Forum - View topicNEWS: 5 Anime Studios Sue 4 'Heavy Downloaders' in Singapore
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edzieba
Posts: 704 |
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* Either they are potential customers, or they're never going to consider purchasing, so why waste the effort. |
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calawain
Posts: 192 Location: New York, NY |
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Someone needs to learn how to use IRC, tisk tisk. That being said, I find it an amusing juxtaposition that this news story is posted the same day as the one about Viz streaming Naruto the same week it airs in Japan. One would think one of the strategies is better than the other eh?
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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Sounds like the eternal and all powerful forces of karma are at work again.
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Quark
 Posts: 710 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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My theory is, if you liked a series enough to download and watch it all the way through, then you liked it enough that should be paying for it. Obviously it was worth something, otherwise, why waste time downloading it? |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4447 |
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The thing is that it's a slippery slope. Sure one or two might not hurt, but if a lot of people do it then it does hurt. And as the article stated, the defendants are alleged "heavy downloaders" which implies that it was more than the occasional movie. |
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Quark
Posts: 710 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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My theory is, if you liked a series enough to download and watch it all the way through, then you liked it enough that you should be paying for it. Obviously it was worth something, otherwise, why waste time downloading it? |
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the Rancorous
 Posts: 2248 Location: Hunting the Dragon in Gransys |
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You see, the flaw here is that there are too many people who would never buy anything that they could obtain for free. And then they'll make up some 100% bullshit justification for it (see Kit-Tsukasa's ridiculous post on the last page  ).
I'll agree that studios, liscensors, etc should adapt to the changes, but even then, as long as there is a way for people to get it for free (IE pirating), then they will. And if these guys were given multiple warnings to stop and didn't, then I say they brought this on themselves. Plus, they said "file-sharing," so my guess is that they were distributing their horde of XViDs and h.264's. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 4447 |
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I agree with Quark. If it was really that bad, then they wouldn't have downloaded to begin with, and just because something is not very good doesn't mean that it's OK to just take it. The very act of taking something means that the person acknowledges that it has some sort of value to them.
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melonbread
Posts: 317 Location: UK (London) |
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This is not the way to solve the problem.
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Greed1914
Posts: 4447 |
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How about an alternative solution instead of a simple statement? And while it may not "solve" the problem, it's always a good idea for companies to let people know that they will protect their products. |
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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Judging from the wording of this article it looks like they were downloading anime that was licensed in their region. If thats the case I hope they get the maximum penalty.
Their is no justification at all in downloading anime thats available commercially. I'd also love to know what type of anime they actually owned. Is all their anime bootleg? Do they own hundreds of legit anime dvds? People bring up good points about fansubbing and how it hurts the industry but too many people forget how and why it started. As a way for fans to see shows that they would probably not be able to see in their country, not as a replacement for licensed dvds. If half the people who downloaded fansubs actually BOUGHT the series they liked when it came out on dvd you'd see anime companies having a different attitude when it came to downloads. The problem isn't people downloading, the problem is people downloading and using it as an alternative to actually buying dvds. |
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Ruremi
 Posts: 60 |
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The heavy downloaders quote leaves me to believe that they were just downloading anything that's on BT; even older series that've been long released and probably really cheap enough by now, to purchase.
If that's the case then that's terrible since that shows that they don't want to spend money no matter how cheap it is, to support the industry. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 4447 |
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It really would be nice if that were how it worked. And I think you're right about the stance that people would have if it played out that way. I wish it were the case. 
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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Greed/Quark: More likely potential value. Agreed that if someone continues to download and watch it must have some value to them. Whether they would have bought it otherwise is another matter. Many people end up buying things they never would have taken a chance on if they had to pay up-front. Even if you were to buy everything you downloaded once it became available in your region, of course, it wouldn't protect you from prosecution.
A lot of people seem to think everyone's neatly split into "downloaders" and "customers". People like in Daimao Raki should keep in mind that, had they been jailed or slapped with a $50,000 fine earlier on, they may not be the loyal customers they are today. The percentage of anime fans who download /some/ fansubs is far from insignificant, and though preventing downloading would cause some to buy more, actually crushing them all would simply take money away from the industry.
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Greboruri
Posts: 378 Location: QBN, NSW, Australia |
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One of the problems with Singapore is probably the lack of anime available on DVD. Sure, there's a lot of stuff on VCD, but it's a really poor video format. Also importing is a pain with the Singapore government rating everything which comes into the country and charging those who have imported DVDs the fees from the censorship board. I know this no real defence for what they did, but I'm just glad I don't live in that country. They are pretty stupid to continue doing what they did, and for not settling out of court. It's also odd that a lot of the copyright enforcement of anime seems to centring on Singapore. Anyone know why? I mean surely most fansubs aren't downloaded from there. I would have thought the majority of downloaders would be from the US.
I really think this a token effort on the Japanese companies part. It doesn't stop the fansubbers creating the fansubs and uploading them and it doesn't stop those in Japan from uploading episodes from TV minutes after airing, which 99% of the time are the basis for fansubs. They need to go after Japanese uploaders in the first place, secondly those who host fansubs, otherwise there is not much point to what they're doing. I completely understand that Japanese companies are caught between a rock and a hard place, but they're going to have to find some other way of making money, and shock horror, having a cheap download service with English subtitles may be the only way to do it (and will kill a lot of the fansubbing). I know it's a hard task and perhaps fans are asking almost the impossible, but the market has spoken. There is no real point trying to fight this. They should have squashed fansubs when they first started to appeared on the internet years ago, but they just sat back and did nothing. I just can't feel any sympathy for them. |
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