Japanese Industry Launches Global Anti-Piracy Effort

[risingstar3110]

Simply you can't use law to stop people willingness. If it take the fansubber to learn different language, then spend countless hours each week to release something free out of passion.... no amount of law can completely stop them. I myself read a copy version of manga that were copied by hand (redraw, you can say) panel to panel, just so they can be distributed freely.

The only way that the anime industry could do to prevent privacy is either distribute it themselves or get rid the passion out of anime audience. However, if the anime corporation have the ability to replace fansubbers as anime distribution worldwide, they have already done so with success. They couldn't do that back when streaming through internet is impossible, i wonder how they can do it now.

Maybe they can win over the mass through proving the negative effects that "free riders" are putting on the product quality. But it's even more impossible

[Marcus H.]

First off, CODA has a lot of work to do if they want to promote "...legal distribution of Japanese content".

• No one would buy Japanese content if they can't understand every single word. The language barrier is just so huge that fansubbers most likely win over legal raws in this aspect.

• Prices nowadays aren't patterned on the target market. e.g. A DVD of Shakugan no Shana S worth more than 6000 yen is a repulsive cost for a person who only focuses only on the show, and none of the extra stuff attached to it. They just look like they are forced to act when they didn't give a damn in the first place.

• Also, there are at least a million sites hosting free anime shows and stuff on the Internet. It will be more of a hassle to the legal side of this situation to handle each and every site. And even though you managed to take out one, more will take its place.

I don't want to say that it's a lost cause, but if they keep on making wrong moves for the next few months or years, the effects of "piracy" will be almost irreversible.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by wontaek

I think you have just hit the most important point of them all : People won't pay money for something they lack knowledge of. If the anime company wants people to give them the money, they have to offer something free at first as an enticement, for people will simply refuse to buy that DVD nor pay money to watch online if they lack assurance that it will be worth it. In order for anime company to really get some money from international audience, they should release subbed version of their anime series to the internet for free, but they should put some advertisement in there, and also advertise on the site where the anime series can be shown and/or downloaded, how people could buy the DVD and related stuffs. They need to turn the internet into a big TV broadcasting station. That probably is the model that can maximize their revenue.

The balance they actually need to strike is between providing a way for people to get hooked on their shows for free, but that also isn't as good as the paid version is. The problem is adding value to the paid versions, really... DVD seldom offers an image quality increase anymore.

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

Maybe they can win over the mass through proving the negative effects that "free riders" are putting on the product quality. But it's even more impossible

I'm not really sure the masses can do anything about free riders (AKA the people who never buy anything)... one person's decision not to download seldom has an impact on anyone elses.

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

The balance they actually need to strike is between providing a way for people to get hooked on their shows for free, but that also isn't as good as the paid version is. The problem is adding value to the paid versions, really... DVD seldom offers an image quality increase anymore.

The industry is starting to doing that at the moment, though. Bakemonogatari intentionally didn't fill all the scenes on its screenings. K-ON! had intentionally lowered picture quality and altered scenes. Recent shows like Sacred Blacksmith and Saki are intentionally censoring and promising uncensored versions on the DVD/Blu-Ray releases. Bake and K-ON! had the biggest first volume sales in Japan this year thanks to those gimmicks (56k and 41k respectively). Sacred Blacksmith rose from the 1100s to the 200s on Amazon pre-orders positioning after news of an uncensored release. The industry is wisening up somewhat. They are beginning to come up with ways to make people buy their product.

That said, whether this gimmick will work in the long term is yet to be seen. The only series in the last few weeks that has had notables DVD sales is Hetalia Axis Powers, which has consistently hit around 20k sales each volume, which is a fair achievement considering almost any series this year has struggled to crack 10k in that format. K-ON!'s latest volume struggled to reach 5k. Would be interesting to see some accurate Blu-Ray numbers but the two competing firms don't like to show numbers much, only positioning. Notably, the majority of Bake and K-ON! sales have been on Blu-Ray.

[Marcus H.]

They seem to have different mindsets when it comes to quality. :/

Well, I could say it would work for the meantime, as long as minimum to no profound changes are seen between the screenings and the DVD versions.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

That's where ratings come into play. You'd want a decent return via ratings. A decent series that isn't aimed at kids will get in the 2-4% range, so-so ones at 1% or lower. Occassionally something like Nodame Cantabile, which manged to crack 8% despite being on around midnight, breaks the ratings domination of the usual suspects. The original FMA series was in the 5-8% range for a long time. For the 2nd half of this year, in the July season Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Bakemonogatari were in the 2-4% ratings range. From the current season, Kimi ni Todoke is in that range at present. There's a couple of new shows aimed at younger people, like Yumeiro Patisserie, which are rating at 5%.

What are you smoking, no such thing as returns via ratings. Ratings, at best, can eventually propel an anime franchise to a better time slot. Late-night Japanese cartoons don't make anything from commercials because the commercials you see are sponsor messages from companies involved with production. In fact, most of the time, anime production committees have to pay broadcasters to air their shows. That's the reality of anime business, it's fueled by fans who actually spend money on their respected franchises. Eyeball count is just a big bag of wind.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Bake and K-ON! had the biggest first volume sales in Japan this year thanks to those gimmicks (56k and 41k respectively).

No, they sold well because they were popular among fans to begin with. (Well, supposedly the commentary track or something is really pushing Bakemonogatari's sales but I haven't read up on it.) These shows aren't relying on gimmicks for sales.

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

I think AT-X and WoWoW are the two cable channels in Japan that are dedicated to anime.

WoWoW is not dedicated to anime.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Not really. It's the same content, simply with subtitles added by fansubbing groups so English-speaking audiences who aren't fluent in Japanese can follow it.

It lacks the commercials. It lacks the associated brand marketing in the real world. Etc. All the attacks at the wallet are gone. Yes, the subtitles only make the main content accessible, but they don't bring along everything else you would see while watching the show.

I disagree completely. The spirit is still the same. Back then the idea was to not allow artificial barriers (such as a really late airing time) to block you from watching and/or re-watching your favorites shows. And today, the idea is to not allow artificial barriers (such as geographical origin of the TV content) to block you from watching and/or re-watching your favorite shows.

I don't think that really comes close to matching the current fan mindset at all. It isn't, "Hey, there is this really cool show that aired on PBS in boston and won't air in Chicago that I'd like you to see" as it was with VHS. Years ago, it may have been that way. The current one seems closer to "Stuff needs to be available the way I want it and for free.*" Even if it is available to them for free, the legal methods aren't good enough for them. It doesn't matter if they could watch it a week later on Crunchyroll or whatever, they will find some excuse to download the pirated copy. (ex: Can't download it.) The idea of "buying" makes them go "So where can I download it." They scream what amounts to "entitlement" whenever the industry does anything that would go against their sharing model. This is the fan mindset that seems prevalent over the internet.

*This is a poor representative quote on my part. The idea is that they believe that their peers need to see content without paying to see it.

The anime industry needs to get around this idea that the episode content alone sells the DVDs. It's not.

The Japanese industry has long understood this. The R1 industry is stuck between a wonderful catch-22: At the same time, fans complain that DVDs are too expensive and lack extra content to give it value to buy. i.e They want more content for the same amount of money, which is very difficult to do. (Yes, the R1 industry has been horrible at adding value via extras too but thats another thread topic.)

Originally Posted by Full Metal Coast

even if these companies were to charge a subscription fee of sorts to watch their programs that have been fansubbed (sort of like a pay tv subscription) i wouldnt have a problem with that as long as is a monthly or yearly fee and you are able to download whatever you want as long as your subscription is valid.

And would you get it if it had no downloads?

by the way i know the main station for showing anime in japan is Animax i was just wondering how many others also air anime and whether they are on free or subscription tv.

It isn't. Most (80-90%) of the new shows in Japan air on the main OTA TV networks (TV Tokyo, Fuji, TBS, etc). Then about 10-20% air on PPV/subscription stations like AT-X, Kids Station,etc.

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by bayoab

No, they sold well because they were popular among fans to begin with. (Well, supposedly the commentary track or something is really pushing Bakemonogatari's sales but I haven't read up on it.) These shows aren't relying on gimmicks for sales.

If I had a dollar for every time I read on a blog, various forums or Sankaku that people bought the Blu-rays primarily for the missing scenes or the added service in those 2 series, I'd be loaded.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by bayoab

No, they sold well because they were popular among fans to begin with. (Well, supposedly the commentary track or something is really pushing Bakemonogatari's sales but I haven't read up on it.)

Commentary tracks are precisely the sort of thing that fans love, and helps sell DVDs, imo. On some of my non-anime DVDs, I enjoyed the commentary track as much as I did the actual episode content.

I could be wrong, but I can't imagine that it's all that expensive to make a commentary track for a DVD. Pay a key voice actor, a key script-writer, and a couple other important people to sit down and hold a commentary over muted/low volume episode content. You only have to pay them for a hour's extra work, max.

This can be incredibly informative and fun.

It lacks the commercials. It lacks the associated brand marketing in the real world. Etc. All the attacks at the wallet are gone. Yes, the subtitles only make the main content accessible, but they don't bring along everything else you would see while watching the show.

Just to be clear... if there was an official legal anime download site, and you could download anime episodes for free but only with commercials put into them (in place of the original commercials that would only make sense for Japanese audiences, of course), then I'd go for that for sure.

I've always viewed commercials as a very small "price" to pay for watching good entertainment content for free.

I don't think that really comes close to matching the current fan mindset at all. It isn't, "Hey, there is this really cool show that aired on PBS in boston and won't air in Chicago that I'd like you to see" as it was with VHS. Years ago, it may have been that way. The current one seems closer to "Stuff needs to be available the way I want it and for free.*" Even if it is available to them for free, the legal methods aren't good enough for them. It doesn't matter if they could watch it a week later on Crunchyroll or whatever, they will find some excuse to download the pirated copy. (ex: Can't download it.)

This isn't the flippant excuse that I think you believe it to be.

I, and many anime fans, enjoy making AMVs in our spare time. I can't do that with out a downloaded copy of the anime episode content, of course. In order to make an AMV, I need to have the content on my computer.

Preventing people from downloading the anime episode is a big problem, in my opinion. If people are paying a fee - even a small, nominal fee - to watch the episode in the first place, the least they should be able to do is also download the episode.

You may be right that some anime fans expect too much, but there's truth on the flip-side... some content providers have ridiculous expectations over how much control they should exert over what happens to the content that they make. This relates to a lot of "fair use" debates going on in the legislative and judicial arenas right now.

To put it in a nutshell, modern copyright law is horrifically slanted against play-by-the-rules consumers. But... that's a huge debate in and of itself. I raise it briefly here just to point out that the "wants to have their cake and eat it too" issue isn't only on the fan's side... it's also on the content providers side.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

I, and many anime fans, enjoy making AMVs in our spare time. I can't do that with out a downloaded copy of the anime episode content, of course. In order to make an AMV, I need to have the content on my computer.

Preventing people from downloading the anime episode is a big problem, in my opinion. If people are paying a fee - even a small, nominal fee - to watch the episode in the first place, the least they should be able to do is also download the episode.

Actually... If you're a U.S. citizen (I don't know about Canada), you are permitted by law to keep a recording of any broadcast you like. Downloading a show from, let's say, Crunchyroll constititutes dumping a broadcast stream onto your harddrive, which is basically the same as recording a TV show with your TiVo. Though decryption is a separate issue. So basically Crunchyroll isn't preventing you from doing anything, its service just doesn't come with a VCR, which you can procure elsewhere.
I'd love to see the industry recognise that fans love to play with their content and offer appropriate packages for us to buy. I've dabbled some in creating MADs, but it was a pain to clean up all the audio and video material. What I'd love to see from the industry would be another step toward the so called remix culture that is now more vocal than ever before, for example offer us DTOs with production material bundles. I'm positive kids on NicoNico Douga would eat that shit up.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by bayoab

I don't think that really comes close to matching the current fan mindset at all. It isn't, "Hey, there is this really cool show that aired on PBS in boston and won't air in Chicago that I'd like you to see" as it was with VHS. Years ago, it may have been that way. The current one seems closer to "Stuff needs to be available the way I want it and for free.*" Even if it is available to them for free, the legal methods aren't good enough for them. It doesn't matter if they could watch it a week later on Crunchyroll or whatever, they will find some excuse to download the pirated copy. (ex: Can't download it.) The idea of "buying" makes them go "So where can I download it." They scream what amounts to "entitlement" whenever the industry does anything that would go against their sharing model. This is the fan mindset that seems prevalent over the internet.

First, regardless of whether the spirit has changed, the fansub does play an important role in making many shows available outside Japan. DVD comapnies and CR have a long way to go before all the good anime is available between them.
Second, the "I want to see it for free" crowd can be subdivided into those who are and aren't willing to buy stuff after they've seen it. The fansub downloaders I know in real life range from people who will spend money building massive, multi hard drive media servers yet won't buy any DVDs to people who have 600 DVD collections to straight out of high school university students who have a lot of incomplete series because they couldn't afford to complete the sets they started collecting but would by the first volume or two anyway. So they're hardly a monolithic block.

As to Crunchyroll, I'm not actually sure that its problem is simply the lack of downloadable copies. If the typical fansub downloader who watches maybe 6-8 shows a season could pay $60 a year for high def streams of those 6-8 shows per season, I think a lot of them would. Problem of course is that for most people, a large chunk of those 6-8 shows won't be available on CR (none of my favourites list from January to September 2009 were on CR). And if you only really care about 1-2 shows per season, then suddenly $60 a year doesn't look like a good deal anymore.

Crunchyroll does a really good job monetizing the "streams everything anyway and doesn't care about image quality" crowd, but they aren't really so hot on providing what other fansub watchers want.

Originally Posted by bayaob

The Japanese industry has long understood this. The R1 industry is stuck between a wonderful catch-22: At the same time, fans complain that DVDs are too expensive and lack extra content to give it value to buy. i.e They want more content for the same amount of money, which is very difficult to do. (Yes, the R1 industry has been horrible at adding value via extras too but thats another thread topic.)

I don't think it's so much that specific fans want more for less, it's that the market for R1 discs is diverse enough that a single release really can't serve the needs of all buyers. Sure, collectors will probably buy a cheap release for completeness, but you could have wrung a lot more out of them with a collector's version. Meanwhile, you need to have cheap editions for casual fans to make impulse buys. Really, most R1 releases strike me as "too expensive for casual fans and too cheap to maximize profits from collectors".

Personally, I think it might be a good idea to separate the market into cheap downloads and physical collector's editions - especially after seeing how a lot of my friends have embraced Steam as their source of choice for PC games they could download for free - but that's just me.

[Vexx]

The Steam model offers an excellent way to provide some solution here... the only problem being the "what if Steam goes bankrupt?" scenario.

[Last Sinner]

Which is one of the reasons I don't like the idea of Crunchyroll being the only streamer in some regions. Plus they would get choose what they want to play - there's a potential to miss out on a lot of material.

[retardation]

the attempt to stop fansubbing for viewership in other countries makes so little sense to me?

how many people buy dvds without being fansub watchers?

what % of the people at cons and buying merchandise don't get a huge portion of their anime through fansubs?

i agree with the whole thing about buying a dvd for a collector's item rather than to see the show. why would i buy a super high priced anime dvd set if i haven't seen the show.

also why are anime dvds so expensive anyway? i doubt american dvds are this expensive in japan.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

If I had a dollar for every time I read on a blog, various forums or Sankaku that people bought the Blu-rays primarily for the missing scenes or the added service in those 2 series, I'd be loaded.

Looking at the DVD sales thread, I don't believe that they actually bought it at all.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

You only have to pay them for a hour's extra work, max.

I don't know if it's Japan's pay structure is even close to the US but the min pay time in the US is 2 hours for any time in the studio. This is why the lack of US commentary tracks on anime DVDs. (Yes, we usually don't want to hear what they have to say anyway, but some people like the extra for some reason.)

You may be right that some anime fans expect too much, but there's truth on the flip-side... some content providers have ridiculous expectations over how much control they should exert over what happens to the content that they make.

Well yes, the content providers need to come into the 21st century too, but they are never going to meet the loudest of the fan demands and thus the loudest voice will continue on.

Originally Posted by retardation

how many people buy dvds without being fansub watchers?

More than 50% according to FUNi's stats.

also why are anime dvds so expensive anyway? i doubt american dvds are this expensive in japan.

List price of most american DVDs in Japan: ~$40

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Looking at the DVD sales thread, I don't believe that they actually bought it at all.

Uh, what? According to that thread Bakemonogatari sold nearly 66 thousand and K-On also broke the 50K mark. The only TV series to do that last year was Macross Frontier, which puts these two shows in a very elite category sales wise.

Originally Posted by bayaob

More than 50% according to FUNi's stats.

I'd be interested in seeing those states and knowing how much they varied depending on the series in question, as well as what else people based buying decisions on.

[Vampire]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

First off, CODA has a lot of work to do if they want to promote "...legal distribution of Japanese content".

• No one would buy Japanese content if they can't understand every single word. The language barrier is just so huge that fansubbers most likely win over legal raws in this aspect.

• Prices nowadays aren't patterned on the target market. e.g. A DVD of Shakugan no Shana S worth more than 6000 yen is a repulsive cost for a person who only focuses only on the show, and none of the extra stuff attached to it. They just look like they are forced to act when they didn't give a damn in the first place.

• Also, there are at least a million sites hosting free anime shows and stuff on the Internet. It will be more of a hassle to the legal side of this situation to handle each and every site. And even though you managed to take out one, more will take its place.

I don't want to say that it's a lost cause, but if they keep on making wrong moves for the next few months or years, the effects of "piracy" will be almost irreversible.

I agree with what you're saying but what do you mean irreversible? And I think this is almost as impossible to stop like killing roaches.

[Sackett]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

I agree strongly with this.


My view is this... once you put video or audio content on cable TV, or on the radio, you're basically giving it away to the whole world for free. That's simply how the world works today. If Japanese viewers can watch anime in their own countries with out spending extra for it (beyond a cable charge, or Japan's equivalent thereof), then anime fans through out the world are going to want and expect that same basic level of access.

Back in the 1980s, people used to record their favorite TV shows on VCR tapes all the time, and share them with their friends and loved ones. As far as I can remember, the law never batted an eyelash at it.

This was accepted for a long time, and nobody saw anything wrong with it.

The only difference now is that the technology has changed, enabling people to tape and share with a far wider variety of people. As long as this is done in a non-commercial and non-profit way, however, the spirit of the act is no different than what was done back in the 80s with VCR tapes.

The anime industry, and entertainment industries in general, are failing to see this. They think that modern-day "piracy" is something unusual or a new "criminality" that needs to be stamped out. It's not new at all... it's the same sort of stuff that people used to do decades ago, simply with lower forms of technology. And since nobody batted an eyelash at it back then, people naturally don't see what's the big deal with it today.


It's different if you're going straight-to-DVD, or airing your content on a PPV channel, or if your content is a movie only being shown in theaters... but the moment it hits cable TV or the radio, it's essentially commercially worthless. That's the trade-off of mass media: it lets you advertise your content for the masses to see, but its commercial value is lowered because of it.

Companies need to deal with that. One way would be to spruce up DVDs more, for example; put added content on and in them that you couldn't just get from cable TV, somewhere in the world.

Another effective solution would be to distribute their material on the web themselves- for free, but include maybe two short commercials. This would blow most of the file sharing out of the water. Why go to the trouble of uploading and downloading and getting server space to do all this distribution if you can just email your friend a link to the official online location?

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Sackett

Another effective solution would be to distribute their material on the web themselves- for free, but include maybe two short commercials. This would blow most of the file sharing out of the water. Why go to the trouble of uploading and downloading and getting server space to do all this distribution if you can just email your friend a link to the official online location?

Good thinking. Agreed.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Sackett

Another effective solution would be to distribute their material on the web themselves- for free, but include maybe two short commercials. This would blow most of the file sharing out of the water. Why go to the trouble of uploading and downloading and getting server space to do all this distribution if you can just email your friend a link to the official online location?

I think most companies would want a little more product differentiation than simply "the pay version lacks ads", particularly since you can just fast forward with most media players. I don't think it's a coincidence that Funimation - whose business model is still DVD based - only streams it's stuff in 640X360 resolution. Keeping the image quality of streams lower than the DVD might be more important to them than competiting with fansubbers who work in HD.