The L33T Lawsuit

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.

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Original article at Anime News Network 

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.

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Original article at Anime News Network 

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.

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Original article at Anime News Network

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.

Here's hoping.

Ken Akamatsu and J-Comi

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.'"

Original article at Anime News Network

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.

This is Otakudom

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?

--Evan Flournoy, Chicks on Anime Interview, Anime News Network 

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!