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.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Bootlegs, Fansubs, Scanlations, oh my!
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.
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.
Monday, February 28, 2011
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.
Unfortunatly for Funimation, suing the 1337 downloaders is proving to be harder than they had hoped:
Here's hoping.
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.
...
Original article at Anime News NetworkThis 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.
...
Original article at Anime News NetworkThe 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.
...
Original article at Anime News NetworkWhether 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.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Friday, February 18, 2011
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 NetworkIf 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!
Monday, January 24, 2011
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.
Not long after we launched, we were featured on Anime News Network:
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!
Remember, don't be a parasite.
Not long after we launched, we were featured on Anime News Network:
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.
...
Original Article at Anime News Network.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!
Remember, don't be a parasite.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Fanservice - It's not all about the jiggles.
Well, this is a pleasant surprise:
Recently the anime industry has been marketing many of their licenses by focusing on how much nudity there is and how jiggly the breasts are. Now, while nudity and breast jiggle is all well and good, there is a point where it gets to be too much. I know several of my friends who didn't buy the series specifically because they didn't want to watch yet another anime that had its story completely squashed beneath the copious amounts of fanservice.
Luckily, despite Funimation's attempt to convince me otherwise, Sekirei was not all about the jiggles. While the series does contain a lot of fanservice, it does not detract from the plot. I'd go as far as to say that, at times, the fanservice even contributes to the plot. It's a lot like product placement, in that respect. When it pulls you out of the story, it's done wrong. When you don't notice it, or if it contributes to the story, then it is done right.
I'm glad Sekirei sold out, but I hope that the reason it sold out so fast was not because of the short skirt and large breasts on the box. I hope that it was because people who watched it told their friends that it was a great series. I want the industry to survive, but not if the series that get licensed are chosen because of the amount of T&A they contain. At that point, we might as forget about storyline and stick to licensing hentai.
Don't be a parasite....even if it is just for the breasts.
Sekirei The Complete Series, featuring voluptuous vixens, sold out at retail in its first week following its release on November 23. The title ranked #1 for new anime series releases for Nielsen VideoScan First Alert Week Ending Nov 28, 2010!
...
Original article at Funimation Update BlogWith the pitiful state that the anime industry is in, news like this is always welcome. One of Funimation's newest DVD releases, Sekirei, sold out at retail only a week after its release on November 23rd. This is great news, especially when it's a new title and not a remake of a series that already has a strong following, such as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It just so happens that I was one of the few anime fans that were able to get their hands on this series before it sold out. I was, however, a bit skeptical as to whether or not the series would appeal to me.
Recently the anime industry has been marketing many of their licenses by focusing on how much nudity there is and how jiggly the breasts are. Now, while nudity and breast jiggle is all well and good, there is a point where it gets to be too much. I know several of my friends who didn't buy the series specifically because they didn't want to watch yet another anime that had its story completely squashed beneath the copious amounts of fanservice.
Luckily, despite Funimation's attempt to convince me otherwise, Sekirei was not all about the jiggles. While the series does contain a lot of fanservice, it does not detract from the plot. I'd go as far as to say that, at times, the fanservice even contributes to the plot. It's a lot like product placement, in that respect. When it pulls you out of the story, it's done wrong. When you don't notice it, or if it contributes to the story, then it is done right.
I'm glad Sekirei sold out, but I hope that the reason it sold out so fast was not because of the short skirt and large breasts on the box. I hope that it was because people who watched it told their friends that it was a great series. I want the industry to survive, but not if the series that get licensed are chosen because of the amount of T&A they contain. At that point, we might as forget about storyline and stick to licensing hentai.
Don't be a parasite....even if it is just for the breasts.
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