Slashdot Mirror
Largest US Anime Distributor Goes BitTorrent
securitas writes "The New York Times' Charles Solomon reports that 'ADV Films, the largest distributor of anime in the United States is releasing promotional packages via the BitTorrent.' The use of BitTorrent is already extremely popular among anime fans who trade films that are unavailable outside of Japan as well as their own subtitled versions, known as fansubs. The company's first experiment with a Madlax torrent in July was so well-received that ADV is launching the bonus promotional packages for upcoming releases Gilgamesh and Goddanar. The question is will other distributors and studios follow ADV's example or stick to their current distribution models?"
So am I the only one annoyed by the extremely negative connotations used by the "reporter"? Apparently World of Warcraft's use of bit torrent was illegal, or just plain unknown! Or perhaps those who distribute anime truly are the bane of good.
The corner of a round room
Its about time some major players start utilising this technology.
I hope the RIAA takes notice.
Due to the overwhelming number of dupes, Slashdot is going to offer torrents so more people can access them.
What bittorrent really needs is proper browser integration. Only when using bittorrent is equally easy as just clicking a web link (i.e., no external programs, configuration etc., just the IE/firefox download window) it will be massively used. When you need azureus/bittornado or anything else, the public will remain small.
The question is will other distributors and studios follow ADV's example or stick to their current distribution models?
Well it's not really a distribution model. They are just releasing promo material. You can already get promo material from most distributors just not over BitTorrent. This is really nothing new.
Have you metaroderated recently?
I really wish the pr0n industry would take notice and give me downloads over the internet.
Oh wait....
Woops....
Via the bittorrent?
It's a protocol, not a network like kazaa/eMule/eDonkey...
(Yes I know eMule/eDonkey uses specific servers to connect to, but with the UDP search technology you can search a lot of servers together, if they support it.)
Dependency hell? =>
torrent rulezz!!!
That seems to be the point: using BitTorrent to distribute free(as in beer) content. BitTorrent is able to distribute identical files among many users fast (and scales well even with HUGE user bases).
But companies need to make money. And anime distributors need to sell videos. But BitTorrent is a rather open system. You can use a tracker with authentication, but that won't work with things like the dynamic tracker protocoll and so an developing. You'll have to secure the actual content. How can that be made? You'll have to encrypt it somehow. But because Bittorrent will only distribute identical files, you'll have to use one encrypted version for all- that means you'll need a server giving away "viewing keys"- better known as active DRM.
so this use of open software and protocolls will actually enforce DRM -- watch what you'Re doing.
---the tail will bite you
I don't know much about Anime culture per se, but I think this is a pretty enlightened move.
With promotional freebies, distributing via BitTorrent gets you free publicity and lowers your distribution costs to practically nothing. Furthermore, doing it through your own trackers is likely to give you realistic download statistics, which are very valuable in themselves. (And why go to, say, Pirate Bay if the publisher itself is seeding?)
For commercial products you'd rather sell, there's also something to be said for BitTorrent distribution. If you know that a significant portion of your customers are going to trade the files on P2P anyway, and you realize there's *nothing* you can do to stop it, why not get some love by seeding the things yourself?
Of course that doesn't get you to the magic "3. Profit!" all by itself, but at least you get something back from a process that's inevitable anyway.
That leaves the question of how to turn that good will into a buck (or Yen), which I admit is not easy. But as it stands Hollywood isn't even interested in trying, so it's nice to see someone inching down a new path.
This Like That - fun with words!
to make one company (not to mention every other anime distributor in North America) decide to switch their distribution model from the current one to Bit Torrent. Bit Torrent is really nice. It works well for Linux Distributions and other things that are given away for free. Hell, it even helps save the distributor some bandwidth. This is a good thing. However, given the popularity of BT programs like Azureus I can hardly see BT being popular as a for-pay distribution method. Azureus can be used to circumvent any distribution restrictions that a torrent publisher attempts to put on a torrent. This is not a good thing for those that believe that information does not want to be free (unfortunately a goodly number of slashbots subscribe to that newsletter).
While it is a rather big step for an anime company to be using BT to distribute promotional material, just because ADV is doing it doesn't mean it will become a trend, particularly in light of ADV's recent financial troubles and staff cutbacks. Let's just say that the rest of the industry won't look towards ADV as a shining example of how to run a business, as they've made what has been viewed as some serious mistakes, such as licensing too many series that don't sell and flooding the manga market with substandard works.
As for the promo itself, these three series will need all the publicity they can get to actually become popular. Godanner has the reputation of being full of meaningless vapid fanservice, Madlax is viewed as a Noir clone, and Gilgamesh seems to be nothing but a monumental angst fest for the entire duration of the series. I wouldn't call any of them remarkable by any stretch of the imagination.
I was in the dealers room, and they weren't there. I kept hearing that ADV was not giving that large Anime convention any time of day. That convention would of been perfect for them to annouce their bittorrent service!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
You mean to say that they are pirating their own products??
* ducks
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
So basically what they're doing is using BitTorrent as their distribution system, ok. BitTorrent can perhaps now be shown as a legitimate tool used not just for illegal file sharing. Oh wait, the media would never allow themselves to be wrong. Ah, there was a glimmer of hope...
Maybe BitTorrent could be used for when later editions of DVDs etc which you have already bought get rereleased with bonus material. That way you could just download the bonus material which you should be entitled to as you paid for the DVD originally.
Obviously this won't hapen as you get all the die hards (LotR for example) who buy the film when it first comes out, then spend even more cash on the "Uber extended bells and whilstles every second of footage even when we accidentally left the cameras rolling" edition so they can get twice the amount of dough out of us.
Don't worry. You're not alone in your hatred for Anime.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
Does anyone know a good bittorrent server? I'm looking for a daemon like program that automatically starts seeding torrents when it finds them in a directory including subdirectories.
A daemon with the following features wouldn't hurt:
* automaticly seed torrents when they are found in a given directory (also when torrents are added while the daemon is running)
* built-in tracker
* process friendly, e.g. report as seed but don't have an active thread\process for a single torrent until it's actually needed
* an option to (temporarily) stop seeding where there are X number of seeds (e.g. only provide initial seeding)
Copyright infringement is theft, at least in the US.
What makes you say that? In the United States, larceny is a crime defined by state law (except in cases involving state lines or federal property), and copyright infringement is a crime defined by federal law. They're completely different statutes with completely different conditions and completely different penalties.
The difference is that, without BitTorrent or its ilk, distributors have to pay for the bandwidth to send those files to the people who want them, and if that material gets popular those servers are going to get expensive, or badly crowded, or both. The question is how much of a boost over the bottom line BitTorrent gives them. Considering the size of some of these promos, I wouldn't be surprised if it's significant.
At 20$ a DVD for a movie, I buy zero. If it was 5 movies for 20$ I would probably pick up a 5 pack once a month or so. And I see DVDs of very old stuff selling new for 2$ at Walmart, so I don't want hollyweird to say they couldn't sell the disks cheaper and make it up on volume sales. They are so out to lunch on pricing. Same with music basically. Now I don't download either (don't want to plus on dialup), but I would be in the market if they got real on hard media distribution and pricing. I've gone to mostly only used media I find cheap for sale.
Just am not going to pay those ridiculous prices for new music and movies for a plastic disk that costs pennies to mass produce.
Lost Season 1
Lost where? In space? Or Land of the Lost? What about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World? Oh, it appears you're looking for Walt Disney's Lost. One word: Bleh.
I'm normally getting about 35Kb/s.
Except remember that BitTorrent reports rates in bytes, not bits. A rate of 35 KB per second is better than you'd get on HTTP.
I'd say thats scaling pretty well. :D [assuming sarcasm]
Just go to bed and it'll speed up. Often the Peers will remain online overnight, and they'll turn into Seeds, freeing up other Seeds to send to you. If a lot of Seeds jump off before they build up a share ratio, then you're on the wrong tracker.
Via the bittorrent?
Not everybody is born in anglophone territory. Other languages have different rules on when definite articles are used, and mistakes may spill over into a fellow's use of English as a second or foreign language.
with the UDP search technology you can search a lot of servers together, if they support it.
It's too bad that the Azureus protocol and the BitTorrent protocol for the newer distributed features are mutually incompatible.
Any opinion that is unpopular automatically is a "troll"
Big brother must love you guys, you prove that it's easy to make everyone follow the leader.
Monstar L
This leaves an opening for another company to say,
:p
"Hey, we let the customers handle all the costs, and we undercut the other fellows".
It's called competition.
How will this Anime distributor feel when, rather than promos, outsiders start distributing the full legnth versions of their products on BitTorrent?
I don't think this question is being addressed. In fact, some seem to want to pretend ADV is distributing more than promos.
resigned
Do they expect to ... um ... profit?
If so, how?
I mean why would anyone want to have to install and setup another piece of software, load it up, and then share your bandwidth in the hopes that everyone else is doing the same so that your download can be a little faster?
I don't know about you but I would definitely prefer that the damn company increase their download bandwidth so that they can support thousands of users direct-downloading their material at speeds similar to a heavily seeded BT file without worrying about how many people are actually seeding the file.
Of course this is not a perfect world and most companies would not shell out the extra bucks to increase their bandwidth when they have a somewhat free alternative that shifts the costs/burden to you. But it gets even better for them when we have a bunch of BT cheerleaders who try to make it sound like it's a good thing for us!
These companies are not doing us any favors by distributing via BT. The stuff is either promotional or content you paid for. Why help them profit when they are too cheap to spend $$$ on the better distribution model (that being direct downloads)?
First of all, how is this news? ADV films going BitTorrent was already covered. Second of all, what's the significance? Promo clips in general are freely downloadable anyway, just like linux ISO torrents.
Heh, this is just promotional short-lenght clips, they're not full lenght episodes. It is just to tease you so you can buy the episodes.
And they wont even pay and host their own promotional material, heh...
I'll be cheering when they actually do release full lenght episodes.
Maybe they dont want to release the freshest episode, but I think it would be nice if they released the episodes older than X months, like 6-12 or so.
I agree with parent but why is it I mention dupe a couple posts down from the top and I get, dupe? (Score:-1, Redundant) , and he gets a 2? Like I said this has nothing to do with the parent I'm just kind of new to posting comments and I dont get how it works. Sorry for the OT.
Giggidy Giggidy Gigg-a-dy
I've thought for years they should have been doing this for series that didn't have a bad first episode. Free DVDs in anime magazines were a good way to give readers a taste of something new without commiting. Now this gets rid of manufacturing costs, and promotes their anime. Now they just have to hope it doesn't backfire, and cause people not interested in torrents to give it a try, and then realize they can get much much more from torrents if they really want it....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
When they did this promo release in July I was tantalized enough to immediately download it. It was visual tripe. Fast paced clips, 1sec each, with nothing that even begins to suggest what the program is about. Completely void of any value.
Not worth, IMHO, the time it took to delete it.
The reason anime has grown so wildly is because of the distribution systems that the fans have put in place, and the distance the anime companies have kept from it. We kindly remove things when they are licensed, and they leave us alone, that's the "deal".
Lets pray that corporate greed does not upset that balance and that ADV leads the way for all the other companies into a more harmonious relationship with their fans.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Hi,
It's because you didn't capitalize the "D."
Thanks for posting,
-The Management
- "sell the disks cheaper and make it up on volume sales."...that you don't understand? I am very familiar with how the industry operates. I have worked movies, tv shows, commercials and rock music before. Take it your direction the opposite way, why don't they charge 100$ for the disk? Won't they make just tons more money?
Oh ya, they WON'T.
I am saying that at 20$, a lot of people don't buy as many disks as they might be inclined to buy, in my case it is zero. Same as when VHS tapes came out at like 79$, I bought none, but once they hit 9.99$ I started buying them, and now with the MUCH reduced costs of media reproduction,(I dare anyone to dispute that) there is NO reason for them to charge more than a few bucks per disk other than thinking they can gouge people. Now they whine they aren't selling as many as they thought they would. Well DUH. I am just pointing out why this is so, from a joe working class perspective. Same with new music CDs, people just don't want to pay that frieght, whereas if it is priced more reasonable they would sell a lot more. Production cost for the original content is the same, the only difference would be pumping out more disks, which at factory mega levels is not that much more to go from one copy to 4 copies, it is maybe another 25cents apiece more cost in volume, (something like that, cheap).
I contend that if disks were priced more as an impulse item, much cheaper, which they could be, they would sell more and they ALREADY are selling *some* brand new DVDs at 2 dollars, proving it can be done. And a lot less people would be downloading unauthorised copies. Why bother when one could grab a handful legitmately for cheap at the store?
The market is there, they just don't get it because they don't want to get it, they need to step away from expensive Hollywood and NYC digs and see how the rest of the nation lives. Hint to any of those setting the prices: the rest of the nation outside of a handful of large urban areas makes a lot less money at a median level(example, the hollywood/LA area "modest home" at a million is 150 grand in the heartland, and etc), so you can't charge as much as you might think based on what you might be able to afford. People in the rest of the nation just do not have as much "spare" cash for that stuff.
Nope, those people are out to lunch,and my theory is that they live in an environment where 20 dollars is chump change,almost nothing,so they think that way, wheras for the bulk of the customers they would like to reach it is a small but still serious chunk of cash.
Well, I used to hate them, until I was in a video store in the mall once, and these two anime dweebs were basically harrasing this chick about the location of this anime, she was trying to get rid of them, basically letting them know it wasn't out yet or something, I see her plight, mouth I'm sorry to her, and after it still doesn't stop, I kinda tell the guys to bug off, which they more or less do, and I Got a phone number out of the deal. God bless anime fans for making me look good.
This is just pr0n for nerds. My Bittorrent is much larger than your Bittorrent. Oh yeah well mine distributes Anime. Wow you'll be on Slashdot now, making millions of teens wet with desire.
Is this kind of like going super saiyan?
ADV is now releasing promos for more (all?) of its properties. The story you linked was for the single Madlax experimental torrent.
But, you are correct, promos are nothing to get excited about.
Not sure how they can use bittorrent in a for profit model anyway.
-J
That's ok, it was the anime storytelling that killed GITS-Standalone Complex.
The *real* stuff, the underground stuff has only gotten better.
from what i could tell, the reporter probably just interviewed US anime distributors and that's how he/she got all the information about these 'illegal' fansubbers.
fansubbing is a gray area if it is anime that hasn't been licensed in the country you're living. i'm not talking about fansubbers that continue to fansub material even after it's licensed. i'm only talking about fansubbers who fansubbed material that won't be available in their language any time soon. in fact, most fansub groups that I know about only fansub unlicensed material, but there are a few in the group who dislike how the american anime companies butcher up the anime by horrible dubbing, bad translations, removing scenes, and slow return time, that they feel like they should go ahead and fansubbed licensed material.
when an anime is unlicensed in the states, japanese distributors have never told them to stop their work. why? because it's a great way to test how well an anime will do in another country. it also lets us anime licensing companies to check how popular it might get with people living here. without these fansubbers bringing a popularity of these animes so high, i'd doubt that over half of what's available today would've been available.
fansubbers are a key step for an anime to get to the USA. what these anime licensing companies are worried about is that several of these fansub groups don't stop fansubbing EVEN after it gets licensed. even if that main groups stop fansubbing, new groups spawn up to continue the fansubbing where the original groups left off.
HD Trailers
fansubbing is a gray area if it is anime that hasn't been licensed in the country you're living.
No it's not.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
At first, I thought nothing but good thoughts about ADV. They came onto the anime fan scene with promises of more translated anime at better prices and I believed them. They translated and resold some really good titles and all was well with the world.. Except....
The fly in the ointment was the incomprehensible fact that subtitled tapes where consistently 33% more expensive than the dubbed alternatives. This, coming from a group that introduced themselves as the "anime by fans for fans" company, caused quite a few fans to question ADV's true motives. Requests, demands, and even (or especially) screaming demands for an explanation were often ignored completely. I sat in on several convention panels where, when asked point blank, ADV representatives would either carefully sidestep the issue completely, get angry and ignore it, or provide a ridiculous justification. The fact is there is simply NO WAY producing a subtitled translation cost more than a dubbed translation but ADV felt justified in gouging their "fans" because they knew they could get away with it.
After being snubbed by ADV reps on the dealer room floor several times I decided to boycott ADV. Years passed, and the question became moot once DVDs became the media of choice. This coupled with ADV's penchant for snatching up every good title the moment they can and at the same time their search-and-destroy policy against fansubbers left me little choice but to try them out again. I was disappointed. Their subtitles left a lot to be desired, and their dubs where, with some exceptions, simply insipid. Paying $.50 to $1 a minute for anime that in many cases had been been partially fansubbed FOR FREE at a superior level of quality really rubbed me the wrong way. I watched series after series get snatched up by ADV, fansubs shut down left and right before completion, and then episodes parceled out at a rate often slower than that of its domestic release. The only conciliation in the entire mess was, if you were patient enough and willing to wait the literal years it took, ADV would eventually come around and release a box set of all the episodes, usually at a price per minute that made the purchase worthwhile. Until...
ADV, in their marketing magnificence, introduced these collectors' kits. Wow, what a concept. Combine box sets with the necessity of purchasing individual episodes one disc at a time and bam, the best of both worlds. We keep the box set guys happy, AND, we rake in even more cash. Goodbye the old series collections, wherein, if the consumer is patient enough, the entire series is sold at a discounted rate per episode. Hello brand shiny sparkly NEW collections, and hey, we'll even throw in a $5 t-shirt for $20. Now, if you want the entire thing from ADV, you're forced to buy them one disc at a time for the full retail price, no breaks, no deals, daddie's gotta buy a brand new car and pay for that heated driveway.
So I'm back to boycotting ADV, secure in the knowledge that if all else fails I can fall back on US Mangle or one of the other smaller commercial subbers now scurrying for scraps from ADV's table. Except, damn if they don't catch on and start doing the exact same damn thing that ADV started. The shelves are now riddled with "collector sets" that consist of large flimsy cardboard boxes filled to the brim with one disc and, if you're lucky, a shirt or some manga, or, if you're not, a neat and completely useless block of styrofoam.
So I say, hats off to ADV, you guys are working your way into bankruptcy one marketing idea at a time. The entire industry is so bent on paying for those driveways that the ONLY source for quality subtitled anime is from the fans, where it's always been. With the exception of Pioneer who've been top notch with the few titles they've managed to wrest from ADV's clawing grasp.
The New York Times' Charles Solomon reports that 'ADV Films, the largest distributor of anime in the United States is releasing promotional packages via the BitTorrent.'
Dammit! And I was hoping that maybe they would be pirating The REM and The Aerosmith!
It's not a grey area at all. Even before a title is licensed, it's still covered under international copyright law. And distributing copyright material without the owner's permission is illegal, whether or not you add subtitles to it.
Massively used how? Various studies have shown roughly a third of all internet traffic is bittorrent related. You simply aren't going to get much more massive than that!
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
by gray, i meant very dark gray. it's very well known that the anime/manga industries operate under different sets of rules.
for example, most major manga artists start off by creating doujinshi. it's basically taking someone's copyrighted character and making up a side-story and (yes) selling it to fans. no one ever pursues these artists? why? because that's probably how 90% of all manga artists start out and the more doujinshi there exists, it just means the more popular the series is and it doesn't compete with them in direct sales.
as the 2 of mentioned and you are correct that it is TECHNICALLY ILLEGAL to fansub. when I said it was a gray area, I meant companies don't bother pursuing them since there is actually a potential benefit that can come out of it and not very much harm if it hasn't been licensed yet.
HD Trailers
Just like many articles don't address how ADV feels about VHS piracy, when they distribute VHS tapes. What shoddy journalism!
fansubbing is a gray area if it is anime that hasn't been licensed in the country you're living.
No, it's not. The laws just haven't been enforced.
when an anime is unlicensed in the states, japanese distributors have never told them to stop their work.
No, also not true. Several Japanese production companies have sent cease&desists, polite emails or their directors have spoken out against it at conventions and in interviews.
without these fansubbers bringing a popularity of these animes so high, i'd doubt that over half of what's available today would've been available.
And this explains why ADV is cutting staff, titles and losing money. Licensing everything on the planet, bankrolling the production of new series themselves - which then turn out to be complete bombs.
I've become quite used to the speed, convenience, and quality of fansubs -- if the anime companies can be faster, more convenient (eg legal), or higher quality, I'd be only too willing to pay for them.
Come to think of it, what would the problem be with a company like ADV simply buying out a fansub group, getting them to do everything as they normally do, just adding an "official" badge and a price tag?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
No, also not true. Several Japanese production companies have sent cease&desists, polite emails or their directors have spoken out against it at conventions and in interviews.
i may have exaggerated a bit by using the word "never", but companies have also came out and spoke out at conventions thanking the fansubber community for bringing interest for particular series globally. and most of the time, companies either don't care or actually support fansubbing.
And this explains why ADV is cutting staff, titles and losing money. Licensing everything on the planet, bankrolling the production of new series themselves - which then turn out to be complete bombs.
there can be a lot of reasons for this. ADV provides sub-quality dubs and translations and people would actually rather buy the RAWs from Japan than to purchase ADV DVDs. ADV is infamous for butchering animes they pick up that's why when a good series gets licensed by ADV, everyone pounds their head. as you said, they license everything on the planet, taking a plate full of more than they can handle which you can tell with their "finished" products.
HD Trailers
I noticed the Godannar torrent link was posted over at www.animeondvd.com. The article didn't give out the link so though I'd put it here for anyone interested.
http://216.136.62.222/torrents/Godannar.torrent