Forum - View topicOhayocon and fansubs
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cyrax777
 Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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My take on it. Industry claiming the sky is falling just like the MPAA is saying over bootlegged Movies. If the person who downloaded a bootleg was never going to buy a legit release in the first place how is the indusrty losing a sale it never had.
ok so maybe I've been reading /. to much lately. |
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Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
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That's not going to help matters from what I can tell. Unless I'm mistaken, most of the fansubs done are TV-rips. If this is true, then nothing is stopping from them using a recording device like a Tivo, etc and then throwing the raw out there. In that case, it won't stop somebody from subbing that and it won't end the bootlegging. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I agree with Zeiram on what he said the solution to fansubs is. Lower the quality, or at least do something that will make a bootleger not want to reproduce it, and keep anime fans from keeping it over the legit versions because of quality. I understand this may never happen, but if there was something they could come up with for this, digi fansubbers would stop getting such a bad rap, and the anime industry wouldn't feel threatened by them. Heck, I have a really really old Ayashi no Ceres fansub downloaded, and it's tiny and small, and low quality, but I still watched it, and it never once crossed my mind to keep it over the legit version.
It'd be really nice if the fansubbers could come up with some way to stop the fansubs from being high quality when transfered to video or dvd, but then the fansubbers out there may never agree to it if it exist unless they're threatened by legal action. And then of course the bootlegers would probably come up with a way to get around the low quality transfer thing. |
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Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
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like I said... until high quality raws go away, it's not going to happen...
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cyrax777
Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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besides if were talking HK dvds about 90% use a raw throw a hastly down chinese translation on it and take the english sub track from a translation of the chinese track thats why you get really really bad subs on HK dvds. How do they thing the fansubbers get the Raw in the first place its the Fans in Asia that are vidcapping and posting them for the most part.
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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It might not stop it but it would certainly take away the justification of fansubbing it in the first place. I would expect that a fansubber who only does it for the art would just buy the Japanese disk from a legit distributor if they knew it was subbed in English at the studio before release and that would naturally cascade down the his potential fansubbee's. The others would be left in the exposure of what it really is. Criminal organised pirating. But then what would be the point if the English market has been covered by the studio in the first place? |
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Ventile
Posts: 40 Location: teh Netherlands |
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You're right, I was argumenting too much from my own point of view and the way I download and buy anime. Therefore I'd like to add another solution to the problem: let licensers hook up with fansubbers and let the licensers place advertisements in the fansub  (don't take this one too seriously though  )
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10421 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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If I can add my own 2 cents to this, simulataneous release is probably, hands down, the biggest way for the Anime industry to cut down on fansubbing and bootlegging. Unfortunately there's a large number of obstacles in the way of simultaneous releases. It takes time for the North American studios to translate and dub their titles. It would be possible for them to do this as soon as the Video and the Japanese script was ready, but most times I thnk they chose the Japanese dub as a reference point. If they need to wait for the Japanese dub, then the English dub won't be ready until a good while later. Some people have suggested that the North American studios release dubtitled only releases earlier. Trust me, they've thought about this, and it just isn't financially worth the time & effort. The second problem is reverse importing. As you know, Anime on DVD is much more expensive in Japan*. It's actually cheaper for a Japanese person to buy an R1 DVD player and pay for imports of Anime from the US. They can turn off the dub & sub, and they have the equivalent of a perfect Japanese DVD. We've seen Japanese studios force the US distributors to wait or not include the Japanese track on their DVDs in order to avoid reverse importation.** But, if anime was released on TV stateside at roughly the same time as in Japan, and then released on DVD again at roughly the same time, the market for bootlegs and fansubs would really shrink. There'd be two causes for this, first, most fansubbers with some ethics wouldn't bother fansubbing something already available ***, and most fans wouldn't need to turn to fansubs since the show is on TV or DVD.**** There will always be people that would rather have stuff for free or cheap. Look at the number of bootlegs of North American TV shows and movies. Obviously this wouldn't completely stamp out fansubbing and bootlegging, but I think that simultaneous releases would certainly diminish the demand for fansubs & bootlegs. We thought we were going to get a simultaneous TV release back in October 2002 with GitS:SAC, but someone dropped the ball on that. *A typical Anime DVD in Japan costs betwee $50 and $60 and contains 1 or 2 episodes. Movies cost about the same, so they get a better deal there, but it's still expensive compared to $19.99 to $29.99 over here. Limited Edition releases generally cost 50% more to 3 times as much. ** First Gundam, Mononoke Hime (They backed down in this case with a small delay). *** I wonder how many would say "Well, the TV release we got is a dub, so we're going to fansub the Japanese version so people can see the original" **** An issue remains with TV shows (on TV in Japan) that don't get aired on TV here. The DVD release would still be several months later, so people would want fansubs. On a slightely different topic, I keep hearing people say "But Japanese people get to see it for free, so should we." No, Anime is not free in Japan. For starters, most of the good stuff, such as GiTS:SAC airs on Pay Per View. And then, even the stuff thats on broadcast TV is ad supported. There's no money coming from the viewers' pockets, but the money is coming from somewhere. With fansubs, there's no money. So while broadcast is nearly free to the viewers, the studios do make their money. Think of it this way: Imagine you're storekeeper, and a Japanese lady comes in with her child, she pays for some candy, and the lets her son have it. Then an american kid walks in, picks up the same candy bar and walks out without paying for it. When you confront the kid about it he says, "But that Japanese Kid didn't have to pay for it, so neither should I." That's all. -t |
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Scaramanga
Posts: 134 Location: San Diego, CA |
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I agree completely. In fact it's my understanding that Blockbuster is pushing for an elimation of region coding to stop video piracy for pretty much the same reasons. Also can someone comment on what economic factors are contributing to such high prices of DVDs in Japan? EDIT: Fixed that annoying quote snafu, gomen. Last edited by Scaramanga on Mon Feb 02, 2004 5:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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cookie
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 2460 Location: Do not contact me for support. |
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A higher cost of living accounts for some of it... ... but really, the companies are doing economics backwords -- they say "We will sell 10,000 DVDs, so therefore we need to set a price point at X in order to make a profit." Rather than allowing the market to expand to additional buyers, they're throttling it off at a point where they'll make what they -want- to make, nothing more or less. Part of this, naturally, is greed.. another part is that they don't like market variability -- if you can ALWAYS sell 10,000 DVDs at $50 apiece, then you can easily plan for the future, because you know that you'll have a certain amount of profit.. compared to the US market, where one can anticipate the same DVD to sell somewhere around 10,000 copies {just a random number}, but only based on market research and previous DVD releases. If the DVD gets bad reviews and doesn't show up in adverts anywhere, it might end up only selling half. If it gets reviewed on CNN, it'll do a lot better. One other thing that probably influences the prices is that... when anime is made, it's usually a combination of several major studios. Each puts money into the project, and so each takes money out as it becomes profitable.. so in order to turn a significant profit for any of them, the prices need to be higher so that they can take a bigger cut. Finally, the 5400 yen price point is what Japanese customers expect. If you see a $5 DVD in a $25/DVD store, what's your initial reaction? I'm not implying that the film is "low quality", but what I am saying is that it's not the kind of film that most people are looking for. To get around the hesitant buyer (since no one would want to put down $50 for a bad series), Japanese DVD releases tend to have 1-2 episodes on the first DVD (usually at about 3800 yen) followed by 3-4 episodes on each subsequent DVD (usually at about 5400 yen). That allows the customer to, in a way "try before they buy".. of course they're still paying, but it's not so much. |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Over to what Tempest was saying, and my example was for the Japanese Studio's to do the subbing, not North American, or anyone else for that matter. In my example the Japanese studios don't necessarily have to have a simultaneous release for the world. That can come later, so there wouldn't be any overseas disks to import, for them to worry about. But by having their first inland releases subbed already that would cover any hard core Otaku's overseas, who would buy it from say; Amazon.co.jp, or some other online Japanese based distributor that these said Hard core fans would usually buy the raw disks anyway and fansub it. The disk sales go up and the money goes into the studio's account. There are plenty of Japanese who can read and write both their language, and English as well, that can translate. If a fansubber can do it on a basically students budget, it shouldn't cost the studios much to sub the master before duplication and the increased profit should cover the investment. But the first step is for them to take. |
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