Forum - View topicThe Proposal of Master Lee - A System For Anime Distribution
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Comartemis
Posts: 28 Location: Chicago Illinois |
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Bingo. From what I can tell, (and keep in mind that I know zilch about the anime/manga industries), doujins are tolerated by the copywrite holders because of the free advertising angle you mentioned, but also because those doujin circles that charge for their comics only charge just enough to break even on the printing costs.
The problem is that way too many people don't do that. I didn't start downloading fansubs until I lost my job at Fry's Electronics last year after I started buying Inuyasha box sets. Now that I've been introduced to the concept of bittorrent, I'm not sure I'd go back to buying my anime if I had the choice; why pay for something when I can get it for free? It doesn't help that the anime I want to see won't be released to the American market for months after the series comes out in Japan, if ever. If I depended on my DVD collection, I still wouldn't know anything about what has become my Holy Grail of anime, the Nanoha Trilogy. How long will it be before TTGL, Rosario to Vampire, Spice and Wolf and dozens of other potentially great shows come out in the US? No, if the industry wants to get my money, they'll have to step up and get these shows out before the fansubbers get their hands on them. Then I'll be only too happy to support the industry... at least once I get a source of income again.
One, one hundred, it varies from pervert to pervert. ((Is speaking from personal experience)) Last edited by Comartemis on Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Animastryfe
 Posts: 152 Location: Vancouver |
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You haven't looked hard enough. No, I wasn't looking for them when I found them. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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I didn't say that they managed to protect their works, I just said that they acted protective. Just like an over-protective parent will rarely manage to really protect their child. As for the rest of your argument I feel I've heard that before. Let me guess... libertarian? 
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ShadowTrader
 Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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You need to review your politics, I'm a Republican. But it seems no has yet to contradict anything I have said in my first three posts, and everybody is talking about the same thing, so you are in the minority. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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ShadowTrader, you've already made up your mind and will not change it no matter what I say, so I'm not really inclined to argue even though I feel your arguments are flawed.
To go back on topic, Master Lee, I think you have a nice little plan here but the real challenge is not the design of such a plan, it's the implementation. The studios will not be impressed by simply hearing "it's in your best interest". If you can figure out how to convince the studios to agree to such a plan, if you have the contacts or the clout to make them come on board, that would be very interesting indeed. You also have to consider that creating such a system would mean a monopoly organization that would control the distribution of anime. Even assuming that the very existence of such an organization is not breaking anti-trust laws, there is an issue of who will control it. Who will decide pricing? What share of sales will each studio get? In terms of control, larger studios will want to have a larger share in decisions but smaller studios will not want to be at the mercy of the large ones either. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Ah, you can be both, ShadowTrader. Come on people, back to topic. This thread should be more about finding solutions to the problem (or managing it at least) than about focusing on why we have this problem, or even if we have a problem at all. On a side note, I am impressed by the quality of some of the posts that have been displayed here. Good going. |
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ShadowTrader
Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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I agree petty quarelling isn't going to get us anywhere. Lets get back to the "problem," which in my view is only a failure to compete.
But I still don't understand why a trird party official sub releaser is not the best solution? Someone mentioned that acquiring zillions of liscenses would be impractical. However this is not needed because only those anime that are currently being aired will be officially subbed and relased, there is no need for official subs for anime that have already been released. As for the preserving intellectual property, if the anime producers just sub their own anime and let the partner release a "view only" episode at the same time as the official air, there should be little intellectual property theft. In my view those companies that do not find suitable partners to release such subbed episodes will lose customer interest and fail to generate enough interest. This kind of competition will increase demand for partners and increase revenue for both parties. It is the simplest soultion to combat piracy without alienating fans and creating a subscribtion or fee based site. |
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GrdAdmiral
 Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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The biggest problem with that though, is it's illegal in the United States to hold a Monopoly. So in a sense, 1 distributer of Anime would not be allowed to be created.
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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A third party official sub releaser definitely seems like the best solution to me, but I feel it is not an achievable solution. There are too many obstacles. I figure there's at least 20 different companies that hold the rights for the anime produced in any given season. It's impossible to get 20 people to agree on anything; can you really imagine 20 companies agreeing on a single distribution channel? ShadowTrader, if you really have a BS in finance then you should be well aware of the extreme power and profit that can be found in controlling a distribution channel. Control of the distribution channel was the whole reason why there was an HDDVD/Bluray format war. It's the lifeblood of sales; no matter how good your product is, if the distribution channel is in the hands of your competitor then you will never be successful. So I think anime companies will be very wary of handing over control of the distribution channel to a third party over who they don't have complete control.
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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It wouldn't be a monopoly so much as a collaborative effort to create a service. Think of cable TV, that's a service distributed by multiple companies, but in one area you probably only have 1 or 2 providers. Many areas only 1, but it's not a "monopoly" because others can always be created.
We are just saying the industry should collaborate and even promote a new starting business that would sell their materials online for them. It's really the only reasonable thing to do when many of your fans obviously prefer online content to physical DVDs. I'd go so far as to say the majority of anime fans today could care less about having a DVD. Dan42, sorry came in after you, but I do agree with what you are saying.. mostly. I don't know that it's impossible, but it's going to be insanely difficult. Until the industry can get it's brains working to develop a system that allows for reasonably fast turn-around online without pouring on the DRM they are going to just have to accept the way things are. Modern internet-driven society isn't willing to wait these days. We have communities capable of working together for quick turn-around. Business pays people to get things done, if free communities can do it they have no excuse. |
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ShadowTrader
Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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I feel like nobody is reading what I'm saying. No monopoly will be created because there will be competitors, looking to attract anime companies to liscense with them. Obviously the company with the biggest subscription base will attract more producers of anime but they will not have a monopoly and if the terms become unfavorable for the anime companies they can go to the other competitors. This will keep a ceiling on the dominant company and no monopoly has to exist. Youtube comes to mind, its the biggest and most popular, but its not a monopoly if users are unhappy with it there are tons of others Veoh, Megavideo, stage6, gofish, myspacetv all come to mind. Since these sites are all free to watch no monopoly can be created and no cooperation is needed in the anime industry, just pick the partner which best suits you and the products you want to release.
The intiative obviously has to come from the anime companies. They have to go to a distributer and say "Look we want to partner with you to release this product at so and so time. The benifts to you will be more hits and ad revenue, and for us we will curb piracy and increase our product profile overseas and around the world." There might be some money chaning hands depending who gets the worst end of deal. Obviously risks are still wide, pirating can still happen from sites that don't protect from downloads, and some might argue that this will create a monopoly towards the safest releaser, but in the long run quality competitors will come out and the anime companies will be able to chose from a wider pool. And to the fans it won't matter where the release will come as long as it can be viewed for free. I understand it might be inconvient to switch from site to site, but the anime companies can just create an info site to let fans know where and when the will release officially subbed episodes. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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... (continuing last statement) Or the community can do that, like it does with bittorrent now.
So there is no problem, except that the industry feels it shouldn't do anything because it thinks the entire problem is people not buying DVDs. The industry's mentality is really too tied to physical media or downloads of single episodes which don't work on all computers due to massive DRM. |
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GrdAdmiral
Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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@Shadowtrader
How does your proposal work towards individuals that actually want to have a copy of the program? Youtube is great for streaming video "example" but I'd rather not have to buffer my shows or watch them all the time on the computer. Plus with some licenses, once you download them to the computer, it is very difficult to transfer them. And say you get a virus or your hard drive crashes. I don't mind buying a download, but I'd like to have a physical copy of the media as well. You could spend thousands of dollars on Anime via downloads, but if I want to watch somewhere other then my computer, I am out of options. I agree that Internet releases would allow anime to be viewed by its target audience much sooner. But I also believe that you would be alienating a large portion of the consumer base as well by only limiting your options to the internet. |
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GrdAdmiral
Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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A lot of people are not buying DvD's, but most of it is because of the war between HD DvD and Blue Ray formats. If the original DvD format is going to be obsolete, why would you as a consumer continue buying a product that is not going to be used. It doesn't surprise me that DvD sales are down because of this. Also throw in the fact that as companies change to the new formats, only a small portion of the consumer base will own a HD DvD or Blue Ray player. You see the same thing with computer parts. New Video cards are released for thousands of dollars. Those cards are only bought by those that can afford them at the time. Later when the prices drop, sales pick up a bit more. |
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Comartemis
Posts: 28 Location: Chicago Illinois |
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Agreed. If I'm buying my anime from one of these distribution sites, I want to be able to burn them onto a disk to free up memory on my hard drive. The really hardcore anime fans are going to have dozens and dozens of downloaded shows in their collections, and having to buy new a new hard drive every couple hundred gigabytes is not going to be much fun. |
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