (as much as you'd pay for the real release) money for a fake product. This seems to happen to me more with non-Japanese releases (I got burned on some DVD sets of Doctor Who and a season of Star Trek Voyager by way of shady dealers on Amazon).

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