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Comcast Targets Unlicensed Anime Torrenters
SailorSpork writes "According to a thread on the forums of AnimeSuki, a popular anime bittorent index site, Comcast has begun sending DCMA letters to customers downloading unlicensed fan-subtitled anime shows via bittorrent. By 'unlicensed', they mean that no english language company has the rights to it. The letters are claiming that the copyright holder or an authorized agent are making the infringement claims, though usually these requests are also sent to the site itself rather that individual downloaders. My question is have they really been in contact with Japanese anime companies, or is this another scare tactic by Comcast to try and reduce the bandwidth use of their heavier customers now that their previous tactics have come under legal fire?"
Haven't the anime companies pretty much said "It's okay, so long as it hasn't been licensed"? I remember the first season of Ghost in the Shell:SAC. When it got picked up for the US market, the company who owns it politely asked the fansub groups to stop. (And they did if I recall.)
The DMCA requires the copyright holder to issue the takedown. If the anime is unlicensed, that means that **nobody** in the US is legally able to issue that takedown, and it should be ignored, or a counter takedown/law suit should be initiated...
IANAL, of course, but the wiki page is pretty clear on that.
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For f*** sake... when will this stop? When will people say "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" and jump off these ISPs and stop being their customers?
In my area it's Comcast and Qwest. Qwests prices are significantly higher than Comcast.
When Comcast called me and said that 300 Gb/mo is way to much, I simply asked them if I could pay more for them to stop harassing me about bandwidth usage. So for another $30/mo I went from being a 'home' user to their business class connection. And even though their home and business connections are listed at the same speed (8 Mb), I now actually get 10-12 Mb. (Plus I go from 768 up to a full meg).
Now, since I'm a business class user, they expect traffic levels they would see from a business that has anywhere from a few computers to fifty computers. Now 300 Gb/mo doesn't seem so high when you compare it to one of the sites I do contracting for--they have 40 workstations, 3 servers, and are constantly transferring high res x-rays to other sites.
The only part that pissed me off about Comcast calling was that they simply never told me of their magical cap, and they refused to tell me what it was--just that I had run over it.
I would have had no problem if they flat out told me their rates and caps--like 500 Gb for $80/mo.
There's no place like
If no contact information is provided (so you don't even know who complained), you may simply ignore it. For some of the other parts you are obliged to inform the complaining party so that they can correct the error, but you don't have to do anything further until they do. Since you can't contact them at all without their contact details, you have no obligations when that bit is missing.
I do not think that Comcast are sending real DMCA notices here, they're just making noise in the hope that people do what they say anyway. But if they were, the above would apply.
A bit of history here, could get long-winded.
The actual origins of the letter are a group of Japanese Anime Licensors, acting under the umbrella of a foreign distributor, Singapore-based Odex Pte Ltd, which itself provides local distribution of VCDs, DVDs and sublicensing for on-air distribution. They first started going after their own customer base, by obtaining lists of ISP customers through their ISPs, (and please note the ISPs themselves were so ignorant of their customers rights that they didn't really put up much of a challenge to the right to obtain customer data, but hey, lawsuits like this doesn't happen often in Singapore). Once having obtained the contact info of the customers they started issuing letters of demand to the individual customer themselves for the amounts of SGD3000-5000 in restitution, together with a promissory note not to do it again.
Of course, there are those who would say it was a fishing expedition, just to get the person to admit fault and become liable for prosecution (which would mean possible jail time under Singapore law).
In any case, the PR backlash was immense, it made the news, and anime communities around the world took note. In order to pursue the alleged infringer without compromising his identity, Odex is now attempting to use the ISP as it's middleman to communicate their demands to the ISP customer. Which is why the letter is sent from Comcast and not from Odex itself, the company is supposed not to know the exact details of the infringer.
http://xedodefense.org/articles.php?art_ID=3
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First there are two laws at work here. The first is obvious, anime/manga is subject to copyright just like any other creative work. Just because it comes from japan (or anywhere else) does not change that.
Second is the issue that it is NOT legal to make a translation of something without permission from the original creator. If I translate your post, that could land me in legal trouble. The law is a bit idiotic as it is broken the moment a reader translates something in his own mind to his native tongue. It also conflicts with most countries own laws on accesibility, translating for instance for the hearing impaired into sign language or in braille for the sight impaired.
Nonetheless, providing a translation of a copyrighted work is by itself illegal.
Now for the position of 'some' anime/manga producers from japan on the subject of foreigners distributing their work with subtitels. They ignore it. Some individual authors have expressed themselves more clearly, but as far as I know no company has ever uttered a statement on the subject OTHER then that they were against it. Any official statement that says otherwise would have the lawyers shitting themselves.
Why? It would mean they would also have to tolerate domestic redistribution of their work by fans. No japanese court would accept a claim by a anime/manga company against japanese filesharers if they given an official statement that it is okay for the rest of the world.
This is in fact the problem, the fansub community has become so big, so reliable and so good that the japanese themselves now use them as their source for 'illegal' downloads. This obviously upsets some companies, and is changing the attitude to fansubs, it is no longer just a few otaku's who share homemade vhs tapes. Some of the subs are in fact of better quality then the commercial release because fansubs are not restricted to the horrible subtitle system of DVD's and can use all kinds of fancy tricks like overlays and color and multiple subs to truly translate and explain what is going on. Plus, well, most commericial subs just plain suck as they get even simple things wrong such as the first name, last name order and use the wrong one in the subs even if the correct name is an essential part of the plot.
Speed is another issue, fansubs are done in days, at times hours. By the time the offical release ever happens, the fan community will have moved on. The idea that you watch the first few eps fansubbed and get the rest on DVD just ain't real anymore, by the time the official western version is out, the fans will have fixed the few errors in the subs, rereleased it with the japanese DVD's as the source including promo's and tv specials and you would have to be very dedicated to buy it on dvd. With bad subs, and always the threat of censoring.
So how come japanese companies still haven't openly attacked this? Well some have, and send out copyright notices immidiatly regardless of wether it has been licensed in the west.
But there is a part of it that goes against japanese culture.
This is turning into a long rant but the first is relatively simple, japanese anime and manga is often far more directly produced by the creators then in the west. They want to produce their work, and don't care about all the legal crap. Just like not all music artist in the west care about filesharing, they are too busy with their art to worry about it. This however is changing as the nature of fansubbing has changed and become far more proffesional. Most material can't be licensed anyway, because it deals with subjects you could never broadcast on western television (well US television anyway) or because it just too specific to japan (Card Captor Sakura was carefully editited in its western release to remove all traces of the series actually being set in japan). In short when you got a small business to run, that is constant on the edge of bankruptcy you got other things to do about then worry what some foreigners are up to.
That neatly leads to the
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