There has been a trend slowly cropping up in the anime industry where american properties are being turned into anime. It started back in 2002 with the release of The Animatrix, a compilation of 9 short films taking place in the Matrix universe, each done different by a different Japanese director and animation studio. Since then, there have been many similar projects done, such as Batman: Gotham Knight, Dante's Inferno, and Halo Legends. Out of these four, I was most surprised by Microsoft when they announced their plans for Halo anime shorts. Additionally, seasons 2 and 3 of The Boondocks featured segments animated by acclaimed Japanese animation studio Madhouse.
X-Men
More recently, American companies have turned to Japan to make anime versions of some famous properties. Marvel is working with Madhouse to bring us anime based on X-Men, Blade, Wolverine, and Iron Man. The latter two premiere this Friday on G4. More and more american properties are being made into anime at the behest of their American owners. There has been quite a lot of interest following these anime adaptions of these traditionally American series, and they've been getting a lot of support from the anime community. However the Marvel anime are not, in my opinion, the most interesting development in regards to western properties being turned into anime.
Supernatural: The Animation
Supernatural is a live-action television show on The CW (formerly The WB) that has just been renewed for it's seventh season. It follows the adventures of Sam and Dean Winchester, two brothers who spend their days fighting against the supernatural. In June 2010, the Japanese Warner Brother's website announced the Supernatural the Animation project. The English release will feature Jared Padalecki, the actor for Sam Winchester in the original series, as the voice actor for his character for the animated series.
This was the first time that an American, live-action television series was turned into an anime. I was personally ecstatic when I heard the news that Supernatural was getting an anime, partially because I am a fan of the series, but also be cause of what it means for other American properties. American properties, obviously, have a much bigger following in America than anime does. If anime can attach itself to American properties by making anime adaptions of them, it will have a much wider audience to sell to, which means more money for the anime industry.
Plus I would not complain if there were to be an anime adaption of Harry Potter.
Things have been astir in the anime and manga world lately regarding an old classic: Sailor Moon. Last March, Kodansha USAannounced that it would be releasing the original Sailor Moon manga in North America, and now, earlier this week, Great Eastern Entertainment (the merchandising company which handles almost all licensed anime merchandise in North America) has announced several pieces of Sailor Moon merchandise.
The merchandising company Great Eastern Entertainment lists four Sailor Moon products on its website as "coming soon" — a set of playing cards, a wall scroll, a notebook, and a binder [...]. The new products have a Toei Animation logo printed on them but also have "No Price Yet." Great Eastern Entertainment has produced Sailor Moon merchandise in the past.
These new developments with the old series are big news. In North America, Sailor Moon held a similar standing as Dragon Ball Z, but for girls (and most boys, but they won't admit that). The English adaption, however, was altered and much of the dialog was changed, in order to make it appropriate for younger audiences, and the final two seasons were never licensed for release. Fans have been begging for a re-release of Sailor Moon for ages, and its looking like that wish is finally starting to come true. There has been an "international revival" of the series happening globally, with the licenses being renewed in countries outside of Japan. However, as of yet, there has been no mention of the series being licensed in North America, but at this stage it seems only a matter of time.
Sailor Moon is such a big deal in the anime world, that whichever company gets the rights to release it in North America will be making lots of money. Several years ago, before the dissolution of ADV Films, David Williams (now working for Sentai Filmworks) once commented on how much he wished that Toei would let them license and re-dub Sailor Moon. Just this last April, at Anime Boston, Justin Rojas, the Social Media Manager at Funimation, said that the show is something that Funimation is definitely interested in.
It will be interesting to see who manages to acquire Sailor Moon, though I personally have my money on Funimation.
I've decided to take a break from the depressing topic of piracy this week and talk about something else. Since I'm working on obtaining my Entertainment Business Masters currently, why not talk a little bit about the origins of two of the most well known companies in the anime industry?
One of the most successful anime franchises in the United States is, without a doubt, Dragon Ball Z. Brought to the United States back in 1996, even today it remains one of Funimation's best selling series. The man who brought it to America was Gen Fukunaga, the President of Funimation Entertainment.
Gen Fukunaga was born in Japan, and grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana. Fukunaga spent his entire 8th grade year in Japan, where he became enamored with the Japanese style of animation. Years later, he would remember the cartoons he saw in Japan and would form a company with the sole purpose of bringing those shows to the United States.
Fukunaga's uncle was one of the producers for the hit series Dragon Ball, in Japan, and approached Gen about bringing the series over to America. Gen had been intent on starting his own company in order to bring Japanese animation to the United States, and Dragon Ball seemed to be a great starting point. Having drafted up his business plan for the company that would become Funimation, Gen began to meet with investors.
There was one particular investment group that was interested in Gen's business plan. Several years earlier, that had invested in another company bringing Japanese content over to the United States. That company, Nintendo, had done phenomenally well, so they were very interested in things coming over from Japan.
Fukunaga had all sorts of data about anime, which he laid out for the investors. However, they weren't all that interested until he mentioned one fact. Dragon Ball was the "#1 video game in Japan, and other territories." Once they heard that, they were hooked. They were convinced that regardless of whether or not the show succeeded or failed in the US, their investment would be saved by the video game.
They were, of course, in correct about that. While the video games have done will in the United States, their success pales in comparison to the success of the anime. However, when you are trying to get investors, you have to get their attention, and Gen succeeded in doing that. While not an integral part of his plan, the video game was able to hook his investors enough to get the funding for what he really wanted to do: which was the anime. In order to get investors, you need to have some tidbit that really catches their interest, even if it's not your main focus. As long as you get their interest, it doesn't matter how.
Matt Greenfield
John Ledford
Funimation isn't the only important company in the history of anime. ADV, while no longer in existance, was once the leader in the North American Anime market. The company was started by John Ledford and Matthew Greenfield, with their release of Devil Hunter Yohko.
Ledford and Greenfield started the company by themselves, doing the majority of the work in David Williams living room. Initially they only gave the shows subtitles, but several years later began dubbing the shows into English.
The first show they licensed was Devil Hunter Yohko, which they licensed from the Japanese distribution company Toho for $100,000. Toho reluctantly licensed them the show, unsure whether or not they would be able to handle it. Ledford and Greenfield made their money back within three months.
While not initially looking for investors, Ledford and Greenfield needed to convince Toho to license them the show. Although Toho was skeptical about whether or not ADV could handle the distribution, nevertheless they did end up licensing them the show. Once they had succeed with the license, it was much easier for them to get additional licenses in funding, eventually culminating with a partnership with the Japanese investment firm Sojitz.
This just goes to show that the best weapon entrepreneurs have when trying to convince investors is success. If your business plan has proven sales, especially if they are as promising as ADV's were with their first license, that is something that investors want in on. The are almost guaranteed to make back their money, and more, which is what investors are looking for. Success is what investors want, so that's what you want to give them.
The second episode of the PodKAAst is finally up! We discuss Anime Boston, TokoyPop, Sony, and allude to guests for future episodes. We've also got a super secret special announcement waiting after the ending music of the PodKAAst!
During the PodKAAst we mention Funimation's new site, which is currently in Beta and you can check it out at beta.funimation.com!
As is quite fitting for the leading anime distributer in the United States, Funimation is also the leader in social media platforms. During Anime Boston, their Social Media Manager, Justin Rojas, stated that they have over 200,000 likes on their Facebook page (rivaling Capcom), and over 20,000 followers on Twitter. This is far beyond what any other US anime company has, so they are pretty good at it. It's only fitting that their new site, Beta.Funimation.com, has been heavily influenced by social media.
Beta.Funimation.com has been the pet project of Adam Sheehan, one of Funimation's Marketing Managers. He said that Funimation's new website isn't trying to be the Facebook of anime, however that is clearly what it is. Don't worry though, Funimation, we like that. We like that a lot.
In addition to having all of the things we're accustomed too with the old Funimation site, like show info, free streaming anime, the Funimation Update Blog, etc, there are many new and cool things available with beta. There are now forums, convention info and reports, cosplay photos, cool new videos, and users can even have their own blogs. On top of all that, the site design just looks really cool and clean.
So go and check out Funimation's new website, currently at Beta.Funimation.com until they move it over to the real site once all the bugs have been worked out!
Don't forget to check out the PodKAAst and look for the special announcement as well!
By now it's common knowledge that Sony has been hacked and that massive amounts of personal data was stolen. Now, while not directly related to anime piracy, it was very interesting to observe people reaction in wake of the theft. So many people are very angry that Sony allowed this to happen, and are less concerned with the hacker group that did the actual stealing.
As a programmer myself, I know how hard it is to make something hack proof. It is nearly impossible to account for every way your programs might be cracked, and some new way might crop up the next day because of some development in technology. Sony doesn't just sit around and let people break in. That's not very good for business, as recent events have shown us. I don't doubt that they make every effort to try and keep their network secure, as evidenced by their move against George Hotz in January. Sony operated the PSN for almost five years without this problem, so it's not as if the way to break in was obvious to anyone. If someone has the skill and is determined to hack your network, it is going to happen sooner or later. Because of this, I find it very hard to be angry with Sony, even though my own account on the PlayStation Network has probably been compromised.
The real ones at fault here are the hackers. Regardless of who they are, they are the ones who purposefully broke into the network and stole the information. They are the ones that stole the personal information, not Sony.
As I thought about this, I found the parallels between this and when the Fractale Production Committee ordered the halt of the Fractalesimulcast earlier this year. It was stopped in response to the massive amount of illegal copies of the show that were available for free on the internet. Since the revenue for Fractale comes from the legal viewings of the show, the Fractale Production Committee decided to halt the simulcast until the amount of piracy was cut down on. Immediately, fans of the show were very vocal and very angry at the Fractale Production Committee for this decision. No one was angry at the people pirating it, or the people making it available online for free.
It is really unfortunate that this has been the way people have reacted to this sort of thing. I suppose it's because people find it easier to blame companies rather than an unknown group of people spread out across the internet. I don't blame the Fractale Production Committee, and I certainly don't blame Sony. They are doing their best to correct the problem, and people aren't helping very much by laying all the blame on them.
Hopefully people will wise up and place the blame on the people who are really responsible.
You know those days where you wake up, eat some breakfast, and then log on to the internet and low and behold, it seems that the world ended while you were sleeping and blissfully unaware?
That's what it felt like Friday when I heard that Tokyopop had announced that it was closing it's North American publishing division. I've been buying from Tokyopop since I first bought Marmalade Boy way back in 2005, so hearing that Tokyopop was shutting down it's North American division was quite disheartening.
Tokyopop was one of the leading manga distributors in the United States, along with Viz Media and DelRey. They were the first to pioneer publishing manga in it's original right to left reading format, instead of flipping it to be read left to right. With the trouble that manga industry has been facing due to illegal scans of manga being freely and easily available on the internet.
Tokyopop also cited Borders' recent filing for bankruptcy as one of the reasons for them closing. People are spending less and less time in physical bookstores, and I have personally noticed that the bookstores I frequent don't keep their manga stock very current.
What's even more discouraging is that last December Tokyopop opened up a print on demand store for some of their older titles. I was very excited about this, and was hoping that it would be a change to help the manga industry increase it's sales, since it would provide them with an additional revenue stream without the risk of not being able to sell all the stock they've purchased. Unfortunately, the print on demand store, along with the rest of their publishing, is not closed.
I'm hoping another company, like Viz, which has some of the most popular manga series like Naruto and Bleach, will make a move to do a print on demand model with some of their titles. While the popular ones will always sell in stores, it will hopefully be more economically safe for them to sell the more niche or older manga as print on demand purchases.
Here's hoping things start to look up, and as always, don't be a parasite.
Finally put up the first episode of the PodKAAst, where myself and other people involved with KeepAnimeAlive.com talk about the anime industry and what we are up to at KeepAnimeAlive.com.
Having finally finished uploading the Bootleg Panel from Bakuretsu Con 2010, I've moved on to the other panel Greg Ayres hosted concerning the welfare of the anime industry.
Greg Ayres talks about the state of the anime industry as it currently stands, detailing the damage he's seen done to the industry in his time, as well as the difficulties the industry has faced in attempting anime simulcasts.
I've talked a lot about the illegal downloading and internet piracy of anime, and it is one of the most prevalent problems facing the anime industry today. However, because of that, I often tend to forget the other, closely related problem of bootleg anime DVDs and merchandise.
When visited Bakuretsu Con last year, I attended and recorded Greg Ayres' new anti-piracy panel focusing specifically on bootleg DVD's and bootlegs. The complete panel is now up for viewing on KeepAnimeAlive.com.
Greg Ayres, whom I've talked about previously, is by and large considered to be the spokesperson on the war against anime piracy. During the panel, he points out many ways to identify bootleg items, and not just DVDs. All sorts of items are subject to being bootlegged, from DVDs, to soundtracks, to posters, to wall scrolls, and even to figurines. One of the key ways he mentions to recognize a piece of bootlegged material is check and see if it's missing a copyright statement. Almost every piece of legitimate anime merchandise will have the companies copyright written somewhere on it.
After doing my own research on the subject, and looking at the Piracy FAQ Greg mentions, I looked at some of my own merchandise, to verify whether or not they were legitimate items. Unfortunately, I discovered more bootlegged items that I'm happy to admit among my collection. Over 3/4s of my anime posters are most likely bootleg, lacking any sort of copyright information at all. I'll be saving these for a future project involving fire and various implements of destruction.
Additionally one of the things that Greg mentions is a court case where some studios sued a flea market to knowingly allow vendors to sell illegitimate and bootleg items. The court ended up ruling in favor of the studios, saying that it was illegal for a marketplace to knowingly allow illegitimate infringing items to be sold. I believe the case he was talking about was Fonovisa, Inc. v. Cherry Auction, Inc.
Now, my own stance on piracy is pretty solid. It's illegal, and it's hurting an industry that I am very passionate about. A benefit to this is that I have the motivation to start a website and blog about it, or go out and record interviews with industry professionals. One of the drawbacks however, is keeping a cool temper when I'm confronted with people defending piracy. In Episode 4 of Conflict of Interest the shows host discuss anime piracy, and specifically a study that was done earlier this year that implied that streaming piracy was helping anime DVD sales
According to the study every 1% increase of views on YouTube correlated to a 0.25% increase in DVD sales. This has been interpreted as meaning that piracy was contributing to DVD sales. Personally, this doesn't make any sense to me. You can't prove that the people that made up the 0.25% increase in DVD sales are part of the 1% viewing the show on YouTube. It makes far more sense to assume the the increase in both DVD sales and YouTube views were simply because the show was just more popular.
They do make many false statements in their podcast, such as the fact that Blu-Ray discs are not region encoded and will play on any bluray player in the world. Unlike with DVD regions, Japan and the United States are in the same bluray region, but there are regions none-the-less.
Now they also make mention of the common pro-piracy argument that piracy acts as free advertising for the show, and contributes to it's popularity in the United States. While this may have been true back when anime was barely known in the United States and didn't have as much of a following, more people are just using them as an alternative to purchasing the legal DVDs. Regardless of whether or not they help the industry, it is still illegal and infringing on the rights of the creators. For me, this is still the strongest argument.
I also listened to the bonus content of episode 116 of Anime Today, a podcast run by RightStuf.com. They interviewed Ed Chavez, the marketing director from Vertical, Inc. A very interesting thing that Vertical, Inc. does is that periodically, they will ask fans exactly which series that they would like Vertical to license. This really lessons the damages of piracy, since the titles they are licensing are ones that people are asking for specifically, so there are better chances of them having higher sales.
Interestingly enough, Chavez denies one of the claims that companies look at the number of illegal downloads to determine which series would do well in the US. Instead, he says that any heavily pirated series, they are far less likely to license that series. The anime and manga industry is already a niche market in the United States, and Vertical caters to an even more niche group of manga fans. They need to licenses things that aren't being pirated in order to make sure that they will get enough sales.
Additionally, they discuss that some Japanese authors, upon seeing their content being illegally translated and distributed, decide to never allow that series to be licensed by American companies as a result. They cite a recent development last year where many authors of Japanese work spoke out and voiced their disapproval of their content being pirated.
Chavez notes at one point that piracy and scanlations are making it less and less viable for companies to licenses content and distribute it over here, which could lead to the eventual collapse of the entire anime industry.
There are reasons why we have copyright laws in place, and reasons why we protect intellectual property. Unfortunately the internet has made it incredibly easy to infringe upon these rights with far less threat of ever being punished for doing so. It seems to me that the amount of pirated and illegitimate anime and manga far outweighs that which is legitimately obtained and watched. There is just so much out there, and very little means of controlling content available on the world wide web. At this point, there isn't much the anime companies can do. If they decide to exercise their rights and try to protect their content, they will be, as Greg Ayres has said, be "crucified" by the people who claim to be their fans.
It's clear that if the anime industry is to be saved, it has to be done by fans who decide to take a stand to protect the shows and comics that they love.
Funimation made a big fuss in the anime community last month when they filed for a lawsuit against 1337 people who illegally downloaded a specific episode of One Piece through bit torrents. Initially, many people thought that Funimation's suit was a prank or publicity stunt, since the number of people being sued, 1337, is famous as the internet lingo for the word elite. However, there is an actual filing of the suit, and Funimation made clear their intention to follow through with it.
Funimation asks the court to stop the defendants from infringing on Funimation's copyrights for this episode and any other videos now or in the future. If another request in the suit is granted, defendants "shall destroy all copies of Plaintiff's [videos] that Defendant has downloaded onto any computer hard drive or server without Plaintiff's authorization and shall destroy all copies of those downloaded [videos] transferred onto any physical medium or device in each Defendant's possession, custody, or control." Funimation also seeks compensation for damages and legal costs.
This is something that has more or less never been done before in the anime industry. Previously, the anime companies have only filed suits against retails sites producing and distributing bootleg copies of their copyrights, but never against anyone who has downloaded illegal copies.
The North American anime distributor FUNimation Productions is suing a group of related companies in Southern California for allegedly selling counterfeit DVDs of its licensed anime on a website. [...] Some of the DVDs are said to have included English dubbing.
The anime industry has carefully avoided going after users who have downloaded anime. This was mostly because Funimation, ADV, and the other anime companies were fearful of upsetting the anime community and losing more sales as a result. The closest they had come to this previously was when Funimation sent out cease and desist letters on the behalf of their Japanese partners, demanding that certain series (which were not licensed in the US at the time) have all fansubbing stopped. Now, just over 2 years later, this is the first time that the anime downloaders themselves have seriously been targeted by the anime companies.
Unfortunatly for Funimation, suing the 1337 downloaders is proving to be harder than they had hoped:
On February 10, Senior United States District Judge Royal Furgeson ordered the anime distributor Funimation to "sever" or remove all defendants except one from its copyright infringement lawsuit over an episode of the television anime One Piece. [...] According to the judge's order, the actions of each defendant did not constitute "acting in concert" but rather acting individually, although identically. [...] Funimation can choose to pursue the other 1,336 defendants in individual, separate lawsuits within the next 30 days, if it submits filing fees for each case.
Whether or not Funimation will chose to pursue the remaining cases is unknown, since each additional filing of a suit will cost them $350. Without the ability to sue down loaders en masse, it doesn't seem very economical to take action against downloaders. However, perhaps a lawsuit every once in a while will make people cautions enough to download less.
It's easy to forget that the problem of anime piracy isn't something confined to the North American market. Piracy in Japan is just as bad. I mentioned in a previous article about Yana Toboso, creator of the Black Butler manga, and the emails she would receive from Japanese fans who had illegally downloaded her work.
Ken Akamatsu, creator of Negima, announced that he was starting a site where out of print manga and doujinshi would be posted online for free. Just recently, he posted some comments on twitter commenting on illegal scans.
Akamatsu suggested on Tuesday that illegal scans have "fallen into the category of 'property of the Internet'" and that it will be impossible to eliminate them. "The only thing we can do at this point is [launch our own free websites with the] 'advertising model.'"
The website, J-Comi, which features a mascot very similar to the ermine Chamomile from Negima, launched on November 26th of last year. Unlike illegal manga scanlation sites, which display each individual page of the manga as a jpeg image, J-Comi provides high quality PDF downloads of it's content. Akamatsu himself has made his hit manga Love Hina available on the site.
While the website is currently only in Japanese, hopefully and English language version of the site isn't too far away. While it will be impossible to stop people from downloading the newest and latest manga illegally, hopefully by providing a free alternative, it will cut down on how much illegally obtained content people are viewing.
One of the things that many people ask me is whether or not I oppose things like anime music videos (AMVs) or fan parodies. While they are technically copyright infringement, they do not hinder the anime industry. Most of the time they help the industry, and companies like Funimation consider it to be a form of free advertising.
The basic thinking going into fan videos is thus: if it whets the audience's appetite, we'll leave it alone. But if it sates the audience's appetite, it needs to come down. Does that make sense?
If they don't hurt the industry, I have no reason to oppose them. There are so many anime I might not have decided to watch if it was not for AMV compilations like AMV Hell. I've made my fair share of AMVs myself, and I love watching fan parodies. Like AMVs, anime fan parodies use anime footage, except instead of editing them to music, fan parodies are generally re-edited and re dubbed by fans, creating something original and hilarious. Some of the more famous anime fan parodies are Dragonball Z Abridged, Evangelion ReDeath, or my personal favorite, This is Otakudom.
This is Otakudom is a fan parody project directed by Scott Melzer. It uses footage primarily from Fushigi Yugi, and chronicles the story of a group of anime fans, or otaku, attending their first anime conventions. It is one of the earliest and most famous fan parodies and has served as inspiration for the many that followed.
This is Otakudom
I have met Scott several times, and was able to interview him for Keep Anime Alive last year at Bakuretsucon. The video of the interview should be up sometime next month, but for now I'd like to talk about several of the key things we discussed.
Scott was inspired by the fan parody Koko wa Otaku, and as a result he and his group NoNDE Fanfilms began work on This is Otakudom. The fan parody played for the first time at Otakon in 2001, and quickly became a huge success. Scott had never expected that it would become such a hit. Currently he visits many conventions and runs panels talking about creating fan parodies, and tells the story of This is Otakudom. One of his most popular and successful events is the Fan Parody Panic, where the attendees record and create their own fan parody at the convention during the two hour panel.
One important thing to note about Scott is that he is a strong supporter of the anime industry and highly disapproves of piracy and bootlegging. In fact, his second fan parody, S.T.E.A.M. The Movie, is very anti-bootlegging and anti-piracy. At the time, Scott ran a video rental store, and piracy and bootlegging was something that hurt his business. He's always had issues with conventions that allow bootlegs to be sold in their dealers room. In addition, all the footage used in the movie are from DVDs that Scott owned -- none of it was downloaded illegally. If any of the anime companies ever tell him to stop distributing it, he will comply.
Scott Melzer and fellow NoNDE member Jon Miller have a lot more to say on the subject of piracy in the full interview. Look forward to it on KeepAnimeAlive.com!
It's been a while since my last post, but I'm glad to say that it's because I've been really busy following the launch of my new website, Keep Anime Alive. The site launched on January 12th, with only a simple news feed for features. Since then we've updated the site with an RSS feed, as well as put in place a system for Sustain the Industry videos to be posted, along with a list of purchases. We still have many updates and improvements that we are working on, and will hopefully be updated soon.
Anime fans Colin Harvie and Chris Perry have established a group called the Anime Defense Project whose primary project at this time is the newly created KeepAnimeAlive.com website.
Anime News Network (ANN) is one of the most popular sites for anime related news, so being featured as an Interest article there was a big help to us. We soon topped about 1000 unique visitors shortly after being featured on ANN. A great many supporters sprung up for us on the ANN forums, but along with supporters came opposers.
Anime piracy has always been one of the most controversial subjects regarding anime for the past few years, and no where is it more apparent than on forums on the internet. Arguments are traded back and forth, before degrading into a slur of name calling. Because the internet removes the face to face interaction between people, they lose their inhibitions and the need to be polite and become increasingly irrational. Arguments very rarely come to a successful conclusion on internet forums, nor is anyone every convinced to switch sides. They just bunker down, and decide to hate everyone with an opposing point of view. Not very productive or helpful.
It's been said that one way to eliminate misunderstanding of tone or inflection is to communicate by written words or email. That is not necessarily true, especially when on forums. When reading the words another poster has written, the reader applies to it the tone or inflection that they associate with the poster, whether true, or not. In addition, when arguing over the internet, people seem more inclined to take things personally, whether or not it was intended as such. As soon as one person takes something personally, and resorts to name calling, retorts will fly back and forth, and the conversation falls apart. There are very few people on forums who can, or will, separate the people from the problem.
Because of this, we have been very hesitant on whether or not to include forums on our site. Even if they are arguing in our favor, it doesn't make us look good, and no one ends up being convinced of our point.
When I started Keep Anime Alive, the goal was to educate people about the dangers of piracy, provide evidence, and actually show people the harm that it's doing, in the hopes that they will come to the correct conclusion themselves and stop pirating anime. Unfortunately for the moment, the majority of our opponents seem to think that we're their to tar and feather anyone who doesn't hold the same view as we do. We're afraid that having a forum might contribute to this view, so whether or not we're going to have one is still up in the air.
In any successful negotiation, you need to be careful not to make the other party feel like they are being personally attacked. This is the reason why we chose to focus primarily on convincing people through education, keeping with objective criteria so that they don't feel like we are making an attack on their character or beliefs.
It's on uphill battle, but with the launch of the site, things are looking good!
