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Kyon27 wrote:

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

Kyon27 wrote:

dewlwieldthedarpachief wrote:

Comparing infringement to shoplifting, how quaint.

Let's see:

Potential loss of sale ≠ loss of item+prevention of another sale.
I would download a car if I could.

And that argument works, in a way, against my comparison to TV theft. However, when you take something that isn't yours, and it wasn't given to you by the owner, it's stealing. I can't believe I'm reduced to explaining this the way I would to a 4 year old. This is why I usually refrain from feeding the trolls in the first place.

I am sorry that do I not see copyright infringement and petty theft as the same thing. They're both crimes, but they're still not the same crime.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

I am sorry that do I not see copyright infringement and petty theft as the same thing. They're both crimes, but they're still not the same crime.

Legally speaking, you are absolutely correct, and we are in complete agreement. I doubt I could even think of half of the different laws concerning the reception of something that doesn't belong to you. I don't know if you have any kids or not, but the point I was making is that when you teach a child that taking something that isn't yours is wrong, you don't explain the myriad ways of stealing things. You simply tell them, "taking something that isn't yours is wrong."

And furthermore, my comment about trolls wasn't directed toward you, but toward Sunday Silence. I felt his post blaming ip holders for piracy to be so ridiculous that I assumed it had to be trolling.

And dewlwield: At no point did I make an argument suggesting, "stop trolling and agree already." Obviously you disagree with me, but are only interested in making snarky comments in my direction. Sorry, dude. Not interested.

Sunday Silence wrote:

Basically, you have a consumer who wishes to legitimately support the creators of a product, but the venues he uses to try and obtain legit products don't exist. After several tries, the only option to rectify the current problem is to illegally download.

While IP holders have a right to control the content as they see fit, their actions like that cause several things.

1. Lost sales due to consumers not being able to access legitimate materials in a timely manner.
2. Fan distrust as IP holders don't seem to care for the fans that helped build the series with their patronage.
3. Inability to change with the times and consumer demands.

So it's the IP holders fault for not giving the consumer what they want. If they don't want people to go illegal, offer products in a manner that encourages the consumer, not make them rebel.

So the anime industry should take on the role of a battered wife, endlessly blaming itself for not satisfying the overbearing demands of its gluttonously self-indulgent and abusive husband known as the entitlement generation.

You can criticize the industry for not taking advantage of the digital age, but it's up to them to decide how and under what conditions their works are released. The fact that you don't like their decisions is in no way an excuse (legally or morally) to blatantly disrespect their copyright.

Blame should be placed where blame is due. Piracy isn't the fault of an industry that's not moving fast enough. It's the fault of an entitled culture that endlessly rationalizes the disrespecting of copyright.

again guys, my entire criticism of the comic, and of EVERY self-entitled pirate, is the *idea* that SOMEHOW piracy can ever be "rationalized." because it can't.

i understand why people pirate stuff. it makes perfect sense to me. it's free, and it's easy. i'm a lazy dude, just like everyone else. when it comes down to how i spend my leisure time, i don't like too many unnecessary steps involved. i just wanna press play and get to it. and i'm cheap too! i have to be! I MAKE HARDLY ANY MONEY! i totally understand.

but don't, just... DON'T pretend it's some noble cause. you are NOT the Sans Culottes of the anime and general entertainment realm, cutting off the heads of the oppressive entertainment Bourgeois. you are depriving an artist of their very livelihood, and the livelihoods of those who BELIEVE and SUPPORT those artists. and to think that SOMEHOW you're doing any of these folks a "favor" by killing them off WITH YOUR LAZINESS is completely insane.

i'm not made of stone - i understand that if you live in a third-world country, it is very, very difficult to make the financial decision NOT to pirate things. i'm not unsympathetic. but don't attempt to paint this as some insane Robin Hood victory. ESPECIALLY if you're privileged enough to live in North America.

if you are upset with the way something is NOT being presented to you, such as, say, Game of Thrones on HBO, you are TOTALLY ALLOWED to write to HBO and say "dear buttholes, what gives? why can't i buy your show without a subscription? why can't i stream it on Hulu or download it on iTunes? or Amazon? that sucks! i wanted to give you my money, and not for a damn cable network! i don't WANT cable! sincerely, Angry Fan." you can do that. but pirating effectively renders your point moot. all it proves is that you're a lazy unprincipled asswipe.

Sunday Silence wrote:

Quote:

I know this might be "off topic" or whatever, but there was this webcomic here that made the blog rounds last week, and it absolutely incensed me. And fortunately, I wasn't the only one.

Both of you completely missed the whole gist of the comic.

Basically, you have a consumer who wishes to legitimately support the creators of a product, but the venues he uses to try and obtain legit products don't exist. After several tries, the only option to rectify the current problem is to illegally download.

While IP holders have a right to control the content as they see fit, their actions like that cause several things.

1. Lost sales due to consumers not being able to access legitimate materials in a timely manner.
2. Fan distrust as IP holders don't seem to care for the fans that helped build the series with their patronage.
3. Inability to change with the times and consumer demands.

So it's the IP holders fault for not giving the consumer what they want. If they don't want people to go illegal, offer products in a manner that encourages the consumer, not make them rebel.

This is what i got from it as well.

Now in regards to all the piracy talk.

I am going to say this first and foremost. I OWN EASILY over 45k worth of legitimately purchased non used non bootleg anime and manga. I buy a MINIMUM of 20 series/movies a year and pretty easily over a hundred volumes of manga a year. Even the bootlegs i do have came from TRYING to purchase legit whether it be amazon marketplace or a now defunct site that sadly seemed to specialize in such things. But even so i will(and have) replaced them with legit copied when i could find them. Now that i have explained this you can't write off my comments as some entitled fan who doesn't support the industry i also try and avoid used games but sometimes the games are out of print such as when i got Sengoku Basara.

Now for my take on it. I feel that alot of these companies nay the world in general needs to accept and understand we live in a GLOBAL community now. Not seperated by country or land or border not really but if anything by "cliques". As i see it we have entered a new world and sadly companies(and governments) are trying to force us to remain seperate but those times are by and large over. I mean i live in alaska and yet i can converse with an anime fan in baghdad or isriael(which i HAVE done even syria once or twice if i recall right) and yet companies even online are forcing this seperation. And i feel that in doing so they are just forcibg piracy depending on region/interest. IMO the best way to solve this would be to accept/embrace the global aspect. Do away with IP blocking, acknowledge that importing is common and do away with teriffs as well as release globally even if just digitally at first. These measures i feel could help end most of our issues.

Now as for streaming sites i will say this. I am a collector/hoarder i admit i download but i buy when i can. Hell i downloaded Brain Powered last year. Why because i couldn't find it legit. I read negima scanlated yet i own every volume released in the US as well as all the omnibi(yes even the two versions of omnibi 1) so i support yet i also enjoy reading it weekly. It gives me joy and a pick me up to read it weekly. Now if i could read it legit online then i would. However i cannot. Again we're creating artificial borders that need not exist anymore. I even keep fansubs from series i own if i prefer them yet i still buy series(such as Broken Blade which i have on Blu ray) while other series i will just buy(such as Madoka i have the first limited edition on my shelf right now with the others on order). So my point in regards to streaming is this people like me archive and collect. If i could say buy episodes of oh lets say Guilty Crown or Aquarion EVOL in even a LQ tv version format i would. Hell even make it so the come with commercials when bought i don't care. But if i CAN buy it i usually wil. However many cases exist where i cannot. Another example is the Karin light novels. I own the 8 volumes tokyopop released as well as the anime, the manga, the fanbook AND Airmail yet i may never get to read vol 9 because of tokyopop folding. Now i cannot read nor speak japanese if i could then i might import but even then i'd need to find it. So what am i to do in such cases but hope that a sadly illegal fan translation be made.

So to TL;DR companies need to realize that we are now a global society and that "localizing" by region doesn't fly anymore. And that trying to lock people out just won't work. So in my opinion to truly damage fansubbing/scanlating will require global releases an end to region encoding and essentially globalizibg the market. But sadly i don't see that happening anytime soon.

As for TV. I for one like having tv and using it as background noise when gaming, reading, or even browsing the internet(in fact i'm "watching" DBZ Kai on nicktoons as i type this) and would do pretty much anything for the Funi network even though i own pretty much everything they air. Now you may ask why not stream? Well as i said before i live in alaska and TBH we have a monopoly here. Our biggest internet/Cable provider serves over half the state and is in fact the ONLY service internet wise for most of the villages. And while they offer very good speeds by our standards(22mbps on paper 2.3 in actuality) they also give us a 200 gig limit. Imagine trying to stream HD anime like that? I can marathon whole series in a day depending on length(my current record is 38 episodes in a single 24 hour period if not day. including food sleep and a walk up to mcdonalds) So i was capping in fact going over pretty regularly and thus reaching over 400 dollars in internet fees(again monopoly so they get away with charging over 107 basic for the internet service i described alone with it being 54.99 or so for 10mbps on paper but actually being 1mbps and a 40 gig cap) so my family switched to the ONE group who offers unlimited bandwidth(the ones i mentioned before used to but then they switched without waring and got away with it again monopoly). However they are so slow that again streaming is impractical. You see my connection is listed as 1mbps but is actually 123kbps completely useless for streaming at least anything more than a few minutes without insane buffering times. So yeah for some streaming is just not viable thus TV(plus i enjoy it) also why i'd rather download.

Sorry for the long post and it most likely being disjointed. I'm feeling rather disoriented so my thought process is kinda funky and i typed this all up on my phone. But yeah i hope my points come across and maybe some of you will like/agree with my comments.

ljaesch wrote:

Also, he seems to recall (as do I) that the RIAA was trying to claim that not only should buying used CDs be illegal, but that someone buying a copy and then turning around and giving it to someone else as a gift was a "bad thing." It really was ridiculous.

It also so blatantly conflicts with the "first-sale doctrine" that I can't imagine the RIAA getting very far in the courts.

I was incensed by the notion in Answerman's column that there was something intrinsically wrong with buying used items. The first-sale doctrine originates in common law, was recognized by the US Supreme Court in 1908, and was systematically incorporated into American copyright law in 1976. Rights holders can only collect royalties from the first sale of a copyrighted work; any future revenue derived from use of that copy, be it by sale, renting, lending, whatever, belongs to the owner of the copy.

Now there's no question that rights holders would prefer a world where the doctrine did not apply. (For instance, artists managed to get a Resale Rights Directive passed in the EU that grants them royalties when their works are resold through a professional dealer.) However much they may complain about the doctrine, the rights holders have managed to live with it for a century and seem to be doing just fine.

There would not have been a vibrant market for video rentals without the first-sale doctrine. Entrepreneurs bought videotapes at retail prices, then rented them out a couple of dozen times to create a viable business. Most "mom-and-pop" video rental stores began this way. Reed Hastings told 60 Minutes that Netflix obtained most of its original stock of DVDs to mail out by buying them at retail from Wal-Marts.

The important distinguishing feature between legitimate resale and rental activities and infringement is that no additional copies of the work are made. The copy itself must change hands. As long as that constraint applies, there's nothing wrong legally or morally with resale and rental uses of copyrighted works.

Cutiebunny wrote:

You can rant on your soapbox all you'd like about how piracy hurts the creator, the industry, ad infinitum, but this is how the majority of the world has and will continue to obtain any source of entertainment as long as it exists. Until laws to protect media worldwide are not only created, but heavily enforced, file sharing, streaming, downloading, etc. will continue to exist.

I think the rights holders will develop strategies to succeed even in the face of widespread piracy. In the anime world, the advent of legal streaming is an obvious response. Right now it's too intertwined with the old system of physical distribution and national or regional licensors, but the Internet is the great disintermediator, providing direct connections between producer and consumer. I suspect we'll see a future with worldwide streaming controlled from Japan by media giants like Sony.

Kyon27 wrote:

And dewlwield: At no point did I make an argument suggesting, "stop trolling and agree already." Obviously you disagree with me, but are only interested in making snarky comments in my direction. Sorry, dude. Not interested.

Obviously I have damaged your sensitivities by daring to not indulge in the utmost serious and respectful attitude you demand from your forum experience. I have shamefully afforded humour undue quarter, and for that I hang my head in guilty pleasure.

Kikaioh wrote:

So the anime industry should take on the role of a battered wife, endlessly blaming itself for not satisfying the overbearing demands of its gluttonously self-indulgent and abusive husband known as the entitlement generation.

Are you sure that's the same as physiological and psychological trauma committed against women by their husbands? It's an evocative analogy, but you're sort of cheapening human suffering here.

LordByronius wrote:

again guys, my entire criticism of the comic, and of EVERY self-entitled pirate, is the *idea* that SOMEHOW piracy can ever be "rationalized." because it can't.

Among people who hold accessibility of information at the centre of their ideology, they regard the legal system as archaic and ultimately unethical. There are many archaic practices no longer upheld that would be frowned upon today. It's not something at all you would agree with, and for what it's worth I think it's an extreme, but at the same time if you make the assertion that this is impossibly justified, the onus will be on you to demonstrate such. I don't believe you have done a good job of that, nor should you try to be doing so if this column is an opinion piece and not a paper on intellectual property. Why promise something you cannot deliver?

Spoofer wrote:

Sunday Silence wrote:

Both of you completely missed the whole gist of the comic.

.......... No, no I think they understood the point far better than you understood theirs...

LordByronius wrote:

i didn't miss the "gist" of anything. it's perfectly clear to me that the guy who wrote and drew it is an entitled asshole.

Music industry forces people to buy CDs with one or two good songs and the rest is crap. After the untold number of P2P networks and programs, along comes iTunes and allows people to buy the tracks they want, at a price that is competitive enough.

It is a success. The music industry changes and accommodates it's fans and consumers. Hell, I can go to Youtube, find a music video, and be linked to a page to buy the track i'm listening too.

Tell me how that model (or parts of it) cannot be adopted for TV series. The minute the show ends airing on TV, why I cannot go to a pay site, purchase the episode, and have unrestricted access to the episode or the series in question. Hell, I can go to some network sites and re-see the exact episode that I watched for a week after the episodes aired, and some rotate the episodes on their site, or put them on the site permanently for people to see.

Kikaioh wrote:

So the anime industry should take on the role of a battered wife, endlessly blaming itself for not satisfying the overbearing demands of its gluttonously self-indulgent and abusive husband known as the entitlement generation.

Should i just invoke Godwins Law right now, or shall I make the Nazi analog first?

dewlwieldthedarpachief wrote:

Among people who hold accessibility of information at the centre of their ideology, they regard the legal system as archaic and ultimately unethical. There are many archaic practices no longer upheld that would be frowned upon today. It's not something at all you would agree with, and for what it's worth I think it's an extreme, but at the same time if you make the assertion that this is impossibly justified, the onus will be on you to demonstrate such. I don't believe you have done a good job of that, nor should you try to be doing so if this column is an opinion piece and not a paper on intellectual property. Why promise something you cannot deliver?

This is one of the things that always makes me laugh.

Funny how the "information" part of "information wants to be free!" or "information needs to be accessible by everyone everywhere at all times" is usually referring to entertainment media nerds like. Nobody gives a shit if everyone everywhere can read To Kill a Mockingbird or read the transcripts of last week's Congressional sessions, but hey man the first season of Game of Thrones and this new Spider-man videogame MUST BE LIBERATED FOR THE GOOD OF ALL

Ridiculous grandstanding horseshit.

Like every week, I read the "Hey, Answerman!" column here on ANN, because I find it very informational and a nice distraction when I need one. Last week, there was a question on piracy and I almost posted here, but I refrained from it, because hey, I'm a dirty pirate!! That's right, I said it! You can throw your stones, point, give me dirty looks, call me a thief/criminal/etc, because I don't care Very Happy

I wouldn't have explored my favorite show as a kid (Sailor Moon) in it's original language/format if I didn't pirate it (the ADV/Geneon dvds were LONG out of print when I rediscovered the show), I wouldn't be as big of a music buff I have if I didn't pirate it (let's face it, music channels are stupid, the Billboard charts are rigged, and if Spotify did not hit the US, I would *still* be pirating music to this day), and a bunch of other stuff I could rant and rationalize piracy with.

Do I think what I do is wrong? Yes, I do. Every time I download an episode of glee, I feel like running to my local Walmart (which is, amusingly, only 2 and a half miles from my house Wink

) and buying every glee album and the first and second seasons on Bluray. Every time I download an album of a favorite artist, I want to run to their house and leave a nice 20 in their mail box with a note that says, "from an entitled, yet grateful fan."

I know what I do is wrong, but honestly, I'm not going to stop. The media companies are just as much to blame for piracy as we the pirates are doing the act. They could reduce piracy if they gave fans what they really want by breaking down regional walls, by releasing things across multiple formats, and (the biggest in my opinion) actually giving the majority of the money to the people who do the creating.

It makes my blood boil to know that if I had buy that those glee albums from Walmart, about 90% of it is going to the record label and not the original artists. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the artists be the one getting most of the money from something they worked on? And don't give me the shit about how engineers/producers/etc need to be paid too, because their pay does not depend on how much an album sells; they get paid
beforehand.

Some of you would immediately scream that those are not legitimate reasons to not buy the media I consume, and I'm even more dirty and low-down since I just tried to explain why I'm a pirate, but you have to give me the honesty card. Those media companies that claim to lose tons of money to piracy are a bunch of dirty liars. Instead of giving more money to the artists, they're pumping tons of it into lobbying for control of the internet through laws like SOPA and PIPA (it's obvious that they're trying to kill any and all competition through the net, since the Indie market is growing rapidly). You want to attack us on morals, but how can I morally give money to a bunch of companies that want to destroy anyone who wants to express themselves without their permission? (And before I get slapped with the off topic sticker, Answerbro attacked *all* piracy, not just fansubs and scanlations)

If those media companies actually put in the effort to compete with piracy (AND I MEAN OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, NOT BEING FORCED INTO IT BY CONSUMERS!!!!), they would come out victorious, but they have to work on terms that are fair for all and not just for them. I know many that would fork over their money for anime and movies if they could be delivered in HD MPEG-4 AVC files that are so pretty, you'd swear they were jacked from a fansub group, are available to all at the same price and same time. There is no need for artificial barriers, and delayed releases, because that only drives people to piracy.

All of that, however, is a pipe dream, because it means the corporate executives would lose money (what a crying shame the shits have to settle for $1,000 suits instead of $100,000 ones /sarcasm), and everyone knows that money runs the worlds. And I'm not demonizing companies like FUNimation, they are victims just like the consumer. They have to deal or else no anime and that means no anime. I'm looking right at the companies that supply the anime and the manga. It's time for change, you always knew you'd lose the control you had, and you're just delaying the end of a miserable era.[/img]

cool, you wanna change the way media is consumed? make it a free, open exchange of information that is devoid of arbitrary borders? great! get politically involved, draft ballot initiatives, petition your government(s), and other things that are far more useful than downloading an episode of something you don't want to pay for. i would recommend reading "Rules for Radicals" but Saul Alinsky was just recently demonized in the latest political witch hunt for some reason, despite being dead for 30 years.

funny thing about that book, though! YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!! it's NOT FREE!!! and he was, to quote the political uproar, a MONEY-HATING SOCIALIST COMMUNIST!!! so weird!

now then! RE: buying used

i never said it was "intrinsically wrong" to buy used books. that's silly. like i mentioned in the column, anime and manga goes out of print all the time, but it's usually for the betterment of all to purchase a new copy instead, if it is available. not just because it "supports the artist" but i mean c'mon, spend the extra couple of bucks to get a copy in decent shape that hasn't been chewed through by a sweaty teenager.

Zac wrote:

This is one of the things that always makes me laugh.

Funny how the "information" part of "information wants to be free!" or "information needs to be accessible by everyone everywhere at all times" is usually referring to entertainment media nerds like. Nobody gives a shit if everyone everywhere can read To Kill a Mockingbird or read the transcripts of last week's Congressional sessions, but hey man the first season of Game of Thrones and this new Spider-man videogame MUST BE LIBERATED FOR THE GOOD OF ALL

Ridiculous grandstanding horseshit.

This is, literally, what I'm talking about. Well said.

LordByronius wrote:

cool, you wanna change the way media is consumed?

Well, no. I'm not even slightly inclined to crusade for IP rights. I don't personally advocate the aforementioned position, else instead of "among people" I would feel comfortable to identify with those ideas. In the process of opinionating and explaining that opinion, it appears as if you're arguing the point; I thought the critical nuance was to just do the latter two, as Zac does, because getting into the argument isn't the providence of "views" on ANN?

dewlwieldthedarpachief wrote:

Kikaioh wrote:

So the anime industry should take on the role of a battered wife, endlessly blaming itself for not satisfying the overbearing demands of its gluttonously self-indulgent and abusive husband known as the entitlement generation.

Are you sure that's the same as physiological and psychological trauma committed against women by their husbands? It's an evocative analogy, but you're sort of cheapening human suffering here.

You already said it's an analogy, so why are you trying to interpret it as a 1:1 equivalence?

...I'll answer that: because it's easier to pretend offense and cry foul than it is to rebut the gist of my point.

It's a classic debate trapping, and you can fall into it by yourself if you want: my point still stands.

Sunday Silence wrote:

Should i just invoke Godwins Law right now, or shall I make the Nazi analog first?

Sure sure, we should always invoke Godwin's Law whenever someone makes a negative analogy. Rolling Eyes

So, I just got an email from Viz saying that if I subscribe to SJA for a year, I'll get 4 exclusive Yu-Gi-Oh cards delivered to my door. This is the sort of thing companies seriously need to do more of. You can't torrent a YGO card or any other form of physical merchandise, and the cost of posting 4 bits of cardboard is probably less than $2 per person. (I don't know US postage rates... don't kill me if I'm wrong) So along these lines, companies need to add extras to their products that you can't get illegally so people will feel it's worth the investment. More than just DVD extras; they can be ripped and uploaded to torrent sites, but actual physical products that people will value and want to have. Most importantly, they need to be at a reasonable price ( coughMadokacough ) as the vast majority of people simply don't have several hundred dollars to spend on 1 anime series. There are plenty of things you could add as extras which wouldn't cost much to produce, but would be worth a lot to people buying the show.

@Kikaioh:

It's an analogy, but a poor one that I find tasteless. Beaten wife to anime industry is not as heart is to pump. People might find your analogies more appealing if they are less exploitative.

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