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Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

arstechnica.com

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Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#11

Post by gilgad13 »

jcr wrote: post #5
wccrawford wrote: post #3

Actually, it doesn't quite treat it as a 'market failure'. It does indeed take it seriously and beat it at part of its own game (releasing shows when people want them) but it still can't compete on price. And I think that doesn't matter. Give people easy, legal access to the shows at a decent price and they'll pay. (Well, some won't, but some never will.) That's the best you can hope for.

Actually, they are competing on price -- they offer advertisement supported downloads for free 1 week after initial release and TV airing. This does mean they are not competing on timeliness with the free/ad version, but it's a reasonable trade-off.

Downloads, or just streams?

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#12

Post by astrange »

That article skips over some of the actual details of the way the site was founded, like how the founders uploaded US DVD rips/pirated content to the site themselves, or the way they started charging for accounts _before_ removing that content, or the way all the site announcements were written in textspeak to make them look like teenagers.

I guess that's called bootstrapping.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#13

Post by DarkShikari »

astrange wrote: post #12

That article skips over some of the actual details of the way the site was founded, like how the founders uploaded US DVD rips/pirated content to the site themselves, or the way they started charging for accounts _before_ removing that content, or the way all the site announcements were written in textspeak to make them look like teenagers. I guess that's called bootstrapping.

Beyond pirating the content, they also went out of their way to steal fan translations. They eventually hired their own translators, but not before making boatloads of money off selling other peoples' work.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#14

Post by ZoFreX »

wccrawford wrote: post #3

Actually, it doesn't quite treat it as a 'market failure'. It does indeed take it seriously and beat it at part of its own game (releasing shows when people want them) but it still can't compete on price. And I think that doesn't matter. Give people easy, legal access to the shows at a decent price and they'll pay. (Well, some won't, but some never will.) That's the best you can hope for.

I've always said this regarding piracy - the reason many people pirate is that it is faster, easier and cheaper than paying for content. There is no system by which I can pay money to watch TV shows as soon as they are done airing in the USA, I either have to wait for the DVDs, hope the show airs here too, or pirate it. To regurgitate a popular TV quote: Shut up and take my money!

Those services that do exist are all inferior to piracy. LoveFilm streaming does not work well on my PC, and has a poor selection on the PS3 (not to mention that if any torrent website was down as long as PSN has been, someone would have created a new one by now).

Hopefully one day systems will exist whereby I can play any song and watch any film or tv episode from my home via the internet in exchange for cash. I'd probably pay £100 a month for that (Spotify is a bargain at £10 a month) - but I can't. On the TV side of things, there is no existing service that even comes close to piracy + XBMC.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#15

Post by michaelpinto »

jamaicahest wrote: post #9

Silly that the anime studios have not learned anything from the recording industry's last 10+ years battle with internet piracy and the success of online music stores. But I suppose it is difficult to accept that your business strategy, which has worked for many years, is now no longer working.

Actually America is a secondary market for anime — it's only recently that the Japanese have started selling here directly (in fact companies like FUNi are licensing anime not producing it). Most anime is broadcast TV so they make their real money from advertising and the marketing of merchandise, it's only in America where the DVDs were a primary point of consumption. So they have different issues (and blind spots) than the recorded music biz.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#17

Post by mmt »

ZoFreX wrote: post #14
wccrawford wrote: post #3

Actually, it doesn't quite treat it as a 'market failure'. It does indeed take it seriously and beat it at part of its own game (releasing shows when people want them) but it still can't compete on price. And I think that doesn't matter. Give people easy, legal access to the shows at a decent price and they'll pay. (Well, some won't, but some never will.) That's the best you can hope for.

I've always said this regarding piracy - the reason many people pirate is that it is faster, easier and cheaper than paying for content. There is no system by which I can pay money to watch TV shows as soon as they are done airing in the USA, I either have to wait for the DVDs, hope the show airs here too, or pirate it. To regurgitate a popular TV quote: Shut up and take my money! Those services that do exist are all…

Hopefully one day systems will exist whereby I can play any song and watch any film or tv episode from my home via the internet in exchange for cash.

I hope so, too, and I'm in the US.

I'd probably pay £100 a month for that

That's a bit steeper than I'd pay, but I'm not not a heavy consumer of content (and, basically, never consume individual[1] songs). I might still pay that if it were for my entire household and not per device, since I could offer it to renters as a benefit.

I would even go so far as to pay à la carte for the content, but only if it were a reasonable "rental" price. The current Amazon prices are too steep, especially since the selection is so limited and the interface is separate from Netflix's service. I'm not, however, willing to "buy" a permanent license, especially to a TV show.

[1] As opposed to radio-style where someone else picks which songs are played.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#18

Post by dangrossman »

I get really angry with this site. I signed up and paid for a premium membership to watch a TV series the same day it aired in Japan each week. When the series finished I cancelled my membership. Ever since then, I get almost twice daily "private messages" from fake people, which generate e-mails to me asking me to log in and read them. When I log in and open the PM, it's an ad from Crunchyroll offering me a discount on upgrading my account again.

I e-mailed customer service to let them know I was unhappy with the constant and deceptive advertising through PMs from fake personas and they essentially told me to bugger off. "Minor things like this" (being upset over deceptive emails) are just "an excuse to validate pirating anime"... they write this to someone who's never pirated anime and has paid them to watch it legally.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#19

Post by SamHealer »

dangrossman wrote: post #18

I get really angry with this site. I signed up and paid for a premium membership to watch a TV series the same day it aired in Japan each week. When the series finished I cancelled my membership. Ever since then, I get almost twice daily "private messages" from fake people, which generate e-mails to me asking me to log in and read them. When I log in and open the PM, it's an ad from Crunchyroll offering me a discount…

I often wonder to what extent these kind of sites understand that there are many people who will see this behaviour and think "Well, if that's what happens when I pay, I might as well just pirate".

It's undeniable that there are plenty of people who pirate because it's free, and because they can. But if legal, practical alternatives are to survive, even if it's only as they begin, the key shouldn't be profitability, it should be making sure customers enjoy the experience.

Of course, that then leads to Hulu's problem - trying to introduce a paid structure too much too soon.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#20

Post by dangrossman »

jamaicahest wrote: post #9

Silly that the anime studios have not learned anything from the recording industry's last 10+ years battle with internet piracy and the success of online music stores. But I suppose it is difficult to accept that your business strategy, which has worked for many years, is now no longer working.

I don't think the studios treat piracy anything like the recording industry does. Many studios turn a blind eye to, or even openly support, fansubbing -- pirating their series with fan-written subtitles. As another commenter said, countries where they're not airing the series on TV are secondary markets, and many studios seem very aware that people in those markets getting access to their material even in illegal ways is a good way to build up enough demand to actually license the series in that country. Piracy builds demand for international anime DVD sales and those that sell well sometimes end up licensed by Cartoon Network, Hulu, etc.
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