Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga UK Confirms No DVD for Honey & Clover, 3 Others
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-kf
 Posts: 29 |
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There was a post that responded to this that now appears to be gone. Obviously posts about gun control have no place in an anime forum, but did the mods delete the post responding to this, and NOT delete the original content that caused the response to be made? Hypocrisy? |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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I've done a bit of video editing and it makes think that including "conversion to PAL" as costly sounds a bit bullocks.
I wonder if on demand disc authoring/pressing would be a viable option for licensee if their fees were reduced. |
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jsyxx
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Yeah, exactly. Like I said you guys are getting screwed. Movies don't create violence or sex crimes. This isn't the 1950's anymore. Also any system in which you must pay so much money to a bunch of government bureaucrats who perform a pointless service to release a DVD that it makes said release unprofitable is obviously extremely corrupt and moronic. |
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-kf
Posts: 29 |
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Although I certainly agree with most of what you say, it isn't a completely pointless service. Ratings help people determine the nature of the content, and thus help buyers make an informed decision. This is important because if a parent is in a store shopping for a child in the 8-10 year old age range, they need to be able to pick out things that are age appropriate. There are a number of things in anime that most parents would probably agree are not appropriate for children in the 8-10 age range. The problem of course is that they don't just assign age ratings, and the methods they employ may not be the most agreeable. I think it is hard to argue that there is something wrong with putting an age rating on a box, granted I'm sure there is plenty of debate on what content should dictate said age ratings. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2256 Location: Online Terminal |
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Getting back to the article, I could see the argument that hardly anyone uses NTSC anymore, but it's still iffy, I think.
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jsyxx
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Honestly, that's shifting the responsibility of parenting from parents to the government, which is just a great way to erode free expression. Here's a simple solution; have the home video market rate their own DVDs and institute a system where retailers can be notified that someone must be 18 years old to buy a film. This can be done with normal POS register software with no government involvement. Bam problem solved. No more moronic waste of tax money and no more government censorship of art. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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BBFC is a non-governmental body. Besides I would just drop that argument if I were you.
It won't go away any soon, no matter how much I, or you yell. Like said by many others, it doesn't really matter. They rarely do anything to DVDs anyway, other than age classifying. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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they are still pretty major markets though, even if they don't comprise most of the world. Me thinks people should continue to import R1 dvds. It's a win-win situation for everyone, really. |
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-kf
Posts: 29 |
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What? Having an age rating on a dvd so that parents can look at it and see what the nature of the content is so they can make an informed decision is shifting the responsibility away from the parent? How exactly does that work? Should the parent just look at the pictures and read the one paragraph description to determine whether it might be suitable, then take it home and screen the entire thing to make sure it is ok?
There are a couple problems with this, firstly there isn't just one home video market, there are a number of publishers, and trying to get all of them on the same page to rate content in the same way would be difficult to say the least. Instead of having one ratings system, you would have 20. The next problem in having publishers rate their own content is a bit of a conflict of interest. How could you expect them to be objective about rating things when those ratings could have a direct impact on their sales? It is much easier to have a third party with one standardized ratings system, that doesn't have a personal stake in the content they are rating. I'm not saying the BBFC is some ideal organization, that their ratings are completely fair or logical, that censoring things and forcing cuts is right or necessary(you shouldn't need to censor material if you are attaching an adult age rating to it) or that the BBFC has fair operating practices. It is however important to have an age rating, to have that age rating applied by someone without a monetary interest in the sale of the content, and to have those ratings standardized for any DVD you purchase. The cost of having your content reviewed and rated, and having materials censored are separate issues from the age rating itself. They don't need to abandon the BBFC, they just need to work towards having some procedural and cost changes instituted. Obviously there shouldn't be any need to censor material when the nature of the content is described, and a mature adults only rating is given to it. It is also a bit unfair to be charging prices for content review that are going to make the content unprofitable. There are any number of ways the BBFC could be made to change their pricing structure to accommodate low selling material. It would be easy enough to have a small initial charge for material with low sales predictions, and then collect a larger fee if said material meets a certain number of units sold. |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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The BBFC was set up by the British film industry in order to avoid the alternative - government censorship. It charges what it needs to be self-sufficient (and therefore independent). The alternatives would be direct funding from the film industry (which would leave it open to charges of favouritism towards the big studios) or direct funding from the government (which would leave it open to political manipulation). Charging based on sales predictions would be a nightmare - there's no realistic way for the BBFC to track sales and determine the final price, especially given that the sales period would essentially be open-ended. Frankly, in terms of DVD distribution, a few thousand pounds in rating fees is a tiny sum - if you don't believe your product can recoup that amount, it's almost certainly not worth your time to release it in the first place since, even if you didn't have to pay the BBFC, you'd barely be breaking even. |
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-kf
Posts: 29 |
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Not if the company signed an agreement to provide that information. You have a title that isn't likely to sell well and you want a break on the cost to get it to the market, you agree to provide the sales numbers.
This would definitely be a bit trickier, but there is usually a predictable sales period. I'm going to pull this out of my ass, but you could set a time frame of say two years, if the title doesn't sell more than a specified number of units by that time frame, then the company wouldn't be obligated to pay a higher fee. Might the BBFC lose out eventually? Sure but the period of time that would pass in order to break that point would be significant enough that it wouldn't matter. Also, if the company owning the material signed an agreement to release sales information to the BBFC then it wouldn't matter if it were open ended, the company would always have that information, and be contractually obligated to provide it to the BBFC. The question would be whether it was worth it to the BBFC to essentially throw people a bone, and I think the answer would depend on the number of titles they would need to do it for. Other than a small number of indie films and a few anime I don't see that they would need to do it very often. Of course they would also have to care enough to even consider trying to help facilitate a niche market, and I doubt that will ever be the case.
Sadly that is the state the anime DVD market is in. If anime distributors want to get some of the more niche titles out to fans on DVD, they have to consider cutting costs in as many places as possible, and hope they sell enough units of enough niche titles for it to amount to something worthwhile. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Note that this service needn't be provided by a costly third party such as the one in question. Several of the R1 DVDs I own feature parental guidance notices on their covers, but do not appear to have been rated by an external body. Over here, such practice is unfortunately illegal. A small number of extreme titles notwithstanding, permitting local distributors to self-rate titles could spare them a fair penny.
One could argue, vis-à-vis import VAT and the holding fee, that HM Revenue and Customs and Royal Mail often benefit more from this practice than customers. Still, there are ways and means around it. (In most cases, at least.) |
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-kf
Posts: 29 |
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That brings us back to the problems of accuracy and consistency. How accurately can you expect a distributor to self-rate their titles when overlooking a couple things could mean dropping an age rating down a category, and opening it up to the potential to sell more copies? Whose responsibility is it to check to make sure all these distributors are rating things correctly? Furthermore Since the BBFC is a separate entity, its rating system is likely proprietary and I doubt they are going to give distributors the rights to use it, and put themselves out of business. This means that each distributor would need to come up with their own ratings system. Then, how do the ratings of one distributor compare to those of the BBFC? How about to the ten other distributors who have decided to self-rate? The criteria one distributor uses to define an age group may be different than that of their peers. I doubt people are going to want to carry around a quick reference chart to compare the differences between a dozen ratings systems every time they look at a DVD box. |
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Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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I guess the problem with that from the BBFC's point of view is that subsequent re-issues or re-releases wouldn't be covered and the drawback from the distributor's point of view is that "sales" might ultimately turn into "returns". It might work okay but there's risk involved on both sides.
The big disadvantage of self-certification is that it doesn't exempt anybody (producer; distributor; retailer; consumer) from legal proceedings if the police, customs or other authorities subsequently decide that a DVD is obscene or otherwise subject to prosecution. A BBFC certificate means everybody can rest easy - it's been officially approved and that approval can't be revoked unless the film is re-submitted. |
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Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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In face of these criticisms, I can only ask the meagre question of how BBFC costs compare with the (apparently optional) MPAA fees in the US. Are they different by a large degree, or does the larger size of the R1 market help negate the price of the latter association's services?
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