As streaming quality gets better and faster you have to ask yourself, when will fansubs move to streaming?
In reality, I don't see this happening anytime soon, (mainly because your ISP and user names are logged by some 3rd party corp.
) but as technology pushes ahead it seems more feasible.
In the old days running a forum website was cutting edge and could not be done by most people, yet today we have animesuki. Once the streaming technology is easily accessible as user run venues I think more people will be interested in using it.
I think the two biggest downsides are the infamous download count and the inability to prevent others from using the fansubs to exploit others.
Download counts matter. Yes, we all get satisfaction from seeing our hard work being appreciated by others. However, I think at the core, most fansubbers do the work because they want to share something special to them with others in a way that they can understand it. Since streaming videos register a hit each time you watch it, just think of how many millions of hits you will get without eating your family and friend's extra bandwidth
The other option is stopping true pirates that sell for profit. Yes, all fansub work is done without actually owning the copyright. But I would contest that some guy thousands of years ago invented pants, but thats not stopping you from wearing them even though he holds the copyright in some distant land. Of course, that is an exaggeration and all true anime fans buy licensed videos in their region.
so the point we next need to get to is people selling fansub rips on pay per view streaming websites. I would say that this is the same problem fansubs first faced and the industry itself still struggles with in dealing with pirate DVDs/VCDs showing up on auction sites like ebay or being sold from shaddy stores in hong kong. I would say stop it when possible and let the government handle it when not. Educating people around you does far more good for the industry then yelling at a few people you have never met over the internet.
bear in mind now, pay websites use the same excuse most fansubbers do, we are raising funds for the bandwidth and server costs, not charging for the videos!
honestly, I dont know much about sites like crunchyroll, but I do know quite a few people use it.
So I have made my two points. and someone is going to say, but what about quality? or what if I want to own my own copy on my hard drive?
well this post assumes that the quality is decent enough (xvid-ish) in the next year or so. and I like owning stuff too, but do I actually own this video I havn't paid for yet? hmm something to think about.
A new company called bost seems to be making a bold move with charging for anime episodes subbed straight from japan. I look forward to supporting them, but I am also quite curious how its all going to turn out.
so now that I have blabbed on about nothing enough in the middle of the night, what is your opinion on the future?