Japanese Government Enforcing Anti-Piracy Law on Anime and Manga - Update

[Alterego-X]

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that piracy is good, just that the "$20-billion" figure is definitely inflated

Given how very clear it is that western anime fandoms could only ever form and spread in the first place thanks to piracy, the idea that piracy has been a net positive for the industry really shouldn't even be all that controversial.

 

[circularlogic88]

It's 2014. It shouldn't be unreasonable to create an in-house translation department that works side by side with the publishers to release content internationally.

When fan-subbers are offering a better service and access to content not available in their own regions for sale, then you're doing something wrong. This crackdown didn't work for the record industry with napster, it's not gonna fly in 2014 with scanlations and subs.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

 

[JSoup]

The other problem with Crunchyroll that I didn't see mentioned is the unreliability of the client. The PS3 version craps out randomly and requires constant restarts to keep working (there are topics on the Crunchyroll forums going back three years on this one, with frequent promises of fixing the issue eventually). The website viewer frequently interrupts itself with ads, then restarts whatever was being watched. With the entire thing being so sketchy, is it any wonder people turn to piracy to watch a simple 20 minute show?

Captcha: Save the Day
Yes, captcha, I wish a reasonable, affordable solution would come and save the day.

 

[MrDumpkins]

If I could buy a digital transalated (same quality as what free sites do now) version of shonen every week, within a week of it's jap release I would sign up for it whether it was individual choice or subscription. I'd only read one piece but I would even understand them not letting you purchase series individually. Problem is it takes way too long for me to get an official english translation for purchase here in the US. I don't go free websites because I don't want to pay, but because I want my product fast. There are so many talented translators groups for manga that there should easily be a website with the manga available in any language for purchase. People scan manga so fast nowadays you can't even use it being easier to pirate as an excuse.

The manga industry probably wants that, but there is a huge market of corps that would lose too much money having things be easier for consumers. So we get what we have instead.

 

[RaikuFA]

Part of the problem is pricing and release. Take that series Panty and Stocking. A DVD was released 2 years after Japan finished it. The box set was $50 for 3 hours of episodes. I could get The Critic for $20 and get three times the content.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

*Grinds teeth*

I'm going to be keeping my eyes on this one. As uncomfortable as it might be to admit, piracy is a pretty damn huge part of the North American anime "culture", so to speak, judging from my university's anime club and the methods most (probably all, actually) of my friends use to watch anime. I actually really doubt this is going to do anything besides make things more covert, more like a black market, I suppose, unless they actually start to do things to actually help with the issue.

Why do people pirate anime, anyway? Well, first of all, it costs $60+ for 12 episodes on DVD. That's pretty ridiculous, especially since you can get collections of other TV shows with way more episodes for cheaper. Second, it's more convenient. I don't know about anyone else, but I have a hell of a time finding anime in stores, even though I live in a city. Ordering off of the internet isn't exactly feasible all the time, either; shipping costs add up, and they add up quickly. It's also really inconvenient and, frankly, risky to order a series that you want to watch for the first time off of the internet, and then have to wait for it to ship. And that leads into the third point: it's really risky to buy anime because of the costs. If you have no way to watch it beforehand to see if you'd enjoy it, then you can't be sure if your investment is going to pay off. Sites like Crunchyroll are really good because of this; they let you watch a series to be able to tell if you'd like it. However, the fact of the matter is that Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix, etc. don't, and probably can't, license everything. And, finally, we reach my final point: it's flat-out more reliable to pirate anime. With piracy, the fans get everything. Every series that anyone might be interested in, they can find on the internet for free, and they get them subtitled very quickly after release. Crunchyroll is very good about the subtitling thing, too; they simulcast their series, so fans in non-Japan regions can watch them subtitled at the same time as the Japanese fans... assuming that the series are available in the region. For licencing reasons, they can't broadcast to a lot of places, and sites like Hulu are completely unavailable to people outside of America. Netflix, too, that has a very limited selection of anime in the first place, is even worse in non-American countries.

I have little issue with trying to minimize piracy. Issues only arise when they just say "NO PIRACY!" and try to crack down on it while refusing to acknowledge the reasons why people pirate in the first place. I do realize that there will always be pirates, but there are steps that can be taken to actually counteract it.

 

[Norithics]

If you want my money, make it available for me to buy. If it's not worth it for me to pay you, then fair enough, it isn't! You can't tell me I cost you money when it wasn't available for me to buy to begin with; that's some shaky math.

 

[144_v1legacy]

The government and the 15 producers and distributors will begin contacting 580 "overseas pirate sites" demanding they delete copyright infringing content. The sites are located around the world, but many are in China, where much of the anti-piracy campaign will focus. A new site will direct fans to legal copies of affected works, which are available for a few hundred yen (equal to a few US dollars), the NHK noted.

Contacting those sites? The correct move. But don't tell them to stop - rather, find a way to turn their viewership into a marketable resource. I know it's hard. Maybe it's really hard. But there should have been a better solution.

Right now, there's no reason for this "few hundred yen" site to be more appealing than the million "free" ones.

I like fansubs because I like the way fans sub. Unless The site is offering the "legal copies of affected works" is offering fansubbed ones as well (dubious), then "free" remains the better option.

 

[prpshrt]

Ugh, do they not get that it's how people become fans of the mangas in the first place? Heck I wouldn't have gotten into almost all my mangas and animes if I didnt read translations/watch fansubs if they weren't free and it wouldn't have caused me to support the manga artists either

 

[dystopiaINC]

But now how am I gonna read an entire manga series for free and pretend it benefits the creator that I don't pay for it? (Oh YES I motherloving went there.)

I know not everybody is like this, but for a lot of us, when there is a series piques our interest and we watch it, we buy it as soon as it becomes available (and noone is going to watch multiple episodes of something they don't like). The problem is that license holders and distributors are ignoring (and have been for years) the market in the west. A hand-full of liscensed subs and re-runs on Adult Swim won't even scratch the surface. Those of us that really love the art form and that have a desire to contribute to artist's compensation are happy to buy their products. But the distrubutors and license holders aren't helping anyone **including themselves** with absurd 2-5 year release windows, DVD's with two episodes and token, if not 0, bonus material for $50, lousy marketing and outreach, and just general f---ery.

Nobody watches a series they don't like? try reading anything made by Seo Kouji. Seriously the first chapter of his newest manga and every week since (25 chapters now) you get about 4 or five people talking about how much they like the series and then 20 ripping on it for anything under the sun. Why? your guess is as good as mine. People get mad about some stupid crap from his other works but instead of just dropping it they keep coming back every week reading it and then complaining about how terrible it is. Then they build up all this animosity and when one of his series ends they jump to the next one and continue complaining. Seriously he may not be the best writer but her art is damn nice and the story's are usually pretty fun if you can shut your brain off and go with it. http://myanimelist.net/people/2405/Kouji_Seo

 

[Saucycarpdog]

All in all, while many sites might be taken down because of this, new ones will replace them, just like back when One Manga went down (anyone remember that site).

I remember that site. It used to be where I'd go to catch up on the latest chapters of Naruto/bleach/one piece/Hunter x Hunter/Fullmetal Alchemist but then that thing happened. I was kind of disappointed cause the forums were a nice place to go(less cynical than some forums)and they had some cool features going. Course now I've just moved on to several other sites for my latest chapters but it's not the same sadly.

OT: Yeah good luck with that Japan. If there is one thing you should know about piracy by now is that it's next to impossible to kill without shutting down the whole internet.

 

[Something Amyss]

Over half of US anime and manga fans watch and read pirated works, according to the METI.

Okay, but are these fansubs of anime that hasn't come out in the US, or pirating established anime and manga? Because even the latter only has a tenuous relationship with damage (as one download =/= one lost sale), and I suspect it's the former that's that primary body (as the original article might indicate as well). I'm not advocating piracy, mind. I'm just addressing the claim of damages.

I'm also of the opinion that this could be at least partially addressed by actually distributing those anime/mangas here. What's amazed me in the past is watching people claim damages for things not regionally available. To an extent, you can import, but that only works if you speak the language or it's already subbed.

I support the right of the creator to choose not to distribute, but it's really weird how often they turn around and use that choose to argue they're losing money because something they won't publish is getting illegally distributed. And despite the notion that people read it before it comes out here, a lot of it doesn't come out period. Granted, the audience may not know what's coming out, but that's furthering the issue.

It's nice that they're talking about "channels," but there would need to be a pretty big overhaul for it to change things much.

Also, directing people to legal copies will only work if they are being distributed. This is part of my confusion over what we're really talking about here.

They should also not be surprised if it possibly gets worse when this idea blows up in their face. The thing about combating piracy is, the more you try to head on fight pirates, the more fuel you are giving them to want to continue doing piracy. While at the same time, shutting down fan made subs and translations might cause more to want to pirate as well. Because as you said, not everything is localized, and most of the time it's just to the US. Even then, with all the restrictions on what is and what isn't allowed means a good majority of things aren't localized in western markets at all.

The internet is also pretty heavily contrarian. There's a very strong "fuck you, you can't tell me what to do" vibe online. I imagine there will be people who will pirate "in protest," which probably sends the wrong message.

 

[dystopiaINC]

[ All in all, while many sites might be taken down because of this, new ones will replace them, just like back when One Manga went down (anyone remember that site).

Yeah, I remember that whole debacle. Happened while I was in high school, so that had to be about five years ago. After the initial anger of no longer having easy access to manga, everyone just moved to the Spectrum. Looks like they're now starting to go through the same thing though.

More on topic, this is a problem that likely isn't going to go away due to the before mentioned fact that a whole lot of anime and manga don't get released outside of Japan, and if they do, it takes a very long time and is more often than not will be very expensive (namely in the anime department).

Let's look at a recent example, Attack on Titan.

The latest issue of the manga to be released in the U.S. is volume 12, which was released on April 29th, 2014. In Japan, volume 12 came out on December 9th 2012, and are about to get volume 14. They also have a means to read the new chapters as they are released legally (which [as far as I'm aware] no one outside of Japan can do, or even read chapters in their non-volume form).

For the anime, in the U.S. the first 13 episodes of the dub came out on DVD on June 3rd, 2014, with the other twelve to come out in September maybe (I don't know if this means it airing on TV or its release on DVD). [For the life of me, I can't get a solid date on when the episodes aired on TV. I get anything from February to May.]
In Japan, the anime started airing an episode a week from April 2013 to September of the same year. As far as I'm aware, the complete DVD box set of the first season came out not too long after the season concluded (again, can't get solid dates).

THIS IS FOR SOMETHING THAT IS POPULAR. You have to wait up to a year or even more after its release in Japan to get anything official in English! If they want to combat piracy, they need to drastically reduce the time it takes for it to come out in English, at the very least.

You could look at the Manga of Rurouni Kenshin as a good example. the manga started in 1994 and ended in 1999. but the US didn't see the first translated volume until 2003, around 9 years later. Granted that was around the time Anime and manga was starting to get big, and it's gotten better but 1-2 years is still insane. when I was younger I used to read Naruto, I pretty much dropped it because it never seems to end but when I did I had a friend that was reading the stuff coming out officially and I was reading it online. I was up to date and ahead of him by 2 years. it was hard to talk to him about with out dropping spoiler bombs. And that's freaking NARUTO! Which is, and lets be honest here, like the Call of Duty of the manga world. just about everybody I know Started out reading Naruto, and that being one of the biggest Manga EVER and it was still 2 years behind in the US. The biggest market in the west. look if you had a site that let me read online, for free with adds, or subscriptions with out ads I would be all over it. hell you could run it like that and then let you download the chapter for a couple bucks a chapter. Using Naruto again, It's weekly, about 17 pages a week and currently sitting at 687 chapters. if you charged $5 a month for add free service and then an additional $1 for a chapter download your rolling in bank. you could even have bundles, download 5 chapters get 2 free, make it 5 of ANY manga and get 2 of any manga free. you could be running 7 or six weekly manga and buying all of the new chapters EVERY WEEK. I'm sorry but this business model just makes SO MUCH sense. maybe not at these prices I'm tossing out but I know people who would be ALL OVER this. you could even HIRE the good scanlators and pay them the get them translated and up. Lots of the good ones can get them up sometimes under 24 hours, these people are talented and doing it for free.

 

[Seydaman]

Okay, sure

I'll get right on giving a shit once you start licensing 98% of what I watch and read

 

[Sniper Team 4]

So...does this mean I'm going to have problems finishing Naruto now? Please no. It's almost over. It's almost over. I'm still buying the DVDs, but the manga has just gone so far over the cliff that I can't bring myself to buy the books anymore...

There's also the fact that some of the manga I'm reading takes MONTHS to be released here in the U.S., and seeing as some of these chapters end on cliffhangers. In fact, I just bought the first volume of Gakuen Polizi and I just found out that Amazon has the next book scheduled to be released on April of next year! How do they expect fans to maintain interest in a series if we have to wait nearly a year for small bits of the story?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Don't worry people. This won't achieve anything other than a minor inconvenience.




As long as fansubs are better and come sooner than official translations (by factors of YEARS sometimes) there's never gonna be an end to fansubs. It's not piracy when the exact product isn't available to buy. They will either have to acknowledge the existence of foreign markets AS A CORE PART OF DEVELOPMENT so as to achieve near same time releases or accept that they'll be pirated to hell. Funimation is at least trying but their work is still stale. Nonetheless I do support their gimpy streams on principle to show them that that's the right way to go about it.

 

[vagabondwillsmile]

But now how am I gonna read an entire manga series for free and pretend it benefits the creator that I don't pay for it? (Oh YES I motherloving went there.)

I know not everybody is like this, but for a lot of us, when there is a series piques our interest and we watch it, we buy it as soon as it becomes available (and noone is going to watch multiple episodes of something they don't like). The problem is that license holders and distributors are ignoring (and have been for years) the market in the west. A hand-full of liscensed subs and re-runs on Adult Swim won't even scratch the surface. Those of us that really love the art form and that have a desire to contribute to artist's compensation are happy to buy their products. But the distrubutors and license holders aren't helping anyone **including themselves** with absurd 2-5 year release windows, DVD's with two episodes and token, if not 0, bonus material for $50, lousy marketing and outreach, and just general f---ery.

Nobody watches a series they don't like? try reading anything made by Seo Kouji. Seriously the first chapter of his newest manga and every week since (25 chapters now) you get about 4 or five people talking about how much they like the series and then 20 ripping on it for anything under the sun. Why? your guess is as good as mine. People get mad about some stupid crap from his other works but instead of just dropping it they keep coming back every week reading it and then complaining about how terrible it is. Then they build up all this animosity and when one of his series ends they jump to the next one and continue complaining. Seriously he may not be the best writer but her art is damn nice and the story's are usually pretty fun if you can shut your brain off and go with it. http://myanimelist.net/people/2405/Kouji_Seo

Ah - I shouldn't have made such a generalization -- especially after acknowledging that I know not everyone is like me! I actually haven't watched or read any of his work. It doesn't look like my thing really. And I can't imagine watching a whole series dispite not liking it. Sounds like compulsive masochism! But you're right - everyone has different viewing habits, and I can't speak for my own as though the rest of world ought to match them.

After Reading the Update:: Here's something I don't quite get about all of this. If markets outside Japan are consistantly ignored, for many MANY series, that indicates (to me anyway) that profit from those markets isn't part of the publishers/licesnsors/distributors' finance portfolios. If there is no intent to sell to those markets, what are those markets taking away by not playing by the rules? Like, say I draw something and I say I'm going to sell it, but I'm only going to sell to ten people (let's name them all Frank) that live in my neighborhood. You wan't to buy it too but I don't care. You know one of the Franks and ask for a photocopy which he gives you. I shouldn't complain that you got it, when you could have and WOULD have given me your money in exchange. If I keep my books only accounting for and caring about the Franks, how is my bottom line hurt by people that aren't the Franks? Or I could finally decide to sell to people not named Frank in other neighborhoods, but I'll charge them a metric ton and make them buy it in halves (ok I know the logic in all this isn't perfect and it certainly doesn't get into the territory of commission work specificaly for one person or group of people - TOTALLY different situation - and it doesn't get into the complexities of contracts, trademarks, or copyrights; but it does illustrate a point). They need to realize that there are a lot of people outside their neighborhood throwing money at the monitor hoping for the stuff they like to be offered in an open and reasonable way. There will always be pirates in every content-driven industry now, as long as technology progresses; but the better answer seems to be to offer a truly competetive and dependable service that people can feel good about using. Maybe what's being proposed in the article will be it, but I don't know.

 

[GabeZhul]

It's 2014. It shouldn't be unreasonable to create an in-house translation department that works side by side with the publishers to release content internationally.

Oh, they are trying all right. And their efforts are usually hilarious.

Case in point, the MoeNovel debacle. The company is a subsidiary of Pulltop, a Japanese Visual Novel studio, and they translated Konosora (If My Heart Had Wings). They took a cute and very vanilla moege (a type of visual novel that focuses on cute heroines and romance) and slapped a translation so horrible on top of it that the fans actually had to re-translate the common route! Not only that, there were apparently multiple translators without any editor, resulting in stuff like one translator replacing every "kouhai" and "sempai" with "underclassman" and "upperclassman". Every single one of them. It was about as natural as you might imagine, and these were the "well-translated" parts. Some were actually Google-translate level.

Not only that, they tried to turn the game all ages for the "US sensibilities", which meant removing all the otherwise also very simple and vanilla erotic content (including censoring fricking hugs and kisses) in a game where one of the stories was focusing on how the protagonist and a heroine started out as sex-friends and their troubles with trying to advance their relationship to another level.

So yeah, this happens when Japanese companies are trying to translate things on their own, and to make things even worse, they also torpedo any kind of translation effort by the fans. Japanese companies are fucked up like that.

 

[SweetShark]

Good.
I have SO many games I want to play, I don't have time to watch Anime or Read Manga.
To be fair, I don't watch Anime as I used to do in the old days, and I read very rare Manga.
At least I will have a reason why I stopped reading/watching Manga/Anime.

And yes, I know this will NOT solve the problem with piracy, but because I am a lazy person to find a alternative to see a specific manga/anime, I don't care...

 

[geizr]

Maybe if the Japanese anime and manga industry started using advertising and better marketing distribution here in the West.

It has been noted that piracy is often a customer service or market service problem. Essentially, a market exists that is not being served or being severely under-served. I'll admit, I read scanalation/fan-sub manga from the web and have torrented some anime that is completely unavailable in the West. And that's the basic problem. There's no outlet except for a very select few of the total catalog of anime and manga over here. Now, if there was a legal avenue that provided complete access, not only to current anime and manga but past as well, and did so at a reasonable price (say a subscription fee anywhere between $5-15/mo.) or used advertising (as long as it's not too intrusive and excessive), I think that would provide benefit to both sides. The anime/manga industry would find a source of revenue, and fans of anime/manga would have access to the content they enjoy.

When competing with piracy, it's not really a matter of trying to compete with "free" in all cases. It's more trying to compete on the grounds of availability, ease-of-use, convenience, completeness, and quality. When the pirates are able to provide a better service and product than the paid-for version, there is a problem. From what I've seen, it's not hard to make something that's far better than what the pirates are offering. Trying to find a pirated copy of something actually requires a significant bit of work, and the quality is not always there. What's more is that the pirate aren't really willing to put in the work necessary to really create an exceptional experience for the customer; they'll only just do the bare-ass minimum of work necessary to throw up a website showing what they have with some links (hit-or-miss, sometimes, whether they work). Even further, there is the danger that what you get is loaded with some root-kit, virus, or whatever else to turn your computer into another node on the bot-net. But, it's sad when that is a better situation than what one finds with the legitimate content. That is the customer service problem; the customer is not being served.

Honestly, I think people are quite willing to pay for anime and manga. The industry just needs to find a better way of getting it to the customer for a decent price. A decent service with a decent product for a decent price. That's all it takes, in my opinion, to beat the pirates. It's no guarantee to eliminate piracy (there's definitely a contingent that just stalwartly refuses to pay for things), but I think it can significantly reduce a lot of the piracy being seen.

On a personal note, I think the anime and manga industry also needs to expand their stories and characters beyond teenagers and high school. Fans of anime/manga grow older and develop older tastes, but the content fails to grow with them. As such, many problem drop out of anime/manga fandom. These are the people with the money, btw. You want to be trying to retain them, in my opinion. The industry can and should still produce anime/manga targeted toward that demographic, but it needs to, at the same time, provide content appealing to an older generation that grew up with the content but has since wandered away due to normal evolution in tastes.