Updating the Pirate Anime FAQ

Joe Curzon writes "Over two years ago, I created what is now probably the most comprehensive and detailed guide to spotting bootleg and counterfeit anime/manga related goods - The Pirate Anime FAQ. A special version of the FAQ has also been published at numerous Anime Conventions around the USA. However due to commitments in the "real world" I have not been able to update FAQ almost a year. :( I would like to iron out any creases and update the whole thing in one go, so I was wondering what improvements would the Otaku readers of /. recommend? The DVD section and Fansub section are in need of the most attention and I plan to deal with that soon, but I was also wondering if there were any subtle changes I could make to improve the FAQ as well?"

Comments

Personally...

[NeoOokami]

I enjoy buying bootleg Hong Kong DVD sets. I'm not trying to justfy it, it's still a form of piracy. But so is just about every song and movie you download off the net. The primary difference is that I still get relatively nice packaging and sets at prices that are sane enough for me to afford. I can't justify spending $300 to watch an entire series. And some sets, like Maison Ikkoku that I've gotten don't have good US alternatives. Viz Video was once releasing it at $30 a two episode tape but stopped before they even finished. Even then this is a 96 episode series. Would anyone in their right mind pay $1440 just to watch a TV show? (Although I do believe Viz Video has recently started to release the show in a series of pricey boxed DVD sets - Unsure of how these will be)

Re:Personally...

[Chymaera]

The primary difference is that I still get relatively nice packaging and sets at prices that are sane enough for me to afford.

The difference is that you're spending money on it at all. Buying bootleg anime supports an evil industry that probably does a great deal of damage to anime studios every year.

If it's packaging you care about you'll get better packaging by buying the real thing. Instead of buying five bootleg DVDs for $30, go buy one legit DVD for the same price and at the same time support the artists that make such wonderful work. If you must have the entire series (which is understandable), go download the rest of the episodes off of IRC/DC++ for free after buying several DVDs. That way you'll

a) get better quality stuff
b) not give away money to an evil evil industry to which studios lose unknown but large amounts of money
c)support studios that will then have more money to make better anime
d) encourage US distributors to license more anime and bring more good stuff to the states.

Re:Personally...

[sasami]

Would anyone in their right mind pay $1440 just to watch a TV show?

You don't have any basis for making this judgment. A 26-episode anime series costs about $180 here, retail. Why is that "too much" but a $70 bootleg boxset isn't? Prices have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the market and what it will pay. Notably, DVDs in Japan cost twice as much as they do here, and they still sell plenty.

If I can't afford to pay that much, then I'll simply do without. Or maybe I'll save up for a while. These are concepts that seem to be lost on people these days. Worst case, I'll rent or borrow, but as a collector I prefer to plan ahead and budget for purchases.

Incidentally, the packaging you get on bootlegs is only "relatively nice" if you don't read Japanese. The printing on even the best reproductions is near-illegible compared to originals. The low-quality papers will also begin to degrade much faster.

--
Dum de dum.

Re:Personally...

[sql*kitten]

I can't justify spending $300 to watch an entire series.

"Hi, I really like your product, but I don't want to give you any money for it. You are going to go on making it, right, so I can just steal it? Hello?"

That's the problem, see. Like all digital media, a DVD is trivial to reproduce once its made. In an industrial scale, it's less than $1/disk. But the content on it is not trivial to produce. Animation requires lots of people and lots of time, and altho' the end product is cool, and the people making the storyboards probably have a blast, the actual cel-by-cel drawing must be incredibly tedious work.

Take open source for an example. There's lots of open source around, because writing software is fun. But the only way to get good documentation is to pay cash money to O'Reilley for it, because writing documentation is dull. O'Reilley sell their documentation in paper form rather than giving away the PDFs for free because if there was no money in it, they couldn't afford to make their product in the first place.

People don't see that every product, no matter how cool it is, is underpinned by lots of dull and painstaking work, that people will only do because it's how they earn their money, which they need in order to buy cool stuff of their own. Those are the people who are really hurt by piracy. Think about it.

Re:Personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some more reading up on free market concepts might do you well. The free market as conceived by various theorists in the 19th century did not include theft as a viable alternative when pricing products and determining demand. I will repeat, for free market theory, theft is _not_ one of the options. You have treated it as if it were. Also, you make an assumption that companies will continue to produce products as long as there are people out there willing to buy them, even if that number declines over time. Unfortunately, companies tend to ramp up much easier and faster than they can ramp down. This is due to one main reason -- it is much easier to hire people than to fire them. Getting rid of costs (employees) is very difficult and takes a great deal of time. During that time, you are still legally obligated to pay them. Companies often cannot make the transition from large to small without declaring bankruptcy. This sometimes results in the destruction of the company. They would not then, of course, be producing any more anime for you to steal. They will almost certainly be producing less of it, at less quality. Your course is a direct path to lack of quality content production. Far from being a rational consumer, deciding when you need to do without, when you need to save up, and when you can afford a product, you are like some sort of weird rat-like creature basically eating free food and shitting your own cage until you cannot breath from the fumes, you're dying from cholera and you decide to move somewhere else (music, movies, perhaps?...). Unfortunately, you're still stuck in the cage in terms of anime. No more anime for you, or anyone else, I'm afraid.

More things to include

[PktLoss]

A couple hi res examples of authentic goods might be usefull, perhapps an image or two from some of the major series's would be helpfull.

I live in a small town, theres only one place to get stuff, so I lack a basis for comparison on most items. As such, a library of authentic barcode/copyright information would be usefull for a website. I know I am interested in series X and Y, so looking up what the barcodes/info should look like for that exact series would be great.

Re:Too Expensive, Blu-Ray

[Fulcrum of Evil]

This is why I hope Blu-Ray discs and players appear soon. While they may not add to much for movies (full HDTV or something maybe) but for collection like series, they would probably reduce the cost a ton.

Don't hold your breath - DVDs cost less than a dollar to press. The price of a DVD has nothing to do with the cost of production.

I could care less about Piracy, but Fraud is bad

[sam_handelman]

I have a poster of Card Captor Sakura on my wall because I harbor deeply unnatural feelings for cartoon characters, not because I care about authenticity!

Seriously, this resource has nothing to do with stopping "piracy"; you may claim that's an issue but what this is really about is *fraud* - which you should be opposed to even if you support piracy (as I do.) It does nothing to stop pirating of TMs or whatever, it just stops these pirated goods from being passed as licensed/authentic, which matters a lot to collectors.

Re:Adapting anime for a new feminist millennium

[Little Brother]

I'm sure this explains why so many Anime's have women heroines, whereas most American cartoons, especialy action cartoons, have stereotypcial male heros protecting helpless, or at best sidekick class women? Considering the Japaneese culture is less tolarant of woman's rights than the USA in most ways, it is IMHO amazing the positive image of women that many Anime's portray. Note, I'm not talking about the XXX rated stuff, XXX rated stuff in ANY format tends to be crude and potentialy offensive, that has nothing to do with the fact that some is Anime.

Taiwan's status

[AtariAmarok]

"Taiwan is not a signatory to the Berne Treaty Convention, it is, technicaly, part of China"

Taiwan is a separate country at this time from mainland China. Both call themselves "China" in their names: Republic of China, and People's Republic of China, which causes some confusion.

Everyone treats Taiwan as a separate country from what is typicalled called "China" most of the time (PROC), except when the PROC demands it. Then when the PROC turns its back, it is time to treat Taiwan as a distinct Asian nation, just as Japan and the Phillipines are.

Re:Adapting anime for a new feminist millennium

[realmolo]

Positive image of women in Anime? Maybe. But that's only a secondary consideration to the producers of the stuff, I'm sure.

The real reason so much Anime has a female protagonist? Tits. That's it. Tits. I would think this is obvious.

What you say is true,

[Inoshiro]

but I'd argue that there is some price fixing. One of the products of price fixing is piracy.

Consider that new CD releases (at least in my city) have been slowly getting cheaper by about a buck every other year since 1999. A lot of new releases try to include something extra, like multimedia files, or a DVD. Why? They're trying to give value to a consumer that won't bat an eye at breaking the law. Offer value, and you can beat free.

Right now, what really strikes me as suspicious is that Canadian DVD prices (I'm Canadian) and US prices are numerically the same. I went to the US and thought I could get the Kubrick DVD box set -- but it was 199$ USD! This shocked me, as the same set was 199$ CDN back home. That (at the time) meant Canada had it for 100$ CDN/64$ USD cheaper. CNL, a Canadian DVD retailer, was the only place I found online that had prices comparable to the local ones, because all the other sites were in USD and thus 1.5x as expensive as buying locally.

Ask yourself why a DVD would have the same numerical MSRP when things like video games and music CDs have different MSRPs in our two respective countries. Ask yourself why CNL says they can't ship to the US.

Re:Elaborate

[Bagels]

Among other reasons, it is *fan*subbing, so typically it creates an installed fanbase in a newly-licensed country that, more often than not, will lap up the higher-quality licensed DVDs and merchandising. Also, in some cases, a series is considered so niche that it would never be released outside of Japan. In those cases, I suppose the companies don't mind fansubs too much because, short of importing the Japanese DVD and hiring a personal Japanese translator, there would be no other way for a foreigner interested in the series to watch it. Finally, sometimes the popularity of a fansub brings to light a new market for a series that the companies had previously thought would be profitless... and we all know how all companies jump at the chance to make a profit.

Re:Otaku

[Nogami_Saeko]

My Japanese instructor gave me the best explanation - that the commonly accepted Japanese meaning was someone who stays at home all of the time (presumably watching anime and playing with toys) - in other words, doesn't get out much.

The meaning took a more sinister undertone in the late 80s/early 90s when a self-proclaimed "Otaku" decided to start killing schoolkids in Japan.

Regardless, it's not exactly the cute word that some people seem to thing it is.

If you say that you're an "Otaku" to a Japanese person, it's basically the same as saying that you're a "fanboy with no life" in english, and although they may be polite about it, the perception will be the same.

Not a good thing.

Re:I have to agree, most DVDs are...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the things i learned in Economics was that a proliferant black market usually implies a market failure. Market failures include:
* Inability of the market to supply goods where they are demanded (eg: US $ in iraq)
* Prices are not set at equilibrium level. (eg: Microsoft Office in China was priced higher than people were willing to pay for it)

The benefit of a black market is that it provides the goods in question (or passable substitutes) at equilibrium price. The resultant drop in demand exerts a downward pressure on the price level of the original good.
While pirating is a bad thing, it is a logical response to overpriced dvds and (as long as it doesn't get out of hand) should encourage companies to move towards either greater innovation or more competitive pricing.
Pirating gets out of hand when it is so commonplace that there is no incentive for the entrepeneur to even bother entering the market. In the US we still have a LONG way to go before that happens. Thus while I think it's important for the amount of pirating going on in a country to be suppressed (by legal means) to it's most efficient level, as long as these DVDs are overpriced that level is not 0.
What do you guys think?

Re:Taiwan is independent

[barc0001]

In most circumstances Taiwan is almost like a country. They do have their own currency and (small) army, but they can't do things like get a seat at the UN or sign international treaties without the PRC's approval. They're like a teenager still living at home. Sure they can go off to the mall for a while without mentioning it to anyone, but if they decided to knock out one of the walls in their bedroom without telling the parents, there'd be hell to pay.