Forum - View topicNEWS: Law Journal Article Supports Fansubs
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BleuVII
 Posts: 672 Location: Tokorozawa, Japan |
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To be fair, only about 2000 kanji are in daily use. But, seriously, it reminds me of the theology students at my old college who insisted that one couldn't understand the Bible without learning Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew, AND Ancient Aramaic. Translations exist for a reason.
Anyway, I thought about this a bit more. If the criteria for legal fansubbing would be the inexistence of an unedited dub, couldn't this set a legal precedence leading to fansubs of unlicensed shows being legal too? Also, this idea seems a bit too narrow and focused. I think it would only make sense to broaden this to all domestically licensed foreign motion picture products. |
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Kireek
Posts: 274 |
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will this guy wright an artical how its allright for me to go into someones house and steal stuff?
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halo
Posts: 356 |
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This just made me laugh. So we're taking what a law student thinks is a good idea seriously? This is a pile of rubbish. What he's trying to say is if you think that edits or even bad dubbing detract from the property (which isn't yours) then you can do whatever you like.
The only people who should ever and will ever have that right is the copyright holder, be they the author, animation producers, etc. If they think their property is being damaged by a foreign distributor they should do what Toei did with One Piece. Arguing that this is somehow damaging to the 'moral integrity' of the property is solely the copyright holders problem. Anime isn't a civil right people. If you need this jaded ethical argument to justify your downloading then you need a life. If you really, really need to have everything uncut and unlocalized form then I suggest you learn Japanese and study their culture in depth (possibly living there a while). Otherwise your going to suffer from something lost in translation since no matter how 'pure' a translation is it's still a translation between two very different languages and two very different cultures. |
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Goodpenguin
Posts: 457 Location: Hunt Valley, MD |
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CorneredAngel wrote:
Does it? School Law Journals commonly feature articles ('notes') from young students that are often based more in an exercise of interest-based arguing rather than dry, scholarly judgment. It's not uncommon to see articles that base their arguments around non-traditional concepts such as 'Social Justice'. In this case the student takes a rather wide turn with the concept of 'Moral Rights', which is by no means an iron-clad legal watermark. This is a student article, and fairly it bears more the mark of creative reasoning (which is often the point of the exercise) than somber legal judgment. It (the student article) often takes pretty big leaps in mixing a work released by the creator into the commercial sphere and art, and seemingly retroactively applies a concept of 'Moral Rights' not to protect the creator but to satisfy an audience. It takes the assumption that Japanese companies are at the mercy of American licensor's, which is dubious at best, and that in Japan apparently anime runs as unedited 'art'. It also similarly overplays the scope of 'edited' only titles that are the only available product. Beyond that, importantly, it gives no practical description of what constitute an 'edit/change' that would allow for 'fan distribution'. Deleted scenes? A change in the soundtrack? An english dub? What's briefly mentioned is an ultra-broad guideline in which a person could argue most anything meets the 'ok to fansub' criteria. It's one of hundreds of student articles that appear in School Journals everyday, and it's primary goal was probably an exercise in using the concept of 'Moral Rights' to some purpose. Let's not blow a student paper into a Supreme Court decision. Last edited by Goodpenguin on Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kireek
Posts: 274 |
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You know its a shame we are all talking about whever fansubs are right or wrong instead of just sitting down and enjoying it.. Since the advent of fansubs it has taken the fun out of anime .
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Labbes
 Posts: 890 |
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If edited shows were a problem, I would say it's a good idea. However, I know only one show that is only available edited and I would consider buying, and that is Shaman King. I dare say edited anime are not a real problem anymore, but this idea could have a huge impact on how loosely it would be interpreted. Personally, I don't think it's a really good idea.
PS: I don't think it's "ok" even if the producers are ok with it. It's as if someone comes to a bookshop and says "I'm gonna buy this book, rip a few pages out and sell it again." - why should the bookshop care? A customer's a customer. |
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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As a general rule, civil rights relate between government regulation on the subject matter and the people it affects, so that's a silly statement to make. But it is subject to protection of freedom of expression and things like that. You are looking for some other phrase, and it is not "civil right." |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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No kidding. Honestly, the only reason I watch fansubs (and buy the official DVDs as soon as they come out, of course) is for long-running series that people will spoil without a care to who hears them. I remember being at a convention and overheard some guy talking about how on Bleach it was shocking that spoiler[Ichigo's father was a former Soul Reaper.] Thanks a lot!  And don't even get me started on people who throw out Naruto spoilers left and right, or that one jerk who spoiled a big moment in TTGL. 
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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I think that it should be pointed out once again after this line that this kid is a student, writting an essay! Once you finish the article you totally forget anything you read in the sub-heading. Christ, whoever wrote this article really wants to steer the audience to take this guy seriously, which is ridiculous. On another note, this is why 90% of American's hate 90% of all lawyers. Because they aren't interested in leveling the playing field, they are interested in giving away or taking as much stuff as they can by making it a right.  I hope this kid has a fun time chasing ambulance's, once he figures out there is money to be made.
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BellosTheMighty
 Posts: 767 |
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Read: twenty-something rich kid coasting on his parents' cash until they figure out it's cheaper to just buy him a Park Avenue apartment and let him live the playboy lifestyle? Well, no, that's a little unfair of me. For all I know, he could actually be the guy from the slums who's paying his way through law school by scrubbing toilets. Still, the operative word here is "student". As in "still learning", or less politely "no real experience in the field", or even less politely "doesn't know jack." I suppose it's a good sign that he can write well enough to get published, but let's face it- I'm sure that all of us have written essays in college that ten years on we have to laugh at because the alternative is to be deeply humiliated that we actually thought that stuff back then. And frankly, the argument that fansubs should be permissible because anime gets heavily edited has three critical flaws. The first is that, with few notable exceptions, anime doesn't get heavily edited anymore. The stories remain intact, and characters and actual plot events also remain intact. If something does have to be edited too heavily, the publisher just waits a year or so for the fan furor to get really hot, then cashes in with an uncut version on DVD. The second is that the attitude he's talking about doesn't reflect the current fansub mindset. "We'll can produce better translations of this material" was the 90's, pre-Toonami attitude. The modern attitude is "we can bring it to you less than an hour after it airs in Japan", or "we can do things faster, more accurately, and with better quality and more style then those other fansubbers". If it was ever really about accurate translations, it isn't anymore. These days it's about status and impatience. And the third is that noone's rights are being violated by a bad translation. The author sells the rights to the publisher, and the publishers sell the rights to the stateside publisher. It's all perfectly legal, unless one party was forced to sign a contract under threats or false pretenses. In which case the fansub situation is mostly irrelevant anyway, because the contracts are void and the rights wind up in limbo. People often talk about how a certain adaptation is "not true to the author's vision." Well, maybe not, but the fact remains that the author either approved of it, short-sightedly signed away rights that he's now kicking himself for letting go, doesn't really give a crap what happens to his work overseas, or just doesn't give a crap in general as long as he gets a cut of the profits. None of which inclines me to believe that any rights of his are being violated. The real rights being violated are the public's right to good television/movies/whatever, which are already crippled by the rather annoying fact that they don't exist. Freedom from persecution is a right. Freedom from tyranny is a right. Freedom from boredom is not, and only a false sense of entitlement tells you otherwise. Frankly, if you don't like adaptations of Japanese works, learn Japanese and watch the originals. Or you could, you know, read a book. Like, one originally written in English? I hear that old guy Steinbeck was pretty good. Just one more thing- I'd just like to ask you all "Who gets to decide what constitutes an unacceptable translation?" This is not something you can measure or calculate in an objective, scientific manner. Robert Frost once chewed out a publisher who ran his poem "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" because he inserted, in the last stanza of the poem, a comma between "dark" and "deep". Frost claimed that that little comma changed the entire meaning of the line, and thus of the poem as well. And if you try and look at the poem both ways, you see that Frost actually has a point. Sometimes, art really can be that delicate. If you allow fansubs for series that are given inaccurate "official" translations, what you're doing is giving anyone who pleases license to comb anything, find the tiniest little flaw, and then say, "This mistake has a disproportionately massive effect on the narrative, therefore the translation is unacceptable, fansub away." Hell, they might not even have to look hard, they might just say "This dub does not incorporate Japanese honorifics, fansub away." You want to talk about the death of R1? How's the R1 industry gonna fare when anyone can pirate your entire catalog on the flimsiest of pretexts? The entire idea here doesn't have a leg to stand on. |
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petran79
 Posts: 122 |
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Fansubs are illegal by any means since they are clearly a violation of copyright, even after the authors death (the (in)famous Mickey Mouse act).
However one point is unclear to me. Are not imported DVDs also illegal? If say one European company buys the distribution rights of an American movie, while now with the state of Euro/Dollar, the consumer can buy the US version a lot cheaper, isnt it illegal to import that title? The distributor buys the rights for a specific country or region. I think this is overlooked. The division in various regions based on television standards acted also as a protection against this sort of problem. But today you can order movies from other regions freely . But this also contributes to limited sales. With video games things are more strict for the time being but it is also illegal playing a genuine, say, PS2 game in another region (only modded consoles support this). With the same logic that fansubs are illegal, import from other regions should also be forbidden. Because a license is valid only for a specific region, country or time. |
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grgspunk
Posts: 136 |
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Technically yes, but it just isn't enforced. They implemented it as sort of a safeguard to prevent competition between different regions for what should be the same product. |
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Hunter2458
 Posts: 19 |
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I want my pokemon and children's card game shows released uncensored ;.;
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1873 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Nobody is going to spend the next 10 years learning Japanese just for that. People aren't like that. They want their stuff immediately and in a language they can understand. They'll download fansubs whether you like it or not. |
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bleuster
 Posts: 455 Location: Orange County |
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I remember reading an interview here with, iirc, the president of 4kids saying that Toei was the one that requested some edits, then 4kids production aligned to those edits as well.
Just from reading some interviews I can tell this happens frequently and for the same reason; to get a wider audience. Say what you want, but "violation of the moral rights of its creators" is only valid when the creator is not actually involved. |
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