Forum - View topicOpen Letter from GDH International's Arthur Smith
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missing_soul
Posts: 44 |
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I was pretty sure this early post will get absolutely no response. Dear Industry People & Industry People Disguising As Fans, I think there's something you don't understand about the product you sell. If you have another FMPs, FMAs, NGEs even Narutos and Bleaches to sell you wouldn't face a crisis. Of course you think by stopping fansubbers, a lot of people depending on you for their "anime fix" would resume buying DVDs. Somehow the image of the small but powerful bunch of female fantasy writers leaps to my mind. I follow the rule do not ever buy a sci-fi or a fantasy book published under a female writer's name, except for a few tested writers like Bujold or Cherryh whose books I have in my library without an exception, but I don't plan to buy them twice. Just a side remark for those who knows the genre: I even read and bought a lot of early Marion Zimmer Bradley who personally raised the worse part of the above mentioned female fantasy book makers. But the late and sour MZB is just unreadable for anyone -still- having balls. I don't compare MZB to the anime storyline writers, the book maker company however... perhaps the tendency to adapt light novels like FMP is not a surprising evolution. Only I'm pretty sure the light novels of the FMP series were originally written with manga in mind (thanks for the translation BokuTachi). The style, the pacing and the focus of the manga and anime is really different of that of a sci-fi book (I suppose high fantasy or romance are easier to adapt). Perhaps the Japanese companies should pay manga writers instead of burning them out as slaves, but then that's not the US based industry's fault nor could you do anything about it. If you don't have enough good products to sell on a mature market, the market-concentration is a natural thing in capitalism, isn't it? Of course you could reprint the old series to the new fans but that's something like.. a niche market of a niche market (with a very niche budget). Declining DVD sales? Please point me out the old and supposedly rich because working fan who collects two times the same series... and let me give you a tip: don't expect to sell overused franchises for a hundred dollars by box set to fans who actually owns all the old shows your recent ones are copying desperately. You can't do a single thing about quality because once the Japanese begin to produce anime aimed culturally at the american market, you will immediately lose your cheap licenses. You can't do a single thing about prices because the Japanese would simply stop licensing anime to US market or go bankrupt themselves if you kill their own national market. It's not a surprise they don't let foreigners (that's R1 for Japanese) access their online services... perhaps they will accept cheap streaming provided US companies stop Japanese accessing US online streaming services. That will solve almost everyone's problem including the Japanese (I used the word almost because you will probably shut out everyone except for R1). And a last word: I won't ever buy a show without an exceptionally good critics from trusted (not industry buzzed) source. So even if you succeed to shut off the fansubs, I still won't buy the crap, because I know better. Remember MZB? I will read the critics, and a biased review (right, dear ANN?) is easy to recognize. Besides I did that a lot lately because I don't care to download fansubs of crappy anime. Actually I'm switching to live-action drama thank you. I admit that's no more legal than anime fansub, but what to do? I really don't know where to buy box sets of subbed live-action NHK Japanese drama (dub in this case is definitely a no no) Do you know what? IMHO the fansub activity is already declining.  It should be quite difficult to sub shows witch make you sleepy.
Sorry for shouting. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Why do you believe this is true? A subscription model is what most of TV uses. Why is a pay-per-episode method necessary? It's not a good method. Most people looking for online streaming are looking to either "try out" shows or looking for it as some kind of comparison to TV. We don't want to pay for things we don't know are good. That's just the way people are. I understand you don't believe this is an excuse for people to pirate, but that again is your way of seeing it. Most of us don't believe we have to justify our actions. We do them because we can, just like we do most other things in life. You have to tell us why we can't/shouldn't or provide us reasonable alternatives. Anyway, I did look into Bost and I signed up there, I plan to watch the free content they have sometime this weekend. I don't like their model because it's not subscription based (I want the same thing the person you responded to does for the most part). I don't necessarily need it to have everything I want to see, but if it doesn't I'll probably still download fansubs (and why not, again by my reasoning is if they don't have it available for me to buy I am not hurting them, you have to explain to me why I shouldn't do that even when I am buying dvds, etc). I don't buy what most of the guys who hate the current generation of anime are saying either. I like the new shows quite a bit. I'm willing to support them and will do so through dvd purchases to the best of my ability. But I'm not going to stop something that benefits me when much of what I watch may never get licensed anyway. Why should I not do something when I don't have the ability to buy it. If they put it up for streaming I'll pay them what I think is reasonable, and if it's not reasonable then I'll stick to buying the DVDs for the shows I really like. |
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suishouryuu
Posts: 2 |
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I registered to this forum JUST to post this reply - will it be heard, maybe. Will anything be done about it? Who knows?
Here's my problem with buying anime. First and foremost, yes I download fansubs. However, I have approx 900 anime dvds that I legitimately bought. I also work for a major anime convention here in the states, and have tried as hard as I can to combat the problem I'm about to mention, but there's only so much that can be done. That being said, the biggest problem with people buying anime on DVD is the cost. What the majority of fans don't know is that they are being ripped off. I used to wrk at Best Buy - I've moved on to bigger and better things - and the employee discount works like this - as an employee, I could buy anything I wanted from the store and would pay what Best Buy paid to buy it from the distributor, plus 5%. ADV dvd's would be in the 15-20$ range, Bandai and Geneon 20-30$. Box sets ranged from 25-50$, based on studio, show, and number of dvd's. Normal price for any Joe or Jane Schmo walking in and buying it would range to 100$ for the most expensive box set, to 20$ for the average ADV dvd - check BestBuy.com for yourself if u don't believe me. Imagine my surprise and disbelief when I walk into FYE or Musicland, or (insert store here) and the price is nearly double! I choked on my ramune at another con when I heard a dealer tell an attendee that the box set he was selling her was 40$ from the distributor, when it was an ADV license and I had bought it a week before for 25$ from work. I don't object to people making a profit, but GOUGING is ruining the industry's sales. Get it under control, and the people will buy. I know this firsthand, because I only owned 20/30 anime dvd's before I started working for the yellow tag, and as soon as it became affordable, I was all over it like a fat kid on a hoho. Just my two woolong... |
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Time and Space
Posts: 167 Location: China |
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[If you aren't in the mood for a tediously long essay supporting the use and existence of fansubs, then you may want to scroll down, heh
 ]
How unfair it is for Mr Smith to condemn the fans of anime for weakening the sales of DVDs in North America. He notes how 'scary' it is that Japanese DVD sales of anime are actually weaker in Japan than in the US, and quite frankly this doesn't surprise me. How many of we fans of anime have more anime DVDs than we do DVDs of any TV shows that we watch? How many of us have purchased anime DVDs that we have since decided we would have been better off not purchasing because we hadn't the opportunity to sample it beforehand? When a show is broadcast essentially for free view on a television station, as in Japan, it seems likely that DVD sales of those shows will reflect the lower (and more realistc) DVD sales of the television shows we watch in the west. For those who don't live in Japan, we are actually required to pay for anime if we want to view it for the first time, in most cases. The reason fansubs weaken the sales of DVDs then, and I don't deny they do, is because they act as that first free viewing, that sample that will help decide whether we wish to purchase it on DVD. It is essentially TV, and despite being fans of anime, we will not, after watching that anime, purchase it unless we have spare money to or unless it was a particularly good series, we are not millionaires and have other uses for such money. I agree then that fansubs do stunt DVD sales, but it is wrong to condemn fansubs as somehow detestable solely for this reason. Fans of anime who don't live in Japan gain from fansubs (I stress) that first unpaid for view that the Japanese already have. In this way fansubs benefit us consumers of anime because ( I repeat) we no longer have to put money to every series we watch. The sale of DVDs might fall, but it will fall until it represents a more realistic model, where fans can more readily choose some, instead of buy all. A fan of anime does not want to see the US distributors decline, because obviously a thriving company is likely to distribute DVDs of higher quality through greater invesments. But his final point was almost ridiculous. He seems to suggest that we owe the companies for the hard work they put in for us. This is absurd, a company works hard for profits, not for the peace of mind of the fan, unless of course that peace of mind helps sell DVDs (which it does, but is nevertheless overlooked in many cases). Although I don't think we could do away with thse intermediaries, this isn't because I think they benefit us more than a direct Japanese distribution would, but because Japanese distribution would just never happen. If there ever were to be direct distribution from the Japanese, I can actually see a great many more benefits, or if not more, then I see no reason why the 'benefits' would not be equal to the ones we apparently experience now. Anyway, I live in the UK, so most of what I've said affects me more dramatically, particularly in the case of not being able to sample a series before purchase, unless I use fansubs. Fansubs got me into anime and I have since bought DVDs because of these. In the case of those fans who do go one step further and burn the fansubs to their own DVDs if they enjoyed watching it. They are condemnable, however, to counter this, some official site that allows us to sample anime for free would put an end to fansubbers. I see no reason why an 'internet tv station', cannot be set up that shows anime and uses advertising to pay for the subtitles, imagine the viewing figures! There may be a decline in DVD sales, but this doesn't seem to affect me. The industry may suffer, like the music industry did due to online downloads, but this didn't bring an end to CD production or musical production in general did it? The anime industry is not so fragile that it will collapse, and quite frankly, the industry within Japan itself is something that isn't affected by foreign DVD sales. No, all we influence is how far and wide anime is distributed in our own region, how much is shown on our TVs and sold as DVDs. TV showing anime not will disappear as long as viewing figures are high, and neither will DVD releases. The only entity truly affected is the prosperity of the company distributing the the DVDs. As long as anime is popular, even with fansubs, I cannot see DVD release of anime outside Japan ending, particularly when anime popularity itself is on the rise. Mr. Smith doesn't adequately respond to the charge that he is scaremongering, and I still don't know what projected damages have been predicted and when they will come. |
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desterion
Posts: 18 |
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I see this as the hate filled rantings of a man desperate to keep his job. He's putting the blame squarely on the "evil" fansubbers. A decent reason I see while sales are declining, is that US distributors are jumping on any anime they can get their hands on, then botching it. He addresses quickly a couple of points like the delay time of releases. But fails to mention how the large majority of anime released in the US, has absolutely horrific script writing and dub voices. They release an inferior product and charge outrageous prices for them. They still haven't figured this out. Quality can be looked past if it's dual audio, but the pricing cannot.
He constantly makes reference to the music industry and how they were plagued by piracy. He fails to see the big solution to it all however. itunes and similar stores. It offered a cheap and legal alternative for people to obtain what they wanted. Many of the people who were downloading illegally, switched over to obtaining them legally. Instead of being charged $20 for a cd with 3 songs you liked on it, you can get the 3 songs you want for nearly 1/10th the cost. The extortionist pricing for the average anime consumer is what's hurting them. Not fansubbing. They've tried to bring it to the internet this way, but the greedy mentality is still there. There is also the fact that there hasn't been any "big" hits like there were in 2005 which drastically inflated the numbers. Thickheaded projectionists like Arthur Smith need to look at themselves and see what they're doing wrong rather than just pointing fingers and whining about it. Idiots like him are the reason i vowed to never buy a DvD from a title licensed by Funimation, Gonzo or ADV. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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dayhawk
Posts: 3 |
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I decided to register as well, just to post some comments to this topic.
I ran my own anime retail and web business for some time until I felt it wasn’t worth it to continue. 1.) DVD's were always a pain to deal with. Several of the retail shops I still frequent, still have the similar problem with loss of DVD due to theft, constant distribution failures and overall cost versus profit on such merchandise. I wasn’t worth it to carry the DVDs. 2.) Digital media makes it easier to download to a larger market. First, even though you may believe or wish to believe otherwise anime industry in North America is really in its early adoption phase. Fansubbers helped to create the industry in North America. How many people were introduced to anime through VHS fansubbed tapes in comparison to some obscure television broadcast? Compare the anime convention attendance numbers with the time frame of when anime was: laser disk -> fansub vhs -> fansub download lowband -> fansub broadband fansubber have been the highest development of market awareness. Sure television broadcasting has led access to a larger market, but show awareness and interest has been always superseded marketing done via the fansub. Until new releases of anime are available on television in viewer ship system similar to currently in Japan, fansubbers are your best marketing tool. Rental of anime DVD shows is still in its infancy. If you want less fansub titles around, then making the material more readily available for people "to try and buy" should be your primary action. There is only so much disposable income available and if the individuals cannot prescreen their purchases in a venue such as rental, theater or television... its simply unfathomable to me that they would buy such items. Would they simply purchase the shows on good faith from the box cover? Not likely. 3.) Quality I used to get at least 6 to 12 vhs fansub tapes a week before the download became the primary avenue for materials. Of the tapes I received, (if I enjoyed the show), as soon as it was released in laser, vhs and eventually DVD, I bought them. It wasn’t to support the developers in north america (even though that was a nice added bonus), it was to get a permanent and higher quality product. Even downloaded fansubs really are such a poor quality in comparison to the dvd products. 4.) Price point Value for purchase is something that is going to always be in forefront of your customer's minds. Making a product cost the same and have 1/4 of the value of another is not a good plan. How many DVD's have I seen for sale for 20+ dollars for 2 25 min episodes. I can buy a feature length movie of 2 hours for the same (usually lesser cost) and get the same enjoyment out of the product. There has been some improvement sin how box sets are being made and available to the public, but it has a ways to go. Yes, you may not have the market share as a paramount television production's box set, but that becomes an excuse in the eyes of the buyer. It costs X dollars for milk from you cause your importing it and making available for clients here or will the purchaser buy product Y Milk which is cheaper and just as filling. Sure your product is imported, has a intrinsic value due to being imported and is something new and slightly different, but does it justify the value difference? If the value of the products exceed the value then people will take the amount out of the disposable income and purchase it. Otherwise, they will go with other choices. bit long, but if ya skip reading through, at least read point 2 =) Last edited by dayhawk on Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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missing_soul
Posts: 44 |
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Err, sorry, but the internet service providers would have a say about that. Actually when you buy a high speed link you pay for the content you are supposed to be able to downstream. Period. In that respect the ISPs are the real bootleggers (people who get money out of this activity). Perhaps you should lobby for a measurement of content exchange over the net and the redistribution of the revenues. Otherwise you could experience a serious sabotage of all your efforts by the ISPs who don't want to find themselves out of business. How ironic. How typical. |
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rebii
Posts: 31 |
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1. In spite of the assertion that fansubbing is not like sharing a taped program with friends, I would have to disagree. The only difference is the number of friends.
2. I certainly would never have purchased the many DVDs of anime I own were it not for fansubs. I certainly wouldn't buy based on the poor dubs that exist on many cable channels. 3. Boost DVD sales with a better product i.e.; better subs, better sound (too often the sub fan is cheated with 2.0 on the Japanese track, while the English track is 5.1. 4. Go after the many bootlegs out there. The couple I purchased, in error and ignorance (as a novice to the genre) were not based on fansubs. I will continue to download fansubs and continue to purchase DVDs based on them. I look forward to Moonlight Mile, Flag (complete), and will someone please bring Monster to DVD. |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Mohawk52, how do you plan to defeat encryption? Outlaw it? How do you plan to beat anonymous p2p protocols? Outlaw them? What if, then the pirates use new wireless technology instead (already heading that direction), and dodge much of the internet framework?
Besides you have to create all these laws and hope that no one has an issue with them. You guys have done a good job so far with the DMCA. You have plenty of Ds & Rs on your side for a bit longer but I think you'll find the general populace will eventually not stand for your changes when it affects them personally. And it will, because any system of filtering will generate a fair amount of false positives when newer p2p protocols start to look more like regular traffic. This is a game no one is going to win. All of your enforcement is going to cost more billions of dollars than that which is "lost" to piracy. After all if you look at this macro-economically then you realize that if they aren't spending money on anime or other media that they are still spending it on other entertainment or hardware. This money doesn't go into some hole. Your system wouldn't end up saving any money it'd just end up redistributing it to the "content industry". While it was in the process of redistribution there would have to be a lot of people working to make sure the "intarweb" wasn't being misused. These people will have to be paid, and they will cost a lot of money to monitor communications and ensure people are acting like the little lemmings you'd like them to be. We'd look a lot more like the Chinese then. It'd be for the better I guess. At least then we wouldn't have anything "stolen" and the "content industry" would be able to finally rest and earn it's due. They wouldn't even have to make anything new! It'd be fantastic for them. They can now sell you what they sold you last week due to new laws which make your computer into nothing more than a streaming-media device. If you don't like it then you don't buy any media. I see a lot of people making that choice. And I wonder if in the long run the content industry would make anymore than they do now. People wouldn't want to experiment on stuff from the small guys in this system, so the small guys would either have to give it away or die out. Great media conglomerates would be the order of the day, much as they are now. Advertisers could now force you to watch the commercials with quizzes. Oh so many great things in this wonderfully controlled world of yours, and they don't even get close to ending here. I'm sure many people can easily think of some other "benefits" that come from this. |
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missing_soul
Posts: 44 |
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I try hard. Somehow I'm still sure the word "license" does not bring the US military into the context.
Anyway I think the discussion repeats itself. No real arguments ever get a response from the industry side. It's very similar to two nations warming up to campaign. Fans are waving their arms (encryption, foreign countries, IRC) as does the people from the industry (licenses, law suits). Judging by human nature this is going toward a clash. I imagine you're going to continue the news campaign about lawsuits for a while. |
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sailor_titan
 Posts: 51 Location: Vermont |
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I do understand the price of anime DVDs is not looking like good value sometimes when set against low priced box sets of entire seasons of Friends or Lost or the like. I know that distributors in the US are trying to address that issue but please be reminded that Japanese anime is usually FIRST seen on DVD in the US….so unlike Friends or Lost, it does not have a rich TV network paying for a big chunk of the budget and this means that Japanese producers need to try to get a decent return from DVD in the US otherwise they're going to have to cut the budgets of the shows themselves and quality will obviously drop (in case you are wondering, Japanese TV companies do NOT pay a big share of the production budget for shows like US TV companies!!).
Even if it's true that Japanese publishers need to "get a decent return" on their DVD sales, that will in no way change the amount of money that anime fans have to spend on anime. As an analogy... You can take a group of homeless broke people, and offer them some bread. The homeless people run toward your bread and shout "yay!" But you say, "Wait. This bread cost 50 cents." "but we don't have fifty cents," the homeless people reply. "But 50 cents is very reasonable. This is a whole loaf of bread! And it has cheese sprinkled on it. I doubt you'll find bread this cheap or good elsewhere. And if I sell it for any less than 50 cents, I won't be making any profit at all! I'll go out of business, and then you won't have any bread." "But we won't have any bread anyway," the homeless people will reply. "We don't have fifty cents." The problem is, even if companies are making anime as "reasonable" as they can, it doesn't change the fact that the people who are buying will not have the money to buy it. I'm lucky, and have a lot of disposable income to buy anime. (Of course, anime that are in my desired demographic--uncensored mahou shoujo anime--are seldom released, but that's another story.) But I remember going to a con a couple of years back and being shocked. There were 5, 6 people dressed up as the famous Elric from FMA (excuse if I'm misspelling, I don't watch FMA.) I assumed, of course, that all of these people (mostly girls aged 13-18) owned a copy of the FMA dvds. After all, they must be die hard fans if they're cosplaying as the lead! Imagine my surprise when, come auction time, a FMA dvd went up for bid--and all of the girls dressed as the lead proceeded to bid. The DVD proceeded to go up in price until it was just five or ten dollars before retail (which I have found it for, easily, online...). While the auction was up, one if the bidders exclaimed excitedly, "I've been wanting the DVD, but it's so expensive! From working in a bookstore, there is no doubt in my mind that a *significant* portion of the anime retail market is teenagers. While teenagers have a lot of disposable income compared to some, buying tons of $30 anime dvds is just not an economic purchase for them (hence...manga does well while anime continues to falter.) When most of them *do* get anime dvds, they box sets. Likewise with college students--more disposable income than some people, but enough that an anime series with 10 $30 dvds is a much more dicey purchase than a $60 video game which will keep them entertained a similar amount of time. Regardless of the fact that anime "needs to make a profit," it needs to be at an economic place where it represents some kind of a value to it's target demographic. Right now, it does not. |
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hentai4me
 Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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I like a lot of current shows too, Sketchbook FC and Minami Ke being the highlights of this season. As for subscription vs ppe I again use BOST (mainly because it's the only active company I know of doing this for world wide users and because the BOST president has shared the info on his forum). Japanese license holders, the people who make the anime, have to be convinced that online distribution of their anime is a viable, profitable method. Thus at this developing stage of the online dist. format only a few companies are willing to do business and allow their titles to be put up through a potentially poor/dangerous/'new' method. This means that companies like BOST can only get a few licenses to distribute anime online (hence their need for fan support). Because they can only get a few shows paying a subscription will be bad for both the start up company (which needs as much revenue as it can get) and the end user, you pay £30 a month and get 3 shows? You'd be pissed. For the moment you have to wait and support the pay per episode format until companies like BOST can build up enough support and get a big enough catalogue of shows to make a subscription format viable. I don't doubt that, and indeed this has been raised on BOSTS forums, a subscription based method may be tried in the future, but for the moment you need to make the online distribution look good to the anime companies. Now you might wonder why we need a separate company like BOST to put up the anime when the anime production co. could just put their shows up direct. I think that something like BOST is good, a company like them can get ahold of lots of different shows and put them all on the same website in an organised, easy to access manner. The anime co.s direct would require users to pay one subscription to each anime co. website, even if they only want to see one show, plus the user would need to search through and learn the layout of each different companies websites. I it makes you feel any better, BOST is itself a Japanese company, so you 'anime must be Japanese produced and Japanese handled' people should have no complaint in this area. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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That argument makes sense. The problem is that since they aren't willing to "risk" I think they will end up believing it's a failure. I personally will go along with the idea, and I guess if I like the free content I'll buy all the rest out of a desire to show interest in the plan. If I don't like the free content I'll at least try one episode of the pay stuff before giving up on it.
I think, though, that I'm a little bit more willing to go out on a limb than other people. Despite the fact that I'm very much anti-copyright I do care how the industry is doing and I do want to support it as much as I can personally. I do agree with you about the problems of having multiple companies distributing directly. I think it should be done on other basis similar to this. I'm more of a dub fan than a sub fan personally (I've watched 4 fansub shows, Clannad, Claymore, Gundam 00 and Rental Magica). Because of this, who is handling distribution matters a lot less to me. I don't hate the American industry as some here do. I think they do a reasonable job, and I like most of the dubs I've watched. My only issue with any of the companies is targeting free distribution instead of producing an alternative. I also think that attempts like this are very weak and probably not going to be convincing to many people. I hope that I'm wrong about that but I don't think that I am. They really need to try harder than this. |
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