Feedback: Discussion re: "warez"/licensed series policy

[TheFluff]

First, let me state that unlike certain other posts of mine this is not intended as a troll but rather as a serious discussion. It is also a post full o' lists (fuck yes I love lists).


Asuki's policy of listing only unlicensed series is becoming more anachronistic with every passing day. The difference between licensed and unlicensed series is smaller than ever:

• Few fansub groups really drop licensed series (mostly they continue under a different "underground" name instead).
• BayTSP etc will happily send DMCA letters for a whole pile of completely unlicensed series. From the leecher perspective, at least in the US, there will soon be very little difference between downloading "regular" warez and downloading fansubs, if there still is any at all.
• An increasing number of series are 0-day streaming-licensed by Crunchyroll et al (which, interestingly, usually does not prevent them from being fansubbed).
• Funimation, pretty much the only major "conventional" licensor left, has made it blatantly clear that they do not approve of fansubs. There should be no remaining illusions about a gentlemen's agreement between fansub groups and US licensors.

Also, I doubt there is anyone who would contest the claim that an extremely big majority of the forum users (as well as its administrators) also download other warez now and then.

These facts, when combined with Asuki's current policy, lead to a number of odd inconsistencies with linking policy etc., such as:

• You are allowed to link to and freely discuss downloading of fansubs of an unlicensed series. You are not, however, allowed to discuss or link to the soundtrack of said series, nor radio dramas etc or raws of that series. From a legal point of view as well as from a leecher's point of view there is no difference whatsoever between these.
• You are allowed to discuss fan translations of games, and also link to warez copies of said games, but only if they are translated. If the translation is supplied as a patch, you are allowed to link to the patch but not to the game you're supposed to apply it to. Here, as well, there is no difference in legality, nor in how it is viewed by the average downloader.

The issue of streaming licenses was discussed a few months ago in another thread, but I'm not sure what actually became of that. I am, however, pretty sure that Asuki lists less torrents than ever before and that it is less relevant as a primary torrent source for most downloaders than ever before. The forums are of course a different matter entirely.


I can appreciate that you want to forbid linking to illegal material in order to stay out of trouble with the law and/or the lawyers of multinational corporations, but fansubs are already highly illegal and with the increasingly loud tone in the copyright debate and the likewise increasingly aggressive behavior of copyright owners, it is likely that with the current policy it is only a matter of time before you start getting C&D's.


I see two possible ways to a) make the policy logically consistent, easily understood and easy to apply, and b) give the site a clear role to play, instead of the current oddball not-quite-a-warez-site-and-not-quite-a-pure-discussion-forum hybrid.

• Option A is simply to remove the torrent listing part, forbid all linking to copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission and treat all anime/manga/games as equal. Simply tell the users to get their warez elsewhere and do not bother asking pointed questions about where they got that MKV file (helping people with playback of illegally obtained material is, as far as I can tell, not actually illegal anywhere in the world). The obvious advantage of this option is that it will most likely keep you out of all kinds of trouble with the law. The disadvantage is that it's somewhat likely to make the site a bit less attractive to your users, although I doubt the impact will be very big since there's not exactly a huge amount of links to fan translations floating around on the forums; people tend to find those on their own anyway
• Option B is to list all anime/manga torrents unless specifically requested to remove something, and permit linking to at least anime/manga-type warez, including visual novels. Other, more "mainstream" warez could probably be prohibited, if only to make it less likely to get the MPAA/RIAA involved, even if it wouldn't be entirely consistent. This is more likely to get you in trouble, although at least in most of Europe, where Asuki seems hosted, linking is probably not illegal yet, and since Asuki does not run a torrent tracker you should at least theoretically be in the clear. I'm not sure, but I don't think any similar cases have been tried in an European court yet. Advantages of this option include that it makes the site more useful to its users, and that it makes sense to allow discussion on how to get warez on a forum that is dedicated to discussing the content of warez anyway. The obvious disadvantage is that it may lead to angry letters in your mailbox, but it should be noted that unless you really insist on giving rights holders the finger like The Pirate Bay did, these letters are highly unlikely to lead to actual court cases or other scary things.

TL;DR treat all animu alike (in whatever way you want); say no to discrimination!



Discuss.

[GHDpro]

While I recognize the problems you address, I'm afraid solving those issues isn't quite as straightforward as it seems.

For one thing, choosing either option A or B would upset those who see AnimeSuki as the place to go for unlicensed fansubs. Either removing the listings or adding licensed anime will upset those people. Granted though, I'm sure this group is in a minorty.

But seriously, I think it may be a little soon to choose option A (remove the torrent listings) just yet: there are still a huge number of fansubs added each day for popular series such as Haruhi 2009, Umineko and K-On!, just to name a few. Especially with the current state of the US anime industry there will still be plenty of series (including popular ones) that will be neither licensed for TV/DVD nor licensed for streaming. For those series AnimeSuki will be a convenient place to find all torrents, as AnimeSuki much more organized than say, sites like TokyoTosho.

There are several issues with option B as well. While we could probably risk listing "fansubs" ripped from Crunchyroll or licensed anime from companies that don't seem to care that much (like Viz), I think it would be suicidal to list torrents with content from companies that are very pro-active about protecting their assets, such as Funimation. That leaves the question: what to list or what not to list. Or when to remove: when a license is likely, when it the license is announced or when the DVDs are available?

As for legal trouble, one issue with the torrent listing is that it isn't run just like TokyoTosho. Right now every torrent that goes on the site is manually added and organized (by group & series) by AnimeSuki staff. This makes us more responsible for the content on the site than sites with user submitted content. The fact everything is indexed also makes it easier for license holders to find what content they'd like removed.

I've at one time suggested to other staff I could make licensed content only visible to users who login to the site & flip some sort of "switch" on the settings page (this would be somewhat similar to AniDB not displaying the ED2K [eMule] links unless your logged in). However that idea was shot down for being inconsistent - the idea was we should either be willing able to list content publicly or not list it at all.

As for loosening the rules of the forum a bit, I personally wouldn't mind. However, as I'm not running the forum all by myself, I would like to hear the opinions of other (much more active) moderators first.

[mit7059]

As someone who uses animesuki almost religiously for most of my anime needs I would have to say that both your options suck.
Option A sucks because clearly it would make finding fansubs from all the different groups much harder. Option B sucks because it would only take one lawsuit and animesuki could be gone forever.

Face it, not listing licensed series is very reasonable. The one thing you brought up though that I never understood is why even when a series is being fansubbed you can't link to the raws, if I can watch it with subtitles why can't I watch it without them?

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by mit7059

As someone who uses animesuki almost religiously for most of my anime needs I would have to say that both your options suck.
Option A sucks because clearly it would make finding fansubs from all the different groups much harder. Option B sucks because it would only take one lawsuit and animesuki could be gone forever.

I would appreciate it if you actually read the OP before posting.
There are multiple torrent listing sites that list everything asuki lists plus a ton of licensed stuff. Also, nobody goes off on a hideously expensive lawsuit in a foreign country without at least sending a notice first.

Both of these points were made in the OP.

[cyth]

The problem is that there are so many simulcast rips and applied game patches posted that it's kind of pointless to promote all the clutter. I myself gave up on checking TokyoTosho because the design is awful. You have to check that clutter multiple times a day, search via tags or the search box to find what you're looking for. Wasted time. It's nice to have all that data available so I can filter its RSS feeds, but as an index site for people to check out it kind of fails. I liked AnimeSuki's listing way back when because it was very easy to look through.
I agree that the current copyright stance needs to be loosened up, but if I were still using the listing site, I wouldn't want to see it suddenly offer me a whole bunch of crap. Seeing as you already have staff adding torrents to the site, you could use that moderating power to add more relevant torrents. What I mean by that is that you list stuff relevant to your visitors, so that they don't get offered multiple copies of a simulcast rip or the 1034th upload of Kanon with years old unrevised translation patches, or troll subs etc. Kind of like AnimeBlips does for anime blogs, shell out the relevant stuff, offer a certain higher standard to your users.

[Slice of Life]

I said it a while ago in that other thread, I have no problems with animesuki giving up the torrent catalog altogether. That would give us a safer legal standing and most rules concerning warez could be dropped safe direct linking to unlicenced material. With the rules being as they are, mentioning TT already violates them, ("providing [...] information about [...] any service that aids in the illegal acquisition of such media is expressly forbidden"). Same goes for piratebay or even youtube(!!!) of course, if you take the rules seriously. And maybe the internet itself? Lol.

Get rid of the torrents and we can finally discuss which sub of XYZ is home-cooked and which is only a crunchyrip, and that Eclipse does ... stuff ... and also .. other stuff ... under a different name. Which is something neither Funimation nor the Emperor of Japan can stop us doing I think.

OK, i can say that because I have no problems using TT, but I also don't understand where exactly Toua's problem lies and how he does without.

An argument against was that the torrent page is actually the gateway to the forum and is needed to recruit newcomers. But I think our forum is big and unique enough to stand on its own. Also, since every 404 page comes with an attached forum nowadays, I not sure if many people coming for torrents even bother to check it out. But maybe I'm wrong here.

[Theowne]

I like Animesuki's listing of torrents better, but if I was forced to, using Tokyo Tosho wouldn't be a big problem. I think the benefits of getting out of the torrent game and just being a place of open discussion of the online anime fansub scene would be bigger than losing the torrent index, as great as it is.

I agree that the torrents page isn't necessary to recruit newcomers anymore. The forum is already very popular and active, and likely appears near the top of most search engine results. I don't think it would take much of a hit.

[Vexx]

I've stated privately that I used to be able to use AS as a good source for "are there R1 DVDs yet?" by checking the unlicensed/licensed lists. With the advent of "streaming licensed" (often un-announced) by CR and others... I now have to do an extra layer of research to see exactly HOW something is licensed before discovering whether I can order DVDs or not. CR streaming a series gives me no confidence at all that a DVD offering is down the road so frankly I'd rather have the fansubs in hand and wait for the DVDs to order.

My current ISP situation requires zero p2p (land wireless network that would be swamped by idiots who don't know how to throttle their torrent clients so I understand the owner's policy) so I'm off in IRC land anyway. But the torrents list still provides me signals that a file is released. And AS is pretty good about listing *all* the versions of a release (unlike a certain other skyblue website that only lists a single version of a release but otoh lists anything someone submit). The site everyone keeps naming that shouldn't be named (Toldetort...) has become a major stop off point for checking new releases. Their filtering search has improved considerably in the last two years (though it can still be a bit messy and you have to watch for goblins).

Some kind of flag that says *how* a series is licensed (streaming, DVD, paper tape, etc) would be useful going forward -- though at some point I think Fluff's scenario is inevitable: shut it down in despair or turn it loose and just put up big WARNING! U IS ON U OWN IF U USE DIS TRACKER signs. There's been a lot of work gone into the database construction and maintenance so I completely understand why GHDPro would want to stretch its life out as long as it makes sense.

[relentlessflame]

For my part, I will state simply that I'm okay with a listing policy that basically amounts to "anime you can't get in English any other way right now". But I would agree with Vexx that what would be useful in this day and age, for all those shows that we can't list, would be an accurate representation of "so, where can I get this?" It used to be that it was a simple bit -- either it's on fansubs, or it's on U.S. DVD now or soon. Now there are a plethora of different ways anime can be consumed, and I think it would be hard for a person who would like to consider the available legal options to know where to start. Most other sites that could serve this role have chosen to be one of the content providers, so have an inherent bias in promoting the shows that run on their own site. So this, to me, would allow the site to continue to serve a useful role in the community, even if it has no reason to serve as most people's primary torrent indexer of choice.

Certainly, I understand the main point that fansubs are, in effect, no different than any other form of warez, so it seems rather obscure to discriminate on what seem like increasingly-arbitrary factors. The BayTSP example in particular validates that point -- people always act surprised, like "but this series isn't licensed!", but that doesn't actually matter. However, I think there is still some usefulness in distinguishing between shows that are and are not otherwise legally available. Having a well-maintained listing of shows is useful in what is an otherwise fairly-volatile P2P community. There aren't very many better places to easily find a fansub directory for some obscure unlicensed show from 5 years ago (for example), and I think it'd be great to see this idea expanded into a more all-purpose listing of "how can I watch this show now?" even if fansubs are a "last-resort" when legal options aren't available.

So anyway, all that to say I think it's just a matter of finding the right niche in order to remain useful, and to provide a service that can't be found anywhere else. Maybe that does or doesn't involve listing torrent files, but I feel like there's still a place for this site's classification system in the midst of this fractured anime media environment. If we have to choose between black and white, who will cover the "grey"?

[Telmah]

I like many people enjoy the easy to find releases to new torrents or things that won't likely ever see the light of day in the West, anytime soon...or anytime at all. It also acts as a way to view new shows and see if they are worth buying or not--I don't know anyone that will buy things at random or based on paragraph...execution of the the product can often vary from the premise. Basically fan subs and the freeflow of information (and animation) have enabled myself and a few of my friends to delve deeper into this hobby.

Animesuki at first was merely a very convient list of links, but as I expanded more into anime, it became a great place to find information about anime and Japanese culture, and other concerns. I enjoy reading about what other people think, posting my own thoughts, gaining and offering suggests, dabbling in graphics, and using the senior and experienced people here for information even about purchasing. (ie Is a 1 dollar manga sale even possible or is it a scam?)

At the end of the day however, I think it just comes down to the moderators and other controllers of the site--simply put, they are the ones taking the risk and they are the ones that have to forumlate the policy. I think everyone here appreciates their efforts and if they wish to maintain the status quo, then that's that.

[mit7059]

Originally Posted by Telmah

At the end of the day however, I think it just comes down to the moderators and other controllers of the site--simply put, they are the ones taking the risk and they are the ones that have to forumlate the policy. I think everyone here appreciates their efforts and if they wish to maintain the status quo, then that's that.

This.
Animesuki is a free service provided to us, if they are not comfortable listing licensed anime then thats all there is to it. If, as the OP pointed out, there are other torrent listing sites that list unlicensed and licensed together then the OP can go there to get their anime.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by mit7059

This.
Animesuki is a free service provided to us, if they are not comfortable listing licensed anime then thats all there is to it. If, as the OP pointed out, there are other torrent listing sites that list unlicensed and licensed together then the OP can go there to get their anime.

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Fluffy, but he's raising an interesting issue and you're somewhat missing the point.

If you've been keeping up with news on how copyright holders are basically trying to kill any form of free sharing over the internet, you'll likely understand that the scenario that TheFluff has described is one that we'll probably get around to sooner or later. We can wait until that happens and then panic about it, or we can think about that scenario now and decide on the route that we'd take. Once we've decided which route the site would take - what the mentality behind the site really is - then TheFluff suggests that, rather than wait around for copyright holders to force us into acting on that decision, we begin implementing the policies right now.

It's tempting to want to wait, though...

[Vexx]

Heh.. Risk Management 101....

[mit7059]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Fluffy, but he's raising an interesting issue and you're somewhat missing the point.

If you've been keeping up with news on how copyright holders are basically trying to kill any form of free sharing over the internet, you'll likely understand that the scenario that TheFluff has described is one that we'll probably get around to sooner or later. We can wait until that happens and then panic about it, or we can think about that scenario now and decide on the route that we'd take. Once we've decided which route the site would take - what the mentality behind the site really is - then TheFluff suggests that, rather than wait around for copyright holders to force us into acting on that decision, we begin implementing the policies right now.

It's tempting to want to wait, though...

I don't think I'm missing the point. The fact is that it would be incredibly hard and expensive for a copyright holder in Japan to stage a lawsuit against a site like Animesuki especially since animesuki has a history of complying with all requests to remove content as has been the case with Media Factory, Funimation and Kadokawa. It would simply not make economic sense for a Japanese company to wage a expensive legal battle where they would gain nothing more than what they would with the mailing of a simple letter. This totally negates option A as TheFluff put it since because animesuki is at no real risk there is no reason to take down the torrent listings.

Option B though offers a number of risks, by freely listing listings of US licensed animes it opens up AS to lawsuits from the much more local American anime producers. They would most certainly send C&D letters to animesuki which would give AS two options

1. Comply, essentially remove licensed content which is the same as as not running with option B at all
2. Further piss off the american anime producers which would probably lead to lawsuits draining the resources of AS, probably taking it off the net and further weakening the already weak american anime industry.

The way I see it this is a case of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'. I like Animesuki the way it is, I like their listings of torrents and use them regularly (their torrent page is my homepage), I would be very disappointing if they stopped listing torrents and there would be questionable benefit from their listing of licensed shows since I'm guessing that the majority of those who use the AS listings use them for currently running shows of which few are licensed. If a user is looking for a batch of a licensed show there are plenty of bittorrent search engines they can use which pose no risk to the great community we have here at Animesuki.

Personally I find the whole 'say no to discrimination' line to be especially stupid. It's not discrimination, AS moderators don't ban the discussion of licenced anime, they simply stop listing torrents of licensed anime, which any person with a brain and a computer could find anyway with just the smallest amount of inconvenience. As I said before Animesuki provides us a wonderful free service, no matter what happens it's not our necks on the line, and the risk the animesuki might disappear is not worth the tiny inconvenience of typing isohunt or mininova into your browser. Honestly if you have a problem with the way AS is run they go start your own site where you can run things however you want.

[Vexx]

I guess that is the most hilarious part of this whole debacle.... that it takes me about 3 seconds with Google to find pretty much *anything* I'm looking for. It makes me wonder just how inept or lazy the enforcers are....

though I know the BayTSP model, they're completely cynical about the whole arrangement. Their clients give them money, they put random sampling scares out, $profit$.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by mit7059

Personally I find the whole 'say no to discrimination' line to be especially stupid. It's not discrimination, AS moderators don't ban the discussion of licenced anime, they simply stop listing torrents of licensed anime, which any person with a brain and a computer could find anyway with just the smallest amount of inconvenience.

hi, I have a somewhat interesting point to make:
not every sentence in a post on the internet is intended to be taken 100% literally

edit:

Originally Posted by mit7059

words

I skimmed this, my eyes sorta started glazing over and I was going to post something mildly unpleasant full of sarcasm and a few thinly veiled insults, but then I remembered I declared this a serious thread, so let's skip the fun part and go straight to the tedious pointing out of exactly where you are wrong.

First off, Asuki isn't more local to the US than it is to Japan. Most of the servers are, AFAIK, hosted in Europe and all of the site admins (GHDPro, xris, NightWish et al) are (again AFAIK) Europeans.

Related to that, there is really no significant difference between an American company and a Japanese one in terms of how much it'd cost them to start a lawsuit in Europe. Pretty much all imaginable costs are completely dwarfed by what it would cost to hire a local law firm to do the paperwork etc. There is no guarantee that they would win since Asuki doesn't actually run a tracker by itself (and even running a tracker isn't necessary illegal in many European countries), and it would be very bad PR.

Japanese companies dislike fansubs just as much as American ones do, if not more; it has less to do with the subtitles than with the fact that it's a really easy way for the Japanese p2p users to download anime. If you take a look at the swarm of any random anime torrent and inspect the addresses with GeoIP or something (many torrent clients has this functionality built-in) you'll notice a surprising number of Japanese peers. Media Factory has already demonstrated their dislike with legal letters; I'd say it's just a matter of time before other Japanese studios do the same. For that matter, Funimation has already DMCA'd people and sites about unlicensed series on behalf of various Japanese companies. In short, if Asuki sticks to the current policy we'll soon be sitting here with Option A anyway, whether we like it or not.

Your argument that "Asuki should not remove the torrent listings because it isn't at risk" makes no sense; instead of being an argument for keeping the status quo as you seem to think it is, it is in fact an argument for Option B (as presented in the OP; read it again). Listing an unlicensed series is just as risky as listing a licensed one as long as you remove listing on request; listing an licensed series pisses off the same people as listing an unlicensed series does, and those people are all extremely unlikely to start a lawsuit in case Asuki complies with the removal request. By your logic Asuki should just list everything until explicitly requested to remove it.

That said, a lawsuit is extremely unlikely. Funimation sent some very nasty letters to various fansubbers about FMA2, and absolutely nothing came of that, even for the fansubbers who are still doing it openly. Other anime torrent listing sites (TT, etc) have absolutely no troubles with listing everything either. The risk of something drastic actually happening is extremely low; Funimation is already operating at a loss (or at least they were doing so Q1 2009, IIRC); they really don't have any money or excess PR goodwill to spend on hideously expensive foreign lawsuits that they are far from guaranteed to win (and even if they did win, the damages awarded to them in an European court would most likely be insignificant compared to the amount of work they'd need to put into it). Same thing goes for the Japanese companies.

Finally, the American anime industry is already dead; it just hasn't realized it yet.

[Slice of Life]

Hm .... I'm still waiting for a reply to my argument.

If this was only about the torrent page I'd say just let it run as it is. Redundancy alone would be reason enough. But the fact that the torrent page exists has consequences for the forum.

Frankly, I feel stupid using acronyms like TT because we all know what it stands for. I, you, and Funimation too. Or talking about that "torrent archive that recently changed its name" because we all know which it is. Or "the fansubbers who are still doing [FMA2] openly" because we all know who is doing it. It's a bit like living in some backwards dictatorship and toasting to the 102 percent election result of our glorious President because the secret police (= Funimation's lawyers) is in the room.

And worse than not being able to talk about the things everybody knows are of course the things I do *not* know. At least I'm sure I'm severely out of the loop about a lot of things from lurking at ... other places every now and then which I often leave much wiser. It's just that I don't like these place so much so I prefer not to visit them so often.But from my rare visits I can extrapolate.

Leaving the legal gray area would give us a better position to defend the right we actually have and we could lift most restrictions of forum rule 1.1.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by mit7059

I don't think I'm missing the point. The fact is that it would be incredibly hard and expensive for a copyright holder in Japan to stage a lawsuit against a site like Animesuki especially since animesuki has a history of complying with all requests to remove content as has been the case with Media Factory, Funimation and Kadokawa. It would simply not make economic sense for a Japanese company to wage a expensive legal battle where they would gain nothing more than what they would with the mailing of a simple letter. This totally negates option A as TheFluff put it since because animesuki is at no real risk there is no reason to take down the torrent listings.

I don't mean to sound argumentive, but you wrote two conflicting things here. You're saying that it'd be incredibly difficult and expensive for a company to successfully sue AnimeSuki, yet you also mention that AnimeSuki is very good about complying with take-down requests. Don't you think that the former is partly a result of the latter?

Let's take that a step further. AnimeSuki already doesn't allow any series from MFI to be listed, regardless of licensing status. If all other anime studios followed in MFI's footsteps and wrote letters so threatening that AnimeSuki couldn't list those series, what then? Option A, as listed in the original post? If that's the case, then we're really just biding time and hoping that it'll never get there.

Originally Posted by mit7059

Option B though offers a number of risks
...
2. Further piss off the american anime producers which would probably lead to lawsuits draining the resources of AS, probably taking it off the net and further weakening the already weak american anime industry.

If TheFluff is to be believed (and based on little bits that I've read here and there, and what I've been exposed to as a fansubber, I have no reason to doubt what he says on this) American companies really have no love of fansubs at all, and they don't care whether a series if licensed or not. Licensing a series just gives them a legal grounds to send C&D's over. In other words, AnimeSuki can't really get into much worse standing with the companies than they already are, by their affilitation with fansubs.

Originally Posted by mit7059

The way I see it this is a case of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.

It's sort of like driving 5 MPH above the speed limit, is what it is. It's technically illegal, but you're probably not going to get pulled over for it, especially when there are plenty of other more obvious targets around. Yet when you're the only one on the road, or if the police officer is in a really foul mood and/or needs to meet his ticket quota, your time is up.

And that's partly TheFluff's point. He's saying that we can either drop down to "the speed limit" (remove torrents, go completely legal) or we can recognize that we're already technically breaking the law, and loosen up a bit. We don't need to go 100 MPH over the limit and flagrantly flout the law (which would be similar to what ThePirateBay did and is doing), but we can stop worrying about whether we're doing 5 MPH or 8 MPH over.

Originally Posted by mit7059

Personally I find the whole 'say no to discrimination' line to be especially stupid. It's not discrimination, AS moderators don't ban the discussion of licenced anime, they simply stop listing torrents of licensed anime, which any person with a brain and a computer could find anyway with just the smallest amount of inconvenience.

Sorry, but I disagree. I've never linked to or discussed where to get licensed anime, but I've received two infractions over this issue, and in both cases I feel that they were a little overly strict. (The first one was over telling a user how to get rid of the "Windows Genuine Advantage" checker after it went crazy on him. He never said he was using a pirated copy of Windows, so I assumed that he was a legit user who had the software go rabid on him - which happened more often than it should have. Any techy user would probably side with me in saying that such help wasn't a violation of anything and deserved some good karma, yet that post was deleted and I received an infraction. Strict.) That sort of policing gives the impression that we're terrified of being discovered for even the smallest things that might imply that we're not 100% law abiding, yet the irony is that fansubs are in violation of the DMCA, period. 5 MPH vs. 8 MPH - loosen up a little.

I actually don't care that much, but I bring up the infraction example to show what I consider to be a bit of an extreme. I'm not going to argue whether I was in the right or wrong on that one, I've clearly stated my opinion on it.

Originally Posted by mit7059

As I said before Animesuki provides us a wonderful free service, no matter what happens it's not our necks on the line, and the risk the animesuki might disappear is not worth the tiny inconvenience of typing isohunt or mininova into your browser.

Nobody is advocating for turning AnimeSuki into isohunt or mininova. I see this as more of a soul-searching exercise, trying to determine where AnimeSuki will be when it's forced to make a decision.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

Frankly, I feel stupid using acronyms like TT because we all know what it stands for. I, you, and Funimation too. Or talking about that "torrent archive that recently changed its name" because we all know which it is. Or "the fansubbers who are still doing [FMA2] openly" because we all know who is doing it.

I actually wasn't trying to censor myself out of fear of getting xris'd, I shortened it to TT because I was too lazy to type out Tokyotosho and went with "the fansubbers" instead of "Eclipse" because I honestly don't know if there's still anyone else who is doing it openly :V

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I actually wasn't trying to censor myself out of fear of getting xris'd,

That's wonderful. Or awful. Or something else. But I wasn't talking about you. I took the third example from your post because I think it is a very generic one. With the second I quoted a post I made by myself not long ago at in a different thread, and neither of us can claim the rights for the acronym TT.

In any case, some people here do act out of fear getting "xris'd", or even (Imagine that!) because they're trying to respect the rules independent of what xris does or doesn't do.