Forum - View topicAnimesuk: and Legal Matters
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maboroshi kid
Posts: 2 |
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Your guy at animesuki has fallen to one of the most basic of legal tactics... cease activities based on threat alone. It is an effective first step, the cease and desist letter. Usually, small entities shake at the letter or email of a big corporation, whether it is valid or not.
Most likely, if this goes to court, your guy at animesuki will not be found guilty or liable of anything. Here's the reasoning: 1) Animesuki only provides links. It does not offer free downloads itself. It is not liable for the copyright infringement of its users. [Case to watch: US Supreme Court re-evaluates MGM v. Grokster today, to see if P2P provider is really not liable for copyright infringing users, it will take a while for the results of this to come through. As it stands, P2P is not liable for the actions of its users. That is why RIAA and MPAA are suing individual users directly now.] 2) The "induce" argument is not signed into law yet, and most likely it won't due to vehement protesting from the IT community. So until the "Induce Act" is signed into law, it is not illegal to provide links for copyright infringement. [Induce Act has been knocked off in Congress this year by the entire IT community, it will be introduced in another shape and form next year, so we'll have another year before any significant law develops on that front] 3) All this is illegal based on the Berne Copyright Convention which protects copyrights from signatory country members. The only reason it is not enforced is because it is up to companies to initiate, and pay for, the protection of their own interests. That is how free capitalism works. Therefore, Japanese companies have not spent money on a market they have not penetrated. It looks like one thinks differently now. 4) Your guy at animesuki so blatantly announcing the effectiveness of such a simple cease and desist letter signals to other companies to launch similar emails to animesuki. I fear this is near the end for animesuki, unless the guy's got balls and stands for something. Anonymous Intellectual Property Legal Researcher for a Japanese Entity PS: Nothing bad will happen to anime companies, they are just making a move to replace underground fans with mainstream fans. It is up to the fansub community to evolve to keep ahead of the game (or rely on IT P2P developers which is more on the forefront and taking this heat head on more than the fansub community). |
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arxane
 Posts: 447 |
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I have absolutely no idea what your main body is talking about. Who's this "your guy at [this is a bitttorrent site]"? Anime News Network doesn't have "a guy" at a bittorrent sight as far as I know.
If by "underground fans" you mean fans who don't support the anime industry by only watching fansubs and never purchasing legitimate merchandise, then yeah, I'm all for mainstream fans...whatever those are (vague definitions are fun!).
In other words, it's up to the fansub community to continue doing something illegal when they were asked not to do so, which completely goes against the code of ethics that fansubbing was built upon in the first place! Wow! |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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He's talking about AnimeSuki.
ANN's filters ban mentioning bit torrent sites, although for the purpose of this conversation it is acceptable.
Although this is true to a certain extent, what the author of this letter (was it you maboroshi kid, or did you copy it from elsewhere?) seems to have overlooked is the fact that AnimeSuki complied with the request not because of the legal threat, but because they have a policy of complying with requests. -t |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Also, what the author doesn't seem to realize,is that the Induce Act has nothing to do with links. The Induce Act regards creating & releasing technology that "induces" people to commit certain crimes.
It has nothing to do with linking... Linking to illegally copied material is already banned in the United States under the DMCA. -t |
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s_j
Posts: 162 |
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1) The Induce Act has nothing to do with linking. It is a misguided attempt to ban broad technology (such as P2P) based on the argument that such technologies 'induce' people to break laws, even though the technology itself may have considerable legal uses, and this is why it failed.
2) Linking to copyright-infringing material is illegal under DMCA. 3) The Japanese companies WILL enforce their copyrights if they feel it is in their best interest, present or future. Fansubbing now may effect the licensing of their title in the future...that seems like a pretty good reason to me. 4) I so hope you're not the only researcher at this unnamed Japanese Entity.  ;;;
EDIT: oops, I'll try to read the entire thread next time... |
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cyrax777
 Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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Courts have upheld that a link to a piece of pirated media is the same as hosting it yourself Irc they also did this pre DMCA, DMCA has to do with circumventing copyright protection for the most part ie cracking DeCSS.
One could arugue a torrent is a link to a link to a file. since a torrent just tells the program Oh yeah connect to this guy and this guy and so on and so forth. |
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s_j
Posts: 162 |
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Actually DCMA does, for the first time, strictly address this issue and establish standard legal tests. In order for a provider (person, website, portal, etc.) who links to copyright-infringing material to be free from liability, the provider must 1) not know the material was infringing, 2) must not profit from this activity, and 3) must immediately remove the link/access to the material once notified. All three of these requirements must be met for the provider to be free of liability. So simply not profiting from their activity will not get portals, such as Animesucky, off the hook. They were right to take down the links. They were legally obligated to. |
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maboroshi kid
Posts: 2 |
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Forgive me. A young friend asked me to calm the fansub community and I thought AnimeSuki was based in the US. Been out of the loop too long. Almost ten years since fansub distribution when we were considered the "new guard" when Escaflowne, Rurouni Kenshin and Fushigi Yuugi were unlicensed. Glad to see these titles have reached a wider market in the US, though at the time I pushed for Marmalade Boy.
Since AnimeSuki is based in Germany, my comments do not apply as I do not know German law. EU laws are quite strict as i have heard, though. AnimeSuki can be regarded as just a link site, so a DMCA topic if in the US, but the fact that it is a also a sorting software I suspect may have qualified as "inducing" infringement, depending on the lawyer. The question posed to me was inducement, originally, not links. Yes, links are lible. But that's all for the US. Germany, I do not know, if in fact it is in Germany. You may have heard that MPAA have moved to sue users of Bittorrent, Edonkey and other sites. This is a move based on observing RIAA's successes initiated a year ago. I wouldn't worry so much for unlicensed anime, as they cannot be the suing authority for that which they do not have a license to. I would worry if (i) you have downloaded Hollywood movies and (ii) in great volume. If the letter comes, get a good neg lawyer to settle. A new law was passed to criminalize not only willful intent, but negligent users as well recently in the US. It is mostly an education to users type move, and settlement is highly likely. Gone are the days of underground fansubs. As a fansub distributor almost ten years ago, we were considered the "new guard" and profilerated fansub distribution, which prompted a flame war with "old guards" (those who watched taped anime without subs and only an eiwa dictionary). The result is well documented in anipike's fansub ethics faq. C&D letters come when fansubs are (i) too greedy (i.e. charge bootleg prices), (ii) too brazen (i.e. sub licensed anime) and/or (iii) too far-reaching (i.e. less underground and more mainstream). My capacity at the time was only max 50 tapes per week but usually 20 tapes per week. That was seen as too far-reaching. Torrents are much more than that now. Corporations make legal decisions based on business decisions, and fan ethics are for fans, although I did and still do appreciate it. But corporations just want to keep fan activities just that, small. And fan ethics are the only source of self-restraint for progessive proactive fans. Funny that MFI mentioned inducement if AnimeSuki is based in Germany. But then again, they didn't send a snailmail C&D but an email. In the US, C&D letters to ISP providers is also an option since and ISP provider removing a "suspected infringer" almost completely relieves it of being an accessory to the infringement activity. |
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beelzebozo
 Posts: 308 Location: Aurora, Colorado |
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C&D letters are legal documents and simply the start of the process. A lawyer sends out the C&D to the offender. If the offender does not comply with the C&D, the lawyer can used the C&D letter as further evidence against the offender, as in "We told them to stop and they didn't. This further demonstrates that they are knowingly breaking the law". To ignore a C&D is adds one more strike against you when you go to a court of law. This is why they are effective. The only reason to ignore a C&D is if you are right, and not only believe it, but can prove it in a court of law.
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