Dear Fansubbers,

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 5:59 pm

EarthCurrent wrote:
BogoSort wrote:having high quality fansubbers around does keep the domestic companies on their toes, and it forces them to spend the extra effort to at least try to put out a quality release(though this doesn't necessarily happen all the time).
So, by your argument, Copyright Infringement is a good thing?
I wonder.... :?

Dude, I make anime music videos, and distribute them online. My stance is that some copyright infringement is a good thing. At certain levels, it creates markets for works. Making music videos often introduces people to bands and animes that they might not have been exposed to before, causing them to seek out and buy the actual legitimite releases. Fansubbed anime helps create a market in the US such that people are exposed to an anime before it's release, so that american companies will fight over the rights to a US release. More legitimate fansubbers tend to cease distrobution of their works when an anime becomes licensed for a US release.

EarthCurrent · Post by **EarthCurrent** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 6:14 pm

=o lively intellegent debate in GA?
it's about time. Thanks Bogo.

No, I agree with you that some amount of Copyright infringement is beneficial to the anime community by and large, which is why the distro companies haven't really done much to clamp down on fansubbers.

What I don't like to see and hear though, is people, like izumI, complaining about "quality issues" when it comes to what is essentially a illegally produced and distributed product.

Fansubbers shouldn't be putting themselves up as competitors against legitimate companies. This is especially true if they are dead set on subbing a series from begining to end, or remaster their fansubs with DVD sources. If their work is "quality" enough, and a person manages to download the entire series, the fansubbers have with a high probability, probably taken a potential sale away from a company. Now if a fansubbing group subs the first 5-10 episodes, a person watches and decides they like or don't like the series based on that, then they are helping the consumer by introducing them to the anime and encouraging them to buy the entire series in order to finish it, and the company benifits, because people have had an opportunity to hear some buzz and look into buying a title when it is finally released domestically to region 1 DVD.

As for AMVs, considering the snippets, cuts, length, and the like, I'd be hard pressed to compare them to fansubs. It is unlikely that many sales have been lost due to someone downloading an AMV.

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 7:14 pm

EarthCurrent wrote:=o lively intellegent debate in GA?
it's about time. Thanks Bogo.

Oh, I'm sorry. Let me go back into the typical posting. OMGWTF!!11 DBZ is teh r0X0rzz!!11! Goku can kick all of your buttz!!

But back to the actual discussion at hand. You'll notice that I made the distinction between a legitimate fansubber vs the average ordinary fansubber. The average fansubber nowadays wants to do the sub, and just release to get their names on the map. The legitimate fansubber should stop subbing a series when they discover that it has been licensed, out of their goal to get the recognition of the actual series enough to get a widespread stateside release. If it never gets licensed by the time that the series gets licensed, I'm sure that the fansubs would've spurned at least a couple of sales of import merchandise, which eventually makes their ways into the producers pockets. Having the overall quality of a fansub compete with the domestic releases isn't exactly a bad thing. It forces the companies here to keep their standards high(whereas many companies put out absolutely crappy releases for even their seemingly high profile titles). The fansubs should have one major drawback, which is the gratitutious placement of buy the domestic release messages all over the video itself.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 7:24 pm

Good Thing: Fansubs propigate anime in North American and Europe. As a result companies can tell which series are more people than others without having to spend any money on this discovery. They also develope a fanbase sooner, so as people will want to buy the anime on DVD, the manga, and all the stupid plushies.

Bad Thing: The typical turn around time for an anime series to go from airing in Japan untill DVD release in North America is 1.5-2.5 years. In this time span the fansubs can propigate themselves across the internet with no effort, making them widly available on FTPs, P2P programs, CD collections, networks, and on 'DJ Izumi's Big Book Shelf Of SVCDs'.

Solution: Fansubs need some method to 'self-distruct'. Similar to the classic Best-Buy DivX DVD players. A DVD that you paid to watch each time, or could pay a higher fee to unlock the disk for unlimited viewing. (DivX the pay-per-view disk system, NOT The Mpeg-4 based video compression.) Perhapps a variant on common video containers that upon playback, the file requires the viewer to search online to see if the file has 'expired' yet. If it's expired, it won't playback.

Problem With Solution: Everything, and anything always gets cracked, hacked or broken into. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

J-0080 · Post by **J-0080** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 7:36 pm

I can't really say anything about this, as I've yet to see a fansub.....

So as lyrs would say. +1

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 7:53 pm

DJ_Izumi wrote:Similar to the classic Best-Buy DivX DVD players. A DVD that you paid to watch each time, or could pay a higher fee to unlock the disk for unlimited viewing. (DivX the pay-per-view disk system, NOT The Mpeg-4 based video compression.)

Actually Divx was a Circuit City product, and it failed miserably, since it was insanely propriety and just annoyed the hell out of users. If it had been in production longer, I think it would've been cracked, and the point of it defeated.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 7:57 pm

Well, I'm Canadian, how am I supposed to know which US Company did it?

The closest real life experiance I've had with DivX was with my first DVD player, it had a hole for a telephone jack, but nothing inside the hole, labled 'DivX'. While the model used to have provisions for DivX, it seemed that it had been removed for the Canadian version... or something.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 8:25 pm

My point still stands. Unless there is some way to control the released content after distribution, the 'Lisenced Fansub Problem' can't go away. This is the internet, the honor system dosn't work here.

J-0080 · Post by **J-0080** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 8:26 pm

To be more specific, there are pockets where it doesn't work. Some people here do have scruples.

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 8:45 pm

DJ_Izumi wrote:This is the internet, the honor system dosn't work here.

This is the internet, no matter how you try to secure your media, someone will eventually find a way to crack it.