Forum - View topic

NEWS: Singapore's Odex Directors Speak as Protests Continue

Wow, the Singapore police take anime fans seriously - 4 buses of riot police for a park gathering!

I don't know why people have such trouble wrapping their head around the concept mskala is trying to explain. You example is not the same as the store cannot resell the returned clothing. Your friend might as well have stolen it since the store has lost that item and recieved no payment. When you download something, the company has not lost 1 of its product. All you are doing is painting everything as black and white, colors which issues rarely are.

It IS black & white.
It's the downloaders who are trying to wiggle thru.
"Using" an anime or tv show is VIEWING it. Once it has been viewed, it has been used. How do downloaders compensate the artists who drew it, the writers who put their ideas into the scripts, & the actors who bring it to life? Unless someone creates a pill to make one forget what one has watched & downloaders take that pill immediately after watching an episode, they can't "un-use" the anime they have used so it is EXACTLY the same as George using Lane Bryant's generous return policy from about a decade ago where if the customer was unsatisfied, they could return the item. I loved it because sometimes I would buy an item, but then not use it, so maybe 6 months later I'd take it back with the tag & everything still on it. That policy ended due to abuse from people like George.

If no one sees you murder someone or if you're never caught for the murder, is the dead person any less dead just because you were never caught? I've seen far too many people express the idea it's only a crime if one gets caught.

And Downloading Anime has been subtley compared to Murder. Don't ya just love Fansub debates?

One can't undo murder. One can't unview a piece of art one has viewed. Yes, it works. Even with theft one can pay back the person one stole from, but one can't give back a life & one can't give back that first reaction to seeing a new piece of art.
Yes, there are people who can brazenly steal from others because "It's not stealing" Party crashers--the food's being served anyway, I'm just one more mouth. But you weren't invited. It wasn't meant for you. Tuff luck bunnykins.

Sure, its excuses when we point out stuff in defence of downloads but when you point out why downloads are bad its fact! Why are your arguements any more valid than ours? Why arent your examples just as "cooked up" to back up what you're saying. Infact, all you're really doing is repeatedly throwing out black and white moral judgements based on no actual analysis of the issue. It amounts to yelling "you got it without paying so you're stealing!" and "Anything you say is an excuse" If thats all you base your opinion on fine, but youre not going to convince anyone with it so you might as well give it up.

Because you're trying to justify stealing.
Just like my clients who have court orders to do things & a million excuses as to why they can't. Court orders someone to stay away from their ex--"But I love her" was the guy's excuse when he was trying to explain being arrested for violating the restraining order. She obviously doen't love him. Stay away.

Sorry to all the people living in places where anime isn't readily available. You know what people did before the internet? Paid OBSCENE anounts for black market versions or did without.

Or made their own knock off versions (I remember hearing back in the '70's Russians would pay obscene amounts of money for real American blue jeans). Just because the internet provides you with a cheap option of getting your fix you still aren't entitled to a copy (pulls out trudge 5 miles to school thru snow story. No, I actually never did. I'm SoCal, right?) My mom has all kinds of fascinating stories of what they had to do without during WWII when she was a kid. When I was a child in the '60's we didn't have HBO & Showtime. Cable was unheard of. We had the big 3 networks, no way to record programs, etc. etc. etc.

CCSYueh wrote:

People who know me also know I have over 2000 anime dvds & over 2100 volumes of manga/manwha. If I want to try a show, I watch free previews offered with Newtype. I bought Saiyuki based entirely on the trailer on ADV dvds or in-store impulse--I forget now, but it was without viewing a single ep or reading a single word of manga. 12 Kingdoms I held off buying until I watched an ep at Comic-con, but my interest came entirely from what I'd read in Newtype about the show. I waited to buy the SDK anime until I read a volume or 2 of the manga. I wanted GetBackers from the moment I saw a 2-page spread in Newtype. I've started titles & disliked them enough to drop them later, but I still bought that first 1, 2, 3, whatever dvds.

It must be nice to have enough money that you can just go out on a limb and buy whatever Anime you think might be good and buy any Anime you want to see. Interestingly, it also makes it incredibly easy to tell people who can't afford to do that "do without" when in no scenario would you ever have to do so. I wonder, If you would just "do without" in such a situation?

It must be nice to have enough money that you can just go out on a limb and buy whatever Anime you think might be good and buy any Anime you want to see. Interestingly, it also makes it incredibly easy to tell people who can't afford to do that "do without" when in no scenario would you ever have to do so. I wonder, If you would just "do without" in such a situation?

CCSYueh wrote:

It IS black & white.

Okay, were done here. I see no point in arguing with someone who believes the world is black and white. Its a completely unrealistic view.

If you really want to go down that road, you'd probably have to close down most anime conventions in the US short of AX and maybe a couple of others who exclusively use licensed material.

I mean, the $64,000 question is whether fansubs do anime good (because it's the only way people can see anime not licensed yet for the US and gauge how popular it might be -- which see Ouran) or bad (because the downloaders won't buy anime at all...).
.

I reiterate my comment: You'd pretty well have to close down most anime avenues to the general public, even here in the States, with that kind of stand.

There was a convention which, in 2006, had EIGHT ROOMS of unlicensed fansub anime.

I had this argument on the Internet years and years ago -- my stand is that no crime is committed until you are caught and prosecuted. (Innocent until proven guilty and the like...)

So what you are saying then is that the US audience has NO RIGHT to the material until the US companies license and release it...

See my comment above on conventions (which could probably also be extended to many anime clubs

A side comment first:
Take it from someone who's had orders like that put on him years ago: You'd be better off having already had him in jail in the first place -- chances are that the target is not the only person being threatened by the perp.

I guess I'll ask the same question here I did in the other thread: Are anime fans the ally or the enemy?

I am about 10 grand below the median income I saw listed recently on net for California.

No. 90% of the world is various shades of grey. However people deserve to be paid for their work.

Not paying someone is basically making them your slave.

If you like something enough to say your're a fan, you should want the person(s) making it to be properly compensated so they'll make more.

And yeah, I have called the FBI on people at swap meets selling bootlegs.

How about people who rent anime dvds from netflix and then make a copy? Is that "evil"?

Actually my teen has a friend who's dad did 5 yrs for that.

I don't know if it was 5 yrs in prison or prison plus parole, but he casually let it drop one time

CCSYueh wrote:

I am about 10 grand below the median income I saw listed recently on net for California.

I wonder where the average teenage Anime fan falls on that?.

CCSYueh wrote:

If you like something enough to say your're a fan, you should want the person(s) making it to be properly compensated so they'll make more.

You make the huge assumption that people don't want to compensate the creator and help the industry. Wanting to and being willing to spend the money to do so are quite different.
.

That guy must've been selling movies wholesale across the internet and on the streets or something to do hard time like that.

Exactly, Rather than respect the artists involved with the project, Jimmy's buying games, Suzie's buying ciggies, & Alice has to have that Starbucks a couple times a week, etc. etc. etc. But if you can't afford to pay for it, why do you think you're entitled to take the work of these artists without compensating them?

Wouldn't you care if someone copied your report & turned it into your teacher/professor/whatever? Wouldn't you be upset if a co-worker kept claiming credit for your ideas at work? Or maybe the co-worker is late everry day, but the boss gets in later, so that co-worker has someone else clock him/her in every day-getting paid the same as you for doing less work?

It's a matter of what one considers more important. I was reading the financial section of the paper the other day & an advisor commented she gets all these people who claim they can't afford to save any money for retirement, yet they're sipping a $4 cup of coffee.

nightmaregenie wrote:

3. Where official DVDs are offered they will be devoid of any extras (as in 95% of the time) and the episode counts are per their Japanese release - that is to say, normally two, or at the most three episodes per DVD. Where original Japanese extras are offered they are, more often than not, untranslated/unsubbed.

What may or may not be on a disc is irrelevant, once it becomes licensed, then one should buy the official release. If one wants more extras then let them know. However, just not buying something doesn't tell them what may or may not be wrong with their releases, especially if they see a lot of people downloading. They're just going to assume people are just greedy and want the show for free, and not that they're sitting on their wallets cause they don't like the release (and they are probably largely right).

I understand how 3. shouldn't really put people off from buying the official releases but I see a whole lot of R1 consumers complaining about having pricy DVDs for small episode counts and little extras and I just want them to see how at least American distributors are TRYING where the majority simply don't care.

But its really irrellevant if you would have to cut out something else to buy it. You're still asking people do do without (be that Anime or something else) when they could have it all. Its unfortunate that Anime companies kinda get screwed since their product can be gotten for free.