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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

#31

Post by nitrogen »

rick888 wrote: post #24
ZoFreX wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I've always said this regarding piracy - the reason many people pirate is that it is faster, easier and cheaper than paying for content." It's the beginning of the entitlement generation. People aren't getting what they want, so they take it. Unless the content is $0 and you can get it whenever you want, the vast majority of people pirating will not stop. I've haven't seen the end of the excuses. There are plenty of…

I see two troublesome arguments here that are often used by the media industries:

1. "It's those @$#% kids!" In other words, promulgating and perpetuating an unnecessary generational divide. The "entitlement generation" will soon enough be running the show, so the incumbents are only doing humanity a disservice by taking a scorched-earth-like policy instead of figuring out how to run a sustainable business that satisfies the demands of the technology-enabled consumer.

2. "Pirates gonna pirate." There is no "pirate" demographic, no one reason why people copy instead of buying. Maybe they've watched the first season of a show on Hulu, but the later seasons are unavailable. Maybe they'll pay for content or watch ads, but not both at the same time (Hulu). Maybe they missed an episode of their favorite show and don't want to wait 30 days to a year for it to show up on Hulu/Netflix/DVD.

Assuming that all pirates are of equally dubious moral character is defeatist, elitist, and self-damaging. It's defeatist and self-damaging because it's ignoring the potential to expand one's market to reach some of the pirates. Each incremental step out of the inglorious dark ages of big media and into the digital light will capture another n% of the currently-pirate market. It's elitist because it regards having a different moral code as inferior, when in reality, it's just different.

This addresses your second-to-last paragraph. Pandora is a pain because it's deliberately crippled. If you get a mix you don't like, you can only downvote or skip a few songs before you're forced to listen to whatever they play, and that restriction applies across all of your stations. In other cases, it's a deficiency of marketing/awareness/trust, user interface, selection, ISP bandwidth/throttling, or pricing.

Finally, give it time. The typical college graduate has probably "acquired" more music over the past 7 years of their lives than they could ever have hoped to pay for. Some of those will eventually convert to paying customers as they begin earning real money, and their increased access to creative content during school may have inspired them to greater societal contributions, from which all of us can benefit.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#32

Post by mukyu »

DarkShikari wrote: post #23
guelo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see selling pirated works as any worse than creating the pirated work. There is no honor among thieves.

It's legally dubious as to whether or not translating someone else's text is piracy. But that's irrelevant: this is supposed to be a legitimate business. Legitimate businesses aren't supposed to build a business model around selling others' works without permission. Unless you're claiming that Crunchy are just as equally "thieves" as the pirates they supposedly work against, in which case I agree.

Under US law copyright owners are given the exclusive right to create derivative works[1] and translations are one of the things explicitly defined as a derivative work[2].

The Berne Convention also guarantees that authors have the exclusive right to make translations. [3]

Dubious indeed.

[1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106

[2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#derivative

[3] http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#...

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#33

Post by glassx »

r00fus wrote: post #26
guelo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see selling pirated works as any worse than creating the pirated work. There is no honor among thieves.

I'd argue it's ethically worse On one hand, you have someone who loves the content (but who would not buy it) and so pirates it - this is "unrealized" revenue for content owners. On the other hand, you have a company that makes money and pays no royalties - this is outright theft from the content owners.

Curiously, mostly fan-subbers are very ethical about that.

Those subbers only translate and distribute stuff that isn't licensed outside of Japan, so the "would not buy it" is, in fact, "can't buy it because it's not for sale and even if it were it would be in a foreign language".

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#34

Post by PakG1 »

glassx wrote: post #33
r00fus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's ethically worse On one hand, you have someone who loves the content (but who would not buy it) and so pirates it - this is "unrealized" revenue for content owners. On the other hand, you have a company that makes money and pays no royalties - this is outright theft from the content owners.

Curiously, mostly fan-subbers are very ethical about that. Those subbers only translate and distribute stuff that isn't licensed outside of Japan, so the "would not buy it" is, in fact, "can't buy it because it's not for sale and even if it were it would be in a foreign language".

I recall watching some fansubs a while back, and seeing the disclaimer say something like:

"Not for sale or rent. Especially not to be used to raise a lot of venture capital to stream online to try to make boatloads of money."

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#35

Post by DarkShikari »

mukyu wrote: post #32
DarkShikari wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's legally dubious as to whether or not translating someone else's text is piracy. But that's irrelevant: this is supposed to be a legitimate business. Legitimate businesses aren't supposed to build a business model around selling others' works without permission. Unless you're claiming that Crunchy are just as equally "thieves" as the pirates they supposedly work against, in which case I agree.

Under US law copyright owners are given the exclusive right to create derivative works[1] and translations are one of the things explicitly defined as a derivative work[2]. The Berne Convention also guarantees that authors have the exclusive right to make translations. [3] Dubious indeed. [1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 [2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#derivative [3] http://www.…

and translations are one of the things explicitly defined as a derivative work

If this was true, Google Translate's "translate a website" feature would have been sued into nonexistence years ago. In fact, it probably would have never been created: its predecessors, like Babelfish, would have died first.

Translation is format-shifting. It is no more illegal for me to translate a movie from German to English than it is to convert it from a DOC to a PDF.

What would be illegal is if I paid for the movie, translated it, and then distributed it for free. The mere fact that it's a derivative work does not make it any more "mine" than the original, and thus it's just as much piracy as me distributing the original, untranslated version. Similarly, converting the movie from an iTunes MP4 to an MKV will not make it any more or less legal for me to redistribute it.

The legally dubious part is distributing just the translated script (i.e. subtitles), but not the movie itself. A reasonable fair use case could be made for this, though whether it would hold up in court likely depends on how much money each side spends on lawyers. Most likely, nobody will ever even bring such a thing to court, as there's no profit motive for doing so.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#36

Post by brigade »

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…

Hm, mine were all from one person (the admin)

Certainly annoying and spammy to send 10 over the course of 10 days before I was motivated enough to click unsubscribe.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#37

Post by freakwit »

modeless wrote: post #25
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…

Strange, I did the same and didn't get these messages.

I feel obliged to say that I've not had spammy emails from crunchyroll, either. Their "notifications" are quite spammy, however.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#38

Post by ZoFreX »

rick888 wrote: post #24
ZoFreX wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I've always said this regarding piracy - the reason many people pirate is that it is faster, easier and cheaper than paying for content." It's the beginning of the entitlement generation. People aren't getting what they want, so they take it. Unless the content is $0 and you can get it whenever you want, the vast majority of people pirating will not stop. I've haven't seen the end of the excuses. There are plenty of…

> Unless the content is $0 and you can get it whenever you want

You're making a straw man argument, I made it very clear that I am willing to pay, and I'm not the only one.

> Yet, piracy is stronger than ever.

You know what else is stronger than ever? Online music sales, and record company profits. The easier method of iTunes is killing the old model.

> What makes you think it will be any different for movies?

7% of US citizens now subscribe to Netflix, making it bigger than any single cable company. I would say this is good evidence that people are willing to pay for legal, convenient access to content.

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#39

Post by michaelpinto »

tsotha wrote: post #30
michaelpinto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

This is a key point. Part of the reason they have such a piracy problem with anime is until very recently only a handful of series were released in the US. For most titles a fansub was your only option if you wanted to watch at all.

Well in the old days we traded VHS tapes that weren't even subbed! ; )

Re: Anime Site Treats Piracy as Market Failure

#40

Post by tsotha »

michaelpinto wrote: post #39
tsotha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key point. Part of the reason they have such a piracy problem with anime is until very recently only a handful of series were released in the US. For most titles a fansub was your only option if you wanted to watch at all.

Well in the old days we traded VHS tapes that weren't even subbed! ; )

Heh. I remember watching the laserdisk version of Laputa at a friend's house circa 1990. Took me almost ten years to secure my own copy.
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