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NEWS: Japan's CODA, Companies From 12 Other Countries to Form International Anti-Piracy Organization


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vgiannell5



Joined: 10 Jan 2012
Posts: 86
PostPosted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 8:26 pm Reply with quote
Adv193 wrote:
While I would applaud the companies for taking down the stuff that is already legally available (which is why I never pirated them since I stuck with the legal options), however the risks on how badly this will affect people are still unknown and if there were more online legal options available then I would be more supportive of what these companies are trying to do.

Well I for one don't support what they're doing because I know for a fact that all they care about is money and that makes them greedy.
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Adv193



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 187
PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:17 am Reply with quote
vgiannell5 wrote:
Adv193 wrote:
While I would applaud the companies for taking down the stuff that is already legally available (which is why I never pirated them since I stuck with the legal options), however the risks on how badly this will affect people are still unknown and if there were more online legal options available then I would be more supportive of what these companies are trying to do.

Well I for one don't support what they're doing because I know for a fact that all they care about is money and that makes them greedy.


While these companies are greedy, my first choice is supporting more legal options even if it means through something like digital purchasing as the whole digital age of piracy cannot last forever (which I was making sure not to get too attached in case something like this happened).
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zrdb





PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 6:49 pm Reply with quote
It hasn't worked before and it won't work now. People who download anime are a dedicated bunch and are quite resourceful and places where they can download will reappear under new guises if removed.
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vgiannell5



Joined: 10 Jan 2012
Posts: 86
PostPosted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 11:52 pm Reply with quote
zrdb wrote:
It hasn't worked before and it won't work now. People who download anime are a dedicated bunch and are quite resourceful and places where they can download will reappear under new guises if removed.

These companies probably hope things will be different this time which is highly unlikely.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6864
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:00 pm Reply with quote
I kind of hope things don't come to massive crackdowns, since a lot of interesting older/obscure anime and manga aren't legally available. But if it comes down to losing those or the industry suffering a serious downturn, I'll take the former. (And the numbers on pirate sites show that most viewers are there for the recent/popular stuff anyway.) Especially with anime piracy becoming more ideologically driven, the legitimate industry can't "compete" with bootleg sites.

Kougeru wrote:
Having to buy so many different subscription services is unaffordable for most people. Fixing this would get them more money than attempting to stop piracy.
It's far more affordable than buying $30 / 4-episode DVDs (2-3 years after broadcast) was in the 2000s, yet the anime viewerbase always finds ways to move the goalposts. Even if exclusive licenses go away, bootleg sites will still have a better selection for free.

xxmsxx wrote:
Another day at the whac-a-mole arcade.

AJ (Lord Nikon wrote:
Like game where you smack rodent with stick that randomly pops out of holes. Shut down one pirate, nine more appear.
So people say, but a lot of those newly-appearing pirate sites just scrape/restream videos from the older, more-established pirate sites. So if just a few of those "mainstay" sites go down, dozens more go down with them. Less of a hydra, more of a house of cards.

Top Gun wrote:
Redbeard 101 wrote:

They're still on pushing it because it's true. YOU might buy more as a result of your torrenting but that is not the case majority of the time, nor has it ever been. *clap clap*

...except it's not. We've known it's not for a long time. The EU actively buried a study stating that it's not. If people currently watch all of their anime illegally and don't spend a dime on it, they're not going to magically start spending substantial amounts of money if it becomes harder to get it for free. They'll just move on and do something else with their free time. Those of us who do spend significant amounts of money on anime and related content will continue to do so whether or not we also occasionally download something. The only reason that industry groups try to create this false association is because it's the only thing giving any sort of credence to draconian anti-piracy measures.

I've bought plenty of things I've torrented over the years too, but as Redbeard points out, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." I've seen that EU study thrown around in these discussions before, but here's the problem with it:
Quote:
[The study] concluded that one specific category, blockbuster movies, is negatively impacted by piracy, with ten downloads leading to about four fewer cinema visits.
As for the other industries that rely on copyright (games, books and music), the study found "no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy." In the case of games, it concluded that unauthorized playing might actually make it more likely users will buy them.

Not featured in this study of piracy: anime. So how does a piracy study that doesn't study anime prove anything about anime piracy? Studying mainstream books, music, and movies and such doesn't account for the unique nature of the anime viewerbase, its historical veneration of fansubbing, its outlaw "stick it to the man" attitude, its misguided "Japanese superfans will subsidize our entertainment, overseas sales are just gravy / don't really count" mindset, its state of being young, broke, tech-savvy, and early-adopters of piracy technologies, its endless litany of culture-war grievances fueling piracy ("sub vs. dub", High Guardian Spice, Vic Mignogna, disagreement with a handful of oft-repeated controversial localization choices, etc.), and the pernicious influence of anti-industry grifters, outrage merchants, and saboteurs spurring viewers to pirate. Enforcement has also been historically weaker than with MPAA movies and RIAA music, due to geographical and language barriers.

And if all that weren't enough, we have real-world evidence to the contrary: the market crash of 2007-08. Back then, anime popularity, online buzz, convention attendance, and piracy (aided by the rise of illegal streaming on "Wild West" YouTube) were all soaring, yet sales cratered and companies scaled back or shut down. If, as the study suggests, piracy had a neutral or positive effect on sales, how does this collapse ever happen?

Nanashi.no.mono wrote:
So, in my mind, libraries, manga cafés and secondhand sales should be as illegal as pirate aggregator websites since the result is the same - the authors/artists don't make any money out of them AKA the biggest argument used against piracy.

The First-sale doctrine somewhat covers the secondhand/used copy issue; basically, there is still one purchase and one copy in circulation, and the original buyer gives up their rights to consume the work when selling it to a secondhand buyer. It's not at all like one copy getting read/watched by or distributed to millions for free. Existing business models in the publishing industry can survive libraries, or buyers lending a copy of a manga volume to their sibling or having a few friends over to watch a show on Blu-Ray. But nobody has hundreds of thousands of friends spread all over the world.

Quote:
Second, for rights holders (authors, publishers, distributors, etc.) piracy can be either a plus, a minus, or a zero/no effect:
1. it can be a plus if a pirate, like you, ends up spending more as a result of pirating;
2. it can be a minus if someone who has the means and lives in a region where a product is licensed and distributed pirates instead of buying said product;
3. it's a wash if product is not available in region pirate lives in, or if pirate can't afford product; in this case rights holders weren't going to make money from the pirate anyway. There is a distinction here between product unavailable but has money vs no money, but for benefit analysis they ultimately are the same.

You're omitting another "minus" category that exists in the anime/manga sphere:
4. "Evangelical" pirates who refuse to pay whether they can or not, tell new viewers and readers to pirate (thus establishing piracy as the "default/natural" option and making it harder for legitimate sellers to make inroads with them), recommend illegal options at every opportunity (even when people ask for legal avenues), spread misinformation and lies about legal options, and actively work to sabotage the industry by trying to convince paying consumers to switch to piracy.

Anti-piracy actions are no longer about merely preventing the "wouldn't have paid for it anyway" crowd from accessing media illegally; they're about excising malignant elements in the community that threaten the stability and viability of the industry. I can't blame them for taking those steps.

zrdb wrote:
People who download anime are a dedicated bunch and are quite resourceful and places where they can download will reappear under new guises if removed.

I don't know; over the past few years I've seen torrent trackers close down or go private/underground, ripping/subbing groups distributing on IRC losing their XDCC bots for good, and direct-downloading sites closing down with no replacements. Some options for the well-connected and hardcore will likely remain, sure. But the vast majority of pirates go to "Easy Mode" illegal streaming and reading sites -- shutting them down probably gives companies the best bang for their buck, as those sites' more casual userbases would be more likely to either stop consuming the material, or be willing to pay for subscriptions or watch a few ads on legal sites.
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xolulu



Joined: 25 Aug 2021
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:50 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
And if all that weren't enough, we have real-world evidence to the contrary: the market crash of 2007-08. Back then, anime popularity, online buzz, convention attendance, and piracy (aided by the rise of illegal streaming on "Wild West" YouTube) were all soaring, yet sales cratered and companies scaled back or shut down. If, as the study suggests, piracy had a neutral or positive effect on sales, how does this collapse ever happen?

I don't really care to participate in this whole debate but I think it's disingenuous, to say the least, to forget the fact that practically the entire global economy crashed in 2007-08, with all the many impacts that had on aggregate demand, discretionary spending, business cash flow, and investor confidence. No amount of piracy is going to spur people to buy anime when they just lost their job.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6864
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:18 am Reply with quote
xolulu wrote:

I don't really care to participate in this whole debate but I think it's disingenuous, to say the least, to forget the fact that practically the entire global economy crashed in 2007-08, with all the many impacts that had on aggregate demand, discretionary spending, business cash flow, and investor confidence. No amount of piracy is going to spur people to buy anime when they just lost their job.
I didn't forget that; rather, I remember that the US anime market decline and crash began well before the recession, which wasn't broadly recognized by US consumers until September 2008.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:24 am Reply with quote
Frankly I don't give a flying squirrel as long as region blocking exists. No-one has ever managed to put forward a convincing argument (or well, just an argument) about how it is a lost sale if someone pirates something they have no legal way to purchase/view. And as long as I have to actually apply illegal (or not entirely legal, anyway) strategies to be able to buy things by creators that I want to support with my money, because they're not being made available for me legally due to irrational legal knots, outdated business practices or other weird, backwards thinking, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy when the same businesses that do crap like that cry about pirates.

(And this is not just anime/manga btw. I pay for Netflix and yet I have access to only a fraction of its library. There are books/comics I'm not able to buy digitally in English - in Spanish, German, French, Dutch, etc. yes, but in English, no. Friends who have bought ebooks from Amazon found that some of them were made unavailble for them when they traveled to other continents. I literally can't buy digital content from Amazon.jp. And so on.)
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