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Paploo wrote:

1- It's an academic work, and the way it is written is indeed something that's copyrightable. When you write a review, it is copyrighted to you- it is your words and opinions. If someone had simply used it as a reference source, written things in their own words for let's say, a website or a research paper, they'd be fine, especially if they cited her book. But scanning the entire thing outright is a major act of infringement and a severe danger to her livelihood. She's not being compensated for her hard work. There's a reason why you get expelled from University [often not allowed in any university for several years] when you get caught plagirising someonelses work.

But even if you did rewrite something in your own words, you are still expected to provide your sources to your professors. However, I'm wondering if such a practice is only applicable to educational institutions. If you tried to do it anywhere else, can it be considered unauthorized reproduction?

PetrifiedJello wrote:

Shakudo wrote:

Book sounds interesting, I'm reserving it at the library now.

You didn't read her blog, then? Per her rant, you're circumventing her income from royalties, and thus, are now a terrorist and a thief because you're obtaining her work for free.

Though, she's angry, so she probably didn't mean it that way.

Well, technically, a copy of a book checked out through a library has already been purchased... by the library or library system that owns it. Yes, many eyes will read that one copy. Some who borrow it from their library won't buy it (like myself, because I ultimately didn't care for the inaccuracies I saw in the book and the tone used in much of the book), but some people may have bought it after first reading a library copy. At the end of it all, library copies can be a double-edged sword.

I know some people that download movies and they would never have gone to see it anyways. So if there sales are down it wasn't because of them. In this day an age of most movies the DVD might as well be on the shelf after 4-5 weeks. If you go to movies regularly the same people are usually there every weekend. If you told them they could watch the same thing at home DVD quality they wouldn't.

The comments about DVD's the bubble has burst. It was the fastest selling electronic device ever there had to be a breaking point. Last time I watched the news the global economic situation wasn't all roses.

Now I am not so sure about music or books because I think they stand abit apart as entertainment. But how many people who used to go to movies regularly chose to play warcraft or some other game of social interaction.

It's wild to see people championing the piracy of her book.

The concept of being a professional/full-time artist is going to be dead within a decade or two or it will be even more corporation based than it already is. Way too many people feel that artists should not be allowed to profit from their work in any way shape or form.

This lady isn't some corporate big wig sitting in a mansion smoking Cuban cigars while swimming through a Scrooge McDuck vault of money. Yet you've got people like Shakudo saying she should be happy that years of hard work is being given away like it's nothing and she should use the popularity. LOL to do what? Devote more years of her life to something else that will get stolen from her? This is reality and people have bills to pay and nobody wants to be a bum.

adam_omega wrote:

.

I feel for Mrs. McCarthy here, but rather than making a huge fuss about it--which is only encouraging people to seek out the pirated product in question (a la the Streisand effect)--she should be working with her publisher to find an alternative to get the Anime Encyclopedia out there legally. Heck, how about partnering with an App maker and porting the Anime Encyclopedia to the Apple iPhone/iTouch? That would be rather useful, actually.

And publish an updated version since people are saying its out of date.

Don't forget the SONY Reader and Kindle ports.

@ sickVisionz:

I wonder if any of the pirates and leeches would ever be compelled to work on anything creative for as long as Helen McCarthy did on her book, and then see it disseminated without consent and compensation by people who don't even have the decency to tell them to their face that they're doing so because [fill in rationalization of choice].

Well, it'd be nice to believe in karma. Better than wading through the massive senses of entitlement seen here, anyway.

I am surprised she is surprised. She wrote a book about anime. Anime fans are well known for stealing stuff.

Could she not put two and two together?

I remember the Anime Encyclopedia.

...Damn. People are pirating it? Isn't that, I dunno, like people pirating English As She Is Spoke? That thing was so damn full of errors, mistakes and authorial bias that it's a wonder I got anything out of it at all.

And the old version thought that Maple Town wasn't released outside of Japan. Razz

Paploo wrote:

nadir-seen-fire wrote:

Just a nitpick. Knowledge can't be copyrighted, period.

That aside authors making public announcements complaining about their work being pirated online is getting tiring.

1- It's an academic work, and the way it is written is indeed something that's copyrightable. When you write a review, it is copyrighted to you- it is your words and opinions. If someone had simply used it as a reference source, written things in their own words for let's say, a website or a research paper, they'd be fine, especially if they cited her book. But scanning the entire thing outright is a major act of infringement and a severe danger to her livelihood. She's not being compensated for her hard work. There's a reason why you get expelled from University [often not allowed in any university for several years] when you get caught plagirising someonelses work.

...

Care not to take a single sentence out of context?

"Just a nitpick. Knowledge can't be copyrighted, period. That's what patents are for. What is copyrighted is the text that the author writes. For example this text that I'm writing know is basically common knowledge, but despite that technically I own the copyright to my portions of this post because I wrote it."

Knowledge isn't copyrightable. It's the application of that knowledge into a written form which is copyrighted. Two people can do the same research of the same knowledge, and write two separate books on that same knowledge. These two separate books have separate copyright owned by their respective authors.

Copyrights protect media created by someone and allow them to control what is done with that work and anything derived from it.
Patents protect inventions, or rather original ideas.
And trademarks protect names and symbols independent of what work they are in.
Each system is a little more specific, but that's the general idea.

Those two post parts were completely separate. Explanation of what copyright covers had absolutely nothing to do with any comment towards McCarthy's post about her book.

This article is not even newsworthy imo. Someone wrote a book, another one scanned it and put it online for free, thus making him/her angry.

Its a tragedy, really.

Dante80 wrote:

This article is not even newsworthy imo. Someone wrote a book, another one scanned it and put it online for free, thus making him/her angry.

Its a tragedy, really.

Of course, this "someone" is Helen McCarthy, prolific anime scholar and organizer of the first anime panels at a convention in England. She also wrote the first English language book on anime, and founded Anime UK magazine.

Before anime could be found free everywhere online, people like McCarthy, Schodt, and Patten were important in the growth of anime fandom.

ABCBTom wrote:

She also wrote the first English language book on anime,

That honor goes to Frederik L. Schodt as he wrote "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics," which came out a full 9 years before McCarthy first books on anime and manga. (Obviously, we can split hairs on the topic being anime or manga, but I view them as being synonymous in this particular case.)

A product surviving in spite of piracy is not proof that it actually helps. Give me a break. Correlation does not prove causation. On top of that, we're simply talking a correlation to something other than financial ruin. That's massively unconvincing to say the least.

If you want a book for free, you can rent it at a library. This wasn't just a scanned page or two, it was the entire book. This act was malicious. Saying that it isn't is like saying that fansubbing Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is really for the sake of the fans. No one reasonable is really ever going to believe that.

Fans scan manga online all the time. It's imaginable that a group of fans each scanning just a portion of the work to easily complete the whole thing.

I own the two editions of "The Anime Encyclopedia". As some people had stated, I testify that the technical data is the best, but the reviews are very subjective, inaccurate and shameful.

For instance, the Evangelion article states that:

"Gainax was critiziced for later scenes broadcast without network approval, indirectly causing the more censorious climate that hurt Cowboy Bebop." (2nd ed., p. 185)

and:

"A succession of Eva movies followed, seemingly designed ro leach the last cash and goodwill from remaining fans" (idem)

and more:

"Despite this confused denouement, Eva was the most critically successful TV anime of the 1990s (...) But like another of Anno's 1960s favorites, The Prisoner, it teases viewers with the illusion of hidden depths that weren't necessarily there, and though designed to be the last word on the giant-robot genre, its success merely ushered in a succession of imitations." (idem)

Those stong, inadequate, contradictory and subjective assertion are said without refering to any source at all. It looks like a bad wikipedia article, that needs cleanup and references.

Not very academic, if you ask me...

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