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Hey, Answerman! - Personality Disorder


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YotaruVegeta



Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 6:40 pm Reply with quote
ANN's search is not great, but it works if you're crafty with your search terms. They need a more advanced search, with categories.

Frazmataz, Napster may have been an illegal avenue for music, but it was a very popular, highly publicized illegal P2P program. It's one of the milestones in what the music industry has become.
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edzieba



Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 704
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:11 pm Reply with quote
Mohawk52 wrote:
They take something that doesn't belong to them
Copyright infringement != theft. This is a very important distinction. Nothing is 'taken', a copy is created. Theft is the deprivation of physical property, whereas copyright infringement is the bypassing of an artificially imposed limitation on replication.
Mohawk52 wrote:
entitlement junkies who wouldn't pay to see Christ walk upon the water when some f***tard has uploaded his videocam raw copy to the world wide web for free.
The sort of people who are happy with an ugly camrip are never going to buy your products anyway. It'd be like trying to sell sand to a Bedouin.

YotaruVegeta wrote:
Frazmataz, Napster may have been an illegal avenue for music, but it was a very popular, highly publicized illegal P2P program. It's one of the milestones in what the music industry has become.
And, more importantly, a milestone of what it should have become. Once they'd built up a customer base, Napster offered to partner with the music industry to monetise what was then the sole centralised p2p music trading service. Instead, Napster was slapped down, and a plethora of decentralised services sprang up in it's place. Even now the music industry has been unable to unite even the paid-for server-based music stores, let alone p2p services. It's a textbook example of how not to adapt to the advent of digital media.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:23 pm Reply with quote
edzieba wrote:
Mohawk52 wrote:
They take something that doesn't belong to them
Copyright infringement != theft. This is a very important distinction. Nothing is 'taken', a copy is created. Theft is the deprivation of physical property, whereas copyright infringement is the bypassing of an artificially imposed limitation on replication.


Yes, copyright piracy is not theft, it is trampling on the rights of creators. Similarly, imprisoning someone for saying something opposed to the government of the day is not theft, but it is a violation of the right to free speech in countries where that right is enjoyed.

Of course, trying to draw a distinction between copyright and property rights based on the idea that copyright is "artificially imposed" is silly: so are property rights. All rights are social rules, no rights are natural laws. So the idea that copyright is more "artificial" than property right so theft is a "real" violation of rights while piracy is only violating "artificially granted" rights is nonsense ... normally a rationalization by someone who is more interested in trampling the rights of creators than in trampling the rights of property owners.

Now, somebody may agree with the grant of property right and disagree with the grant of copyright, but then there is also an argument for the opposite: copyrights are rights that are limited in duration and are only granted on the creation of something original. They are a far more modest right than the theoretically infinite property right, which can be gained by the "choice" of wealthy parents.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:28 pm Reply with quote
YotaruVegeta wrote:
I think renting anime is supporting the industry as well, no? Also, you have online subscriptions like on The Anime Network.


It depends on where you rent it. At Blockbuster ... yes, clearly, they are an important market for any DVD that they carry: if renting an anime carried by Blockbuster contributed to convincing them to carry more anime, that's a definite benefit to industry, so long as Blockbuster survives (they of course will not still be around in 2020) . At Netflix? Well, its better than nothing.

Clearly the subscription streaming model generates more income for the industry than the Netflix renting model.

~ Edit: cutting down multiposts ~

Sunday Silence wrote:
So which one is it? Fans need to buy, or does the Companies need to cater to the fans needs and wants? Kinda see-sawing the topic at hand here.

Here's the rub: BOTH sides need to co-exist with each other in order for both to be in harmony. Fans need to buy stuff, and the companies need to cater to the customers and adapt to the changing marketplace. It's that simple. From what i'm seeing, your just saying "throw all the counterweights onto one end of the ship, let that end float the ship in it's entirety."


Fans can only do something about one, companies can only do something about the other.

If the question is about what fans should do if they want to see the industry to survive, the answers are the same whether the companies are doing an effective, an ineffective, or a mediocre job of what they need to do.

Whether the companies are doing a good or poor job is relevant to guessing whether the industry will survive, but not to whether fans should support the creators of the works they enjoy.


Last edited by agila61 on Sat Aug 21, 2010 10:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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azhanei



Joined: 21 Aug 2010
Posts: 79
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:54 pm Reply with quote
Anime and manga business models are two different things. As others have mentioned, anime companies have figured out ways around production lag times, and also made DVDs more affordable for those who want hard copy. Another important difference is anime companies have a good track record of delivering the promised product. I don't mean whether or not you think the dub or packaging was good or not. I mean, barring company closure or loss of license, just getting the complete product (or whatever part of the product was licensed) to market. Manga companies, otoh, have issues with dangling the proverbial carrot only to snatch it away. Bad enough some titles in a series get published once a year -- works for 350-page text novels, not so much for something you can read in an hour -- but then there's this common scenario. You're bought vol. 1. Loved it. Bought vol. 2-6 like clockwork (never mind 2-19). And then ... nothing. The year goes by; you start digging through amazon.com, the publishers website, ANN, for any news of the next release. Only to find out, oh, they cancelled it.

So let's see, $100 gone. Two, five, ten years gone. And you, dear reader, are left stuck not ever knowing what's happened to these characters you've grown to care about. There comes a point where you’re frustrated and tired of gambling hard-earned money and your investment of time on a product that seems to do this far too much. And then you stop buying anything.

I’m not justifying scanlations, or any other form of copyright infringement. And I understand that there will always be series that end due to poor sales. But, to echo an earlier posted sentiment, we have to meet in the middle. Right now, though, what I hear from cons and news postings is this coalition ranting about scanlations being the root of all woe. Defend your works and licenses – with the understanding that there will always be titles people want to read that aren’t translated by any other method the fans; and there will always be people who try to beat the system. People steal from libraries where they can get the item for FREE, for Pete’s sake. But then ask your consumers what they can do to encourage their buyer loyalty and see what you can do to meet that need. In this case, it’ll take cooperation from Japanese publishers, which I read in one report are hesitant to accept digital modes of delivering manga, one thing that may be a good answer to some of the issues of the current paradigm. Another may be working more at point of origin. Instead of waiting to see if the title is popular in Japan, get in at the point it’s licensed in Japan and do “simultaneous” releases. Develop manga that are published first for the US/N. American market. Not OEL in the traditional sense, I mean Japanese mangaka working either through their Japanese publisher or independently through their agent to develop projects stateside. Whether or not it’s how things are currently done is irrelevant. They’re ideas to explore. Anime shifted its paradigm in big ways to survive. Someplace, somehow the paradigm for this market on both sides of the Pacific needs to change for it to survive.
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 9:55 pm Reply with quote
gingi789 wrote:

Actually, Mangafox removed a lot of it's licensed content. Onemanga shut itself down, and [this is a bittorrent site] doesn't list anything that's liscensed (or that the distributors asked it to take down). I know there are probably tons of sites that you can use to refute that, but those are a few examples of fansub/scanlation sites trying to do the right thing.

It seems Onemanga waited until the last possible moment to shut down & after they made their share of money so I'm not seeing them as good guys.
gingi789 wrote:
However, when something is not available through a lisenced distributor in the US, i do download. Do i feel bad about it? No, because when the series finally does get lisenced (take Bamboo Blade or Rental Magica) i take it off my computer and buy a legit copy.


Sorry abunai.
This was actually the point of those 2 paragraphs you removed. I was trying not to sound too harsh about people (specifically Zin5ki) who do live in areas/countries where there is little to no anime & manga licensed.
In a perfect world where everyone walks the straight & narrow no one would do anything wrong. We all pick laws to obey & laws to break like speeding, etc. If you are happy with your justifications for what you do, whatever, but just don't expect people who are obeying the various laws you decide are unimportant to obey to agree or to even understand your choices. In the same respect, accept the consequences such as ticket, fines, whatever. A teen posting stuff on his blog getting nailed had to comprehend at some level how incorrect what s/he was doing was not correct just as people who smoke marijuana in most of the US understand it is not legal & do it anyway

And don't go bragging to the people holding the copyrights or who made the stuff that you're not paying for that you are doing it. I can't really see having the nerve to say anything that bold to someone one hopes the fan respects. "I love/enjoy/like your work" is nice, safe & doesn't hurt anyone's feelings.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 10:37 pm Reply with quote
azhanei wrote:
But, to echo an earlier posted sentiment, we have to meet in the middle.
We have to meet in a place where the industry can, if possible survive. There is no guarantee that is someplace in "the middle".

The foundation of that is that either copyright is respected or else some other way of ensuring the income of the people creating the work is established ~ and not a hypothetical back of the envelope fantasy, but a real world, functioning system for ensuring the income of the people creating the work.

As Erica Freidman discussed last month at the Hooded Utilitarian, scanlations are a solution to a problem that have now become a problem in their own right. There, she suggests an approach to fan translations that may well offer a way for fan translators to contribute to rather than damage the manga industry.

But like any potential real world solution, it is not a "middle ground compromise" between debating sides ... while she listens to both sides, and indeed was at one time involved in making fan translations of the Marimite light novels, as she meets and gets to know more of the people who does the work, she can no longer personally accept trampling on their rights on the grounds of any of the excuses commonly offered, including "no licensed copy is available".
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gingi789



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 56
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 11:00 pm Reply with quote
CCSYueh wrote:
gingi789 wrote:

Actually, Mangafox removed a lot of it's licensed content. Onemanga shut itself down, and [this is a bittorrent site] doesn't list anything that's liscensed (or that the distributors asked it to take down). I know there are probably tons of sites that you can use to refute that, but those are a few examples of fansub/scanlation sites trying to do the right thing.

It seems Onemanga waited until the last possible moment to shut down & after they made their share of money so I'm not seeing them as good guys.
gingi789 wrote:
However, when something is not available through a lisenced distributor in the US, i do download. Do i feel bad about it? No, because when the series finally does get lisenced (take Bamboo Blade or Rental Magica) i take it off my computer and buy a legit copy.


Sorry abunai.
This was actually the point of those 2 paragraphs you removed. I was trying not to sound too harsh about people (specifically Zin5ki) who do live in areas/countries where there is little to no anime & manga licensed.
In a perfect world where everyone walks the straight & narrow no one would do anything wrong. We all pick laws to obey & laws to break like speeding, etc. If you are happy with your justifications for what you do, whatever, but just don't expect people who are obeying the various laws you decide are unimportant to obey to agree or to even understand your choices. In the same respect, accept the consequences such as ticket, fines, whatever. A teen posting stuff on his blog getting nailed had to comprehend at some level how incorrect what s/he was doing was not correct just as people who smoke marijuana in most of the US understand it is not legal & do it anyway

And don't go bragging to the people holding the copyrights or who made the stuff that you're not paying for that you are doing it. I can't really see having the nerve to say anything that bold to someone one hopes the fan respects. "I love/enjoy/like your work" is nice, safe & doesn't hurt anyone's feelings.


I'm sorry you interpreted that as bragging. It was simply a statement; however you choose to interpret it is up to you. Fine: if you don't like my solution, what's yours? Or would you just tell people "sorry, even though you're attached to these characters, and you like this story, since (XYZ distributor) decided to stop carrying it, or cut off halfway in the middle, you're just out of luck?" That's a pretty rigid stance to take.

Oh, and i do think onemanga did the right thing; considering that they weren't asked to shut down. Mangafox was asked to remove licensed materials from their site, and they did. You do know that sites like Crunchyroll weren't legit till they got backing from Gonzo, right? Before then, they were just a collection of fansubs that they brought to one place. Mangafox could be to manga like what crunchyroll is to anime.

Oh, and i know (and have) enough legit stuff to tell VA's that i like it, or to have them sign. Like i said, when the series becomes available in legit means, i buy it. Do you want me to feel bad about not buying things that aren't available? (we're not even talking about learning japanese-keep in mind that anime that's released in japan is coded region 2-for both blu-ray and regular. If you know a place where i can find an uncoded blu-ray player, by all means, show me Very Happy )

Oh, and don't just say "blind buy" or "read a review". Case in point: my last blind buy was Divergence Eve. And if i went by the reviews of Speed Grapher on ANN, i would've missed a series that i enjoy a lot. However, if you have a solution that is somewhat of a compromise between our two viewpoints, then share it. But don't just say that everyone should stop downloading, because: a) it'll never happen. I spend a decent amount on anime, and i still downlaod-because i can't get the series here, and b) it's not a compromise. It's just what you think people should do.
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 11:45 pm Reply with quote
azhanei wrote:
Manga companies, otoh, have issues with dangling the proverbial carrot only to snatch it away. Bad enough some titles in a series get published once a year -- works for 350-page text novels, not so much for something you can read in an hour

But the issue to that is you're comparing soy beans (Japan) to apples (US & most western markets). They have a weekly/monthly/bi-monthly delivery system while we have daily newspapers with the basic 4-panel format, Weekly Sunday Funnies, the comic book delivery system on a monthly basis none of which includes manga for the most part. Yeah, we did get some titles at one time in the 32 page format back when & we've seen some attempts at the same magazine format Japan has, but it's never really taken off here int he US. It's sort of the old serials that aired with double features--we don't have them any more, though we do have tv.
azhanei wrote:
You're bought vol. 1. Loved it. Bought vol. 2-6 like clockwork (never mind 2-19). And then ... nothing. The year goes by; you start digging through amazon.com, the publishers website, ANN, for any news of the next release. Only to find out, oh, they cancelled it.

Can you tell me how Pushing Daisies ends? I really loved that show & it got axed. Reaper. The list of shows that actually manage an ending is far shorter than the ones who have just left things hanging. There are lots of novel series where things aren't all wrapped up because usually the author doesn't clearly end them--there's always a chance there might be another novel until such a final volume is written.

azhanei wrote:
So let's see, $100 gone. Two, five, ten years gone. And you, dear reader, are left stuck not ever knowing what's happened to these characters you've grown to care about. There comes a point where you’re frustrated and tired of gambling hard-earned money and your investment of time on a product that seems to do this far too much. And then you stop buying anything.

I've had more than a few series cancelled on me. I haven't stopped buying. Lilling Po, Queen's Knight, BTx (Vol 16 has finally been posted for sale. Yeah!) Saiyuki, King of Hell, Baron Gong Battle, Apocalypse Zero, Twin Signal, Bow Wow Wata, Bride of Deimos, City Hunter, Category Freak, Do Whatever You Want, Dark Edge, From Eroica, Young Magician, Dragon Hunters, Embracing Love, Kizuna (rescued after half a decade), Finder (rescued like Kizuna), Gadirok, Gate, Fantasyland, GetBackers, First King Adventures, Satisfaction Guaranteed, Roureville, Sword, & others but I've "cancelled' (dropped) as many on them & more than a few have been left in limbo by the creators (X, Legal Drug, Yami no Matsuei had a large break from publication, same for DNAngel. We're always seeing titles being put on hiatus)

Most publishers I've heard at Comic-con have voiced a certain nervousness going much past 8 volumes & I'm sure that has more to do with the attention span of the audience they're selling to over the company arbitrarily cancelling a title that's doing well. Clamp, big shonen titles like Bleach-sure, but the rest? They don't want to anger the fans by not finishing the title, but they also don't want to license a title they're going to be stuck printing if no one is buying it. There's also hesitation at picking up ongoing stuff which likely has more to do with your complaint over lags. I followed Dragon Knights for about 7 years, was it? We were getting a volume per year at the end. Same for Excel Saga. The manga-ka aren't universally reliable in their production of these stories.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 12:34 am Reply with quote
CCSYueh wrote:
Can you tell me how Pushing Daisies ends? I really loved that show & it got axed. Reaper. The list of shows that actually manage an ending is far shorter than the ones who have just left things hanging. There are lots of novel series where things aren't all wrapped up because usually the author doesn't clearly end them--there's always a chance there might be another novel until such a final volume is written.


I'd love some more novels in C.J.Cherryh's Alliance Space universe (or manga, or anime ~ there's ample opportunity to tell lots of different stories in that space, as she showed with Gehenna) ... then there's Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, where the author died before finishing the last book, which had sprawled so much that the Brandon Sanderson is finishing it as a trilogy.

There may or may not be a business model using new technology (hard technology as in print on demand printers, or soft technooogy as in crowdsourced translation and digital releases) that can overcome the dropped manga series problem, but all that an individual fan can do to help a series finish is buy the volumes as they are published.
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YotaruVegeta



Joined: 02 Jul 2002
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Location: New York
PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 1:32 am Reply with quote
edzieba, I believe that copyright infringement is theft. You got something for free which was only offered by the owner through payment.

You're stealing a potential opportunity for people to make a sale. It's like going on all the Disney World rides for free. Yes, nothing was taken home, but you jumped that fence and went into someone else's property.

Whether you would have eventually bought it or not is not guaranteed, but now that there are free copies floating around, it's also not guaranteed that you would want to pay for anything else the content owner wants to legitimately offer you.

The limitation of digital content It's not "artificially imposed" If you want all the music on iTunes, for instance, you just have to buy it. The people who have the rights to copy it can make more for all who want it.
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Sunday Silence



Joined: 22 Jun 2010
Posts: 2047
PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:14 am Reply with quote
YotaruVegeta wrote:
edzieba, I believe that copyright infringement is theft. You got something for free which was only offered by the owner through payment.

You're stealing a potential opportunity for people to make a sale. It's like going on all the Disney World rides for free. Yes, nothing was taken home, but you jumped that fence and went into someone else's property.


If the product isn't available for purchase, a download isn't a lost sale.

Also, you and the rest of the moral brigade here fail to realize that some of us do BUY after watching the pirated copy. I also would like to understand how they are loosing money to us "Gaijin" when they have little or no intention of selling it to us.
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edzieba



Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 704
PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:17 am Reply with quote
YotaruVegeta wrote:
edzieba, I believe that copyright infringement is theft.
Then you'd be legally incorrect in most countries under the Berne Convention (which either specifically classify copyright infringement as seperate from theft, or have no case law on the matter).
Quote:
You got something for free which was only offered by the owner through payment.
Remember that money has nothing to do with this. If a company offered a video for free via a streaming player, and you saved the streaming content to play offline later (essentially an extended buffering), you have committed copyright infringement, and are just as guilty as someone who downloaded the file from bittorrent or the like. There is no legal difference between the two. Which is rather odd given the specific exemptions available for recording from the radio or TV.
Quote:
It's like going on all the Disney World rides for free.
No, that's criminal trespass, something entirely different.
Quote:
Whether you would have eventually bought it or not is not guaranteed, but now that there are free copies floating around, it's also not guaranteed that you would want to pay for anything else the content owner wants to legitimately offer you.
This is the crux of the argument; within the set of downloaders there exist multiple subsets:
1) Those who would buy a physical product regardless of if they downloaded or not.
2) Those who would only buy the physical product if they have downloaded it.
3) Those who would only buy the physical product if they had not downloaded it
4) Those who would not buy the physical product no matter if they did or did not download it.
4 are a lost cause, so targeting them is pointless. 1 will always buy the product. 2 & 3 are the bone of contention.
Quantifying the size of these subsets is the major issue; as there is no real way to do so other than random guesswork, especially when where a person falls in each classification will vary with each series.
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LordRedhand



Joined: 04 Feb 2009
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 7:46 am Reply with quote
No case law you say edzieba? How about MGM vs. Grokster? http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZC1.html

Relevant point: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer "Deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft."

And to quote from this article: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey18feb18,0,5092348.story

Quote:
The downloading-isn't-stealing faction makes much of the fact that infringements don't deprive copyright owners of their works. But that deprivation is not an essential element in every kind of theft. If you splice into your neighbor's cable wire and get 150 channels for free, you're not diminishing the available supply of cable TV or depriving anyone else in the neighborhood of it. But you're still acquiring something of value without paying for it, and you're doing it without the seller's permission. That's called theft of service.


In addition when we go to the moral side of things copyright infringement can be seen as indistinguishable from theft. You normally position such statements with "I believe X." Normally followed with some reasons why "The creator asks for a price and not paying it isn't fair? There may be others premises to lend support to the conclusion and make it a valid form.
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YotaruVegeta



Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:00 am Reply with quote
edzieba, I wonder if someone took digital content, then sold that content you would then consider that theft. You take something you have no involvement in the creation of, nor the rights to, then you sell it.

As much as I am for taking as many legal avenues as are available to me now, I will admit to downloading free streamed content so I can watch it later.

I think sites need to create a feature or program that allows you to resume where you left off in an episode, because for now I use my media player's bookmark feature so I don't have to guess where I left off.
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