Hmm...well, it's been a pretty ok weekend, so far. There was a signal company cohesion thingee on wednesday, and i suppose i MIGHT count it as a day off from camp, although, according to Junming, what they did was actually to CUT our wednesday nights off...so we should be
demanding compensation!!! Whahaha!
Oh, and i've finally gotten that IPPT gold award! Which means that i get a $200 bonus for the next pay-day..woohoo! Can't promise to treat everyone who asks though erps.
Today, i went down to the IT fair as well where i only bought DVD+Rs and casing..mainly because i didn't need much (besides the Sandisk 4GB thumbdrive..which was sold out!..I can't believe i didn't buy it at some outside shop just because i wanted to save $3 :\). Played mahjong for the first time in nearly a MONTH as well...and i lost pretty big. But my warm-up period is now over! If anyone still wants to win super big from me..too bad for you! Mwhahaha...sigh.0_o
Anyway, this morning i woke up to some really horrifying news..that Odex, a local anime distributer, has started to issue legal letters to people they believe are downloading anime fansubs!! And they are demanding the alleged downloaders "settle the issue" or face legal action!! (
Page H2 of The Straits Times, Friday, June 1 2007)
I suppose Odex is right to do such a thing. Many anime downloaders are, after all, thieving off the good work of the original manga writers and the crew of the anime production team by watching anime without paying a cent.
But still, something about how they're going about doing things just doesn't sound right to me.
Firstly, the newspaper and the Odex spokesman didn't clarify: does the "fansubs" in question refer to ALL fansubbed anime out there, or just those that have been licensed by Odex or other distributors?
It's "common knowledge" to fansubbers (those who create the fansubs) and those who download anime that "it's perfectly alright" to sub and distribute an anime series until it has been licensed in America. Then, fansubbers are to cease distributing fansubs for that series, or they will then be labelled as REAL anime pirates. I'm not sure if Japan's legal system has changed, but well known fansubbers have kept to this sort of "Fansubbers Creed" (my own term for it...at least i think so) and have never gotten into any legal trouble.
So my question is, can i get into legal trouble if i download only unlicensed anime, and stay away from those that has been licensed in the USA...AND by Odex as well? In any case, i don't think Odex has the power to take legal action against people downloading unlicensed anime.
Secondly, downloading anime that's unlicensed is all well and good, and when i see Odex's list of licensed anime, nothing alarms me at all, because i don't have any plans to download any of those anime series which i don't have (in fact, i've bought quite a number of those Odex vcd boxes! 8 series-worth in fact, amounting to a few hundred dollars).
Except for one: Bleach. Let me paint the scenario for you: Bleach is currently at episode 127 in Japan, and every week, Dattebayo kindly subs and distributes the latest episode for all of us to watch. For free of course, so that probably makes Dattebayo a "deviant fansub group". 0_o Meanwhile, the Odex releases of Bleach haven't even reached episode 50 yet, and in accordance to the law, we're all supposed to wait while Odex takes their time burning those episodes into vcd format.
Some fansubbers have decided to interpret the "fansubbers creed" differently, and stop distribution of certain episodes of their fansubs ONLY when those episodes are released in dvd or vcd. Of course, Odex will probably take the more extreme view and say that when an anime series has been licensed, the WHOLE series becomes illegal for free downloading...including the episodes that have YET to be released on Japanese TV.
Is this truly correct? I get the feeling that Odex doesn't seem to understand that the internet was created to help us keep up with the rest of the world in terms of information...of ALL kinds, whether it's about knowing the latest soccer scores, the latest terrorist attack, the latest celebrity death, OR the latest happenings in Bleach.
"Go watch YouTube instead" isn't the complete solution, and i bet it isn't what Odex wants, too, because anime isn't exactly like music; a non-downloadable version of lower quality won't make a person go out and buy the vcd or dvd, because anime episodes are only watched once or twice, most of the time - not at all like music, where people play their favourite songs over and over. Thus, watching the anime in low quality on YouTube (which's supposedly legal) is NO DIFFERENT from watching it in avi format as a fansub (which's supposedly ILlegal); unless the person's an extremely great fan of the anime series, he probably WON'T buy the vcd or dvd once he's watched the episode in EITHER of the formats. Trust me, it really is the case.
SO, i think that the Odex team partially have themselves to blame for low earnings...because they really ARE slow, after all (not to mention that lots of their anime suck quite a bit..). If they wish to sell more of their vcds and dvds, they really should release them much earlier.
The Dattebayo fansub group (and almost every other fansub group out there for that matter), who, by the way, don't get paid a single cent for what they do, can release fansubs within a
day after the episode is shown in Japan. Why can't Odex, who rake in the cash from vcd/dvd sales, even do it within a
year after the final episode in their box? They don't have THAT many extra steps to take (especially once the first box for that series has been released). Is it perhaps because the later episodes have to be licensed first? If so, then why can't i download episode 127 and watch it at the same time as everyone else?
Finally, maybe it's because i'm pretty well-off compared to many others, but the reason why i download anime ISN'T to save money (the save-money motive was gone along with my music/game piracy ways when i started to EARN money). Rather, it is out of CONVENIENCE. There're quite a few good anime series that aren't available in video shops in Singapore. If the only way i could get a dvd for a particular anime series was to order it from America and pay a hefty delivery fee (and wait a long while too; stocks are limited, after all) - or maybe to fly to China and buy it with traditional chinese subtitles which i can't read to save my life! - i'd MUCH rather just download the anime...it would be ready, overnight.
Furthermore, the newer anime series aren't even OUT in dvds yet, and the process to licence it and release it in a dvd takes almost a YEAR. What am i supposed to do in the meantime? Unlike famous TV series, like Heroes, Lost and Friends, anime series don't get transfered to normal television in Singapore so easily, not to mention with just a few weeks' lag. Words just cannot describe how difficult it is to catch the anime series you want over here, even with cable television WITH extra, paid-for channels. One simple example, could you find Claymore and Lucky Star being shown on ANY of the television stations here in Singapore? What do you think?
Anime released on TV here in Singapore are also notorious for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Worse still, i remember lines for series like Samurai X and Slam Dunk were changed so much, that when i saw them on fansubs and mangas, the meanings were totally different. I remember wondering why those TV people couldn't just dump their pride aside and copy the subtitles from the fansubs wholesale. And Odex's spokesman said that focus groups couldn't find any differences in quality between fansubs and the dvd releases. Of course there isn't...now why doesn't he compare fansubs to vcds instead? And while he's at it, i hope he explains why Odex, the company with the money, is simply trying to
match the unpaid fansubbers in terms of video quality, instead of trying to
surpass them.
And before i forget to point out, price sometimes CAN be an inconvenience. Odex's spokesman, Stephen Sing, claimed that "even when Odex bundled three DVDs for a $9.90 trial offer, fans did not bite". To be honest, i think that that's a
crap-ass statement. Firstly, what do they mean by a
trial offer? Does that mean that those who paid for those dvds would have to return it? And were there really "fans"? Because i'd really like to know the TITLE of the bundled dvds. The honest truth is that the dvds ARE expensive, sometimes. The Project/Initial D dvds retail for around $12 to $15 per dvd..and the newest of series can cost nearly $20 per dvd. And each dvd contains...
...2 episodes. Wow. Really affordable. >.< To be fair to them, Odex has mainly released anime dvd sets like Gundam Seed Destiny, Monster and Full Metal Alchemist, that cost about $39 and which comes with 14 episodes. More affordable than Project D, and i even bought one. But prices can still be lowered, no matter what the Odex spokesman has said. There were 7 sets of high quality dvds, which included 138 episodes of Naruto, most of them non-fillers. Bluemax made those dvd sets and retailed them at around $50 for an average of 20 episodes per set. Slightly more worth the money compared to Odex's offerings, and i bought all 7 of those dvd sets for around $350.
As a suggestion (since ranting is quite pointless without at least one), i don't have the infrastructure required to start a project this big, but i certainly hope that Odex would look into it: an anime version of the iTunes store. It's for their own good too, because if they don't, then anime fansubbers might just make a deal with the copyright holders of the different anime series and go ahead without them. They could charge people to download anime fansubs (and different fansubbers could be assigned to different anime series - although that wouldn't make them a "fansub group" anymore...and those video files can no longer be called "fansubs" :|)...starting at, say around $4-5 per episode, which then gets cheaper by 50 cents for every year (or half a year) that it's been released, until it stops at $2 a pop.
It's something i learnt from Code Geass...which is by the way, an anime series: Resistances, which might just include "resistances to paying for fansubs", will lose most of their support from the non-extremists when a compromise is offered that allows those non-extremists a way to get what they want..somewhat..but without any risks involved. It would then be easier to define the pirates and extremists; those who do not embrace the new idea ARE the pirates (or are just poor...how sad can this world get). It'll also be easier to track down those downloading free anime when the number who's doing it is much fewer.
I think it's just that Odex is going about it the wrong way. By only adopting a hard-line stance with regards to anime piracy, painting themselves as the victims to the media, and THEN
victimising others by taking legal action against them, it'll only result in a lot of hurt and pain for relatively innocent families; people who would have liked a compromise...if only one existed. Meanwhile, the gap between the anime distributers and the anime consumers as a whole will grow ever wider.
Odex should learn from the iTunes store and the music piracy scene. A hard-line approach COUPLED with a feasible compromise would go a long way to eliminating the rampant anime piracy that's been going on in Singapore (And music cds HAVE dropped further in price than before). It doesn't have to be anything like my idea, but if the anime online store really becomes a reality, i'd be really glad..and relieved.
And when that happens, as the person who brought the idea forward, i'll invite Odex or whoever's in charge of the store to come down to my place and charge me, at those rates, for every single fansub that i own.
And i will pay every single cent of it.
