Pirate Anime FAQ Updated

Joe Curzon writes "The Pirate Anime FAQ has finally been updated, after year of me being far to busy to do anything on the internet! The FAQ would have been released sooner, but my request on Slashdot.org produced some "interesting" feedback via e-mail. This update includes a new and improved Fansub section, which also covers Digisubs. Scanlations have been added as a point of interest. Additionally the Audio CD and DVD sections have been improved with more details on the Pirate Companies and how to spot their "products". I would also like to say that feedback from readers and the industry is critical for keeping the FAQ up to date, and without their previous and continuing support The Pirate Anime FAQ could not exist. Finally I would to remind people to be extremely cautious when buying from on-line auction sites such as eBay. The most common e-mail I get sent is from concerned fans who have just found out that they have bought some pirate goods off a seller who claimed what they were selling was legitimate."

Comments

The quality of HK DVD

[Sexy Commando]

It's worthy to note that 90% of Hong Kong Anime TV-show DVDs are from the inferior TV captured sources, not from the DVD releases. Of course you can find dedicated pirates who strive to get the same quality as the original, but it's not likely you can find them in Hong Kong made DVDs.

If the show is unlicensed in the US, it is likely that you can download from BT sites like here and here.

Re:Aw MAN.

[Mononoke]

I knew that Rei blow-up doll couldn't be a licensed product...

No, but the Hello Kitty vibrator is.

(No, I couldn't deep-link directly to it. Look in the 'Toys' section.)

Enjoy!

Re:Is this correct?

[kaltkalt]

Yes but some laws require a mental element, i.e. intent ("mens rea" in legal fancy-latin). That's different from ignorance of the law. If I jump out at you from behind a tree and yell "boo!" to scare you and cause you to have a heart attack and die, it is not murder because I did not have the intent to kill you (even though my act caused you to die and I knew killing someone is murder, which is illegal). If you buy it thinking it is real, it is still contraband and you can't bring it into the country (it will be confiscated by Customs if they find it) but you won't be charged with a crime. Now, bringing in 100,000 units of pirated stuff might get you in some trouble b/c it could imply an intent to sell/distribute the stuff (it's clearly not for your personal use).

Yes, this applies to drugs, too. For example, if someone sticks a bag of pot in your pocket and you had no idea they did it, you're technically not guilty of a crime, even though the stuff is in your possession. But, you'll have a hard time convincing the cops that someone stuck it in there (don't they have the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Sure... but these are drugs, and as we all know the Constitution doesn't apply to drug crimes).

Anyway, bottom line is you're not gonna get in criminal trouble for bringing a pirated anime doll or whatever into the US from abroad. It can be confiscated, though (ya won't get it back, no matter how innocent/ignorant you were).

Re:Why aren't they trying to SOLVE any of these?

[TomHandy]

Regarding the legitimate item not being available, I'm not sure whose fault you are implying here, but you seem to think that if the product isn't available, it's the fault of some particular company, and therefore isn't even bootlegging in this case. Normally there can be a number of factors, including the rights to a show being in limbo, or some other issue. Either way, it doesn't change it from being bootlegging if you buy a bootlegged company of something. Although it is probably lower on the scale of things people worry about (i.e. if something isn't available commercially in any format).

Regarding packaging, I don't know what anime you own, but either way, just because the anime you own has average to crappy packaging doesn't mean that is true of all commercial anime, especially more recent stuff. Certainly some modern anime releases still have poor packaging design, etc. (you can get a good idea of this by reading the reviews on animeondvd.com, which goes into a lot of detail usually on packaging, menu design, etc.). Either way, the main issue with that entry in the Pirate Anime FAQ is that a lot of pirate anime still ends up with good packaging because they are able to spend more on high quality packaging, and for the artwork they usually just steal art and packaging design from the Japanese or US releases.

Not sure what you mean about "not having to know English to do their work". I'm not sure what commercial anime you own, but generally most subtitling is pretty good, although there are still examples of some shows released with sometimes poor translations (or at least inaccurate). But this is more the exception than the rule, and it makes me wonder what commercial anime you have, as generally it is the bootlegs that are known for very poor English translations, which are generally done by people who know very little English. Or are the bootlegs what you were referring to?

Regarding the pricing, most of the cost has to do with the cost of licensing the show, the cost of producing it, translating it, often dubbing it, authoring it and doing the other things that go into domestic anime releases. There are plenty of costs involved, and it's not like they just take a Japanese DVD and slap on some subtitles and that's it. Aside from that, the only DVD's now with only 2 episodes a disc are usually very expensive OVA series (such as FLCL, which is 6 episodes across 3 DVD's.....compared with 6 episodes across 6 DVD's for the original Japanese release). Some shorter series get spread across 3 and 4 eps a disc, and some more high profile series are released with sometimes 3 episodes a disc in order to recoup costs, but it's becoming more common to have 4 or 5 episodes a disc.... there are even companies experimenting with doing things like 7 and 8 episodes a disc, with a higher MSRP.

But the commercial US releases are still considerably cheaper than the Japanese R2 releases..... the point made in the pirate anime FAQ though is that if the prices are insanely low, like a 26 episode series for only $30, then it is likely a bootleg. The general economics of anime can generally explain why no commercial releases can be anywhere as cheap as a bootleg..... prices of commercial anime are coming down a bit, but they still aren't going to compete with bootlegs because bootleggers don't have to really pay for much at all, thus they can sell their stuff for very low prices.

Your assmption that customers want both Japanese and English subtitles isn't really the reason that bootlegs have Chinese subs in addition to English subs. The Chinese subs are generally because the bootlegs are heavily popular in Asia, and so the bootlegs almost always have Chinese subs. I think you might have been saying this might be a reason why people would buy a bootleg, but that really isn't it. There are legitimate Chinese DVD's with actual Chinese subtitles that are legitimate and commercial, so people who want legitimate Chinese subs can buy commercial DVD's, not resort to bootlegs.

To answer

Re:Really...how big of a deal?

[TomHandy]

Well, this is an especially big deal to the original Japanese companies. And it's not just a US issue, but the problem of Japanese anime DVD's being pirated and bootlegged throughout Asia. The Japanese companies have generally expressed an even greater concern about this. In terms of how much it affects the US companies, it's more a different issue. Fansubs generally aren't as much a concern as "import" shops that sell bootlegged anime DVD's, even bootlegged DVD's when the show is licensed and available commercially in the US. Same with eBay auctions, where some companies have been more active in trying to clamp down on bootlegs than others (AnimEigo in particular has tried very hard to deal with the bootlegs of some of the shows they have licensed and released commercially like Kimagure Orange Road and SDF Macross).

And you are right..... the US companies in particular do recognize the role fansubs play, and the general thing they ask for is to stop distributing fansubs of shows when they are licensed..... although the digisubs phenomenon makes this more difficult, because it isn't as easy to halt digisub distribution compared to the VHS fansub days, when a fansub distributor could stop distributing a fansub, and the extent of a fansub's spread after that was less, and the quality wasn't that good anyway compared to commercial releases. This is the big issue that is dealt with regarding digisubs, which can be copied and distributed easily to hundreds or thousands of people at a time, and each subsequent copy isn't degraded like when people copied fansubs for friends, etc.

But anyway, the focus, and the big deal is most definitely the actual bootleg anime DVD's, etc..... fansubs and digisubs aren't seen as quite the same kind of issue.

-Tom

But who's selling it?

[twoallbeefpatties]

The U.S. doesn't have much authority to go after the people that pirate anime. The stereotypical point of sale for this stuff is Hong Kong. Though not everything comes out of there, obviously, the majority is printed and distributed from the Far East, not from within the U.S., and surely you've heard about the rampancy of piracy in countries like China, where more software, music, and movies are sold as pirated material than as the real thing. They have enough trouble as it is going after the niche stuff like anime.

It's important to keep the consumer aware about this stuff because most of it is something "we" have no control over. If you're ever in Boston, go to Tokyo Kid in Harvard Square, an anime-goods-only store, and check out their selection. They don't sell the video ripoffs, but they do have an extremely good selection of pirated CDs. Of course, you wouldn't know that the CDs are pirates. They look just like the real thing, except for the fine print that credits "Ever Anime" as the distributor.

Or check out eBay. I'ma hop over and type "Lain" into the search box and see what comes up. Choose the section of results from videos only. Of the 50 results on the first page, 4 of those results were people selling a region 1 DVD. The rest are selling region-free discs, and some aren't even shy about shipping directly from Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaysia, while others are proud to be U.S. sellers. And if the sellers aren't even in the U.S., what jurisdiction does even eBay have to do about it? Are they going to go in and hand-pick out every pirate disc they find? Serious caveat-emptor.