AnimeSuki Forums

PocariSweat · 2003-12-02, 21:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by kuru

Japanese people don't download fansubs. They download copies of raw anime, as they aren't interesting in english subs. Fansubbers get raws because the japanese exchange raws between themselves.

If raws become hard to get, then I don't doubt more and more Japanese would be willing to put up with subtitles they don't have to read for the extreme ease BitTorrent provides. Lets face it - I've never seen any other P2P app as simple and effective for popular files as BT (rare stuff is another matter).

EDIT: as a side note, it's simple to test this - just look at this site's (or better yet one of the trackers) logs and see how many Japanese IPs show up.

zalas · 2003-12-02, 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by PocariSweat

If raws become hard to get, then I don't doubt more and more Japanese would be willing to put up with subtitles they don't have to read for the extreme ease BitTorrent provides. Lets face it - I've never seen any other P2P app as simple and effective for popular files as BT (rare stuff is another matter).

EDIT: as a side note, it's simple to test this - just look at this site's (or better yet one of the trackers) logs and see how many Japanese IPs show up.

Um... first off, it's incredibly easy to get raws in Japan versus here. The abundance of good connections between you and your fellow peers in Japan makes it quite easy to trade around raws. Hence, stopping the flow of raws from fansubbers to Japanese people is pretty much pointless.
However, for the BT you do have a point, but I think the proliferation of BT is going to bring to attention American companies faster than Japanese companies since for English fansubs, English speakers are the target audience. That may change with the whole distroing (crappy) raws on BT thing.
Lastly, Winny uses a text file as a node list, it doesn't contact a node server. Therefore, as long as you have a good enough node list, you can still connect. I'm connecting fine

And even though the main site is down, the Winny Tips page is still up, so they really haven't done much (I go to the Tips page for stuff anyways, since they have more things on it).

Xiandu · 2003-12-02, 22:46

I being rather new to the fansubbing scene, have to agree that the fansubbing is starting to get a negative outlook upon it. Before I didn't know anyone who got fansubs except for one person because he worked at one at his school. Now on the other hand 5 1/2 months later i have met all kinds of people who download fansubs via bit torrent. Partially my fault cause i told a few friends, they told a few friends and has escalated. Companies will start to look at this and it will be ugly when it hits the fan. Perfect example is how bad pirating is affecting the music industry. The have lost something like 35% of its revenue in the last 3 years. While fansubbing hasn't impacted it nearly as much, companies are becoming greedier and greedier. An example of this is If you live in California you know about the grocery strike. A strike that is all centered on greed. Companies will not be afraid to stop illegal pirating if they see them as a threat. With the recession that is going on in Japan and the hardluck that we have had here in the U.S. due to the 9/11 incident, some companies have seen a decrease in sales. Then to see that there are groups doing this stuff so that the public can get it for free will put a bull's eye on fansubbing. It may not happen this year but i fear the same thing that Pocari Sweat does. It's only a matter of time before fansubbing as we know it will become something of the past. I will be sad to see that happen but it will. Just like with Kazaa, you have people who only use fansubbing for free. They will not buy the dvds once they are released and that costs the industry lots of money. My roommate does that, I on the otherhand do not. I own over 190 dvd's all legit ones and will continue to buy dvd's of the shows i really like.

maxthelostboy · 2003-12-02, 23:03

nothing lasts forever other than pirateing. It never ends . if anime dvds werent 30 bucks i bet it would be alot less. Since every piece of entertainment cant be seen as an art anymore just a piece to make money off the public i see greed striking the fansubs. Nobody makes things for you to enjoy just things for you to buy. Which is pretty stupid noticeing how all the money going to the music bussiness could solve world hunger and so many other importent things, and really has no other thing to do for society other than to waste it's money. I know alot of people wouldnt download anime if it was uncut and shown on regular tv stations like in japan instead of 30 buck dvds and 300 buck series packages for a stupid cartoon. wish there was a time when the world wasnt run by greed but thats never gonna happen

rayearth · 2003-12-02, 23:10

I'm not going to bother talking about the future of fansubs or whether Japanese IPs should be banned from BT, but for your worries about Winny being "KOed" - don't worry.

As pointed out before, the 2 arrests were for a 41 year old sharing movies and a 19 year old sharing GBA bomberman ROMs. The original creator of Winny was not arrested, he only had his apartment searched. It's common sense he took down the site, or else it would've been like saying "sure, come and get me, I don't care if you search my apartment, I'm still going to host the program" and that attitude would probably get him arrested :P Winny also encrypts the IP and port of any node that connects to the network, so it is still a mystery how the police tracked down these 2 people (or they just picked randomly as Winny is widely used in Japan, just how Kazaa, WinMX and e-donkey are widely used in the west). One suggestion given on the Winny BBS was the sites were taken down to help (but NOT completely) stop the program being reverse engineered to reveal even more IP addresses of people on the network.

From what I can see, these 2 arrests were just used to make an example to scare others off. Much like the 2 arrests made in 2001 when they pulled in 2 university students who were sharing illegal software (warez) on WinMX. Some Japanese ISPs responded by blocking the ports for WinMX, but modified versions soon came out that got around the problem. And for anyone who does use Winny, you'll probably notice nothing has changed - it is just as easy to get stuff as before, old and new. As for those worrying about nodelists, new nodelists already have popped up here and there online, you just have to read the BBS to find them.

On a side note, some channels in Japan (noticably bs-i which broadcasts some of the HDTV raws we've been seeing lately) have put notices on their shows to ask people not to put their broadcasts on the internet (they had a notice on Tsukihime, I'm not sure if fansubs use raws captured from this channel, so you might not have seen it before), so yeah, they noticed, but it was the police that did something about it :P

Xiandu · 2003-12-02, 23:12

I totally agree with you, but unfortunately these companies will not. I hate how this "Corporate World" has become, but it is reality and a sad one at that. I just don't want to see anyone hurt by this. But you have those groups who are doing American licensed anime and that is hurting us. It's one thing to do a series that has been licensed but no where close to coming out like say Gungrave the anime, but another when stuff like Chobits is out on dvd for a while now and companies are doing it. Look at Suteki Yumi, most of their stuff is stuff that has been out here in the US for months or years now. Giving fansubbing a really bad reputation, a rep that soon companies will not ignore.

method · 2003-12-02, 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxthelostboy

nothing lasts forever other than pirateing. It never ends . if anime dvds werent 30 bucks i bet it would be alot less. Since every piece of entertainment cant be seen as an art anymore just a piece to make money off the public i see greed striking the fansubs. Nobody makes things for you to enjoy just things for you to buy. Which is pretty stupid noticeing how all the money going to the music bussiness could solve world hunger and so many other importent things, and really has no other thing to do for society other than to waste it's money. I know alot of people wouldnt download anime if it was uncut and shown on regular tv stations like in japan instead of 30 buck dvds and 300 buck series packages for a stupid cartoon. wish there was a time when the world wasnt run by greed but thats never gonna happen

Please that is one of worst excuses I've seen concerning pirating. People pirate movies that just came out which are around 8 bucks to see, videos which can be rented for 4 bucks. People will always go the cheapest route concerning any entertainment. Entertainment is a luxury so if you can't afford it do without.

Gungrave is alreay licensed. It will be here in due time.

maxthelostboy · 2003-12-02, 23:20

i dont see many animes for 8 bucks to see in the movies

and not many anime dvds to rent at my stupid block buster and they charge almost 5 for everything

and its a waste of time downloading movies your right.

method · 2003-12-02, 23:27

If you use the internet you can find anime dvds for under 20 bucks. Some places even take money orders so if you don't have a credit card you can still pick up titles you want. Using its 30 bucks and that is so high should not be a excuse these days.

Xiandu · 2003-12-02, 23:30

Quote:

Gungrave is alreay licensed. It will be here in due time.

It's licensed yes, but it isn't anywhere close to being finished yet. So it will still be a while before it comes to America. Like say a year or so. That was my point about Gungrave. Knew it was already licensed.

Sour-Do · 2003-12-02, 23:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiandu

BTW dunno why this post is all like that, can anyone tell me what i did to make it like this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiandu

It's licensed yes, but it isn't anywhere close to being finished yet. So it will still be a while before it comes to America. Like say a year or so. That was my point about Gungrave. Knew it was already licensed.

Looks like you accidentally set your text color to white. To fix (like I did), click on the edit button, highlight all of the text, and click on the button that looks like this A in the forum's text editor.

-- Sour-Do
AnimeMuyou!

method · 2003-12-03, 00:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiandu

It's licensed yes, but it isn't anywhere close to being finished yet. So it will still be a while before it comes to America. Like say a year or so. That was my point about Gungrave. Knew it was already licensed.

You concradicted yourself then. You said that by doing a series like Chobits it brings a bad reputation to fansubbing yet praise for subbing Gungrave which is license. To companies that is the same thing.

PocariSweat · 2003-12-03, 00:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by rayearth

The original creator of Winny was not arrested, he only had his apartment searched. It's common sense he took down the site, or else it would've been like saying "sure, come and get me, I don't care if you search my apartment, I'm still going to host the program" and that attitude would probably get him arrested :P

That's probably enough to make the studios happy - it's much easier to send a "chilling effect" to the P2P community this way than to fully prosecute a case. Especially because, depending on the laws, the program's author doesn't dictate what people do with it. In much the same way everyone who's been sued by the RIAA chooses to settle out of court because even if they're innocent, it's hard to prove and the potential penalties if they lose are insane.

Quote:

Winny also encrypts the IP and port of any node that connects to the network, so it is still a mystery how the police tracked down these 2 people (or they just picked randomly as Winny is widely used in Japan, just how Kazaa, WinMX and e-donkey are widely used in the west).

Someone said in another thread it was based on freenet. Somehow I don't think that's the case because with freenet no one person really shares a file - instead it's encrypted and uploaded in random bits to the network as a whole. A given user may be sharing bits and peices of thousands of files, but even they can't tell or choose exactly what.

If Winny works like more conventional peers (where you choose to share files on your HD), then it's impossible to fully hide the IP. search results may not reveal it, but once you connect and start downloading a file, doing a netstat will tell you the IP of anyone you're downloading from. So will many firewalls - TPF, for example, has a status window which shows every connection each program has going and can log IPs.

PocariSweat · 2003-12-03, 00:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by method

You said that by doing a series like Chobits it brings a bad reputation to fansubbing yet praise for subbing Gungrave which is license. To companies that is the same thing.

You're very right - to companies either case is using their property. However it does piss me off when a company sits on a license for years (as Disney has done with Nausicaa for example). Still that's just a moral not a legal distinction - I still don't think a place like AnimeSuki would be wise to allow it.

A much bigger problem is fansubbing is no longer limited to the US - it's pretty hard to convince someone in some other part of the world that because someone in America can buy the show, they shouldn't be able to see it at all. The Internet can't easily make allowances for stuff like that, so it comes back to haunt U.S. fansubbers.

rayearth · 2003-12-03, 01:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by PocariSweat

That's probably enough to make the studios happy - it's much easier to send a "chilling effect" to the P2P community this way than to fully prosecute a case.

It sent a "we lost 2 comrades, but we will fight to the very end! Zig Zion" effect too. Read some of the BBS, it's very amusing :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by PocariSweat

Someone said in another thread it was based on freenet.

It was suggested, but it is not confirmed. While it looks similar to what freenet uses, the actual method to encrypt the addresses is still unknown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PocariSweat

If Winny works like more conventional peers (where you choose to share files on your HD), then it's impossible to fully hide the IP. search results may not reveal it, but once you connect and start downloading a file, doing a netstat will tell you the IP of anyone you're downloading from. So will many firewalls - TPF, for example, has a status window which shows every connection each program has going and can log IPs.

Yes you can, but only if you manage to pin point yourself into that single connection. The way that Winny switches between nodes all the time makes it not exactly that simple to find the IP of "that" node you're looking for. There'll also be upload and search connections as well, meaning another bunch of IPs to join your list. Also, for the average user, Winny is not the only program that would have connections open.

So in a controlled test environment, yes, you can find a list of IPs you're connected to and can probably track down these people, but if you want to pin point a node that is sharing that particular file that you want to arrest, it would take some effort - and police departments have better things to do :P

complich8 · 2003-12-03, 02:05

<prepare for more of complich8 babbling about nothing for a while -- this time I have an excuse though: I'm sick

>
Back to the "fansubbers have been contacted" thing ....

My group has a rule. Our number 1 rule actually. "Don't do anything to piss off ADV."

We have this rule for a reason.

Back when we were on aniverse, we were subbing some ADV stuff. Well, actually we had already subbed, and moved on, nothing was current. ADV's reps contacted the irc ops and had them tell us to stop serving their property. They did that to several groups, and some listened and some didn't. I want to say that was about ..... maybe 15 months ago or so? Don't remember exactly, but it was when we were on aniverse.

Well, about the same time, ADV's lawyers contacted our beloved channel founder's university with a cease and desist. Nevermind that that particular university has about a T1 for the 1000 or so residential users... they issued a C&D and told her to stop serving anime. Not that she was.

Since then we've adopted a fansub-group internal policy. Jerry Chu from Bandai issued a blanket request to fansubbers (and a direct request to certain people in the community) saying "please stop subbing our stuff." We no longer do bandai-licensed releases. Our policy is "if the people who own it don't want us doing it, we don't do it"

This still leaves pioneer(now geneon) and a few other companies that haven't told us to knock it off yet.

The way we view this issue as a group has always been that everything we do is basically promotional. Whether we sub it or not, someone will. If someone doesn't, someone will rip the dvd's when they come out. HKsubbers will HKsub and people will buy hkdvd's thinking they're the legal equivalent of R1's. If there's the demand for popular stuff, people will see it. If there isn't demand, people will get introduced to it. It's that philosophy that made me proud to see the numbers of downloaders for our work on L/R (a geneon property) rise from less than 200 giving it a try to more than 1500 people actually finishing up watching the series. It's the same philosophy that let tapesubbers justify what they were doing.

Now, I'm not going to say "subbing Enishi is going to make it more popular" -- it's not. Series that start popular and don't die to their bad budgets or poor planning will sell great, will be heavily downloaded, and will be massively loved by many.

But markets are complicated things. I don't know if we would get more people buying dvd's if fansubs were lower quality. I don't know if we'd get more fans if dvd's had niftier features (like those features in textsub, which are a bit far out of the dvd spec, but damned cool). But I do know that I like watching anime, and I do know that I like fansubbing anime. I know that I couldn't have EVER been exposed to nearly as much as I have seen if it hadn't been for the hard work of an army of digisubbers, who were probably exposed to all their stuff by an army of digisubbers, who were exposed to theirs by an army of tapesubbers. I've seen a lot of anime, and I've given a lot of things chances because I could do so for free. Does that make the authors of the great stories I've fallen in love with and the animators whose styles have captured my interests deserving of compensation? Sure. Does it make them deserving of my blind faith that whatever they put on my plate is going to be worthwhile to buy? No!

Something to draw a parallel to, however, is libraries. You can go out and check out the latest release of a book in the library. If it's something popular, they might have a dozen copies or so waiting to be checked out. Those copies will get read, and read, and read and no matter how many times the copy of Stephen King's "The Wolves of Calla" gets checked out from my local library and read, Steve doesn't get another thin dime from it. If your exposure to that book pushes your decision to go out and buy your own copy of it to read through at your leisure and without the drool-stains from the guy who fell asleep reading it 2 checkouts before yours, or if that influences your decision to go out and buy Song of Susannah in summer, that's great.

Of course, in digisubbing, everyone gets the same copy of the file, and the same copy becomes dozens or hundreds or thousands of copies (if you trace it right back to the source, the original file probably gets tens of thousands of people viewing it if its popular), and of course everyone can do whatever they want with it (much like scanning in the pages of your favorite novel to read off your computer screen at your leisure) but the drool-stains are there. They are the translator's, the editor's, the encoder's, the typesetter's ... as we make them better we minimize, but don't lose, those stains. We can't, we're human. We're not even getting paid for this!

Anyway, I have my doubts about 4 more decades of free libraries. I also have my doubts about 4 more years of free fansubs. I'm hoping that something changes the path the lawmakers are walking regarding information and ownership of it, but I rather doubt it.

So get it while ya can, it's probably not going to be here forever. That's all I have to say.

Shii · 2003-12-03, 03:06

Why were you subbing stuff licensed by ADV?

complich8 · 2003-12-03, 03:18

that was like a year and a half ago....

we still do licensed. Back then we did whatever licensed we had. We were a new group forming, and that was kinda our thing...... well, I should say their thing. I wasn't really a "group member" back then, just distro.

come to think of it, when we were subbing adv stuff, we were still on dalnet.

Damn, those were some times....... less than 1000 people scrutinizing our every move....

I kinda miss those days. They were fun. But these days are fun too.

Xiandu · 2003-12-03, 04:37

I never contridicted myself. I was just simply stating that, while both are wrong, I can understand those who download the Licensed anime that isn't going to show up in any stores or on dvd for a long while to come. In my opinion it is really much worse if a group is doing fansubs of anime that is licensed and available in the US versus those that do it for show that will take a long while to get here. Again both are wrong, but one is much worse than the other. I recently had to sell alot of my dvd collection, god that really hurt, because I lost my job due to some bs. To pay rent and bills I had to sell about 70 of my 190 dvd's and I'm still in the process of selling more to some of my friends who were interested in it. Luckily some of my dvd's are backed up like Ai Yori Aoshi, but most weren't and I will miss them. I have over the years put so much money into the industry, so yes I have downloaded licensed stuff and still do. Again I (well once I get a job again) will buy any and all dvd's of those shows that I like. I have a few fansubs of anime that I thought was ok, and will not be wasting my money on the dvd's. I am so wrong for doing so? I don't think so, but I am sure others people who have not spent nearly as much on dvd's will think so. It's a no win situation.

K_R · 2003-12-03, 08:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by NenMaster

i say in a couple years we will have problems, but i think new stuff will be out etc, just think 200mb files with 10mb line, its nothing much is it

i think the average connection (adsl, cable) will be 10mbit + in a couple of years

ADSL in Japan goes up to 26Mbit (for $13/mth USD). People can also get FTTH which is 100Mbit (I don't know the pricing).

2003-12-02, 22:46	Link #23
Xiandu Destroyer of the God Deus Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Carlsbad CA Age: 45	I being rather new to the fansubbing scene, have to agree that the fansubbing is starting to get a negative outlook upon it. Before I didn't know anyone who got fansubs except for one person because he worked at one at his school. Now on the other hand 5 1/2 months later i have met all kinds of people who download fansubs via bit torrent. Partially my fault cause i told a few friends, they told a few friends and has escalated. Companies will start to look at this and it will be ugly when it hits the fan. Perfect example is how bad pirating is affecting the music industry. The have lost something like 35% of its revenue in the last 3 years. While fansubbing hasn't impacted it nearly as much, companies are becoming greedier and greedier. An example of this is If you live in California you know about the grocery strike. A strike that is all centered on greed. Companies will not be afraid to stop illegal pirating if they see them as a threat. With the recession that is going on in Japan and the hardluck that we have had here in the U.S. due to the 9/11 incident, some companies have seen a decrease in sales. Then to see that there are groups doing this stuff so that the public can get it for free will put a bull's eye on fansubbing. It may not happen this year but i fear the same thing that Pocari Sweat does. It's only a matter of time before fansubbing as we know it will become something of the past. I will be sad to see that happen but it will. Just like with Kazaa, you have people who only use fansubbing for free. They will not buy the dvds once they are released and that costs the industry lots of money. My roommate does that, I on the otherhand do not. I own over 190 dvd's all legit ones and will continue to buy dvd's of the shows i really like.

2003-12-02, 23:03	Link #24
maxthelostboy Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2003	nothing lasts forever other than pirateing. It never ends . if anime dvds werent 30 bucks i bet it would be alot less. Since every piece of entertainment cant be seen as an art anymore just a piece to make money off the public i see greed striking the fansubs. Nobody makes things for you to enjoy just things for you to buy. Which is pretty stupid noticeing how all the money going to the music bussiness could solve world hunger and so many other importent things, and really has no other thing to do for society other than to waste it's money. I know alot of people wouldnt download anime if it was uncut and shown on regular tv stations like in japan instead of 30 buck dvds and 300 buck series packages for a stupid cartoon. wish there was a time when the world wasnt run by greed but thats never gonna happen

2003-12-02, 23:10	Link #25
rayearth Member Join Date: Nov 2003	I'm not going to bother talking about the future of fansubs or whether Japanese IPs should be banned from BT, but for your worries about Winny being "KOed" - don't worry. As pointed out before, the 2 arrests were for a 41 year old sharing movies and a 19 year old sharing GBA bomberman ROMs. The original creator of Winny was not arrested, he only had his apartment searched. It's common sense he took down the site, or else it would've been like saying "sure, come and get me, I don't care if you search my apartment, I'm still going to host the program" and that attitude would probably get him arrested :P Winny also encrypts the IP and port of any node that connects to the network, so it is still a mystery how the police tracked down these 2 people (or they just picked randomly as Winny is widely used in Japan, just how Kazaa, WinMX and e-donkey are widely used in the west). One suggestion given on the Winny BBS was the sites were taken down to help (but NOT completely) stop the program being reverse engineered to reveal even more IP addresses of people on the network. From what I can see, these 2 arrests were just used to make an example to scare others off. Much like the 2 arrests made in 2001 when they pulled in 2 university students who were sharing illegal software (warez) on WinMX. Some Japanese ISPs responded by blocking the ports for WinMX, but modified versions soon came out that got around the problem. And for anyone who does use Winny, you'll probably notice nothing has changed - it is just as easy to get stuff as before, old and new. As for those worrying about nodelists, new nodelists already have popped up here and there online, you just have to read the BBS to find them. On a side note, some channels in Japan (noticably bs-i which broadcasts some of the HDTV raws we've been seeing lately) have put notices on their shows to ask people not to put their broadcasts on the internet (they had a notice on Tsukihime, I'm not sure if fansubs use raws captured from this channel, so you might not have seen it before), so yeah, they noticed, but it was the police that did something about it :P

2003-12-02, 23:12	Link #26
Xiandu Destroyer of the God Deus Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Carlsbad CA Age: 45	I totally agree with you, but unfortunately these companies will not. I hate how this "Corporate World" has become, but it is reality and a sad one at that. I just don't want to see anyone hurt by this. But you have those groups who are doing American licensed anime and that is hurting us. It's one thing to do a series that has been licensed but no where close to coming out like say Gungrave the anime, but another when stuff like Chobits is out on dvd for a while now and companies are doing it. Look at Suteki Yumi, most of their stuff is stuff that has been out here in the US for months or years now. Giving fansubbing a really bad reputation, a rep that soon companies will not ignore.

2003-12-02, 23:20	Link #28
maxthelostboy Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2003	i dont see many animes for 8 bucks to see in the movies and not many anime dvds to rent at my stupid block buster and they charge almost 5 for everything and its a waste of time downloading movies your right.

2003-12-02, 23:27	Link #29
method Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2003	If you use the internet you can find anime dvds for under 20 bucks. Some places even take money orders so if you don't have a credit card you can still pick up titles you want. Using its 30 bucks and that is so high should not be a excuse these days.

2003-12-03, 02:05	Link #36
complich8 Fansubber Emeritus Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Rockville, MD Age: 43	<prepare for more of complich8 babbling about nothing for a while -- this time I have an excuse though: I'm sick > Back to the "fansubbers have been contacted" thing .... My group has a rule. Our number 1 rule actually. "Don't do anything to piss off ADV." We have this rule for a reason. Back when we were on aniverse, we were subbing some ADV stuff. Well, actually we had already subbed, and moved on, nothing was current. ADV's reps contacted the irc ops and had them tell us to stop serving their property. They did that to several groups, and some listened and some didn't. I want to say that was about ..... maybe 15 months ago or so? Don't remember exactly, but it was when we were on aniverse. Well, about the same time, ADV's lawyers contacted our beloved channel founder's university with a cease and desist. Nevermind that that particular university has about a T1 for the 1000 or so residential users... they issued a C&D and told her to stop serving anime. Not that she was. Since then we've adopted a fansub-group internal policy. Jerry Chu from Bandai issued a blanket request to fansubbers (and a direct request to certain people in the community) saying "please stop subbing our stuff." We no longer do bandai-licensed releases. Our policy is "if the people who own it don't want us doing it, we don't do it" This still leaves pioneer(now geneon) and a few other companies that haven't told us to knock it off yet. The way we view this issue as a group has always been that everything we do is basically promotional. Whether we sub it or not, someone will. If someone doesn't, someone will rip the dvd's when they come out. HKsubbers will HKsub and people will buy hkdvd's thinking they're the legal equivalent of R1's. If there's the demand for popular stuff, people will see it. If there isn't demand, people will get introduced to it. It's that philosophy that made me proud to see the numbers of downloaders for our work on L/R (a geneon property) rise from less than 200 giving it a try to more than 1500 people actually finishing up watching the series. It's the same philosophy that let tapesubbers justify what they were doing. Now, I'm not going to say "subbing Enishi is going to make it more popular" -- it's not. Series that start popular and don't die to their bad budgets or poor planning will sell great, will be heavily downloaded, and will be massively loved by many. But markets are complicated things. I don't know if we would get more people buying dvd's if fansubs were lower quality. I don't know if we'd get more fans if dvd's had niftier features (like those features in textsub, which are a bit far out of the dvd spec, but damned cool). But I do know that I like watching anime, and I do know that I like fansubbing anime. I know that I couldn't have EVER been exposed to nearly as much as I have seen if it hadn't been for the hard work of an army of digisubbers, who were probably exposed to all their stuff by an army of digisubbers, who were exposed to theirs by an army of tapesubbers. I've seen a lot of anime, and I've given a lot of things chances because I could do so for free. Does that make the authors of the great stories I've fallen in love with and the animators whose styles have captured my interests deserving of compensation? Sure. Does it make them deserving of my blind faith that whatever they put on my plate is going to be worthwhile to buy? No! Something to draw a parallel to, however, is libraries. You can go out and check out the latest release of a book in the library. If it's something popular, they might have a dozen copies or so waiting to be checked out. Those copies will get read, and read, and read and no matter how many times the copy of Stephen King's "The Wolves of Calla" gets checked out from my local library and read, Steve doesn't get another thin dime from it. If your exposure to that book pushes your decision to go out and buy your own copy of it to read through at your leisure and without the drool-stains from the guy who fell asleep reading it 2 checkouts before yours, or if that influences your decision to go out and buy Song of Susannah in summer, that's great. Of course, in digisubbing, everyone gets the same copy of the file, and the same copy becomes dozens or hundreds or thousands of copies (if you trace it right back to the source, the original file probably gets tens of thousands of people viewing it if its popular), and of course everyone can do whatever they want with it (much like scanning in the pages of your favorite novel to read off your computer screen at your leisure) but the drool-stains are there. They are the translator's, the editor's, the encoder's, the typesetter's ... as we make them better we minimize, but don't lose, those stains. We can't, we're human. We're not even getting paid for this! Anyway, I have my doubts about 4 more decades of free libraries. I also have my doubts about 4 more years of free fansubs. I'm hoping that something changes the path the lawmakers are walking regarding information and ownership of it, but I rather doubt it. So get it while ya can, it's probably not going to be here forever. That's all I have to say.

2003-12-03, 03:06	Link #37
Shii Afflicted by the vanities Fansubber Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Fish-shape Paumanok Age: 36	Why were you subbing stuff licensed by ADV?

2003-12-03, 03:18	Link #38
complich8 Fansubber Emeritus Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Rockville, MD Age: 43	that was like a year and a half ago.... we still do licensed. Back then we did whatever licensed we had. We were a new group forming, and that was kinda our thing...... well, I should say their thing. I wasn't really a "group member" back then, just distro. come to think of it, when we were subbing adv stuff, we were still on dalnet. Damn, those were some times....... less than 1000 people scrutinizing our every move.... I kinda miss those days. They were fun. But these days are fun too.

2003-12-03, 04:37	Link #39
Xiandu Destroyer of the God Deus Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Carlsbad CA Age: 45	I never contridicted myself. I was just simply stating that, while both are wrong, I can understand those who download the Licensed anime that isn't going to show up in any stores or on dvd for a long while to come. In my opinion it is really much worse if a group is doing fansubs of anime that is licensed and available in the US versus those that do it for show that will take a long while to get here. Again both are wrong, but one is much worse than the other. I recently had to sell alot of my dvd collection, god that really hurt, because I lost my job due to some bs. To pay rent and bills I had to sell about 70 of my 190 dvd's and I'm still in the process of selling more to some of my friends who were interested in it. Luckily some of my dvd's are backed up like Ai Yori Aoshi, but most weren't and I will miss them. I have over the years put so much money into the industry, so yes I have downloaded licensed stuff and still do. Again I (well once I get a job again) will buy any and all dvd's of those shows that I like. I have a few fansubs of anime that I thought was ok, and will not be wasting my money on the dvd's. I am so wrong for doing so? I don't think so, but I am sure others people who have not spent nearly as much on dvd's will think so. It's a no win situation.