Is releasing fan-subbed licensed anime wrong?

[Spike Spiegel]

This is indeed a topic of great controversy. Many anime fan-sub downloaders look down upon groups who subtitle licensed anime in North America. However, I wonder if those who look down upon downloading licensed anime also look down on downloading mp3s. It would be hypocritical to say that downloading licensed anime is wrong and downloading mp3s is fine. I live in Toronto, where recently it was decided by the courts that sharing mp3s via Kazaa or whatever, is not illegal. When you think about it, sharing mp3s for free is much like letting a friend borrow a music cd from you, which obviously isn't illegal. Filesharing anime is no too different from sharing mp3s. If a fansub group releases an anime which is licensed, as long as the fansubbers owns the DVD or pays for the TV station from which they ripped the anime from, it is not wrong, since lending something to a person is not wrong. This is why I feel that licensed anime should not be looked down on, and that it should be encouraged. Even if the North American releases of anime DVDs do not sell as well later on, this will encourage the creators of the anime to work harder and produce a better product for us (i.e. more special features on DVDs, less expensive releases, etc..). Sharing fansubbed anime is also a way of advertising an anime series for free, whether it's licensed or not. Well, that's all I have to say about this, but I'd like to know what everyone out there thinks about this? I look forward to hearing some well thought out responses. Peace out.

[Shii]

Wrong forum, Captain Ethics.

By the way,

[JOJOS'STAR]

Ashi-Baaka is right Although that sig is as noxious as ever.

[complich8]

Originally Posted by Spike Spiegel

Filesharing anime is no too different from sharing mp3s. If a fansub group releases an anime which is licensed, as long as the fansubbers owns the DVD or pays for the TV station from which they ripped the anime from, it is not wrong, since lending something to a person is not wrong.

This condition does not hold true, and at least half of it can't possibly do so in the context of current fansubbing, because:

1: most fansubbers aren't in japan and don't get japanese TV. Only the raw capper sees the original broadcast (paying for it himself), then he removes ads and redistributes it. The fansubbers, and the end viewers don't see the ads, which are TV's form of payment. Nobody but the raw capper (the first step in the process, and typically not part of the group) pays for it.

2: DVD releases of licensed anime aren't out. So we can't own a copy yet, because they typically don't exist for somewhere between 6 months and 2+ years after the license acquisition. Fansubs aren't typically that far behind, especially fansubs of licensed series. If you're releasing rips of dvd's that you own, it's not fansubbing. It's DVD RIPPING. There's a pretty big difference, both in methodology and in levels of involvement.

On top of those (throwing out your condition), the analogy itself doesn't hold, because fansubbing licensed anime isn't just "lending to your friends", it's large scale distribution of digital reproductions of unauthorized translations. The unauthorized translations thing is what gets you most clearly, because it's CLEARLY against internationally agreed-upon copyright law (see also: Berne Convention).

The other way the analogy doesn't hold is the fundamental concept of lending: when you lend something to someone, you deprive yourself of it. You can lend your buddy a DVD and it's perfectly fine, because no new DVD is created. Both you and your friend don't have the DVD at the same time.

Look at the word "Copyright" and break it apart. It means, as the parts of it say, "The right to copy". Copyright legislation is law dictating who has the right to copy something, and who doesn't. The general idea behind copyright law is "if you made it, you can copy it, or sell your right to copy it to someone else. If you didn't make it, and didn't buy the right to copy from the creator, you shouldn't be making copies" -- which is what you're doing by sharing on p2p.

While I'm no expert in Canadian copyright legislation, I can tell you that US copyright law involves "Fair Use" clauses, which allow for the creation of backup copies for personal use. However, it rather clearly prohibits the "unfair" use of making backup copies for your use, and for the use of your 50 closest friends. Particularly now with the advent of Bittorrent and the heyday of Kazaa and Direct Connect, and in the presence of ubiquitous broadband, it's a lot more likely "perfect effortless copies for your five-to-fifty-thousand closest friends" than "a copy of my AC/DC tape that I made with my dual cassete deck and hooked my buddy up with", just by simple scale. This is the fundamental issue at the heart of digital media and copyright, and just because one judge said "yeah, sure, you can make copies for your friends" doesn't mean that every judge will, nor does it mean the precedent will stand.

The final interpretation of digital law is up in the air, and will remain so for a pretty long while both in the US and internationally. It will probably take quite a while for any real understanding of the implications of the whole digital phenomenon propagates to lawmakers and lobbyists to a point that they can make good decisions that reflect the views and norms of society as a whole, don't go building your whole justification for these sorts of things on a single instance of a court case, or you're going to find yourself unpleasantly disappointed when the next two cases reverse the precedent.

And I'm definitely gonna agree with ashibaka. Paragraph breaks are a good thing.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Spike Spiegel

This is indeed a topic of great controversy.

Maybe so but if you are going to make such a post, please make sure your make it in an appropriate forum, not the first one you see.

Also, this topic has been thrashed out many a time here in the AnimeSuki forums. If you do want to discuss it further then please find one of the existing threads and post to that, do not create any more new threads please. Just make sure your argument isn't as full of holes as complich8 has already pointed out.