Manga Anti-Piracy Coalition

Until recently, the anime industry never made much mention of piracy, for fear of alienating their fans. With the exception of Greg Ayres, the industry made a point of ignoring piracy and not talking about it, silently hoping that the problem would go away. Well it didn't go away, and now the at least the manga industry at has decided to do something about it.

On June 8th of 2010, Viz media made an announcement that a multi-national manga anti-piracy coalition was formed.

San Francisco, CA, June 8, 2010 – Today a coalition of Japanese and U.S. publishers announced a coordinated effort to combat a rampant and growing problem of internet piracy plaguing the manga industry. “Scanlation,” as this form of piracy has come to be known, refers to the unauthorized digital scanning and translation of manga material that is subsequently posted to the internet without the consent of copyright holders or their licensees. According to the coalition, the problem has reached a point where “scanlation aggregator” sites now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators’ expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales. Worse still, this pirated material is already making its way to smartphones and other wireless devices, like the iPhone and iPad, through apps that exist solely to link to and republish the content of scanlation sites.  

Participants in the coalition include the 36 members of Japan’s Digital Comic Association, Square Enix, VIZ Media, TOKYOPOP, Vertical, Inc., the Tuttle-Mori Agency and Yen Press. Working together, the membership of the coalition will actively seek legal remedies to this intellectual property theft against those sites that fail to voluntarily cease their illegal appropriation of this material.

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 Original article at Viz Media

 Although relatively new, just the creation of the coalition has had an effect on piracy. Shortly after it's creation, two of the largest manga scanlation sites announced that they were removing all of their content due to the the stance taken by the industry against scanlation. If the top two scanlation sites removed their content simply because the manga industry decided to form a coalition against piracy, one has to wonder what the effect would be if the rest of the anime industry were to stand up and express their displeasure.

Earlier this year, a coalition of American comic publishers, including Marvel and DC, recently had the largest internet distributor of American comics shut down, with support from the FBI. Perhaps the Manga scanlation sites' swift action in removing their content was sparked by worry that the Manga coalition would soon follow suit, and shut them down in a similar fashion.

While the formation of the coalition and the scanlation sites' responses is brightening the outlook for the future of the industry, there has not been much news from the coalition since it was announced in June. As of yet, they do not even have an official website and other than the initial article detailing the formation, there is very little information about it. Hopefully we will see some new developments with them soon.

As always, don't pirate your manga and anime, and don't be a parasite.

Bakuretsucon and Greg Ayres

I attended Bakuretsucon two weekends ago. It's a small anime convention in Vermont. Although they are a smaller convention (attendance this year was 529) when compared with conventions like Anime Boston (17,236) or Anime Expo (44,000+), Bakuretsucon is the convention I look forward to every year. They always have amazing industry guests, and the attendees are very respectful and nice, which sadly isn't always the case at many conventions. However, other than this, one of the things which Bakuretsucon prides itself on is that it's dealers room is free of any anime bootleg DVDs or merchandise.

Remember the interviews for KeepAnimeAlive.com that I hinted at in a previous post? When I went to Bakuretsucon, I was expecting to maybe get an interview with Greg Ayres, if I was lucky. However, once the other guests and the convention chair heard about what I was doing, suddenly there was no shortage of people to interview. In the end, I was able to interview Greg Ayres, Chris Ayres, Chris Cason, Scott Melzer and Jon Miller of NoNDE Fanfilms, and the Convention Chair Valerie Tatro. All of these interviews, and video of Greg Ayres' Bootlegging and The State of the Industry and You panels, will be available at KeepAnimeAlive.com when it launches next month.

Greg Ayres is, of course, the big name in the industry for speaking out about anime piracy, and I'd like to talk a little bit about him for the rest of the post. It was only after hearing him speak at Anime Boston in 2008 that I started my work against piracy. Immediately after hearing him speak out against piracy, I stopped watching fansubs and became more conscious about buying legal anime DVDs and merchandise. As is probably obvious at this point, Greg is someone I respect and admire very much.

One of the things he says when you hear him speak at his anti-piracy panels that really spoke to me, was that he runs these panels as a fan, and not as a voice-actor. Greg Ayres loves the anime industry. He left a very high-paying job in order to become a full time voice actor for anime, and not because the pay was better. As a voice actor, he makes "less than the lady that greets you at Walmart."

He was also the first person to really speak out against piracy in anime industry. He first started after seeing many of his friends who work in the industry, both in Japan and the US, have trouble finding work. When he started speaking out against piracy, everyone else in the industry tried to ignore the issue, afraid that if they spoke out, there would be a negative backlash from the fans. Indeed, when Yana Toboso recently voiced how upset she was with "fans" downloading her work illegally, she was essentially crucified and flamed by the so-called "fans" reading he work. Greg Ayres himself comes under fire a lot on online communities, but he choses not to care and pushes forward in his struggle against piracy.

Greg was once described by someone as the perfect person to speak out against anime piracy, because he was "the only person I know who could walk into a roomful of people and give them the finger." Now, while quite unprofessional, it does show the strength of his convictions. This is something that people higher up in the industry, like the executives of Viz or Funimation can't do because they have to maintain that professional attitude. Greg wants to see the anime industry survive, even if he has to estrange himself from the rest of the industry in order to do so.

Please look forward to the video of his panels at Bakuretsucon and his interview once KeepAnimeAlive launches. I'm not able to post them until I get confirmation from Greg that everything is in order with them. In lieu of them, here is a video showing one of his Fansub panels at Sogen Con 2007.

Remember, don't be a parasite.