Slashdot Mirror
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.
For everyone else asking that question, they apparently translate foreign movies and make English subtitles.
have they learned nothing from the collapse of the record industry?
From the article (assuming you're like me in wondering what "fansubbing" is):
Trolling is a art,
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 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?
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).
My opinion as a very minor fansubber (and this is held by various large fansubbing sites I'm not going to link from slashdot) is that it is fine to fansub until some American company announces they have aquired the licence to an anime, at which point you stop.
These people appear to be continuing to distribute and subtitle anime after this has happened. In some cases it looks like they are continuing to distribute a fansub after an anime is released.
Personally I think just as bad as downloading an actual pirated copy of an anime. Of course I do do that. But I know it's pirating and don't try to pretend it's anything else.
These companies don't appear to be going after fansubbers who are fansubbing things which haven't had, and probably won't get, an American release.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Most fansubbing groups operate on morality vs. legality.
They will sub, and release, a series until there is a company that picks it up and says "we are going to do this". And then they drop it. At which point, most drop all sources for all episodes both future and already released. This is why studios don't have a problem with most groups. It doesn't dilute the market enough to bother with.
I don't consider this practice immoral. However, given the current state of copyright laws, it is illegal. Doing fansubs, or DLing them is an at-risk practice for all parties involved.
Much like driving 5MPH over the speed limit, or doing a rolling stop at a stop sign. Illegal and immoral do not always coincide.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
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.
Media Factory should have been less blunt since as mentioned the "dirty little secret" about digisubs is that companies actively use this as a marketing tool to know what is hot and what is not. They get a lot more feedback through watching fan activity than they ever did in those "reader response cards" and web site mechanisms. Even so, I can't blame Media Factory for wanting to protect their investments. They took the time and money to create shows to market in the Japan and the US and are irked to see their work handed out freely. Although they could have handled in a more friendly fashion the fact is that they asked these groups to stop and it is in their right to do so. They should have handled it with a gentle handle instead of the blunt instrument of psuedo-legal issuing of offical letters.
The fansubing groups need to get off their high horse and honor the request. In the past, "fansub ethics" have always said "honor the request of the creators" reguardless of reason. As much as these guys think they are "promoting the show by sharing" they continue to ignore the reason they are asked to stop which is that there is a seedy element in fandom that just wants cheap shows to watch.
Both sides should just acknowledg each other and walk away from this situation cleanly instead of fuming and dwelling on it. The system works best when it runs silent not when red flags and warning bells go off.
For those who may not be familiar with such translations:
....
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us
Cats: You are on the way to destruction
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
Cats: HA HA HA HA
Captain: Take off every 'zig'
Captain: You know what you doing
Captain: Move 'zig'
Captain: For great justice
If you want Japanese cartoons before they're released in English, learn Japanese.
And then what? Watch them as they're broadcast in Japanese on local TV here in the States? Good luck! Even if you live in heavy Japanese settled areas you are unlikely to find much Japanese language programming. Fansubs usually come out as the shows are being broadcast in Japan. Fansubbers then do a lot of hard work to provide their own translations of these shows.
Finally, the entire anime fan community has a strong "buy a licensed version" ethos. If the Japanese companies who make these shows were to release subtitled versions of the shows online for a reasonable fee I suspect that fansubbing would screech to a halt (so I don't get what you're talking about with fansubbers "creating barriers to legitimate online distribution" there is no current legitimate online distribution--if there were, there would be no need for fansubs). I think the typical fansub viewer would prefer the original audio with subtitles over any English remake of the dialog anyway.
I do not have a signature
Not yet... Give it time. With the US government in the hands of big business, I fully expect to see copyright infringment criminalized within the next few years... They'll probably be using the death penalty in a decade...
Now onto the subject of this debate:
I was a fairly active fansubber in the late 90s, but had to give it up because of time constraints (and because I got tired of poor-quality translations). I never digisubbed (old school SVHS subbing), but I still download stuff today and watch it.
I don't think the fansubbing is all bad, as it does provide a decent method of previewing series without shelling out $15-20 to buy DVDs that you might not like. And there's still far more anime produced in Japan than will ever be released in North America. Some series are too short to be cost-effective, and some just aren't suitable for distributers here.
That said, the trend of distributing full-resolution subs with high quality video and audio encoding is pretty dangerous. If the video was 1/2 res or lower, and audio was MP3 at less than 128kbps, then it wouldn't be of sufficient quality for people to archive/keep when DVDs are released. Sure you could watch it, but you'd definately prefer having the real thing.
I was doing a fair bit of encoding/releasing of JPOP concert material, but I'd make sure the video and audio quality was highly-compressed enough to "encourage" people to buy the original DVDs. I'd never release direct copies of the VOBs, even to my friends online.
In the end, it will be better for the fansubbers to find a way to help work with industry (and most reputable subbers WILL terminate their subbing of series when studios either announce acquisition of a series, or when they actively start distributing it).
And don't kid yourself that this is just a north american thing. There's a booming anime fansubbing industry in other asian countries as well (Korea for instance).
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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
I dumped this from a PDF file Lunar Anime received. Most of those in the fansubbing community know that we respect US licenses, so we're also respecting MFI's request. Please note that Lunar is only doing KgNE from that list.
--
Name of sender:
FUKUI Kensaku
fukui@kottolaw.com
Admitted in Japan and New York
TELEPHONE:(813)5766-8980
FACSIMILE: (813)5466-1107
KOTTO DORI LAW OFFICE
MINAMI AOYAMA POINT 1ST FLR.
18-5, MINAMI AOYAMA 5-CHOME
MINATO-KU, TOKYO 107-0062 JAPAN
December 7, 2004
LUNARANIME.ORG
[removed address]
Re: Copyright Infringement on Web Site
Dear Madame/Sir,
I am a legal counsel of Media Factory, Inc. and writing this letter in that capacity.
Media Factory, Inc. ("MFI") is one of Japanese major animation film producers and owns or jointly owns with other companies copyrights and trademarks regarding various Japanese anime films including the following works ("Works"):
Gankutsuou
Rahxephon
Genshiken
Kimi ga nozomu Eien
Recently, MFI found that certain unauthorized copies of the Works are uploaded to the following web site(s) considered to be managed by you ("your web site") and/or that users are induced on or through your web site to certain web sites containing such unauthorized copies. Such unauthorized copies may be downloaded by users in many countries including Japan from such web sites without charge. We believe that a large number of unauthorized copies have already been flowed out through such web sites.
www.lunaranime.org
Needless to say, unauthorized copying and upload and distribution of such copies are serious copyright infringement. Absolutely no money goes to creators and anime producers of the Works from such illegal distribution.
I hereby request you to cease and terminate said upload and/or inducement immediately and erase all the copies of the Works under your possession. Please confirm the termination and erasure in writing to my contact address set forth as above within ten (10) business days of your receipt of this letter either by mail or facsimile.
In case we cannot confirm said termination and erasure within such period, we will need to consider commencing necessary legal action.
This letter is sent without prejudice to any of MFI's rights or remedies. Sincerely,
FUKUI Kensaku Attorney at law
Not quite, they take TV recordings of animes that aren't available in the destination country, sub them, and release them onto the net, kind of like haveing a japanese freind send you this weeks episode with a resume of what goes on.
As soon as someone in the destination country starts producing (or even state that they intend to start producing) the anime in question, it disapears without trace from the web.
The idea is to get to see footage that will probably never be translated (and in most cases isn't, especially into non english languages, France here), not to kill off the japenese film industry.
I've got loads at home, but I also have a lot of Mangas, DVD's etc that I acquired after they were (finally) released. FYI a 4 year wait isn't uncommun.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
..in general, fansubs are made because there is no official english version. You can occasionally get separate subtext files too (some come as video + subtext file), but for the most part they come together.
Like elsewhere, the shows are typically aired long before they appear on DVD (even foreign DVD). So the only means of getting the video, unless you happen to be in that country, is to download a copy. Think of it as the usual "I download Stargate because it's not available here" with a translation to boot.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"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)
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.
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.
Why of course! They are "losing" money everytime when you merely think about their sacred, divine "intellectual property" "product". If you were a good citizen of the corporate republic, you would have immediately run and "bought" the "product" because by thinking about it, you are "experiencing" in part the "joy" of the "product" and thus "depriving" its "creator" of his justly deserved "revenue".
P.S. Don't forget to buy individual copies for each time you plan to "experience" it, think of the poor starving "content producers"! Think of the children!
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)
This has been going on for 20 years, and in fact was largely ignored by the anime companies until recently because there was an unspoken agreement over stopping subbing when a license was available.
This was fine for those in the US, but led to a lot of disgruntled European fans who were waiting years beyond the extensive wait for a US release for their own. So, the dispute ended up being about subs continuing after domestic (US) release-- companies like ADV argue that sub distribution should stop after a US release, and European sub groups disagree.
Then add in the pirate groups that were doing their own things outright.
It's been a grey-area issue for a very long time, and is hindered additionally by the fact that the anime release companies in the US pay attention to sub groups to find out what people *want*.
Manga are not subtitled. A translated manga is either a "scanslation" (fan-made, from a blend of 'scan' and 'translation' -- manga are scanned and then translated) or "dual language" (release by Japanese companies for the readership to study English).
We kindly ask you to repost your comment without using that many "ironic" parentheses.
Cordially,
"Committee" for "Proper" "Sentence" "Construction"
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
The most telling thing to me is that fansubbers sub series because they enjoy them, not because they want to try to earn money off them. It seems like most commercial releases just do elaborate dubs and stick on a few trailers for other series. But as the article mentions, they don't put the effort into it that fansubbers do. There's no painstakingly yet beautifully done karaoke, no pretty and easy-to-read color-changing fonts, no translations for all the onscreen signs or Japanse jokes. And most commercial releases have a fair number of grammatical errors in their subtitles, which personally annoys me. I understand that things like these probably don't both most of their audience, which is why they don't do them, but it would be nice to see a US studio put as much effort into their releases as fansubbers do. If you really love a series, it shows.
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.
I'm in the UK and a well known Gundam fanboy (my name is based on Gundam and FMA). Bandai have totally given upon Gundam in Europe and now you can get very little but import manga from Amazon and DVDs which wont play on all DVD players (region crap). So I have to fansub the series, but I do go out of my way to buy all the Gundam models and mangas I want, or even don't want in some cases. Bandai and Sunrise earn more money through Gunpla (Gundam models) then they do through DVD sales. So clearly I'm putting my money back into the series through "alternative" ways. Many people work the same way as I do.
I like muppets.
It appears that the controversy here is over copyright infringement when the "fansubbing group" releases an entire video with their translated subtitles attached to them. While I agree this is copyright infringement, I would also like to point out that, according to the Berne Convention Article 8, translating copyrighted works is the exclusive right of the copyright holder.
I would love to hear of any legal precedent that says that this doesn't apply in the case of translating Japanese audio to English text.
URL is http://www.lolikon.org/guide.html
I'd also like to point out that fansubs are likely to spread the Japanese culture a lot more than any dubbed-and-slashed US versions released. Granted, this may not be an amazing thing for American companies looking for quick profits on a new frontier, but I believe Japan as a nation will benefit in the end.
Under the Berne convention, everything copyrightable is copyrighted by default. You don't have to include a (c) either. The copyright is equally valid in all signing countries, which is ~100 nations, and all of the important ones. This post is copyrighted in the US and Japan. So is yours. It's as simple as that.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So is this 'fansubbing' thing only for Anime? Are there fansubbings of regular movies? Because if there aren't, it would be a great idea. Hmmm... there's a lot of great Russian movies that I would love my American friends to see. *lightbulb*
... that quite a few fansub groups no longer have a website or an IRC channel. They simply sub the files and distribute them to a few trusted individuals.
Once they're distributed, they're virtually impossible to eliminate because they're sent over bittorrent, usenet, p2p networks, and online storage services like Streamload. There are still tons of copies of Ranma 1/2 encoded in old Realplayer files floating around.
I would imagine that in the long run, the companies' crackdown on these groups is going to make the groups change their stances from simply subbing until US licensing to subbing until completion regardless of the licensing. The companies might be right in their defenses of their abilities to distribute their products, but Americans don't have the ability to watch a show to completion and then decide they want to purchase the DVD like the Japanese do (OVAs not withstanding).
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
Actually, not al anime is a cartoon. From the webster online dictionary, a cartoon is a "a drawing intended as satire, caricature, or humor". Not all anime is intended to be that way. Some of them are drawn realistically. Would you consider the paintings of Da Vinci cartoons? Of course not. The same applies to lots of anime shows and movies. And since anime is a medium rather than a genre, it would be better to call it animation.
Just my two cents.
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
Fansubbers typically choose anime that is released in Japan, but has not been liscened for distribution in other countries yet.
.VIV frmat (vivo). We will not further speak it's name here. Other formats have come and gone, most everything is done in divx or ogg/xvid format now. Quality is very high. I think this may have something to do with the crackdown.
Fansubbing has been around for quite a while, and traditionally it was done using VHS equipment. My experience with the fansubbing community has vastly changed in the last few years due to changing video compression capabilities. VHS fansubbing usually was associated with poor quality, where you would be getting 2nd, 3rd, and even lower generation tapes. The first fansubbed anime I ever got on the internet was in the
The legality was questionable to begin with. You have a huge industry in japan, with a negligable market in the US. They used to overlook it because they do not sell in the US. Things have changed, and now more and more anime is making it's way over here. So now you have a situation where it isn't illegal to copy the anime and sub it for the US, it will be if the anime ever gets liscensed for distro in the US. It becomes more and more of a problem the more mainstream anime gets.
As always, wikipedia beats me to it. More or less what I have said above.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship