Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! DMCA MSRP WTF
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aereus
Posts: 574 |
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PetrifiedJello: The DMCA and even the other thing you mentioned about Communications Decency only cover illegal material uploaded to them unwittingly.
Fansub groups and Scanlation groups KNOW they don't own the rights to the files they host or throw up on torrent sites. They really wouldn't have a leg to stand on with regards to DMCA/CDA. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14761 |
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Besides, Baen consumers are "sophisticated" consumers. I'd daresay compared to them, typical anime consumers are on the level of script-kiddies. 
While sophisticated consumers would look for the best value for their product, script-kiddies would just look for the lowest price, even if they have to steal and distribute the spoils to others. That's why the Baen model works for their consumers. |
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Sunday Silence
 Posts: 2047 |
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Same could be said for the companies themselves. People are willing to pay for content, so whats the hold up? You can only call your customer base "thieves" so far before they begin to dump you in favor of something else. |
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Wrathful
 Posts: 372 |
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Panon
Posts: 242 |
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Toradora is "moe-centric" now?
Are we just at the point where "moe" means "has girls in it" or something? |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14761 |
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Heheh, I guess the new state of the Japanese industry's reputation now precedes it.
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garfield15
 Posts: 1517 |
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Yes. Yes we are at that stage now.
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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You've missed LRH's point entirely. The argument is directed at those fans who go on about how if the industry would "only" do X, Y or Z, why, then they would have an explosion of success that they are turning their back on now. The counter-argument is, if its that easy, why not just do it, and then you'll have the benefits of that explosion of success. So the point of the argument is that it isn't as easy as some people make out, because otherwise somebody would be doing it and experiencing that explosive success. The hold-up is that the "forum sure thing" is a fantasy - even in new business models that eventually work out, it is common for some of the early innovators to not get all of the pieces right, and fail, with some other company that learns from its mistakes being the one that reaps the rewards. So the "hold-up" is that people are betting the life of their companies on their decisions, and are not eager to be the company on the bleeding edge. As far as calling their customers "thieves", you seem to have your companies confused. You slipped from talking about the anime production committees and manga publishers to talking about the members of the RIAA. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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It's not speculation, agila61. Though, look up Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver aka The US Copyright Group. Currently, they've 14,000+ lawsuits ready to go for those who've downloaded. Though, it's really not about the courts, it's about pre-settlement letters to avoid court. Yep, let's not care about infringement, but instead, try to get thousands to avoid prosecution. These types of lawsuits are growing quickly. If you still believe it's speculation, check out the Joel Tennenbaum and Jammie Rasset lawsuits. Why are the plaintiffs focusing only on the make available? Statutory damages. Much, much higher for those making available than simply downloading.
But both touch upon copyright law, therefore, are inclusive.
You're missing the scope. All websites contain some form of copyright material. It's how those materials get onto the websites where the focus is. I don't disagree these owners know the content is copyright, but that doesn't matter. The law is protecting them until it's proven otherwise. I just wish they'd take a more proactive approach rather than hiding behind a shield. No, I don't mean properly addressing take down notices, I mean doing what's ethically right. However, such is human nature for some to just not give a damn.
Hence why we have lawyers. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Jeeze, you really don’t get it do you? If you're not going to listen to me, go out and find a forum where comic artist convene and ask them how they're making a living. Most comic book artist here would KILL to have something similar to the comic industry of Japan here. Japan has a fantastic system that nurtures indie artist starting out in middle school all the way to being professionally published. Yeah, they need to adjust for digital, which some of them are slowly doing, but no other place in the world has such a large number of comic book artist, constantly employed and being paid a regular pay check. Their system is as much of a “lottery” system as ANY other art career; acting, painting, photography, singing, etc. If you don’t have the talent or the business knowledge to survive, you won’t be successful with that career path. The working model is not blown to hell, and though sales are slipping with manga magazines in Japan due to people reading manga online, actual book sales are still going strong. The publishers just need to figure out a way to get the magazines online because magazines all over the world are suffering, comic oriented or not.
As a matter of fact I DO support the system that has been working for years. What you’re talking about will NOT work for people just beginning to get out in the comic industry. Not EVERYONE who reads comics reads them online. Some people, like with regular books, will always prefer to read them with a physical copy in their hands. You will NOT being seeing the end of the publishing industry as we know it in your life time. It may be down the road a couple hundred years into the future, but books are far from dead. Yes, an artist has the freedom now more than ever to take their property into their own hands and run with it, but an artist has always had the freedom to deny selling certain rights to publishers. Publishers are not a big, faceless, evil conglomerate here labeled The Man as you seem to be trying to demonize them. Publishers are companies of plenty of hard working people, from editors to quality checkers, and the reason why comic book artist and authors go with them is because they help get you access to larger audiences. Yeah, I can post my comic or book online on my own website, try some banner ads and facebook/my space pages, etc, but you stand an even worse chance of making a profit you can live off of versus signing up with a publisher. Publishers get the work out there, publishers get the books into stores, set up a monster machine of advertising and publicity, and in Japan gives a comic artist acess to millions of readers in a single week who may be reading the magazine for One Piece, but might actually stop to read your random chapter of manga that got published in the same magazine. If the indie comic artists want to get together to offer a site with tons of titles for free, they can do that, and ARE doing it. But there is a very small percentage are making enough money to make a living off of it.
There you go demonizing the publishers again. The royalties favor the artist for the most part. All contracts are different depending on the person, but the royalties favor the artist. Publishing a comic that sells ok in book form will give a manga-ka enough money to live off a season to a year or more, just like anyone who makes a living writing. With this sort of job you need to constantly produce more work, very rarely can you depend on a single work to get you through the rest of your life. If their royalties were not giving them enough to eat, you would not be seeing a huge population of comic artist in Japan. The artist are content with the pay they make, and a better paycheck depends on the quality and appeal of their work to the masses, just like with any other career in art. The internet is not about to drastically change this for anyone who makes a career off of the arts.
Why do you continue to demonize the publishers? Easily find methods to get their work out there? Laughable. You obviously have never tried doing just what you're suggesting. Artist WANT publishers. Yes, there will always be those who never want to go near them, but the majority of artist who want to make a living off their work WANT publishers. Any artist who is planning on making a living off of their work HAS to produce that work with a business mindset. If you are not a businessman as well as an artist, you will not make a profit, and instead possibly starve, go nuts, and cut off an ear or something. Artist are aware of what they have to do to make money, and yes, some publishers take advantage of that artist, but you learn, you move on, and you start another project, and get better with business lingo, the rights of your creations, and what sort of business partnership you make with a publisher. Piracy is a problem here because it is affecting both the artist and the publishers. There is no set business model that anyone can use right now to guarantee profits on the net, but most every publisher is experimenting. Just because they’re not working fast enough for you doesn’t mean you have the right to read it for free because there isn’t an official digital version available. Some artist and authors will NEVER want their stuff posted on the net. Again, this does not give you the right to post it on the net for them.
OpenManga is a piece of crap I wouldn’t put my creation on to because I don’t support who they are, or how they got there. And I’ve already stated why a distributor, a PUBLISHER is necessary if you want to make a living off your work. Publishers get your works to the masses, and they are brilliant with publicity. You can try to publicize on your own, but unless you’re a genius on the net with a brilliant grass roots movement, you will not be getting to as many readers as you would with a publisher backing you up. If I made a comic on my own I COULD post it on the net, but at this point in time I will NOT be making any money off of it. Oh sure, if I spread it around to as many sites as you say, over a month I may get a paycheck totaling around 40 bucks. I cannot live off a paycheck of 40 bucks. Again, many people in the comic business are trying what your suggesting, but an extremely small percentage of them are making a living off of it. Just the other day some people I know in the comic industry were trying to come up with a name of some comic book artist out there making a living solely off of the internet via ads and the like. We came up with NO ONE. Penny Arcade, and Megatokyo perhaps? Making most of their money off of book sales and merch, even if all their comic is available for reading online. If you’re aware of comic artist with success stories in what you’re talking about, please, link them to me so I can see how they’re doing it and share it with everyone else I know in the industry, because as far as we know it ISN’T HAPPENING. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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The lawsuits are directed at torrent users, precisely because most torrent users simultaneously upload ... that's how torrent works. Paradoxically, the only torrent downloader of infringing material who is not participating in the distribution of a new copy are the pure leech downloaders. If the only evidence that is available on your claim that a judge has ruled that watching a stream of an infringing video is copyright infringement is a mass lawsuit enterprise targetting torrent downloaders, then you got nothing to back up your claim. You just made that part up. |
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mglittlerobin
 Posts: 1071 |
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I hate how new anime fans don't seem to want to collect anything, why WOULDN'T you want to watch your favorite anime more than once with no worries about commercials, or emails from your ISP about illegal downloading, I'm PROUD of my small, but steadily growing collection. I'm not buying ALL of them, but my favorites are definitely ending up on my shelf.
And if you whine about being broke, then I have one word for you, PRESENTS! Get them as presents! |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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OK, I still believe you are making shit up when you claim that watching a streaming video has been found to be illegal, so let me go ahead and do that. And lo and behold, the very first link I click on in google:
He was using Kazaa, not watching video streams. He admitted in court that he uploaded material. If that's the evidence you relied upon (instead of looking for evidence after the fact and that was the closest you could find), then you just fabricated your claim that a judge has found watching infringing video streams to be illegal. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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A lot of people loosely project from the newspaper industry to all publishing. But the newspaper industry was a particular business model in which the cost of publishing and distributing a daily newspaper made it into a monopoly or tight oligopoly market, which was funded by Wal-Mart and the kid down the street selling his bicycle not because they wanted to fund the Middle East desk, but because it was the only way to get the ads in front of the eyeballs that they wanted to reach. Break the market power protecting the display ad and especially the classified ad revenue stream, and its an industry that does have to reinvent itself in the coming decade. For manga, the business model has been to rely on sales of the work and associated rights in multiple channels. Rather than replacing that model, online distribution is one or more additional channels. Which means that publishers have to find a way to get a net benefit from the online channels ... gaining an online market without prematurely killing off their print publishing channels. If the publishers are accused of being "greedy money grubbing" when they manage their different channels to try to find the best balance for their profits ... well, the artists' ability to continue to earn an income from the activity requires that the "greedy money grubbing" is successful. The alternative is an industry shake-out and a lot of mangaka looking for work elsewhere. |
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cjovalle
Posts: 31 |
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I have to disagree somewhat here, primarily because these aren't simple issues.
There's nothing in the DMCA to expressly protect anime or manga, because in general, specific industries are not protected. Anime and manga are still protected like anything else is protected. The DMCA modified existing US copyright law, and is not the only law to do so involving digital materials; but copyright still protects anime and manga in the same manner as it always had. The DMCA goes far beyond the protection of OSPs (to use the statutory language, Online Service Providers, which are inclusive of ISPs); that's really only a small section of that particular law. Just because a website says it's protected by the DMCA doesn't make it true; many streaming sites are not protected. To take advantage of the safe harbor provision, the site has to comply with statutory requirements, including the registration of a DMCA contact with the US Copyright Office and compliance with the notice-and-takedown procedures outlined under the statute. It's not that an "assumption is made" that sites will comply; there are specific provisions that require compliance in order to retain the safe harbor. If the site does not comply, it loses its safe harbor, and may be liable for the actions of its users. Knowledge of specific instances of infringing material may result in the loss of safe harbor liability, and inducement of infringing behavior may also result in liability. This situation came from the Grokster case, but it's also applied to at least one bittorrent site (Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., v. Fung). The international context complicates things; however, that is not specifically a problem with copyright law. The safe harbor for OSPs is the only reason why user-content sites can exist. It also protects libraries, schools, and other institutions that offer Internet services. It also protects forums and sites like the Anime News Network from being liable for the potentially infringing actions of its users (if ANN has gone through the proper DMCA registration procedures). From a consumer standpoint, the DMCA is not particularly friendly, and even for that section it was certainly not a complete win. The notice-and-takedown procedure itself has also been abused. I do agree that notification of infringing material, to both the service offering it on a legitimate site, and to the copyright holder for most sites, can help. |
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