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Last edited by BasouKazuma on Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

Tofusensei wrote:

BasouKazuma wrote:

In short, hosting streaming media is no worse than using bittorrent which I'm sure most of you use for your own purposes.

Except when you make 4.05 MILLION DOLLARS off of it.

-Tofu

*Sigh*

A number that is under speculation and seems sensationalistic. I'm sure it doesn't take into account the costs of running the site. I can guarantee most of that will go back into the site.

sheighton wrote:

You know I am wondering something here...If indeed ANN is so reliable, why don't we know who wrote this article or where it came from? Do we know the credentials of this individual or not? How is it that this information was come by? Is this all just a hoax or a scorned former member of CR trying to have their revenge?...I actually find this article more dubious than in fact what it is proposing. Why? There are a lot of people out there that write fake stories and try to get them published for one reason or another, and as of right now I have no proof to the contrary of this article falling into that category.

Please do some rudimentary research before posting ^^;

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=uGa&q=crunchyroll+venture&btnG=Search

-Tofu

BasouKazuma wrote:

*Sigh*

A number that is under speculation and seems sensationalistic. I'm sure it doesn't take into account the costs of running the site. I can guarantee most of that will go back into the site.

Dear Pig-piling Crunchyroll defenders coming here just to defend the site,

You're wasting your time.

Last edited by BasouKazuma on Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

I was merely stating a more informed opinion. No need to bring the attitude unless you are against the freedom and distribution of valid information.

If I'm unwelcome this will be the last thing I'll say on this subject.

Good day.

Tofusensei wrote:

sheighton wrote:

You know I am wondering something here...If indeed ANN is so reliable, why don't we know who wrote this article or where it came from? Do we know the credentials of this individual or not? How is it that this information was come by? Is this all just a hoax or a scorned former member of CR trying to have their revenge?...I actually find this article more dubious than in fact what it is proposing. Why? There are a lot of people out there that write fake stories and try to get them published for one reason or another, and as of right now I have no proof to the contrary of this article falling into that category.

Please do some rudimentary research before posting ^^;

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=uGa&q=crunchyroll+venture&btnG=Search

-Tofu

I am not talking about what started the article, rather the other wild speculations that it makes. I am also asking about who it was that wrote this article and whether they are a reliable source and not just some blogger-type with no credentials whatsoever...

sheighton wrote:

Quote:

There are no advertisements placed into the streams and there is no known plan of doing so

From Crunchyroll management:

Quote:

Moving forward: Like Hulu, long-format video streams will eventually include in-stream advertising. "Pay for play or ownership downloads don’t work because the anime community has been living on years off free fansubs," explained Crunchyroll, "but if its long content, on a clean site" unlike Hulu, "part of a like-minded community" it can succeed.

The difference is the payoff after the ad: you’ll wait 1-2 minutes to watch a 24 minute episode of a 56 episode series, but you won’t wait through a 30 second ad for a 5 minute clip of user-generated crap.

Also, whether the ads are in the stream or on the webpage doesn't in the slightest affect the fact that Crunchyroll is profiting from the streams.

Quote:

There is no evil plan, the owner just wanted to share videos with friends and people who loved Anime from the beginning.

C'mon. Does Crunchyroll's owners also nurse sick puppies back to health while saving the environment? People in it for 'social' reasons don't track down venture capital funding (I found articles dating back into 07 stating they were courting capital investment), come from cutting their teeth on other business venture/ad revenue websites (HotorNot), and have a handful of preplanned advertising goals prepared as stated in the article. This is clearly primarily a internet business venture, and always was.

sheighton wrote:

It is illegal to charge for providing copyrighted content without permission or payment to the copyright owner. True...That however is not what Crunchyroll does, there is no required fee involved, as membership and access to the video content is free.

Unless, of course, you want access to the high-quality video.

sheighton wrote:

One can however donate money to keep the site up.

Or one can pay a service fee to gain access to the high-quality video.
You may choose to believe that crunchyroll.com is operated by some guy named shinji on a shoestring budget as a hobby, but I choose to believe that it is at least 3 guys working on it full time out of hotornot.com's location as a business with a revenue stream rapidly approaching $1 million/year.

sheighton wrote:

There is nothing illegal about any of this...Sorry to burst your bubble...

There's several things illegal about it. The big one is willful infringement of copyright "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain". Regardless of what fairy tale you believe that their revenue stream from donations and advertising goes to, they just got infused with $4 million. TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 5 > § 506 (a)(1)(b) and (c) probably apply too, just not as blatantly obviously. Those all fall under criminal infringement.

You (and crunchyroll.com) seem to be suffering from the notion that "Safe harbor" under the DMCA applies here, but a number of conditions have been neglected. Among the most obvious are:
a) Safe harbor applies if "the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content." Crunchyroll.com offers "low quality" modified content for free, and original "high quality" for a fee.
b) Safe harbor applies if the provider "does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing." Umm... yeah.
c) Safe harbor applies if the provider "does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity." $4 million in venture capital attracted by a revenue stream sufficient to justify it with a business model based almost exclusively on the distribution of copyrighted material without a license to do so suggests that crunchyroll.com may be over-exposed here.

This is a fun one: safe harbor applies "to a service provider only if the service provider has designated an agent to receive notifications of claimed infringement described in paragraph (3), by making available through its service, including on its website in a location accessible to the public, and by providing to the Copyright Office, substantially the following information:
(A) the name, address, phone number, and electronic mail address of the agent.
What crunchyroll.com provides:
Email: copyright at crunchyroll dot com
Fax: 901.234.1256

One out of four isn't exactly a complete disregard for the requirements of the DMCA, and I guess you might argue that a fax number counts as a phone number, but still...

Curiously they are much more thorough in their requirements for complaints.

sheighton wrote:

Wow, it seems that most of you if not all of you except for Goodpenguin are missing the point that there is only ONE thing that is illegal that is being done...That one thing is illegal distribution. There is no profiting going on, only donations by subscribers and an investment of $4M by an outside company...And yet the reason why I say that it still falls under a gray zone of the law is because of the fact that CR makes it very visible that they will willingly remove any copyrighted content if asked or told to do so. This in turn would mean that if a company does not ask this, it is essentially consenting (whether it approves of it or not) to this distribution until it does ask for the removal of the series. This is also the reason why a distribution company is far more likely to come knocking on the door than a studio...

I notice that you amended your position from 'nothing illegal' to 'one thing illegal' so progress appears to be happening. Most of this is just sort of funny, but the notion of implied consent here made me actually laugh out loud when I saw it. The fact that they have a copyright policy visible on their website is just the beginning (a failed one) at trying to meet the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. It isn't a get out of jail free card.

Last edited by sheighton on Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:38 pm; edited 2 times in total

Goodpenguin wrote:

From Crunchyroll management:

Moving forward: Like Hulu, long-format video streams will eventually include in-stream advertising. "Pay for play or ownership downloads don’t work because the anime community has been living on years off free fansubs," explained Crunchyroll, "but if its long content, on a clean site" unlike Hulu, "part of a like-minded community" it can succeed.

The difference is the payoff after the ad: you’ll wait 1-2 minutes to watch a 24 minute episode of a 56 episode series, but you won’t wait through a 30 second ad for a 5 minute clip of user-generated crap.

As far as I can find there is nothing on CR itself or anywhere in its forums that says that, but then again I might not be looking in the right place...So where exactly did you find that?

tempest wrote:

Dargonxtc wrote:

Chalk that up to venture investors. Invest in company, buy company stock, wait till stock doubles or triples. Sell stock before company begins downward spiral, legal troubles etc. Wipe hands clean in the end, usually couple years down the road.

Doesn't work that way. The company hasn't gone public yet. The VC's money is going to be locked in for a while. If the company sinks before the VCs are allowed to sell their shares, they lose their money.

-t

True. I was using terminology for publically held companies. And this one is not. However the modus operandi is still basically the same. And while it is not impossible for these companies to lose money, more often than not they don't. That's what these people do. Look for seemingly risky investments that no one else will touch, and exploit them through strong arming and sticking to a plan. And no, they don't necessarily have to go public to achieve those goals.

But your right in that they don't always make their money back. But these people bathe in risk, and they pick their targets carefully. And success to them may mean disaster for everyone else. Or it simply may be turning it into something that say a company like Google and the like will buy from them.

I wasn't wrong in what I said, you just took it as an all inclusive 100% as that is what happens no matter what. But they know why things are "risky" just like everyone* else.

What neither sheighton nor BasouKazuma has adequately explained yet is why the venture capital investment happened in the first place, and the motive is most certainly relevant to this discussion. Did they do it because they saw CR as being on the forefront of legitimate online video distribution? If so, then what's going on here is acceptable provided that CR makes a diligent effort to completely cease hosting material without permission, regardless of whether someone's asked them to stop or not. If not, and the venture capital company saw the profit potential in what CR is currently doing, then there's bad legal ramifications in the wind here, and all the nitpicking you're doing on technicalities isn't going to prevent that, sheighton. In such a case CR, whether by intent or not, is just playing the odds that no company is going to be diligent enough to actually sue them and carry it through. I cannot see a jury actually buying the "it's only donations" argument based on information that has been explained and presented so far, especially not with a $4 million capital investment. As others have said, venture capital is always done with the expectation of profits.

And on the point about C&D orders: the fact that CR responds to them doesn't clean up their image much. Permission to do something with regard to electronic or written media is not legally assumed if not explicitly denied; if no word is given one way or the other on permission, then it defaults to what the law says, and on nearly any form of media the law says, "may not be used without authorization/permission." That is not an arguable point, as it is printed explicitly in the legal warning at the beginning of every (non-bootlegged) DVD I've ever seen, announced during every sports broadcast on TV/radio, in the credits of every movie and TV show I've ever seen, etc. etc. In no way does CR's policy of removing content on request get around that if they're allowing content to stream or be downloaded without permission in the first place.

sheighton wrote:

Quote:

So where exactly did you find that?

http://kokoromedia.com/?p=56

'Kokoro Media' is a entity that just so happens to aim 'specifically for content & licensing executives who are in and interested in working in media that originates or is purely influenced from outsides the United States: specifically the media-rich countries of Japan and the rest of the Far East.' I'm not sure if there is any direct connection to Crunchyroll, or if it's just happenstance.

sheighton wrote:

Also note that the easiest way to solve everything that is being argued about in this thread would be merely for CR to obtain distribution rights and charge a nominal fee to pay for those rights...Easy enough (just might need a few more members first)...

Oh, yeah. Piece of cake. Frankly, I'm not sure what's more appalling, your understanding of copyright law or your estimation of licensors' intelligence.

CR: Hi. We've been getting rich off your content illegally for two years. Can we have your content legally now?
Licensor: Sure! No problem! Here you go!

Others on this thread have derailed most of your other arguments.

jsevakis wrote:

sheighton wrote:

Also note that the easiest way to solve everything that is being argued about in this thread would be merely for CR to obtain distribution rights and charge a nominal fee to pay for those rights...Easy enough (just might need a few more members first)...

Oh, yeah. Piece of cake. Frankly, I'm not sure what's more appalling, your understanding of copyright law or your estimation of licensors' intelligence.

CR: Hi. We've been getting rich off your content illegally for two years. Can we have your content legally now?
Licensor: Sure! No problem! Here you go!

Others on this thread have derailed most of your other arguments.

Actually, not really...I have not been all that far off on any of the copyright issues (ie illegal distribution, being the only issue, but anyways), nor I am wrong to be questioning the validity of this article (nothing other than illegal distribution and investment by venture capitalists has actually been confirmed), and nor is it unlikely for CR to gain a legal distribution license...Faced with making more money and not making more money, which do you think a copyright owner would likely choose? Rolling Eyes

Last edited by jsevakis on Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

sheighton wrote:

Actually, not really...I have not been all that far off on any of the copyright issues (ie illegal distribution, being the only issue, but anyways), nor I am wrong to be questioning the validity of this article (nothing other than illegal distribution and VR investment has actually been confirmed),

Uh... isn't that the crux of the article? 1. Said company has almost entirely illegal content; 2. Said company just got millions in VC money. The rest of it is just minor details, the most significant of which is that they're intending to try to license content legally, which you are clearly arguing for.

Quote:

and nor is it unlikely for CR to gain a legal distribution license...Faced with making more money and not making more money, which do you think a copyright owner would likely choose? Rolling Eyes

Hahahaha! DEFINITELY spoken like someone who has never worked with an anime company! (Or the Japanese in general.) Basic commerce rules mandate that there has to be mutual trust for two companies to work together. By starting off the relationship by ENGAGING IN PIRACY, CR has more or less completely eliminated the possibility of working with anybody in the anime world in a legal manner. They are and will be personna non grata for as long as anybody remembers them.

BasouKazuma wrote:

I was merely stating a more informed opinion. No need to bring the attitude unless you are against the freedom and distribution of valid information.

If I'm unwelcome this will be the last thing I'll say on this subject.

Good day.

Valid information? I'm sorry to say, but that site is not even going to come close to needing 4 million to operate. If their operating costs resemble that number then we can all take solace in the fact that they are getting screwed as much as they are screwing the industry.

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