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NEWS: Uncertain State of the Anime Industry Profiled

funny how the lion share of posts are about how fansubs kill sales while ignoring the very clear message that the industry has been screwing the workhorses who do the majority of the animating.

DomFortress wrote:

And the fact is nobody will go and buy every single licensed anime/manga after one had seen it in fansubs/scanslations.

Yo. *waves hand*

literally cut out the middlemen who have been lining their pockets at the cost of the artists who actually deserve the the profits companies like funimation and ADV ...etc... who buy up the licenses and pretty much leave the artists in the dust if the anime does sell big are doing the industry far more harm by making it so unprofitable to be an animator people are leaving the industry the very people who create their profit which is why I personally wouldn't care if they ended up getting cut right out of the loop by the animators.

samuelp, every postyou've made about people who watch fansubs , had this one simple fact that you tend to ignored, and that is they are stealing intellectual properties owned by a dying industry that aren't free, but are paid to air only on Japanese TV networks with advertising revenues from Japanese companies. So unless you can come up with a good defense for that accusation, everything you've said are just whines and complains with condescending undertones that's making you sound like an elitist.

The great majority of late night anime actually is pay-to-play, i.e. the anime production companies have to PAY the TV station to air the show on TV, not the other way around. Furthermore the advertising revenue (if there is any) goes straight to the TV station, not the anime production group. And what is abundantly clear here is that people who equate "breaking copyright law" to "morally corrupt behavior" are not helping the industry survive.

So...

samuelp wrote:

The great majority of late night anime actually is pay-to-play, i.e. the anime production companies have to PAY the TV station to air the show on TV, not the other way around. Furthermore the advertising revenue (if there is any) goes straight to the TV station, not the anime production group. And what is abundantly clear here is that people who equate "breaking copyright law" to "morally corrupt behavior" are not helping the industry survive. So...

Aren't Japanese anime industry themselves Japanese companies? Aren't they paying the pay-to-play TV station to only air their anime as advertisements for the related anime medias, using their own ad revenues? And anime fans with a better moral sense are not just supporting the anime industry with their contributions on legally owned anime medias, but they're also not the ones that are stealing from the anime industry.

So what, elitist?

So while yes fansubs are not the only issue facing the industry, it is the one that we can directly do something about.

I just don't see how you can call the 1000s of otaku in Japan who only buy ~5% of the shows they watch fans, while calling the 1000s of fansub watchers around the world who only buy ~5% of what they watch thieves and villians, when the only difference is a violation of international copyright law.

I know that I personally don't watch fansubs anymore, but the only anime I've been buying this past year has been Macross F on Blu-ray, despite having watched 10-12 anime series on TV last year. So I guess that makes me a true fan, just because what I'm doing is completely legal?

If the TV broadcasts are truly just advertisement for the merch/DVDs, then what company wouldn't want those advertisements aired to the largest possible audience?

As far as your "fact" posts where you reference losses in the industry, I want you to prove with real sales numbers that shows that are fansubbed perform worse than those which do not. Fansubs existed in the peak period of 2006. Why are they "suddenly" having effect years after they came about? Is your point that more people who were previously buying aren't now because of fansubs? Can you prove this with numbers or statistics? Can you prove there are no other contributing factors?

The point is that fansubs don't take money away from pay-to-play media. That media has always had to earn it's revenue in other ways (DVD sales, etc.). Fansub is a distribution method that costs the industry nothing, so if anything this could be considered helpful to the industry, provided that the people watching it are actually buying DVDs. They don't have to pay to play fansubs.

The moral problem is people not buying DVDs or attempting to support what they like. The idea that copyright infringement = stealing is inane, particularly when it comes to pay to play media. Even if I were watching on TV if I really like what I'm seeing and don't support it I'm doing the wrong thing. I believe the same is true of those people who buy used, etc. If it's not supporting the industry it's not supporting what they value and it's useless money spent.

As far as your "fact" posts where you reference losses in the industry, I want you to prove with real sales numbers that shows that are fansubbed perform worse than those which do not. Fansubs existed in the peak period of 2006. Why are they "suddenly" having effect years after they came about? Is your point that more people who were previously buying aren't now because of fansubs? Can you prove this with numbers or statistics? Can you prove there are no other contributing factors?

You are a true anime fan when you're doing everything you can to support the anime industry legally in your country of Japan, yes. Because those 10 - 12 anime series that you watched with your Japanese TV networks subscription, were only licensed to release on domestic Japanese TV networks.

The international copyright law granted the original creators the sole rights to do whatever they want with their intellectual properties, while at the same time requested the people within the jurisdiction to respect the copyright holders with their decisions on what to do with their properties. So technically when you committed copyright infringement on a copyrighted intellectual property, you're basically disrespecting the original creators' rights as individuals. And that's even before you've found guilty by your local authority.

And when intellectual properties are being illegally released and distributed amass, and by doing so violate the original creators' rights. That's not advertising, that's just wrong.

As the article states itself, the actual animators, directors, producers, and animation production companies do NOT own any of the copyright to the shows they create. Instead the copyrights are dolled out to the companies who fronted the cash for production, i.e. the sponsers. So the whole concept of "intellectual property", i.e. that you own something you create, is turned on its head in this situation, because the people who actually create the content give up their intellectual rights from the very beginning.
The companies whose rights are being violated do not create anime, they simply fund it.

However how do you define "The original creators'"?

As the article states itself, the actual animators, directors, producers, and animation production companies do NOT own any of the copyright to the shows they create. Instead the copyrights are dolled out to the companies who fronted the cash for production, i.e. the sponsers. So the whole concept of "intellectual property", i.e. that you own something you create, is turned on its head in this situation, because the people who actually create the content give up their intellectual rights from the very beginning.
The companies whose rights are being violated do not create anime, they simply fund it.

samuelp wrote:

However how do you define "The original creators'"? As the article states itself, the actual animators, directors, producers, and animation production companies do NOT own any of the copyright to the shows they create. Instead the copyrights are dolled out to the companies who fronted the cash for production, i.e. the sponsers. So the whole concept of "intellectual property", i.e. that you own something you create, is turned on its head in this situation, because the people who actually create the content give up their intellectual rights from the very beginning. The companies whose rights are being violated do not create anime, they simply fund it.

WRONG! The actual animators, directors, producers, and the rest of the animation production company own the intellectual property which is the anime that they've made collectively as a group. You're mistaking copyrights with licensing. Because otherwise, by your logic, the copyright of Macross Frontier would've belong to Shoji Kawamori, and not Satelight, the anime studio that produced Macross Frontier which Mr. Kawamori helped co-funded in 1995.

While this is often correct, it does vary from show to show. In some cases, the animation studio (or even small groups of creative staff, who've formed their own company) is a member of the production committee, which means that it shares copyrights with partner sponsors.