Japanese Government Enforcing Anti-Piracy Law on Anime and Manga - Update
- Thread starter roseofbattle
- Start date
So it seems that even the Japanese government has failed to understand how to overcome and beat piracy. To those who don't know, it's real simple.
Provide customers a better service than piracy.
Take Spotify for example.
(Following comes from a former pirate's mind. Don't flap your jaw at me, you know you did it too before iTunes)
Why sow out through hundreds of different files out in TPB or KAT to find that one album you really want, and to be fair, a lot of us have a lot of good bands/artists we like, and sometimes end up getting songs in the hundreds, so at some point, space on your mobile device might be a problem too. Maybe not so anymore, but you get my point.
So to get this music, you have to go online, search that specific album/song you want with the possibility of viruses and not to even mention, if it's an indie artist, you're taking somebody's bread and butter away from them.
Enter Spotify
An online streaming service that allows you to access virtually any artist you want, Indie or otherwise (Your good friend Miracle Of Sound for example has his stuff in there. Thanks Gavin!) and you know the best part? It's free! Sure, there are ads, but that ad-revenue goes to your favorite artists. If you don't want ads? Simple, just get Premium. This way you'll have no ads and mobile access without random shuffle. 10 dollars a month, that's a bargain, considering I used to spend about 200 dollars a year into music alone, before piracy was a widespread thing. Now it's more like 120 dollars, and I don't even notice it going anywhere, because it just is part of the monthly stack of bills.
Customers want simplicity and ease. Customers want luxury. Something that makes their life easier. To get something that they want, for less work and they are prepared to spend money to get it.
Or Steam is another good example.
You don't even have to get off your butt to go to drive to GameStop and buy that one game you want, input the CD-key, wait for the DRM gate to check the CD-key validity, then install it and it's possible day-1 patches..
Just click buy, it's on your library, download it, it'll patch itself, bing-bam-boom, you got yourself a game.
And, and if it's a game that came out a while ago, you'll probably get it for a bargain! Just the other day, I checked how much I would've spent to buy 5 games from GameStop (new and old) and I saved about 30 dollars buying from Steam. So in addition to the fact that it's easier than the old platform, it's cheaper too!
The movie industry must catch on at some point too.
Nowadays we watch endless marathons of series on Viaplay or Netflix, movies too, and the only thing that gets us up for new movies is the fact that we can't get a proper view anywhere else. I mean, movie theaters are a lovely thing, and I like to support the industry, instead of getting a crappy cam off of TPB. There's the social aspect too, of course, but a lot of people, millions in fact will want to see the movies, but are willing to wait, because "they don't have money" or "time" or just don't care otherwise, and wait until it's on Netflix or on Blu-ray. And then there's the time in-between movie releases on DVD and Blu-ray! If we had some sort of one pay ticket on Netflix or something (say, 5 bucks to watch it) then after that it would go free, we might have those people watch those brand new movies because "eh, it's only five bucks, cheaper than the theater" and even if some wouldn't want to buy that ticket and would wait until it becomes a "normal" movie on Netflix, they would still see it, and then money would go to the studios anyways! Might get smaller profits for a time, but the people would catch up eventually.
Might mean the death of movie theaters though, which has it's own social and cultural aspects, of course.
But sometimes people are just lazy, and as entrepreneurs of entertainment, don't they have the need to satisfy the customer with what they want?
Gee, there might be even a whole 'nother level of entertainment someone will come up eventually. Like VR movie theaters or something with the Oculus Rift, then some sort of voice chat system in the background, if you wanted it.
Like Henry Ford said ?If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.?
So the some customers don't necessarily even *know* what they want, so that is why the entertainment industry *needs* to experiment with new things that go along with modern stuff, like the Internet. F1 for example would be a lot more popular if it had YouTube content, and other social media aspects, but since it's run by a man with the mindset for the 70s, it's not exactly doing too well viewer wise.
To make a final point, and a sort of solution for this problem, make something like Spotify, but for Manga. Depending on the views that specific manga series gets, they will get revenue from ads, and premium users alike.
THIS IS SO SIMPLE. WHY NOT FIX THIS.
Provide customers a better service than piracy.
Take Spotify for example.
(Following comes from a former pirate's mind. Don't flap your jaw at me, you know you did it too before iTunes)
Why sow out through hundreds of different files out in TPB or KAT to find that one album you really want, and to be fair, a lot of us have a lot of good bands/artists we like, and sometimes end up getting songs in the hundreds, so at some point, space on your mobile device might be a problem too. Maybe not so anymore, but you get my point.
So to get this music, you have to go online, search that specific album/song you want with the possibility of viruses and not to even mention, if it's an indie artist, you're taking somebody's bread and butter away from them.
Enter Spotify
An online streaming service that allows you to access virtually any artist you want, Indie or otherwise (Your good friend Miracle Of Sound for example has his stuff in there. Thanks Gavin!) and you know the best part? It's free! Sure, there are ads, but that ad-revenue goes to your favorite artists. If you don't want ads? Simple, just get Premium. This way you'll have no ads and mobile access without random shuffle. 10 dollars a month, that's a bargain, considering I used to spend about 200 dollars a year into music alone, before piracy was a widespread thing. Now it's more like 120 dollars, and I don't even notice it going anywhere, because it just is part of the monthly stack of bills.
Customers want simplicity and ease. Customers want luxury. Something that makes their life easier. To get something that they want, for less work and they are prepared to spend money to get it.
Or Steam is another good example.
You don't even have to get off your butt to go to drive to GameStop and buy that one game you want, input the CD-key, wait for the DRM gate to check the CD-key validity, then install it and it's possible day-1 patches..
Just click buy, it's on your library, download it, it'll patch itself, bing-bam-boom, you got yourself a game.
And, and if it's a game that came out a while ago, you'll probably get it for a bargain! Just the other day, I checked how much I would've spent to buy 5 games from GameStop (new and old) and I saved about 30 dollars buying from Steam. So in addition to the fact that it's easier than the old platform, it's cheaper too!
The movie industry must catch on at some point too.
Nowadays we watch endless marathons of series on Viaplay or Netflix, movies too, and the only thing that gets us up for new movies is the fact that we can't get a proper view anywhere else. I mean, movie theaters are a lovely thing, and I like to support the industry, instead of getting a crappy cam off of TPB. There's the social aspect too, of course, but a lot of people, millions in fact will want to see the movies, but are willing to wait, because "they don't have money" or "time" or just don't care otherwise, and wait until it's on Netflix or on Blu-ray. And then there's the time in-between movie releases on DVD and Blu-ray! If we had some sort of one pay ticket on Netflix or something (say, 5 bucks to watch it) then after that it would go free, we might have those people watch those brand new movies because "eh, it's only five bucks, cheaper than the theater" and even if some wouldn't want to buy that ticket and would wait until it becomes a "normal" movie on Netflix, they would still see it, and then money would go to the studios anyways! Might get smaller profits for a time, but the people would catch up eventually.
Might mean the death of movie theaters though, which has it's own social and cultural aspects, of course.
But sometimes people are just lazy, and as entrepreneurs of entertainment, don't they have the need to satisfy the customer with what they want?
Gee, there might be even a whole 'nother level of entertainment someone will come up eventually. Like VR movie theaters or something with the Oculus Rift, then some sort of voice chat system in the background, if you wanted it.
Like Henry Ford said ?If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.?
So the some customers don't necessarily even *know* what they want, so that is why the entertainment industry *needs* to experiment with new things that go along with modern stuff, like the Internet. F1 for example would be a lot more popular if it had YouTube content, and other social media aspects, but since it's run by a man with the mindset for the 70s, it's not exactly doing too well viewer wise.
To make a final point, and a sort of solution for this problem, make something like Spotify, but for Manga. Depending on the views that specific manga series gets, they will get revenue from ads, and premium users alike.
THIS IS SO SIMPLE. WHY NOT FIX THIS.
Saucycarpdog said:
The thing is, you can't beat piracy like this. Someone will always step up and make another service. Nowadays Onemanga is replaced by Mangafox.
If The Pirate Bay would go down today (which it wont, thanks to proxies. To quote Hydra, "Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place" except more in the literal sense.) there would be another site that would come up to replace it. Hell, Kickasstorrents already has in some countries, where some people don't know how to use these proxy sites.
It sounds to me like this is focusing on china, not the states, in which case, ha, good luck getting them to cooperate. China is a cultural hot bed for piracy, and I'm curious to see how this turns out.
I could be mistaken, but culturally I don't think china sees "piracy" as morally wrong. Copyright? What? No, this thing is available, of course we're going to make use of it.
I could be mistaken, but culturally I don't think china sees "piracy" as morally wrong. Copyright? What? No, this thing is available, of course we're going to make use of it.
Am I the only one that thinks this would be ok as long as certain requirements regarding quality and delivery are met?
For example:
-Preferably the site gives options of high, mid and low quality streaming as options as not everyone can width stand the wait of who knows how long for clear wording and imagery.
-The subtitles must be available in multiple languages as people of many ethnic back grounds across the globe watch anime.
-Preferably not dubbed as I have had bad experiences ranging from lack of emotion (no offense meant to voice actors cause I know how hard you guys have to work) to random cuts to sound not synching with the video.
-The time difference between the release in Japan and the release on the site has to be at most a week because in my opinion being 1 week behind from Japan is something I don't see a problem in.
-Buying the anime online instead of getting a physical copy must be cheaper as there is less waste on resources.
-Multiple ways of purchasing the anime you're going to watch such as season pass/ every few episodes because I'm sure no one wants to constantly use their credit card, PayPal, etc every few weeks just to keep renewing something as it would just be an annoyance.
-Trailers/First episodes/descriptions of anime's must be free to watch, available in most languages so people thinking of watching the anime can get a taste/sample to see if they really want to pay for something they are going to watch and may not particularly enjoy.
-If it's going to be something online preferably an app for smartphones so its not always based on a computer which is stationary so we are able to watch it whenever we want.
Of course manga should also be treated the same way with specifics of its own for example instead of streaming for anime it would r high quality pages with no blur that a some times cause by the spine of the book.
Though this is generally my own opinion of how it should be if they were to make a site just for people outside and inside of Japan where anime and manga are legally posted and updated for users of course there still lies the issue whether they are going to just upload everything in Japanese or actually sub/translate everything.
For example:
-Preferably the site gives options of high, mid and low quality streaming as options as not everyone can width stand the wait of who knows how long for clear wording and imagery.
-The subtitles must be available in multiple languages as people of many ethnic back grounds across the globe watch anime.
-Preferably not dubbed as I have had bad experiences ranging from lack of emotion (no offense meant to voice actors cause I know how hard you guys have to work) to random cuts to sound not synching with the video.
-The time difference between the release in Japan and the release on the site has to be at most a week because in my opinion being 1 week behind from Japan is something I don't see a problem in.
-Buying the anime online instead of getting a physical copy must be cheaper as there is less waste on resources.
-Multiple ways of purchasing the anime you're going to watch such as season pass/ every few episodes because I'm sure no one wants to constantly use their credit card, PayPal, etc every few weeks just to keep renewing something as it would just be an annoyance.
-Trailers/First episodes/descriptions of anime's must be free to watch, available in most languages so people thinking of watching the anime can get a taste/sample to see if they really want to pay for something they are going to watch and may not particularly enjoy.
-If it's going to be something online preferably an app for smartphones so its not always based on a computer which is stationary so we are able to watch it whenever we want.
Of course manga should also be treated the same way with specifics of its own for example instead of streaming for anime it would r high quality pages with no blur that a some times cause by the spine of the book.
Though this is generally my own opinion of how it should be if they were to make a site just for people outside and inside of Japan where anime and manga are legally posted and updated for users of course there still lies the issue whether they are going to just upload everything in Japanese or actually sub/translate everything.
I seriously doubt that these measures will "recoup" any of that 20 billion of so-called "loss"; given how profoundly fucked up and costly most Japanese media licensing is.
Even if they're successful, all they will succeed in doing is driving the demand for their media down.
Makes me glad I have literally zero interest in either manga or anime, though I'm sure we're going to see another surge of this behavior make the rounds for other media industries soon enough.
Even if they're successful, all they will succeed in doing is driving the demand for their media down.
Makes me glad I have literally zero interest in either manga or anime, though I'm sure we're going to see another surge of this behavior make the rounds for other media industries soon enough.
You know what this line of reasoning reminds of though? I remember some people in the industry telling us that they lost money because of piracy. Think someone else said it right though: 'a download=/=a lost sale'.Atmos Duality said:
That's exactly why I used the quotes around "loss". It's not a certain loss because not everyone who engages in piracy would have necessarily bought it even if the piracy option didn't exist.hickwarrior said:
i have some rules regarding to anime.. if japanese people watch it for free in their tv, i also watch it for free. if they are released in ova, im not touching it even if it's my favourite serie. the problem is with the manga, no one in japan can have free manga, that's why i only buy "the things" i think they arent free in japan. I buy manga here in Italy but the thing is i cant continue my "Yotsuba&" series because publishers here dont have enough guts to supply it here, well i can have it on amazon in english version, but there are two problems:1)(for collectionists) collectionists dont want to have another copy of the next volume of another publisher, it's not the same if you put them on shelves (just immagine it, i have the italian version, with special cover on it, then putting it next to english version, without special cover. the picture would be awful.)2.)(for italian nationals, and other local people who speak only their mother tongue)im happy japanese government released that site, but what about the other languages??? such as italian, spanish, french etc.. I know how to speak english , im able to make a normal discussion, but i pity those who cant access these masterpiece.
Japanese government should release "tv aired" anime series for free. that's because japanese people watched it for free i should also watch it for free. if they are aired in 480p in japan, I PROMISE, ill watch it also in my house in 480p, just please dont take down those "tv friendly" series.. anime is my escape from reality.
Talking about manga piracy, i thing it's a good act(even though most of my friends and posters in this forums pirate stuff). id love to have some of my manga in that site, but some (like Nichijou of Kadokawa Shoten) arent still available in the site.
last thing. Everytime my friends invite me to watch OVA, i also refuse them because it's not free.
my two cents
Japanese government should release "tv aired" anime series for free. that's because japanese people watched it for free i should also watch it for free. if they are aired in 480p in japan, I PROMISE, ill watch it also in my house in 480p, just please dont take down those "tv friendly" series.. anime is my escape from reality.
Talking about manga piracy, i thing it's a good act(even though most of my friends and posters in this forums pirate stuff). id love to have some of my manga in that site, but some (like Nichijou of Kadokawa Shoten) arent still available in the site.
last thing. Everytime my friends invite me to watch OVA, i also refuse them because it's not free.
my two cents
Isn't this technically cutting off America from anime and manga??? and if it is, won't this most definitely hurt Japan??? Because isn't when something's popular in Japan it then comes to America? and another thing: they have merchandise, right?? If this gets cut off from America, how will American-anime/manga lovers are goin to buy their stuff?? And how will the American-anime/manga fans are gonna know what's new??? And won't there still be people at there continuing to make "bootleg" anime/manga?? I think this is bad business...
Isn't that what regional coding for dvds is for? Simply tax any dvds ordered online that aren't Japanese Region coded for imports. Granted the companies don't get the money but it would slow it down. Or HOLY CRAP STOP RIPPING OFF CUSTOMERS! (Or at least pay your animators a little extra for how much you charge for dvds. most get less then Mcdonalds employees there.)youji itami said:
Ho hum. Japan, welcome to where America was ten years ago. If you look at a few newspapers, you'll be able to see where the RIAA and the MPAA made a pig's breakfast of their content.
Oh, wait. Right. To do that you'd have to have access to physical copies because news sites delete stale content. Ah well. Carry on screwing up.
But you summed up the reason why anime and manga culture have spread as far as they have. The fanbase realized that the publishers would take two forevers to actually bring the content to markets that wanted it and opted to speed up the works with the magic of subtitling, dubbing, scanning and text manipulation. Since computer programs came along, making the editing cheaper, and broadband internet made uploading content so much faster, hey presto: websites with free content and folks doing the work because they love doing it.
If Japan manages to get their own site up and running with a couple of bucks buying content instead of a couple hundred, they'll stand a chance. Otherwise, the underground will yawn and move slightly, keeping content that cannot come legally to those who want it flowing.
Oh, wait. Right. To do that you'd have to have access to physical copies because news sites delete stale content. Ah well. Carry on screwing up.
Heh. You're on the Internet, mate. The land of free porn and Rule 34. Believe me, we're well past the judging stage.PunkRex said:
But you summed up the reason why anime and manga culture have spread as far as they have. The fanbase realized that the publishers would take two forevers to actually bring the content to markets that wanted it and opted to speed up the works with the magic of subtitling, dubbing, scanning and text manipulation. Since computer programs came along, making the editing cheaper, and broadband internet made uploading content so much faster, hey presto: websites with free content and folks doing the work because they love doing it.
If Japan manages to get their own site up and running with a couple of bucks buying content instead of a couple hundred, they'll stand a chance. Otherwise, the underground will yawn and move slightly, keeping content that cannot come legally to those who want it flowing.
Shit, if they simply through a bit of money at fansubs and used their product for distribution, you know how fucking fast that'd be? We literally could save the companies money if they'd see us as "People willing to work for free because we love the hobby" instead of Pirates. Obviously the money they gave to fansubbers would be "translate this and don't distribute it".Living Contradiction said:
Shit that could make anime cheap. It's almost like THE COMMUNITY WAS CROWD-SOURCING BEFORE IT WAS COOL AND THE COMPANIES SIMPLY REFUSE TO CASH IN ON IT.
Why? The aforementioned "We're screwing our local fan base with over priced goods and don't want to bother losing those profits"
They say Piracy harms Japan for shitloads of money.
HOWEVER!
Think how much publicity/attention is drawn to anime and manga in the west by these pirate copies? Oh, but they say they'll put up a site! In Japanese! Which few outside Japan understand! to buy legal copies! In Japanese! Which few outside Japan understand! For Yen! ....I'm not going to type that again.
Here's hoping they can't touch sites outside glorious east-asian prosperity bubble.
HOWEVER!
Think how much publicity/attention is drawn to anime and manga in the west by these pirate copies? Oh, but they say they'll put up a site! In Japanese! Which few outside Japan understand! to buy legal copies! In Japanese! Which few outside Japan understand! For Yen! ....I'm not going to type that again.
Here's hoping they can't touch sites outside glorious east-asian prosperity bubble.
What did they expect? Imagine paying incredibly high prices to watch that season of Suzumiya Haruhi that's mostly the same episode over & over again, those episodes of Attack On Titan that are mostly flashbacks & flash forwards, & those Naruto & Bleach episodes that are mostly recap. Worse, imagine paying so much to watch one of the sudden downer endings that japanese cartoons are so full of. Watch it once, hate it, never be able to unwatch it or get your money back. Screw that.
For fuck's sake, are they oblivious to how much piracy has BOOSTED sales for them? Anime that would have otherwise received zero attention outside Japan.
How about offering a legitimate way to download 1080p/720p full seasons & sets with decent subtitles...people will gladly pay for it if price is reasonable and the site/service doesn't suck. And I'm talking all the obscure stuff too, not just the big-hit anime.
Until then, pirates are offering an infinitely better service.
How about offering a legitimate way to download 1080p/720p full seasons & sets with decent subtitles...people will gladly pay for it if price is reasonable and the site/service doesn't suck. And I'm talking all the obscure stuff too, not just the big-hit anime.
Until then, pirates are offering an infinitely better service.