Forum - View topicBootlegs vs. Fansubs.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10430 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Why not steal the DVD too? That way you could save your money for something else... As I've said before, stealing stuff is a personal decision. But at least have the character to admit that if you're downloading fansubs in order to save money (ie: you have no intention of buying the product) you're stealing intellectual property. In the case of a person that downloads and does not buy, you're harming the everyone involved in the industry, including this site (yeah, the more successful the US companies, the more money they have for advertising), the US licensors, the Japanese companies, and the staff involved in the production. Obviously the harm done per single instance of IP theft isn't as great as the harm done per single instance of physical theft, but its as real nonetheless. People who think that IP theft (downloading MP3s, movies, anime; copying software, etc...) isn't theft are generally those with very weak character. It's a semi-subconscious defense mechanism that works like this: "I'm a good person so I don't steal, but I want anime but I don't want to pay for it.... so as long as downloading anime isn't theft its okay, so now I can download anime and not feel guilt." In other words, people decide that IP theft isn't real theft so that they won't feel bad about stealing. Personally I have a lot more respect for the person who knows he's stealing something and doesn't give a damn. This is not to say that I feel that every instance of fansub download is equatable to theft (regardless of law), but that it is theft if financial factors are a part of the motivation. -t |
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tigerbalm
 Posts: 21 Location: United Kingdom |
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Hi there everyone !!
Although I ve been following anime for more than a year or so now, this is my first ever post on an anime-related internet forum, or any forum for that matter ! Glad to meet all you lovely folks on the ANN community. Speaking from a strictly legal sense, not only bootlegs are illegal (for obvious reasons highlighted above), fansubs are also illegal as it is in direct contravention of all known copyright laws. The viewing of unlicensed anime; the sharing of fansubs; the putting up of any anime on the internet and such are all felonies. That would make us all (well, most of us including myself) guilty for the violation of all known copyright and piracy laws ! However, if we dismiss the strict and pedantic laws and view fansubs from an ethical and moral perspective, all is fine and well. The norm, or rather the unwritten rule, or more emphatically the golden rule, prevalent amongst the english language fansubbing community is that once an anime title has been licensed and officially announced for future release, the fansubbing of such ceases. By doing so, competition between fansubbed animes and legitimately released animes is forseeably prevented. Further, the initial fansubbing of such anime titles promotes awareness and generates interest of a particular series which would hopefully precipitate the purchase of that particular series when it is finally released in all its DVD glory. And this cannot be said to be a bad thing ! At least, not in its totality. From a more personal standpoint, I live on fansubs ! What I usually do is this: I download the fansubbed version of an unlicensed anime title, watch it, enjoy it, delete it and hope with all my might that it will be due for an official release very soon and then purchase it in order to fulfill my lifetime goal of amassing a massive collection of anime DVDs which I intend to ultimately pass down to my children ! Hahaha ! Uchuu no Stellvia is just one of those titles !! I absolutely loved it ! At the end of the day, it is up to the anime fan him or herself as to how to conduct his or her actions with regards to fansubs. You could either ignore the golden rule or adhere piously to the golden rule. What I can say is this, we all need fansubs. And more importantly, the anime distributing industry needs fansubs for the same anime fans who fervently download and view fansubs are the same anime fans who will ultimately purchase the DVDs released and sustains its existence. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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No, we don't. That's the thing. No one needs fansubs. No one even needs anime. Buying an anime series is always a risk you have to be willing to take. I could understand downloading the first episode of a series to preview it before you buy it, but it's really not necessary to watch the entire thing first. If you're willing to buy the series afterwards, that's good, but many people aren't like that. Even assuming we have a perfect world where everyone does that, suppose you download a series you don't like? I imagine you'd never buy the series then, but you still would have seen the series for free. The anime industry can survive beautifully without fansubs. You could say that the fans who "fervently download" fansubs are those that will buy them on DVD later, but as I said earlier, this is most often not the case. There are series that aren't good enough to want to spend money on, or series that you just don't like. Not to mention the HORDES of unscruplous people who will just watch the fansubs, maybe burn their own DVDs, and just never touch a single R1 DVD of it. No one needs anime, and no one needs fansubs. If you can't afford it, deal with it. (That was a general "you," not you specifically.) |
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Zwieghinder
Posts: 2 |
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If you can't afford it, deal with it indeed. And boy does P2P deal with it good! We live in a capitalist environment and im sure most of you know how capitalism works, somesone has to get the shaft. So in the end you just have to deal with it. 
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Steve Berry
Posts: 522 Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA |
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Just because you don't need it or not doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that fansubbing is illegal-- what matters is the morality of it, and I don't see how it's immoral.
SakechangBD, you say that "You could say that the fans who "fervently download" fansubs are those that will buy them on DVD later, but as I said earlier, this is most often not the case." How do you know this? I buy them. Others on here have said they do. How do you know it is otherwise? You can't. I say that downloaders __do__ buy them. That's my experience. It's just like I don't know whether the number of anime fans that actually download stuff is very significant. In my experience, it is a neglible number of "purchasing" fans, but that's only my experience..... I can't prove it to you. As for, "Buying an anime series is always a risk you have to be willing to take," I can only say what your response was to "needing" anime (which was correct, by the way)... namely, that no, we don't need to take that risk. Why should I heedlessly buy a show that I've never viewed?? I don't do it with any live-action shows or movies I buy. Why should it be any different with anime?? You said, "If you're willing to buy the series afterwards, that's good, but many people aren't like that. Even assuming we have a perfect world where everyone does that, suppose you download a series you don't like? I imagine you'd never buy the series then, but you still would have seen the series for free." Well, yeah, of course I would see the show for free. Just like watching tv. That, or I rent it and watch it. Which is a fine, legal alternative that is my general practice. But this discussion is about shows that are new and unliscenced. Are you, personally, buying lots of shows that you don't know whether you like or not? No offense, really... no offense, but that seems sort of silly to me. I mean, when the disc came out, if I hadn't seen the show yet, I'd rent it, rather than buy it. My point? Simply that saying that you won't buy it later if you didn't like it isn't a vaild arguement, as I wouldn't buy it anyways if I rented it and didn't like it. Watching the fansub and then not buying it isn't different from, say watching a show on TV and then not buying it, or renting it and then not buying it (other than the money given to the video store.... which could be a valid arguement, if you wanted to stick with that). I want to understand your point of view, but I don't. When you say, "No one needs anime, and no one needs fansubs. If you can't afford it, deal with it." Why should I deal with it? Because it's illegal? It may be illegal, but its not morally "unrighteous". Or do you find it morally reprehensible to watch fansubbed shows? I don't mean that jokingly, I'm just trying to figure out where you're coming from. Because if watching fansubs isn't causing anyone harm, or if isn't stopping me from buying anything that I wouldn't have bought anyways (because I didn't like the show), then I'm not taking money away from anime companies or doing anyone harm. I don't see the moral negativity in downloading a fansub. Now, whether or not "hoardes" of people are downloading shows and then keeping them and never buying the real deal, even though they like the show... that is a whole other arguement. But, I don't feel people are doing that. That's been my experience anyways. I know you feel that they are, but I see no way for you to give me any evidence. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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No, watching it on TV is not free. You pay for cable access. You buy the products that companies advertise that allow them to show commercials on TV. When you rent a DVD, you're giving money to the rental shop who bought the DVD. Having someone buy the DVD and rent it out is not the same thing as everyone just watching it for free with NO ONE buying it. Suppose you rent a show and you hated it and decide to not buy the series. Well, at least the rental store bought the DVD.
Uh... reread what you just said there. "It may be illegal, but it's not morally "unrighteous." If it's illegal, it's illegal. The end. And doing someting illegal, like say... STEALING, is morally unrighteous. Let's say I can't afford to buy food for my starving family. Why don't I just run through a farmer's field and steal all his crops? Oh, I remember, it's illegal, that's why.
I don't see why this is so hard to understand. You're STEALING. STEEEEAAAAALLLIIIINNNGGGGGG. Stealing an episode of intellectual property isn't as bad as say, stealing a car, but stealing is stealing. |
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Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
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Sakechan, I think the point that Steve is making is that just because it's illegal doesn't make it morally unrighteous. Otherwise, everything Martin Luther King Jr. did was morally unrighteous with regard to civil disobedience. A black man going into a whites only section then was doing something morally unrighteous?
The point is, that illegal does NOT equal moral unrighteousness. That's why there is a distinction between legality and ethics. That's also why there is a distinction between morality and legality. Now let's take another perspective. Let's say that I borrow a friends legally purchased DVD's and watch an entire series that way. What makes me different at that point than the fansubber in respect that I have not paid a single penny to the producers or licensors of that series? I may not retain a physical media of that series, but at that point, I have watched it for free. The main problem in dealing with the severity of the issue is that there are no hard numbers to deal with. Everything is speculative at best. We have no hard facts on: How many people bought it after downloading it How many people would have bought it anyway without seeing it first. How many people who downloaded it and kept it without buying said DVD. How many people did not buy it because they didn't first preview the series fansubbed. And the list goes on... Until we have some hard facts, neither side has much ground to stand on in regards to how much money has been gained or lost because of fansubs. And as such, since there hasn't been much experimentation with series (there are exceptions, but again, no controlled experiements) there is no way to realistically determine how well the U.S. industry would do without them. Speculate all you would like, but until there are some hard numbers to work with, nobody has an argument holds much water. Last edited by Godaistudios on Sat Feb 14, 2004 1:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Steve Berry
Posts: 522 Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA |
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If downloading is stealing, fine. It's stealing. You're right-- people who download fansubs are not paying for it. We pay for libraries (i.e. free books) through taxes. Shows acquire money through advertisers because advertisers think we're watching their joyless commericials. But downloaders don't watch commercials, and their taxes don't go towards the production of anime, and they're not giving donations to the anime companies like people do to PBS or NPR.
So yeah, I guess that makes it immoral. As immoral as say, speeding, which is illegal and possibly bodily harmful, or burning a CD of music to give to a friend, which is illegal and stealing, or getting a free copy of a computer program from a friend, which is illegal and stealing, or drinking at 16, which is illegal and potentially bodily harmful, or smoking a joint, which is illegal and (I guess) potentially bodily harmful. I don't disagree with any of these things. Maybe they're all sins, I dunno. They seem though, to me, harmless, and therefore I have felt no guilt over doing them. If downloading a fansub (which I don't do, since my computer is too slow ::chuckle:: ) ... if that is the worst thing I were to do, it'd be fine with me. I personally still support anime companies with my money by renting shows and by buying shows I've seen that I liked. If someone wants to watch a show here or there that isn't available in the states yet, fine with me. I can't say much more than that. You're right, it's stealing. So is burning a music CD for a friend. I don't feel bad about either. Perhaps I should, but I don't. A question though-- obviously, burning a music CD or getting a computer program for free is also stealing. Do you feel that they are as immoral?? And have you ever done either of those things? If you have, then you might see my point-- namely, that for some (many) people burning a CD is not something to get riled up over or to feel immoral about. It's just too small of a deal. They all seem very small, small things to me. Like driving 75 on the freeway. I just don't see how people can be so .... well, righteous about this. People get so riled up. It just doesn't seem that big of a deal to me, even if, yes, it is stealing. Of course, if a person truly believes that many many people are downloading fansubs for free and are therefore taking away a substatial amount of income away from the anime industry.... well, then fine, that opinion would lead one to a hell-fire and brim stone kind of point of view. I don't think it's doing that, so it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. How does the CD burning or copying a computer program for free examples hit you? Does it strike a cord? It just seems to me that people put up some sort of strange double standard for the downloading of subs, versus these other examples. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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Ugh, I'm not "righteous" about anything. I'm simply trying to show that just because *you* think it's not morally unjust, doesn't mean it's so. There's a difference between personal opinion and written law. And I hardly think downloading an mp3 is analogous to crusading for civil rights.
Teddy Roosevelt once said, as I'm sure you all know, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Well, we're all brandishing a large stick. And in the point where all the sticks meet is a horse that's been dead for years. It hasn't budged in years, and it doesn't seem to have any plans for getting up and walking away anytime soon. Beat. Beat. Beat. Is it dead yet? Beat. Beat. Locked. |
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