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Comics and Digital Piracy

That doesn't make any sense at all.

I still fail to see why we have to purchase an entire series to decide whether or not we like it. What if we don't?

I don't believe the argument is wrong because the statement is combining two completely different economic factors. Refusing to buy DVDs has nothing to do with wanting to consume animation. Unfortunately, this fact is lost on many.

Really think if all the piracy sites were shut down tomorrow the anime industry will be better off?

If anyone thought the answer "yes", then it's quite clear the global recession hasn't taught its lesson. The anime industry is using the exact same model to support itself and has already crashed once because of it.

I'd hate to think of the world if consumers didn't force the rules on businesses.

Doesn't this fit exactly what's going on now?

I put an emphasis in bold on the biggest factor in running any business. Why didn't you say "consumer has to spend"? After all, isn't this the same thing?
We have to buy a box set in order to watch anime.
We have to buy books in order to read manga.
We have to buy CDs to listen to music.

We have no choice in this market.b]

This is an excuse to justify people buy in today's market and it's a strawman argument.

Back in "the day", anime wasn't popular at all. In fact, it took the work of copyright infringement to bring anime into the US market.

Yet now that fansubs are doing the infringing, it's wrong?
*pulls out red card. Penalty! (bet you imagined Haruhi saying it, didn't you?)

Those prices you paid back then was because there was no market for anime in the US (high demand = high price). It wasn't until piracy grabbed more and more titles that a few businesses sat up and took notice at a potential new market. Thus, the industry was born.

But there was a problem: too many businesses saw the opportunity and when licenses were used to finance new productions, the bubble burst was inevitable.

Take a look at those titles you own. Are those business who brought them to you still around? Chances are, they're not.

Piracy didn't cause the bubble burst then and it's not the reason the industry is hurting today. That distinction goes to businesses who fail to sell a product people are willing to buy.

I can not fathom why anyone has a problem with this but yet here we are.

This is called "windowing" and it's a model which should be outlawed, in my opinion. It's price fixing. There is absolutely no reason why every single anime company releases its products at the same price its competitors do. Why is Sentai Filmworks selling its titles at the exact same price point FUNimation does despite not having a dub?
*pulls out red card. Penalty!

agila61 wrote:

Saying that is not a solution.

Whats your ideas then? Before I rip into yours, you bring your game to the table.

So, there would be a tremendous benefit from aggregation of legit manga viewing. Given an agreement with even a few big online tentpole mangas from big publishers ... the aggregator could very well then provide its diversity via also viewing from one or more niche crowdsourced translation publishers.

Calling it "Legal Aggregator" or LA for short, "(Conventional) Publisher" or Pub for short, and "Crowdsource Online Publisher", or COP for short, the relationships are LA:Pub1, LA:Pub2, LA:Pub3, LA:COP1, LA:COP2.

Each LA:Pub# might involve its own independent negotiated page serving system, but ideally the LA:COP# relationship involves an open-standard content system, and the bells and whistles and app'ing and etc. to make the viewing experience as easy as possible for the novice viewer as possible is provided by the LA.

For the business model, there is a wide range of content that the Japanese publishers cannot afford to localize, international license holders cannot afford to localize, and crowdsourcing localization can. Publishers cannot "grab" that portion of the content without embracing crowdsourcing of localization ... and if they embrace crowdsourcing of localization, "we win!!! Woot!".

The thing about the viewer side is that the more, the merrier is the manga, not the sites. More manga at one site, more people coming to read the manga to chat with in the forums ... the viewer side "wants" to have a power law distribution: one to three big viewer sites.

On the online publishing side, it kind of "wants" to be fragmented. Circles of crowdsource translators and their supporting fans, focusing on a niche or genre or approach ... or language.

In order to allow both natural distributions to work, the COP's need to be set up with licensing that allows aggregation access with a fair share of aggregator revenues. That allows the aggregator sites to focus on ad based monetization, while the COP's focus on subscription model monetization. The subscription proceeds allow payment of the permission to attempt a translation, PAT, as well as group member view royalties, while the aggregator payments to the COP are passed on through to the creator or their assigned agent.

One side point, that has not been raised: each COP needs to have a ranking of how much royalties each of the hobbyist translating circles have raised for the mangaka that they are translating. Not the dollars, just so and so 5th, so and so 4th, so and so Bronze Medal, so and so Silver Medal, so and so Gold Medal. Pure bragging rights. "We made our mangaka's money, WE WIN! TEAM-GLIB WINS!!! Woot!"