Guillotine

There are a lot of views out there on the topics of anime and manga piracy these days, and just as with what I guess would be called “domestic” piracy there are are extremely polarized viewpoints on both sides. I like to think of myself as a middle ground type person. I kinda see the points of both sides, but the extreme viewpoints sometimes just leave me with nothing more than a nasty headache.

So I feel a lot of mixed emotion right now about certain events that caught my attention, and want to add my two cents into the mix. Unfortunately my long-winded-ness won’t allow this to fit into a 140 character Twitter post or even a dozen of them. The beginning of this article for me started with a post on Twitter which got my attention. Someone ratting out a manga scanlation site about having licensed material up. As I researched into the causes of the event I found some things which kind of knotted me up inside, but I decided to hold my tongue and go on with my life pretending to be blissfully unaware of the ridiculousness of what I saw. The second event was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” for me, and has spawned my own entry into this foolish behavior, and yes I am aware of how foolish it all sounds to the average person. This second event is something that is still on going, and will be my first point of discussion.

Many may or may not be aware that several days ago Roger Ebert wrote an article reviewing The Miyazaki film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Included in his article was embedded the entire film streamed from Google Video. Now several sites immediately began to carry this story, and several advertised it as “Free and legal”. There were some however on Twitter who question the validity of that. I myself question whether it’s something Google actually has permission to stream or simply something they missed when cleaning up after they stopped allowing users to upload videos. The fact that the film as well as several other Miyazaki works were uploaded 2 to 3 years ago seems to support my second theory. Just something Google missed, and could easily be remedied by someone reporting the video to Google. They would probably have it down within the hour, but the way of the world is that people decided that they would rather grandstand and bring attention to themselves by sending out messages on Twitter about it (the one that got my attention has wasted a couple days posting on the subject now).

Now some may say… Well… Why don’t you report the video yourself instead of writing about it. I could even be accused of grandstanding myself. But the truth is… I am not going to report it because I simply don’t want to. I don’t have a problem with the video being there. Personally I watched Spirited Away for the first time on Youtube, and it only made me want to go out the next morning as soon as the video store opened to purchase the DVD and a few other Miyazaki DVDs as well. Aside from the fact that it’s blown way too out of proportion by now to matter much. One of the funnier aspects of the story is that Anime News Network contacted Walt Disney Pictures to confirm whether the stream was legal, and basically got a response from Disney saying it was none of their concern and ANN is now contacting Studio Ghibli (rather than simply diffusing the entire situation by contacting Google about it).

All this leads up to one of the points I’m trying desperately to make… The current state of fan subbing and anime piracy in the U.S. If you go back a few years you would find a point in time where fan subbing was not all that controversial, and was actually sort of a noble thing to participate in. The reason for this was simple… Most fansubbers were only subbing unlicensed material thus bringing works to the U.S. that would otherwise be unattainable by legal means (not to mention a fluent knowledge of the Japanese language). Even licensors have mentioned on occasion that they “used to” like fan subs. It didn’t interfere with their business and they sometimes used it as a gauge to figure out which shows were popular among fans thus giving them a means to research which titles would be worth seeking licenses for. Now I can’t say what the feelings of the original creators of these shows in Japan thought about all of this… To be honest it seems many were unaware that piracy was even occurring until very recently, and even then it’s a rather difficult process for  persons in one country to seek a lawsuit against persons in another country which is why most issues of anime piracy have stayed for the most part in the domain of licensed shows with the license companies policing the industry pretty much on their own.

These days things have changed… Now that licensing companies are streaming simulcast episodes of new shows themselves the fan sub community is looking more like a thorn in their side. Especially since the newer breed of fansubber doesn’t seem to care whether a show has been licensed in the U.S. or not. One thing that has obviously changed is the disappearance of the fansubber’s “code” At the beginning of episodes there was always a message that asked that the episode or series stop being distributed once it became licensed. Whether it actually happened or not at least they seemed to care back then.

Another thing that has changed recently is the birth of the “rippers” as they are called. These people pass themselves off as fan sub groups, but they don’t actually sub anything. They rip the streamed subbed video directly from websites such as Hulu, Funimation, The Anime Network, Crunchyroll, etc. Once they have the video they either upload it directly to the internet, or they will time the subs to a high quality Japanese broadcast rip of the episode and upload that. So in essence these days anyone with a little software knowledge can become a “fan sub” group without even the slightest knowledge of the Japanese language.

Now there are still quite a few real fan sub groups out there, but even they seem to have been poisoned by the attitudes of the piracy/anti-piracy groups and their viewpoints, and seemingly sub things just for the sake of annoying one group or the other. Some these days don’t even seem to care about the shows they are subbing as much as who will get upset that they are subbing a show in the first place.  Which is a rather amusing concept in itself that someone would put forth the effort of subbing a show just to spite others.

And now more on the first event which spawned this diatribe. (you didn’t actually think I was finally done rambling did you?) So I’m checking posts in Twitter and come across a post about a manga site that is uploading licensed manga to their site. At first I think well… Just another nosy person who can’t mind their own business. Out of curiosity I visited the site in question and found out this person was also trolling the site’s forum basically telling the site owner what can and can’t be on their site as if they had some ownership over the content. So while perusing the forum reading through this (rather annoying) busybody’s posts I found something that concerned me even more. Now I’ve never bothered with manga scanlations myself… I don’t have the time for that. Any manga I’ve read I purchase as something to read when I’m bored, so I’ve never had the desire to bother with scanlations.

What I started noticing was that these scanlators actually “demand” that a site gets their permission before they can upload a scanlation on a particular site. This strikes me as both audacious and plain and simple stupidity. These people are actually making demands about a product that they reproduced, translated, and distributed illegally. And they actually demand (or send their minions in their place) that sites take down works which they translated. I’m sorry, but I think it takes more balls than you’d find in a gay bath house to actually put limitations on something you did illegally in the first place.

Once I started seeing these things going on in the scanlation sites I start to understand why manga creators are lashing out at piracy, and even kind of understand why (one in particular) would wish cancer on those who pirate their works. It’s one thing to pirate material and distribute it, but it’s an entirely different matter when you start to treat another’s work as your own. I find that terribly insulting to the original artists.

So to sum up… You have the anti-piracy people being attention whores ratting out everyone on the internet… To other people on the internet rather than reporting it to the people who might actually do something about whatever they are whining about. Which frankly pisses me off a bit… This is exactly what is wrong with this country. You have a lot of people talking, but nobody actually putting forth an effort to do something even if it’s as simple as sending a message to the person who has your panties in a bunch. Instead of being pro-active I’ll just tell all my internet buddies about it so they will make a big stink that I can take all the credit for when someone actually does get around to fixing the problem. It reminds me of that commercial a few years back where a group of people stand around a piece of litter complaining about it rather than just picking it up and putting it in the trash.

On the other side you have the piracy folks who are getting sick of the anti-piracy people’s grandstanding… Their answer is to simply pirate more stuff and shove into the anti-piracy people’s faces… Even going to the extreme of pirating things that don’t even need to be pirated in the first place. Which is leading to more and more people on that side doing stupid things like showboating their activities, and basically downright insulting the original artists.

And then you have the creators and licensors trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on, and the typical reaction to confusion is to lash out at the first opportunity that arises. It makes me think of someone being told to clean up a house that is filled with trash from floor to ceiling and that person standing there trying to figure out where to start cleaning.

I’m getting a feeling lately that things are coming to a boiling point rapidly, and that something interesting is bound to come from all of this. At any rate the meltdowns on all sides should at least be fun to watch. Someone pass the popcorn.