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superdry wrote:

I forgot where it was published or maybe it was posted on a forum...but supposedly Steam helped curbed at least some PC gaming piracy in Russia because it was priced well, easy to use and safe compared to the piracy route.

That's why I feel if IP holders give fans a good, competitively priced, legal alternative that's not encumbered would help a little to lessen piracy.

100% agree. Give reasonable attractive alternatives, make it worth it to pay upfront, and in a timely manner. If it worked for the music industry and now computer games, why not Anime and Manga?

Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:

which brings me to another thing i have been wanting to ask for quite some time. Do you or anyone have you have heard of live streaming?? people can stream directly from their computer showing off games, doing web-shows etc. Now here is a huge grey-area with some court cases pending but it is relevant to this case.

Some one like me doesn't have many irl friends that like anime or want to watch any series with me, so what if I do a live stream of my legal DVD purchases and chat about it with my friends online. In my sense this is done in private chat/streaming room from my house which is no different from having 10 friends over to watch a rented movie right?? Does this still fall into a huge legality issue or is something I have a right to do with merchandise I own.

Given the case of the company (Zediva) that had a huge bank of players, and would stream a single disc to a single household over the internet got shot down, I suspect live streaming of copyrighted material (which doesn't limit it to a single endpoint) would meet the same fate in a legal challenge.

TheAncientOne wrote:

Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:

which brings me to another thing i have been wanting to ask for quite some time. Do you or anyone have you have heard of live streaming?? people can stream directly from their computer showing off games, doing web-shows etc. Now here is a huge grey-area with some court cases pending but it is relevant to this case.

Some one like me doesn't have many irl friends that like anime or want to watch any series with me, so what if I do a live stream of my legal DVD purchases and chat about it with my friends online. In my sense this is done in private chat/streaming room from my house which is no different from having 10 friends over to watch a rented movie right?? Does this still fall into a huge legality issue or is something I have a right to do with merchandise I own.

Given the case of the company (Zediva) that had a huge bank of players, and would stream a single disc to a single household over the internet got shot down, I suspect live streaming of copyrighted material (which doesn't limit it to a single endpoint) would meet the same fate in a legal challenge.

Then it might be best to tread lightly then, I really don't have any irl friends that like anime so it's my only social means to share the medium with friends online. Perhaps I will just stick to streaming games for now until more cases pop up on the issue thanks.

superdry wrote:

RyanSaotome wrote:

People always hate on piracy, but its a good thing for consumers: It forces companies to to try their best to make systems that will benefit the consumers. Why do you think Steam was created in the first place for PC games? It was to combat piracy, and to sell games at such a low price and with extras that they were a viable alternative to piracy.

I forgot where it was published or maybe it was posted on a forum...but supposedly Steam helped curbed at least some PC gaming piracy in Russia because it was priced well, easy to use and safe compared to the piracy route.

That's why I feel if IP holders give fans a good, competitively priced, legal alternative that's not encumbered would help a little to lessen piracy.

That is true about Steam and for us PC gamers Steam has been a great thing. However there is a difference in PC gamers and a lot of anime fans. Most PC gamers are adults or mature teens. Many PC gamers will complain about Mass Effect 3 or Battlefield 3 requiring Origin and not being on Steam and while a lot say they are going to pirate the game, from what I read on forums they still buy the game. The same with Call of Duty, a lot of people say they will pirate it but still buy it. For pretty much any game by Activision, EA, or just a game that that they don't want to pay full price for they will just wait until that game is on sale during a Steam sale.

Now most anime fans, mainly the younger ones, wouldn't buy anime even if there was a Steam like service. Why? Because so many of the younger ones have this sense of entitlement that anime should be free and they can't comprehend that money keeps it coming out and its not free in Japan. Just because you don't like Viz's translations or the price of a DVD gives them reason to pirate. I have heard people say they won't watch One Piece on hulu because there are commercials. Have you seen the hate Viz has been getting because of Shonen Jump Alpha? Little immature meme loving anime fans were telling Viz they are going to pirate the manga because they shouldn't have to pay for manga that is 2 weeks old. Now think of that for a second. There were no complaints when Viz was releasing graphic novels that had chapters over 2 years old in Japan but suddenly it is 2 weeks behind Japan and you shouldn't have to pay? They were giving excuses like "well with it being 2 weeks behind I can't go on the forums or the wiki because of spoilers", Back in 2007 something like Shonen Jump Alpha seemed like it would have never been possible. My point being that even if there was some Steam like service/App that gave us manga the same day as Japan and anime an hour after it aired so many of those fans would still pirate. They would pirate because the translations would be too professional, not enough swearing, attacks are translated,lack of suffix's in some titles, etc. Us PC gamers can be pretty elitist at times but you can please us, a good chunk of anime fans will never be pleased unless they are living in Japan knowing fluent Japanese.

Welcome to the east coast Brian! Your immune system will get used to it. At least now you can get the best crab cakes in the USA. Smile

superdry wrote:

RyanSaotome wrote:

People always hate on piracy, but its a good thing for consumers: It forces companies to to try their best to make systems that will benefit the consumers. Why do you think Steam was created in the first place for PC games? It was to combat piracy, and to sell games at such a low price and with extras that they were a viable alternative to piracy.

I forgot where it was published or maybe it was posted on a forum...but supposedly Steam helped curbed at least some PC gaming piracy in Russia because it was priced well, easy to use and safe compared to the piracy route.

That's why I feel if IP holders give fans a good, competitively priced, legal alternative that's not encumbered would help a little to lessen piracy.

Part of this is also Valve did some local market research and joined with this money kiosk thing as a way to put money into Steam with cash since people there are adverse to CC's and electronic payment and prefer to use cash. It's market research like that that makes money.

Asterisk-CGY wrote:

Part of this is also Valve did some local market research and joined with this money kiosk thing as a way to put money into Steam with cash since people there are adverse to CC's and electronic payment and prefer to use cash. It's market research like that that makes money.

Like the way you can put change into one of those change counting machines and get a slip of paper that lets you pay for a membership on Crunchyroll, addressing the long standing complaint that you need a credit card to sign up to Crunchyroll.

writerpatrick wrote:

... As for the artists getting hurt by piracy, this tends to be more of an indirect effect. The artists are paid by the distributors and it's the distributors that may be affected by illegal copies. If sales aren't that strong it's likely to result in a lower pay to the artist, but in many cases the artist may be paid a lump sum regardless of sales.

This is looking at an individual work in isolation. The amount that the producer of a work for hire can afford to pay for the work, and the advance on royalties (MG in anime) that the distributor acquiring rights can afford to pay, are determined by their expected return.

If experience shows that they cannot expect the return that they once could, they have to reduce accordingly the amount they can budget for work for hire, or the amount they can offer as an advance.

In other words, what the distributor is doing is financing and, for royalty payments, taking on some of the risk. If the result does not, on average. refund the outlay on work for hire or the advance on royalties, then they cannot keep on doing that.

The fact that the advance normally covers royalties except for an unexpectedly strong seller, so that the creator considers the advance a "lump sum" payment does not change the fact that if the industry earns less, it cannot afford to finance as much new work. Therefore, if piracy actually does undermine revenues to a certain extent, as is often argued by opponents of piracy, it does reduce the amount of work that can be financed.

Quote:

Although proper piracy involves the actual selling of the material and it's those dollars that go to the pirate and not the distributor that really had the effect because it involves people who would actually pay for the material. ...

The two main types of piracy affecting anime are filesharing, often peer to peer, and leech streaming. IMV there is a strong case that the leech streaming has substantially more net negative impact than the filesharing.

Indeed, the leech streaming proves that there's a substantial part of the viewership who would rather not go to the trouble of filesharing, because the leech streaming video quality runs from mediocre to abysmal, while the filesharing video quality is typically next best thing to BD. Indeed, given testing of apparent resolution of materials, a 1440x810 download would be equivalent to BD quality except for whatever compression trade-offs are made, and a 1280x720 download is normally not downscaled at all for all or much of the original production materials and worst case only downscaled 12% if a higher quality series has been processed at 1440x810 with the occasional occasional 1440x810 material in the mix.

And the leech streaming is quite definitely generating advertising income from the process, despite the fact that viewers are watching for free, so there's no doubt that even on the above definition that the leech streaming is "proper piracy".

Of course, the movable feast discussion of piracy at ANN tends to focus on filesharing and tends to ignore leech streaming, because the filesharing tilts toward the kind of higher information readership that ANN attracts. The leech streaming sites often cater to a far more naive viewership.

Last edited by dragon695 on Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

Quote:

I remember way back when I was in college, the teacher in my Japanese class showed us Sazae-san with English subtitles. The videos (it has to be video, as DVD was not very common) apparently were made for Education purpose. But, apparently there were videos (although I think it may only available in Japan).

I solve the availability problem by learning Japanese in my college years. Nowaday one could purchase Japanese manga/DVD online directly from Japan. Now I can read/watch the original without English translation. The fact is, no matter how good a translation is done, there is always something that could not be translated, such as "Ore", "Boku", or "Watashi". Certain characters, simply change how they address themselves would also alter their personalities.

I would not recommend this method, since 1-2 years of Japanese (what most might expect will be enough) is not going to give you anywhere near the level of reading comprehension needed to understand a shounen/shoujo, let alone more adult-oriented manga. And you certainly would struggle just to understand dialog in even the most childish anime, even if most dialogue is not at native speed. Japanese is damn hard for a number of reasons. First, it is a mash-up of ancient Korean and local island natives along with ancient Chinese dialects at certain periods. Then there is the fact that you have to remember 1000+ Kanji to even be semi-literate, which is much harder than you think. And, of course, there are the complexities of understanding what is "not said" since there is a distinct lack of "complete sentences" and abundance of vagueness in most conversations. Japanese can be interesting to take for many reasons, but it is not worth your time and frustration if you want to watch anime or read manga in the original language. And if you do, you will need a minimum of 3-4 years of quality instruction and weekly interaction with native speakers to be able to get the same level of understanding that you get from most good commercial translations/subs.

Quote:

Japanese is damn hard for a number of reasons. First, it is a mash-up of ancient Korean and local island natives along with ancient Chinese dialects at certain periods.

Ahem.

Japanese MAY be related to Korean, but only barely, and only if the Altaic Theory is correct. Said theory is hotly contested in the realm of Linguistics, and no one really knows if it's true or not. Interestingly, said theory also posits that Japanese is related to, of all things, Turkish.

Second, Chinese never has, nor will it ever be, related to Japanese. The two posess radically different phonology (Japanese has a voicing distinction, Chinese has an aspiration one. Chinese has quite a few phonemic affricates, Japanese doesn't. Chinese possesses retroflex fricatives and affricates, Japanese doesn't.....) and their grammar isn't very similar, and the parts that are (special markers to indicate grammatical function, honorifics, etc.) are almost certainly due to language contact and not any under-lying genetic relation.

Japanese is classified as a member of the Japonic language family, currently. It's only related to the other Japonics--said family is a language family isolate as far as we know now.

Japanese did borrow many words from Chinese, but English did from Latin, yet English is still Germanic and not Italic/Romance.

/linguist-in-training

Chagen46 wrote:

... Japanese MAY be related to Korean, but only barely, and only if the Altaic Theory is correct. Said theory is hotly contested in the realm of Linguistics, and no one really knows if it's true or not. Interestingly, said theory also posits that Japanese is related to, of all things, Turkish. ...

Given where the Turks came from and where some of the Koreans originally came from, that's not so surprising. Locations can be fluid on the great grasslands of the world.

How the Japanese fit into that, I dunno, but I guess that's part of why its controversial.

Chagen46 wrote:

Quote:

Japanese is damn hard for a number of reasons. First, it is a mash-up of ancient Korean and local island natives along with ancient Chinese dialects at certain periods.

Ahem.

Japanese MAY be related to Korean, but only barely, and only if the Altaic Theory is correct. Said theory is hotly contested in the realm of Linguistics, and no one really knows if it's true or not. Interestingly, said theory also posits that Japanese is related to, of all things, Turkish.

Second, Chinese never has, nor will it ever be, related to Japanese.

As for the former, I will concede a bit, but there are a number of elements that make Korean more similar to Japanese than to Chinese. Further there is significant biological and anthropological evidence that show that the bulk of Japanese are descended from peoples who migrated from Korea (albeit many thousands of years ago). The language that those ancient Koreans carried with them contains many features that were preserved both in modern Japanese and Korean. Off the top of my head, many of the common particles and their function are similar or the same.

The general point, however, is that it is a frustrating experience for most western learners because there are elements of the diverse origin of the modern Japanese language that do not mesh well together. It is precisely for the reason that Japanese is not syntactically related to Chinese that it is a huge problem when nearly half the words in the Japanese language were imported from China at various times. This is a fact. Even more interesting is that it was not a one-way exchange, as some Japanese was taken back. Because of this, different grammatical constructs exist depending on the etymological basis of the word being used. For example, the relatively simple difference between i-adjectives and na-adjectives when used in pronominal form. I won't belabor the point, but I feel that Japanese syntax and grammar is, for the most part, far more complex than a romance language due to this duality.

As for the latter, I've already alluded to the fact that I well aware that Chinese and Japanese share nothing in common grammatically. Oh how it would be so much easier if it were. It was poorly worded, but I was referring to the sino-japanese vocabulary and of course the characters/pronunciations that were imported during various periods of China's history. The multitude of readings of most Kanji and different meanings for said reading, is one of the reason why learning Japanese characters is 10x harder than Chinese characters, despite needing to know upwards of 4000 more for the latter.

But, again, my point was that the option of learning Japanese so you can import all your manga/anime from Japan is not at all practical.

Yeah, I know what you mean, I just tend to love any chance to faff on about Linguistics I can get...

dtm42 wrote:

I don't care what creators think

You managed to sum up everything that's wrong with entitlement culture in just one clause.

dtm42 wrote:

That's what they care about, the bottom line.

Sure. After a lifetime of practice, financial risk and devotion, artists certainly wouldn't at all care to maintain a sense of ownership and control over their creations. If their low wages and long work hours are any indication, they're only in it for the money.

dtm42 wrote:

Your attempt to try and make some overriding moral argument for why fansubs are bad is laughably weak and yet insulting to those people who actually support the industry more than you do.

Don't compare me with other people when you don't know me. Over the last 15 years I've spent thousands of dollars on anime DVDs, soundtracks, manga, games, merchandise, convention attendance costs, theater viewings, and more. I spent years in college learning Japanese, created and presided over an anime club, and traveled throughout Japan a number of times over the past 7 years, having walked the streets of Akihabara and Den Den Town as well as buying anime and manga goods in various cities throughout Honshu and Kyushu. Are you trying to imply that the average pirate, who often downloads/streams simply because the cost is free, has supported the industry more than I have?

And of course I'm calling you out on the morality of your brand of piracy. You're under the illusion that you have a special understanding with the creators: namely, so long as you pay them after your illicit viewing, initially violating their rights is okay. It's a fundamentally unethical belief system: to a lot of people (myself included) money isn't a free ticket to steamroll over an artist's rights. You don't simply ignore attaining an artist's permission out of a presumptuous belief that paying them back later 'makes it all good.' If artists only cared about making money, art would be the last profession they'd have picked. Artists care about their art and copyright too, and that should be respected.

Buying DVDs after pirating is unquestionably better than not having bought them at all --- on the same token, it's also unquestionably better not to pirate in the first place and respect the artist's rights. But if your reason for thinking my argument is weak hinges on the fact that you don't care what the creators think and therefore don't need permission to view their works, then you're unquestionably right: because when a fan proudly admits to such a puerile, self-serving point of view, there aren't really any arguments strong enough to be even remotely convincing. You'll have drowned yourself in entitlement cool-Aid, and if mental gymnastics were an Olympic category, you'd be a 5-time gold medalist.

One final note: I found your cheeky attitude entertaining. I expect more snarky replies in your next response. Chop chop.

samuelp wrote:

One time, I was in Tezuka's animation studio and I noticed one of the animators watching Naruto... turns out it was on a pirate streaming site.
I asked her if she knew the site wasn't legit and she told me that she couldn't afford the DVDs/renting (since she's an animator and gets paid crap).
How about that for complex morality question?

I think it's ironic how she's participating in a culture that's often blamed for the economic state of an industry that pays her poor wages, which in turn prevents her from buying/renting DVDs. It makes for a vicious cycle. I don't see it as a complex moral question, though: she really shouldn't watch it online if she can't afford it. Even then, IIRC Naruto broadcasts on TV Tokyo which is free to air, so she already has a legal option to view it for free --- in which case, she wouldn't have much of an excuse for supporting the online pirates. At least her view isn't representative of the industry as a whole, since there's certainly been a number of vocal mangaka and animation studios disparaging the effects of piracy.

As an aside, I didn't know that Mushi Production still existed, which is interesting to know.

Kikaioh wrote:

samuelp wrote:

One time, I was in Tezuka's animation studio and I noticed one of the animators watching Naruto... turns out it was on a pirate streaming site.
I asked her if she knew the site wasn't legit and she told me that she couldn't afford the DVDs/renting (since she's an animator and gets paid crap).
How about that for complex morality question?

I think it's ironic how she's participating in a culture that's often blamed for the economic state of an industry that pays her poor wages, which in turn prevents her from buying/renting DVDs. It makes for a vicious cycle. I don't see it as a complex moral question, though: she really shouldn't watch it online if she can't afford it. Even then, IIRC Naruto broadcasts on TV Tokyo which is free to air, so she already has a legal option to view it for free --- in which case, she wouldn't have much of an excuse for supporting the online pirates. At least her view isn't representative of the industry as a whole, since there's certainly been a number of vocal mangaka and animation studios disparaging the effects of piracy.

As an aside, I didn't know that Mushi Production still existed, which is interesting to know.

Both Mushi Pro and Tezuka Studios still exist, and they're separate. Mushi Pro is _tiny_ though.
And she'd be working when Naruto airs. The Studio goes till ~10 PM every day.

Kikaioh wrote:

Don't compare me with other people when you don't know me. Over the last 15 years I've spent thousands of dollars on anime DVDs, soundtracks, manga, games, merchandise, convention attendance costs, theater viewings, and more.

How many thousands of dollars? I estimate that I've spent NZ$30,000 in six years. For that sort of money I could have taken up paramotoring twice over, and the thing is, I didn't need to spend it, but I wanted to. I wanted to help out the industry which gives me such cool stuff to watch.

Now there's plenty of people who spend more - after all, I don't import from Japan, not knowing the language - but it isn't an insignificant amount of money. I think I have the right to avoid having you get on my case, especially as I buy everything I finish watching. I'm not a parasite, get off your high horse and stop treating me like one.

Besides, convention attendance and theatre viewings are hardly lining the creators' pockets. Going to Japan is impressive though, I'll freely admit that.

Kikaioh wrote:

One final note: I found your cheeky attitude entertaining. I expect more snarky replies in your next response. Chop chop.

Well, you completely ignored my point about how ANN uses fansubs, you think you're god's gift to Anime, you think you are totally and completely right despite not even being close, you confuse legality with morality, you are narrow-minded, you are ethically and mentally inflexible, you think you are better than other fans, you are under the delusion that you know what the Anime creators are thinking, you lump all pirates into one category and all creators into another, you trot out being a fan for fifteen years as if it were something special, you think knowing the language makes one whit of difference to how you support the industry, you take delight in belittling those who actually support and positively impact the industry in their own way, you blindly believe in copyright instead of evaluating it objectively, you think downloading a fansub is just as ethically bad as stealing something physical, you do not understand that traditional business models are outdated, you refuse to accept that there are more ways to make money than people waiting an inordinate amount of time, you look down on those fans who don't want to wait two years just to watch a show or movie, you close your eyes and cover your ears whenever someone states that piracy has been beneficial for the Anime industry since the days of VHS and laserdiscs even though there is bountiful evidence that this is indeed so for you to consider.

There, was that sassy and snarky and scornful enough for you? No? Then don't bother replying, because I'm only going to talk to you if you first admit you were wrong to be a prick. That's not going to happen of course, so I guess this is where we part. Chow.

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