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Fansubbers Under Fire
CNet is running a story about new developments in the fansubbing world. The article provides some background, and then discusses
Media Factory's recent letters to fansubbers demanding removal of their shows. Historically the studios have turned a blind eye towards the work of the fansubbers, and the assumption has always been they they secretly approve since the fans work is amazing market research. I've bought countless DVDs based entirely on the work of fansubbers, so I hope that this isn't the beginning of the end.
It's illegal, it's wrong, and it's certainly not good for you. If you're rich because of what's being shared.
If you want Japanese cartoons before they're released in English, learn Japanese. It's fun and easy if you're not an idiot, and you can do it while you're at work if you have headphones and a cd-rom drive.
Why are you encouraging people to steal their employer's time and resources for a personal, non-work hobby?
...for two reasons.
(1) "Anxious times in the cartoon underground." Nothing like the term "cartoon" to once again give people inaccurate impressions of the entire anime world. I expect better from CNET.
(2) I will not buy DVDs blind, nor will I watch anime dubbed. I require at least a sampling before I plunk $ down on discs. Fansubs meet this requirement and have determined every single one of my anime purchases, with the exceptions of those series that came out before fansubbing really existed.
The coolest voice ever.
Well, if companies like Funimation would actually translate the real words instead of making most of them childish, then people might wait until the anime is released to the US because the translations are correct. It is amazing to compare the translations these big corporations do, compared to the real script.
No doubt some people go too far in their fansubbing, but on the other hand it is very rare indeed that a corporation will be or even can be reasonable (think of how their stockholders would react to a corporation allowing unauthorized copying of their content). That is why the law must provide the balance. If you think that there ought to be a reasonableness to this kind of thing the I recommend that you make your feelings known. Support the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
One thing I know for sure, if we do nothing then eventually we will live in a world where you have to pay every time you read your kid a bedtime story.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I can understand both sides of this issue. But assuming that the trend of the distributors cracking down on fansubbers continues, why not have the fansubbers just release their subtitles with no video?
This would allow the die-hard fans to either purchase a legitimate non-English DVD and apply the subtitles themselves (there is lots of software to do this available). This would, in theory, remove the legal burden from the fansubbers since they would no longer be distributing the actual video.
Everyone wins in this case: the anime fans would get to watch the series earlier than they would if they waited for a true English release, the fansubbers continue doing what they do, and the studio/distributor still gets their money from the sale of the DVD.
I know that many anime fans often prefer the fansub to a commercial subtitling because the fansubbers often include translations of on-screen items, not just dialog, so you can figure out if those kanji in the window are significant to the plot of if they are just decoration.
I know I have bought many DVDs because I got the fansubs, and they were good.
I'd be rather apprehencive about buying a $70 set of some show I would have never heard of if it weren't for fansubs.
Besides, once the series' get liscensed, the torrent is removed and the file is taken off the tracker listing.
And most people go buy the DVD.
Like the OP said, fansubbing makes for incredible market research.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I don't get it, why are you all bashing the fansubbers? It's like taping an tv episode for a friend in a forein country and translating it for them. I don't think language should be a barrier to determine what is piracy and what isn't. I mean, anyone can watch tv for free and tape it, hell record it if you like on an HD. So I don't see how it's wrong in any way, unless of course it's licensed in the country you live in, which in this case is most likely the states.
So again, how is this different from doing it with US shows and giving it to a friend in Europe who doesn't want to wait forever to receive it on their network, and while you are at it, translate it for them?
I actually feel a lot more comfortable with people who engage in indiscriminate copyright violation than I do those who specifically single out Japanese copyrights as somehow "not counting" -- Japanese works as not being "official" until they're published in some more important country like the U.S.
forgive my ignorance about fansubbind/anime/etc.. my questions are those of a complete layman (but a layman who works in the entertainment/film industry).
most of these are JP-only cartoons that are dubbed/titled in english (presumably for american or EU audiences on the net).. i fail to see how this really affects the target demographic that the cartoons were released for. I'm not saying it's 100% okay to take someone else's work and give it away for free (modified or not).. as it isn't yours.. but certainly there are shades of gray in every avenue.. and i have to imagine that giving away a retitled work to an audience that would have never had a chance to see it anyway (as it plays on tv in another country), when the original work probably played for free in japan anyway (on tv) seems a little more "gray" than it does "black."
we release commercial products, and certainly i dont want anyone to give them away for free, but if i found out someone had DIVX ripped my latest DVD release and subtitled it in japanese, it wouldnt exactly break my heart. in fact, i'd probably be excited, because if we had any sort of widespread downloading success in japan, those people [who dubbed my videos] would actually just be growing a potential market for me.. whereby someday we could release a native japanese version and sell 10x as many units because we are now that much more of a household name in japan.
not saying you're wrong, just saying it's not as cut and dried as you imagine it to be (imo).
If you're an honest user of these communities' work, react by not buying the licenses of those series where the studios don't let you see fansubs as preview.
If fansubbers' argument that they actually promote purchase of the English-language license is true then the Japanese studios will soon back off when their offerings are less competitive because American licensees' profits are lower.
You make no sense at all your post is littered with so many errors it is difficult to count them up!! I am one of the people you are calling thieves and I run a small website which is involved in fansubbing Goriko No Porkio which is >herebr br
I wouldnt do this if the original cartoons were available in english because i speak english better than japanese despite being a japanese native. If they made them available i would buy them so they arent supplying a product so how am I stealing this my friend??!!!and as for learning japanese, I already know japanese as does everyperson who fansubs, or they couldn't do it, so it is just irrelevant! back to the drawing board, and apologise.
I do also share music but I buy the albums when I have enough money, so noone loses anyway you are one of these accountants who are so straightlaced they can't see past to the spirit of the laws rather than the actual wording. your crazy interpretation would fail in a court of the law!!
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
I fail to see what the issue is here. These people know what they're doing is illegal.
End of story.
Myself, I've used fansubbers in the past.
;) ) to read all the subtitles. Which was OK, but now that the series is coming out on DVD in the US with dubbing I don't have to be there every minute. So I'll start buying the whole series as it comes out so she can watch it without me.
My daughter (age 6) had what I call a "Disney princess image" issue. Thanks to the Disney cartoons, she let me know one day that "Princesses don't fight - they just wait for the prince to rescue them".
I didn't like that idea.
So I found other things for her to watch, like "Magic Knight Rayearth" (cute little girls fight with swords against monsters), "Kiki's Delivery Service", "Angelic Layer" (cute little girls with robot dolls that fight each other into submission), and so on.
One of those is a (formerly) fansubbed series called "Stellvia of the Universe", which features a girl attending school in a space station, dealing with the ins and outs of school life. Shima (the main character) is a geek girl, and my daughter and I got a kick out of her (mis) adventures.
The only problem was that Daddy had to be there since she's not a fast enough reader (hey, she's only six
But we've started on other fansub works, like the "Ah! My Goddess!" series now running in Japan. We sit together, I read the subtitles and do the voices for her, and she's started picking up a little Japanese. When the series reaches the US I'll still buy them.
At the same time, I respect the animation studios who might not want their work fansubbed. In those cases, I'd recommend the fansubbers could create external subtitle files (I believe these are idx files that work with VLC or MPlayer), and people could be encouraged to rip their own DVD's to AVI files with special instructions, like "Use Handbrake at X rate blah, blah, blah".
This way, animation studios could still sell DVD's, funsubbers and fans like myself could still get "previews" of a sort. It would be better if the studios would work with the fansubbers and sell the movies online for cheap (say, $3 an episode in a nice XVID format or some such, $1 to the fansubbers and $2 to the production company), since thanks to them I'm going to wind up spending about $150 in DVD's that I would not have otherwise.
Guess we'll wait and see what happens. I'm sure there are people out there who only watch the fansubs and never buy the DVD, but as the article mentions, there may be a few if the "middle area" (the ones people watch on fansubs but have no intention of buying ) animes that lose sales as a result. (Which is why I think the "buy fansubbed for $3" would be a better result for everyone involved.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Here we go again... no you cannot "steal" information because information does not have the required physical attributes to be "stolen". Anime is not "service" either because service requires a physical action to be performed for you by someone. And by using the word "theft" in this context you merely showed yourself to be a propagandist for people who believe one can "own thoughts and ideas".
In other words you have no clue what you are talking about but you do have a knee jerk reaction that clearly identifies you as a worshipper of greed.
"Whether it's theft of service, or theft of property, it's still theft."
It's called copyright infringement.
No. That doesn't make sense.
Anime are cartoons.
Bugs bunny is also featured in cartoons.
Opera is music
Rap is music
You see where i'm going here?
Most fansub groups cease distribution of a given series as soon as it's licensed for production in the US. The point is that until it's licensed there is *no* english translation. Hard to argue that you're costing a company sales when they arent providing that product.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Under U.S. Law, the purpose of Copyright is to promote the arts and sciences by giving a means by which creators of intellectual property can be paid for their work.
Therefore, while fansubbing might be technically illegal, if we wish to determine the ethics of it we need to look at the question of whether it promotes the art or stifles it, and whether it enhances revenue or diminishes it.
From the article, it would appear that fansubbing has both promoted the art and enhanced revenue for the creators - but the market may now be reaching a point where in some cases fansubbing may (possibly) diminish revenue. It still seems to be contributing to the promotion of the arts, however.
Therefore, when considering the ethics of the situtation (as opposed to mere legality), there is only one thing to consider: does fansubbing diminish the revenues of the creators or their assignees? The fact that most fansubbers remove their material when a commercial conflict comes up shows good faith on their part, but that may be insufficient. In any case, the development of the U.S. market for anime may have changed the equation, so that what was formerly ethical (though not technically legal) may no longer be ethical.
Even that, of course, is in doubt. There is a good deal of reason to believe that the free sharing of material has helped commercial distributors far more than it has hurt them.
Baldur
Anime films/series are cartoons in the same sense that 8 mile was a kind of musical.
Just because it was a different style of music didn't make it a different thing, and just because an anime is (sometimes) animated with more care or in a different style doesn't mean it isn't a cartoon.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
So you say that somehow the companies are losing profits from fans releasing a series in a country where no legal/official release will ever occur?
Linux is not Windows
Personally, I think the greatest benefit of these fan translations is that it keeps the companies relatively honest. Fans already know the dialogue can be competently translated, so there's less excuse for poor dictionary-switch translatings or covering up harder dialogue with protected laughter that has nothing to do with the movement of character mouths. Heck, a few companies have made use of fan translations when doing their subtitling.
That said, with the company's request, they should immediately shut down translations of that company's work. *wry grin* It will likely mean lower sales due to decreased publicity, but that's that company's perogative. We must respect that.
^_^ So glad you understand now.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
In summary:
Redistribution to one person -- likely to be ignored by copyright owners.
Redistribution to the entire fucking planet -- likely draw a certain amount of attention.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"Companies worry that the easy prerelease availability of fansub versions means that the otaku class has already seen their products, and no longer need to buy anything but the must-haves."
Perhaps they companies don't understand that this is how it's SUPPOSED to work. I'm not going to shell out $250+ for a series and find out that I don't like it. Fansubbing gives me the option to see it as a whole and buy that which I really like. And just for the record, I have a WALL of anime that looks like Suncoast.
There's also the issue of market saturation VS. otaku and the "casual buyer".
If someone told me that I'd have to shell out $500 to find out if I'd like Babylon5 or not, I'd tell them to shove it!
"Not the Earth!!! That's where I keep all my stuff!!!" - The Tick
Regardless of definitions of theft, it's going against the wishes of the copyright holder.
And that is, quite bluntly, wrong. No matter the arguments put forward that fansubbing an anime and releasing it online is letting it reach a wider audience, is doing better translation work by the fans who know the series/creator's work well, or is making up for a copyright holder not allowing distribution in the country you live in, it's wrong.
If you don't consider it wrong, then it's not wrong for Microsoft, Apple or Sun to decide that they can copy the entire Linux kernel, modify it for their own purposes and make it into a proprietary Winux or iLinux for example... because they believe it can then reach a wider audience, or be written by paid coders, or make up for the copyright holder (those who wrote GPL code) not allowing distribution in a proprietary form.
But I expect it's more a case of double standards, that fansubbing will still go on and violating the copyrights of those who created it, and being done in part by people who insist their own copyright is respected with the code they release.
RST
It bears mentioning that when you put these video files up on the net, they are just as accessible to people in the domestic Japanese market as anywhere else. I would tend to imagine that is of some concern, especially in the case of those late-night niche series that make all their money off video and merchandise sales, rather than advertising, like Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. They would need to approach foreign sites distributing video files just as much as they would approach Japanese ones.
No matter how much additional style or substance is added to it, anime still qualifies as an animated cartoon. Apparently, CNET is aware that they are speaking to a general audience that is not as refined in their... well, cartoon-watching.
I wish you lot would just calm down a bit, it's not like you're whiter than white either, and I can't see you're problem if you're not even interested in anime.
And stop thinking that world=USA, there are lots of us in other parts of the world, and, as I stated earlier, most of the time we _never_ _ever_ get a legal release (Case in point, 9/10 of the fansub's I've watched haven't been released under any form where I live, let alone translated), so it's not like the shareholders are loosing money on this.
In short: Fansubs disapear as soon as a legal distrbution method appears, and in most cases the legal version doesn't appear at all, so there's nto much to complaine about.
David
P.S: Before you start moaning that more legal releases would appear but for fansubbing, remember that their probably wouldn't be anything like the number of manga/anime available today had it not been for the free publicity that the fansubbers provided.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
Hard to argue that you're costing a company sales when they arent providing that product.
Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut into their future sales.
Back in the good-ole days of VHS fansubbing in the 1980s, that was an unlikely event. But today, if an anime has any substantial appeal to Americans, it'll certainly get an international DVD release inside of two years. (Indeed, anime companies are making the USA market a critical part of their business plans. Some anime, like Big-O, has been renewed for new episodes solely on the strength of USA viewership)
For some kinds of show, that isn't true: there are genres whose international appeal is to tiny to support a translated release, and there are also high-profit kids' shows (like Pokemon*) where the audience won't be interested in reading subtitles (especially on TV).
But for many things that get fansubbed today, neither of those excuses works. Prehaps the strongest example is "Ghost In The Shell", an expensive scifi action series that's still being broadcast in Japan, and which already has DVD and televised releases in the USA. Even back in pre-production 3 years ago, this was a tremendously famous series, and it was obvious there would be a major world-wide market. Yet fansubbers went ahead, set their VCRs, and FTPed raws and subs around the world.
* In the case of childrens' shows, there is a further motivation for the producers to condone fansubbing: the shows themselves are usually "toyetic", existing primarily as 22-minute advertisements for toys and branded merchanise. A vendor can hardly argue against free ad time...
I wonder if this has anything to do with the market being a little more "flooded" than usual. In that case it would compare well to the MPAA...
Fansubbers release subtitled versions of anime online. Fans download. More downloads/activity = more popularity. Anime companies use popularity to determine US sales.
Now, anime has caught on more in the USA. Anime factories want to release more anime, faster, and with less regard to quality. What previously sold well due to predetermined popularity will now sell by volume. But those that don't want to watch crap can download the fansubs and determine that it is, in fact, crap and not worth buying.
It's like theatre movies and shelved music. The good (or at least, popular) stuff is selling more than ever, but people are better prepared against the crud. Industry wants to sell both, so they fight against the evils of "piracy"
I think he meant he bought official commercial releases after having seen the fansubs.
> I've bought countless DVDs based entirely on the work of fansubbers, WHAT THE FUCK!! Don't you know *anything* about this stuff? The fansub groups explicity do not want that to happen, because that is exactly what causes the companies to need to crack down, idiots like you buying illegal copies.
To me, what he said was that he bought DVDs based on what he saw from the fansubers. As in, watch fansub, go buy official release on DVD. Not, watch fansub, buy DVD that was made using fansub.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Super Milk Chan
>If you steal my bicycle
Then I've taken a physical product from you and stopped you from using it, I haven't copied it. The only way I can "steal" the profit from you is to go, gun in hand, to your office and steal your money, take the physical bank notes away from you and into my pocket. This isn't about copyright infringement being detrimental or not, it's about it being theft, and by the defitinion of theft it isn't.
The guy who sells CDs with a bootleg of a film is benefitting from copyright infringement. The other guy who breaks into a warehouse and steals a whole bunch of CDs or DVDs to then sell them is benefiting from theft. They're both illegal, but they're not the same. Pretty fucking simple isn't it.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Many of you are making faulty assumptions comparing the Japanese and American markets:
#1 Did you know the Japanese productions do not "Break Even" until DVD sales/rentals...THAT is why they are priced so high. TV does not break even on a show...it helps market it for sales/rental so that it will break even later.
1a. This means if you fansub, you are contributing AGAINST a production breaking even.
1b. If you torrent this is even worse as the last tracker I kept stats on over 40% of the traffic was non-US (~30%+ asian)...AKA the very rental/sales market that pays for productions!
#2 Fansub translations are better than commercial.
LOL! I've met the translators they get their material from!...At best they are above average AMATUER translators...many write scripts that are so bad they have to go through the projects english speakers to make sense.
Take this in comparison to professional level translators that run the finish product past the Japanese firm in many cases and have access to the ORIGINAL CREATOR. If there are differences, guess what, alot of the times its on purpose as someone WANTED IT THAT WAY from the Japan firm!
Example: series: FLCL fansub name: FuriKuri. REAL NAME: FoolyCooly Thanks to the R to L slur in Japanese this was told to SynchPoint by the CREATOR, the CREATOR told the fansubbers on more than one instance (at a con) THEY WERE WRONG. (ex: Name: Alice = Arisu or occasionaly Arise)
Never forget the #1 rule in Anime:
NOBODY screws up anime more than the Japanese!
One Piece.
"Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut into their future sales."
Maybe. Or maybe the fansubs generate more interest for the eventual release.
The real question for me is why the fansubbers (a new word for me, admittedly) rely on this nebulous notion of "tacit approval" to justify their actions, rather than actually asking permission. They must not want to know.
Nobody is saying you're wrong in a technical sense. What the poster was getting at is the word "cartoon" carries a very specific tone and set of boundaries in the US (which is where I'm from, at any rate). Here, the word "cartoon" means, something animated for the kids - high-frame-rate, low quality, simple platitudes, etc. Something you grow out of.
Anime, on the other hand, encompasses a much larger set of genres and audiences. Anime is designed for everyone from kids (and God, do we know that, thank you Pokemon) to teens and adults. Anime even has sub-genres - definite sci-fi series, comedy series, westerns, horror, etc. What was the last time you saw a horror "cartoon"?
Most of all, though, anime has much more interesting subject matter - stuff that makes you think. The characters are not one-dimensional, and are not all designed for gags as they are in 99% of "cartoons". The storylines are well written and continuous, and characters develop and change. Depending on the series, the nature of family, friendship, religion, or even reality itself is challenged. And when you're tired of all of that, yes, there's plenty of comedy and "low humor" as well.
This is why anime fans get upset when you call it a "cartoon". Yes, it is a cartoon. But calling it such implies it is much, much narrower and vapid than it deserves.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Haven't these companies noticed the massive amount of bootlegs/imports coming in from Hong Kong? I can pay $120 - $200 for a series from the legitimate publisher, or $30 for an import/bootleg that is nearly the same quality, but on fewer discs. It's not like sites that sell this stuff are hard to locate either, led alone the amounts you find on eBay.
I think piracy is cutting into the market a heck of a lot more than fansubs. I'm amazed that so many of the sites continue to operate, seemingly within the US as well.
> fan subbing is pointless now, most groups fan
> sub the most popular shows, which are often
> licensed internationally before they air (or
> was funded by an American anime company)
Bear in mind, though, that many of these shows only get popular after being fansubbed.
Also, popular shows may not be licensed because of other issues. For example, Naruto. Madly popular, and if it was any other show it'd have been licensed already.. but who seriously is going to want to license a show with 100+ episodes where a single plot point can take up 10 of them? It's based on the soap opera model and who the heck wants to put them on DVD?
Given that the standard US DVD is 4 episodes, nobody'd pay for one of them. (And if you say "they would if it wasn't for fansubs", no they wouldn't: at best they'd buy one, feel ripped off after watching Naruto standing on a bridge talking to Zabuza for an entire DVD, and never buy another one.)
At the very core, what the fansubbers are doing amounts to charitable work for a for-profit organization. At some point that company is going to step in and assert their ownership over their works, lest they fall into the public domain.
Look at the logical cocnclusion of fansubbing:
- Japanese company creates anime feature
- Fans subtitle it and redistribute it on the internet
- A large fanbase for the company's works grows outside of Japan
- Company responds to consumer demand by releasing officially dubbed versions
- Company has to shut down the fansubbers because of the direct competition
Honestly, success for the fansubbers (raising awareness of the feature) means that the company will have to pursue legal action against the fansubbers.
And what good would an American release do to me? I've bought couple R1 dvds which I can't even play legally due to frigging region codes. So nowadays I buy manga.
As a fansubber (over 200 released episodes) I know that many if not most fansubbers are not from America, so why should we care about US licenses? There're entire groups that sub in English (since it's currently de-facto language) but don't have even a single native English-speaker.
IMO it's just stupid to multi-fansub (as in having multiple groups doing their own versions) new popular series which will definaetly be licensed. Instead doing old forgotten series which will never be licensed would be better use of quite limited resources. OTOH this just hobby for most people so they tend to do whatever they like.
And currently companies are doing about right thing. While it's their interest to guard their rights/series, suing fansubbers would cause many to quit, but others would just go underground like warez/etc has done. There already are couple groups like LMF (doing gits 2nd gig) and Spoon (doing FMA/tactics) which are underground due to licensed series.
> Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The
> company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the
> USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut
> into their future sales.
Yup. That's why NO film company has ever released a DVD of a film that's already been out on VHS. It wouldn't sell, would it?
That's why LucasArts only ever released one single, perfect VHS version of Star Wars. After all, who'd pay for the same thing again?
That's why in the UK, where one of the most common cable channels is UKTV Gold which shows nothing but repeats of classic Britcomedies, the BBC don't sell DVDs or VHSs of Red Dwarf or Fawlty Towers since anyone who wants them will already have taped them, right? (Note: Both series have been released, twice on each format..)
If you want Japanese cartoons before they're released in English, learn Japanese.
It's not a matter of "before". Many shows and movies are never translated. There is no legal way to aquire them, and "learn Japanese" isn't an answer and you know it.
Every fansubber I've ever dealt with has stopped providing tapes as soon as the title is going to become available (e.g. when Disney signed with Studio Gibli for all the Miyazaki films like Princess Mononoke all the fansubs for Miyazaki films vanished). Yet there is still no way for me to get a legal subtitled version of Nausicaa, so I'm keeping my fansub. If Disney releases it, I'll buy it.
Realize that fansubbing was going on in ernest at a time before the general anime craze in the U.S. This was back before you could find a whole aisle of anime at Fry's and Best Buy. This was when a video store's "japanimation" section consisted of Akira and a couple random episodes of Sailor Moon.
Copying isn't stealing. When the owner of the material isn't even trying to sell it to you, then there isn't even the hypothetical loss of revenue argument. To then call that STEALING is just being a SYCOPHANT.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Not stealing" does not imply "not illegal". Running a red light is a crime, but it's not theft. Likewise, infringement of copyright under U.S. federal law is a crime, but it's not theft[1]. I liken copyright infringement more to trespass than to anything else.
[1] I single out federal law because it governs copyright disputes in the vast majority of cases, but a few states do still have something similar to copyright infringement as part of their theft statutes.
Flagrant, organized, and large scale willful copyrignt infringement.
Free offshore (from Japan to 'gai'-land) marketing and product modification, coupled with a total and complete lack of business ability to profit from these free services given to them.
>By this logic you employer would not be stealing from you if he never paid you.
He'd be breaching my contract, which says he's going to pay me every month.
>Sneaking into a movie theatre would not be stealing.
Theft of service is rather different than copyright infringement. In one you use the resources of someone else for your benefit, on the other you copy something and distribute it with your own resources.
>Using your credit cards without your consent would not be theft.
Look up "Fraud".
>other then your obvious mental retardation
Stop talking to yourself.
In addition, I would just like to take this post to give a warning to the anime industry.
Take a lesson from market behavior with the RIAA and MPAA. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or not only will the fansubbers stop buying anime (I'm willing to bet fansubbers are also the anime company's most profitable customers) from you, but they'll just spend their effort on subbing licensed material to piss you off. As it is now, there's a pretty good agreement where we basically get to sub things that aren't licensed in the states, and they back off. They send notices out to the sites that do host licensed stuff, but that will be done no matter what, and there's no way to get rid of these people.
As it stands right now, the VAST majority of the anime community respects the wishes of the anime companies, and we understand that we have a symbiotic relationship. They need our money to keep producing anime, we need their anime to get our fix. Very dumb move on behalf of this company to change that "agreement" just in search of higher profits. Write fansubbing off as a marketing expense and collaborate with some of the better groups instead, like Anbu or AONE or Seichi. Work with their translators, and get market insight from the fansubbers who have WAY more experience dealing with the desires of fans than the actual anime companies do.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Ah but there are two problems with so over simplifying this:
1. A far greater number of anime series are being released.
If 5% of anime is the expected big hit variety and 20 series are released in a year, and a fan can buy maybe 4 series a year, there will be 1 smash hit, which he will buy, with the other 3 purchases spread over maybe 10 of the mediocre series.
Anime becomes more popular, and 200 series get released. There are now 10 big series, the fan can't even buy all of these, let alone the mediocre ones.
2. American companies are getting better at picking the really good series.
With the market as competetive as it is, picking a good series is a lot more important, in the old days any anime was better than no anime. Not only are there the Japanese viewing figures to take into account but fansubs are important too. Regardless of your opinion if overall they do more good or bad, they do create a fanbase for the series before anyone has even liscenced it, an active English fanbase shows that it's a series that will do well. An anecdote from Newtype USA with some American company director was that thanks to fansubs Naruto has become the most expensive anime to liscence because everyone knows it will be a massive hit.
So because of this, not only are there more releases, which means more hit series, but also a higher percentage of hit series.
The reason the mediocre anime sells badly is because no one has the money to even consider them. Most of the purchases are likely to be people who have come to love the series because of the fansubs.
I realized I'm joining the discussion a whole 3 hours late which means no one will probably read this comment, but what the hell...
First, a little history:
I used to fansub shows starting about five years ago, but my roots in online fansubbing go back even farther, to 1997. I was one of the three groups (although I guess I was really only one person) who pioneered online distribution of fansubs in the first place, back when RealPlayer G2 had just come out and Cable modems and DSL were just first available. I used to take VHS fansub tapes, encode them to RM, and make them available on my website. If you run across old Sailor Moon RM files, or Macross 7, or later on any of the Fumei Anime encodes, that was me.
Then DivX and broadband changed everything, and the whole online scene exploded. Now, you had people in Japan ripping raws from TV in high quality (beginning with Noir and Vandread, they were the real breakout series for Digital Fansubbing, or digisubbing) and groups translating and reencoding these raws, you no longer had to wait for an old-school tape fansubber to translate it and distro tapes. It was revolutionary.
But about that time I started to see where things were headed, and I got out of fansubbing more than two years ago because I came to realize that the modern fansubbing scene is nothing more than the next warez scene. Everything turned into speed, speed, speed, and became less about quality and the love of anime and more about online prick-waving contests about which group was cooler and got their releases out faster. I grew out of that crap when I was 16, thanks.
Today's market no longer needs fansubbing. Fansubbing was important back when shows might never get brought over to the US, or releases might not occur for another 4 years (like ADV and Excel Saga, for instance), but today the domestic anime companies get their product out in reasonable timeframes (it's no 1 week wait time, but that's for obvious reasons), produce good product (if they don't they hear about it forever, ask ADV about Eva Vol 1 sometime), and do a bang-up job of trying to get the whole phenomenon out to new people.
Anything good that gets aired on Japanese TV will be licensed in the US, period. Everything that's being produced in Japan now is licensed before it airs, so this crap about US companies looking to fansubbers for direction is bunk. All fansubbing is these days is whole-sale piracy on the one hand and another silly adolescent online rat race on the other. When you have "release" groups, distro groups (read torrent sites), and all of these things have three letter abbreviations, you know it's just the new warez scene.
That's why I got out. The last show I enjoyed subbing was Kokoro Toshokan, because I knew it would never get brought here (indeed, it still hasn't after three years). That was what fansubbing was about. Today's scene is a terrible perversion of the ideals of fansubbers of old.
"I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
I've been in the fansub community for years now. One thing I've learned is that it is impossible to determine what stuff will get licensed (The US doesn't get anywhere close to 100% of the stuff released in Japan) in the States. For instance, Super Milk Chan is showing on TV. I would have never expected that. On the other side of the coin, no American company has (thus far) made a peep about Naruto, and it is up to episode 119 and is basically a shoe-in for the Amerian audience.
Anime companies of course have a policy of not releasing any information on series they are interested in acquiring, so Fansubbers have effectively NO information to go on. So what is a Fansub group to do? Just sub what you find interesting and stop if the series gets picked up.
I read the internet for the articles.
The problem is this chief difference in culture:
In Japan, making something animated does not automatically mean you were trying to make a kid's show, or if it is adult, that it has to be a comedy like The Simpsons or Family Guy. In the USa, the public kinda does have that assumption.
The importers chief mistake is in assuming that animation and seriousness can never mix. Of course, the annoying thing is that the importers of this material are themselves responsible for continuing to perpetuate this mistaken assumption on the part of the US audience.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Not necessarily, I can tell you of about 10 series I'm waiting for a US release of so I can buy them and own a high quality copy as well as the DVD extras. I've already seen them fansubbed, but I'm still planning to buy. In fact it's unlikely I would have bought these if I hadn't seen them first. Anime DVDs are still too expensive for just impulse buys ($30 a DVD is still pretty common for new releases.)
Big O's a unique example, it was much more popular in the US than in Japan. The popularity of it here in the US finally led to more of it being produced, but it was produced mainly for the US market. The small group of fans of the show in Japan got an unexpected bonus thanks to the US fans in that case. These type of things are also quite rare. Big O's the only one I know of where more episodes were made because of popularity in the US. ADV has helped pay for the production of some series, but they did that without fan input.
Ghost in the Shell's another quirky one, the original movie was much more popular outside of Japan than in it. (Not just US, but worldwide.) You're either confused or misunderstanding the TV series here as well. There are two TV series based on Ghost in the Shell. The first, called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, originally aired starting in 2002 and has long since completed it's 26 episode run. A second TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig started airing in January of 2004, it appears to be finishing up it's 26 episode run this month. As of now, only three volumes of the original TV series have been released in the US. The second series has had no release. Of the two movies, both have been released in the US, the first by Manga Entertainment several years ago, and the second by Dreamworks in 2004 (I believe it was 2004, not sure on the exact date of that.)
Knowing it would eventually be released is a silly condemnation of those who fansubbed it. Even though it's insanely popular here, there was no guarantee it would indeed be released. It very well could have been the case that the Japanese owner would want more for the rights to it than any company would feel it was worth. This has happened in the past with other series in fact (For example, the Ah! Megami-sama/Oh My Goddess! movie rights came with the stipulation that the mini-goddess TV series, which is not very well liked, had to go with it and be released. Fans had to wait several years before a company felt it was worth it to take the license). Beyond that, we can see from this one series, one that is in fact quite popular in the US, that it took 2 years for the TV series to start being released in the US. This is a big reason why fansubs take place as well. It also does help sales, not that that makes it legal, but it is true.
This kind of argument hurts fans of these series. First you assume only children would be interested in Pokemon. Secondly
You're right. If my employer didn't pay me it wouldn't be stealing - it would be breach of contract.
Copyright infringement isn't stealing for the same reason that murder isn't rape.
In addition to all of this, it is important to note that fansubbers often produce better quality "subs" than the professionals.
That's one of the major reasons why I watch them.
While the translations run the whole gamut of quality, I love how some groups go the extra mile and provide cultural footnotes that you can read, and translations of writing that appears on the screen. Many commercial products don't do that.
Almost no commercial products do that. Speaking as someone who does ADR writing on anime (essentially I provide a dubbing script from a rough translation), I have to agree wholeheartedly. If something comes up culturally that can't be easily translated, I'm expected to gloss over it or find a way to dumb it down so it fits in the mouth flaps. The dubbed versions are really the lowest common denominator. Moreover, they sometimes use the translation scripts (not the final dubbing scripts) for the subtitling, providing poor translation and poor English.
Hm, I'm really getting psyched up about my work, here.
The one and only thing I hate about fansubs is the incessant need to use wild designer fonts that are completely illegible. Oh, and the fact that the translation quality is often extremely poor.
When a Japanese animation company notices one or more of their works showing up on tapes or dvds from and unknown source, and the show has all sorts of glitzy animated karaoke titles, font-and-color matched text, still frames of a 'subber group logo, etc. they don't say, "oh, a fansub," they say "what _company_ did this?!" That is when Gonzo / Bandai / Geneon / Bones / Gainax / Aniplex et al start the legal ball rolling because when the result looks commercial, and the authors of the bootleg work are going to be treated as if they were an infringing company. The fact it is an informal group of fans isn't going to lessen their ire: it is about the look of the finished product that concerns them, and whether the authors "have more heart/love" in their effort than an official release is irrelevant. Thus things like the Media Factory C&D.
Fansubbing was _almost_ dead around 1998 as domestic (USA) releases were ramping up to the point that the time lag between Japanese TV broadcast and US store-shelf purchase of the same show continued to shrink. Then came desktop video encoding, and the "digisub" was (re)born. Better capture hardware, better encoder schemes, better titling software and most of all--cheap, widespread broadband. Now a show is digitized as it is shown on TVT or WOWOW, etc and sent to a subber group in a matter of perhaps an hour. Subber groups, like Las Vegas hotels, vie constantly for one-upmanship thus you get the incredibly lavish animated title fonts, twirly song lyric titles, fade-in/outs etc. the results of which mean a fansub torrent of a given show will exist from 1 to 5 days after the original Japanese broadcast. Unfortunately the translation tends to be rather weak, but if the colloquialisms created by the groups are "hip" enough, people will accept them and think they're spot-on.
Then came bittorrent, and you have achieved the current position of digisubs. The problem the companies and their licensees now observe is loss of potential sales. Furthermore, when a show is popular enough, fansubber "morality" goes out the window in favor of the screaming masses who "want their anime now dammit!" Take the show Full Metal Alchemist, the most popular show of 2004. It was licensed for US distribution about halfway through the 51-episode run, and while 1 or 2 sub groups ceased subbing it, a dozen more jumped into place to take up the slack. Yes, some of these groups are outside the US, but the point illustrated is popularity vs. morality. It is going to happen again, too, with a show called "Bleach." ONE episode of FMA typically got *30,000* leechers, from ONE TORRENT! It is numbers like these that concern the animation companies and their licensees, and that is why the legal engine is going to start rolling--hard--on folks again.