We spend a lot of time talking about piracy in the aniblogging world—why it’s bad, why it’s justified, why people do it in the first place. But if you ask me, it’s really not that complicated.
My theory has two prongs:
1) Fans generally want to support creators,
2) But we don’t want to work too hard to do it.
So: the first part. Anime fans seem to care a lot about supporting creators. Fan-run anime conventions go to great lengths to welcome Japanese anime voice actors, directors, and producers to America. And every time I’ve been to an autograph signing event, an opening or closing ceremony, these creators seemed overwhelmed by western fans’ love.
I didn’t realize that this was a western thing until Tony from Manga Therapy and I started going back and forth in an email about eastern vs. western anime fandom.
“What’s interesting is that Japanese directors/producers don’t even get hyped in Japan as they do in America,” Tony told me. “My Japanese friend told an otaku in Japan about this and her friend went, ‘America is weird.’ Isn’t it amazing how we tend to worship the makers/behind-the-scenes folks more?”
Because the creators are important to us, fans like to feel that they are participating legitimately. Sites like Crunchyroll and Nico Nico have become increasingly popular, because part of their selling point is that they publish anime with creators’ permission (and in the case of Crunchyroll, compensate creators proportionally to what you watch the most).
I think there’s a second reason Crunchy and Nico are doing well. They’re free.
I think pirating happens when piracy is the path of least resistance by a significant margin. Supporting creators is a hefty incentive, but not if a ton of time and energy needs to go into the process.
My whole life as a fan, I’ve gone for the path of least resistance. At first, that was piracy over Kazaa. Yes, watching a loading bar for two weeks was the easier way back then, when English subbed copies of Gravitation didn’t exist yet. (I am happy to say I have since bought this series legitimately.)
Today the easiest way to get anime is legally, through simulcasts and DVDs. But not manga, which is still operating on a delay. The fact that we need fan scanlations at all is an indication of a broken system that doesn’t meet readers’ demands.
Manga translations are slow, if they come at all, and when they do it’s costly. Meanwhile, fans have become accustomed to anime simulcasts, where we get to watch shows at the same time that Japanese fans are watching them. We’ve become entitled. “If we can watch anime as soon as it comes out, why can’t we do the same with manga?”
And honestly? There isn’t a reason we shouldn’t except that the business side is not in place. If anyone is going to figure it out though, it’s going to be Crunchyroll. They have their own translators—all they need is the source material. Right now they have Kodansha’s source materials, but maybe later they’ll go after other manga publishers’, too.
Some of you saw my Twitter tirade about wanting to buy a song from Gundam, but not being able to do so without an iTunes Japan gift card or Japanese physical address.
Why won’t iTunes just let me give them money and buy this Japanese song? I hate this arbitrary wall. https://t.co/04ElTCjYH1
— Lauren Orsini (@laureninspace) April 2, 2014
The song was only $1.29; it would have been easy to support the industry. But do you think I ended up doing that? Nope. Whenever I want to listen to it, I just go to YouTube. I’m a fan, and I want to be supportive. But it feels downright restrictive to jump through hoops like this one.
I obviously can’t justify illegally downloading anime, reading scanlations, or watching YouTube videos whose creators don’t own the rights to the song. But I do believe the people who do these things are otherwise supportive fans who have just gotten fed up with the system.
Previous thoughts on piracy: Anime piracy and how the anime industry is like the journalism industry
Screenshot via Captain Harlock
26 Comments.
I couldn’t read the whole article, because I’m hung on this sentence:
“Fans generally want to support creators,”
Really?
What, you don’t? I can’t think of anyone who would openly deny this.
I’ll be sharing my loose thoughts about this.
This is certainly the case in my side – I resort to being a pirate because our demographic is being underestimated by the production companies.
Most of the anime series I watch are not available in Crunchyroll here in my home turf, and I don’t have the guts to use a VPN like some of my friends.
I feel compelled to say this – these companies need to loosen up so they can have a wider audience.
Look at Morning Rescue – if not for the fansubs who did Madoka Magica then we won’t even be knowing that drink.
@Jay, how does a VPN help with this? I’m just curious since I just built one (and documented the whole process on my work’s website).
I don’t think companies will EVER be cool with pirating, but I hope that more of them open up to simulcasting. What fans want is very simple: anime in our language, relatively soon after it airs. If companies deliver this, piracy could become a thing of the past.
I think Jay was referring to using a VPN to bypass location-based content blocking. For example, a person from Europe might use a VPN to obtain an American IP address in order to gain access to the content they want on Hulu, which would otherwise be blocked in their region because of licensing issues.
Thanks Patrick for clarifying that. That’s what I am talking about.
Nothing wrong with paying for a good VPN cause honestly its still great for security in general. I have Private Internet Access for this particular reason.
The biggest and most difficult issue about all this is one that remains far enough behind the scenes that it’s difficult to do anything about — how creators are remunerated for their work, and the contractual obligations behind all that. I’d like to see regional licensing dismantled, but I don’t expect all those contracts to be rewritten to make that happen — rather, they will probably only be revisited as they expire over the decades. (I don’t know what Japan has vis-a-vis things like termination rights.)
Some kind of simulcasting for manga would be a great idea, BTW.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It fits right in with the “piracy is evidence of market failure” idea. Fans would love to support the people who do this stuff, but the business models make it next to impossible. To mix a metaphore, easy is only as easy as the hardest link. I watched CR free for a while, got tired of the ads, and paid for the anime stream. Then I upgraded to a full subscription, just to read the manga. Bad choice. They don’t have anything like the “queue” for manga the way they have for anime, so I have to remember where I am, and start over, each time. I probably won’t renew that part when it expires.
Seriously, their manga reader is pretty horrible. It’s sized small so all the lines are horribly compressed unless you full screen. It’s a dumb flash player because I dunno “security” like it stops people from using print screen. I need the bookmark and subscribe feature if I’m to keep up with anything.
the biggest problem has always been the fact that the demographic that watches anime seldom can afford to purchase anime. these people are usually teenagers and young college-bound adults. Since the current economy sucks and the unemployment rate among the young is higher than it has been in 40 years, most are only able to pirate.
At least what Viz has licensed for Weekly Shonen Jump is available on a same day as Japan. That is a step forward. Seems to be working out and it’s just $26/year. I suppose if that’s enough of a success financially, maybe Shojo Beat could come back digitally as well. That would be a good barometer if that experiment is taking off.
Just found comic-walker.com. 18 different manga in English and 200(?) Or so in Japanese. Only first chapters of most in English, but the service just started, and it’s free. One more option, it seems
Just double checked. It’s official from Kadokawa, has it’s own website and app. Haven’t downloaded the app yet(just found it 2 days ago), but have played a little on the website. I’m hoping it does well, as it complements my Crunchyroll manga subscription.
@Brent, thanks! I already have more manga than fits comfortably in my apartment, so I am always looking for new legal means of getting it online.
Yeah, I’m starting to rethink the physical media thing as well. It takes up sooooooooooo much room and I seem to get most of the limited editions, requiring even more space (the few Japanese l.e.’s I have really hog the storage boxes…). Very sturdy shelves are in my future, it seems.
I’m torn… I want to agree with you that at the core people really do want to support their favorite anime creators, but on the other hand, I know A LOT of people who in general download everything illegally because 1) it’s much easier than getting it legally, and 2) because we live in a country with a commodity fetish where we only think about the product and not where and who it comes from and what it takes to get to us. I guess I just don’t think that making easier to get it legally will solve the problem or saying that piracy can be justified because companies don’t have a simultaneous release in English holds much water.
I have thoughts on this that do not fit into a brief box (as someone who didn’t know better, as a translator, as a poor person, etc), but I will agree about the commodity fetish. Also, in American fandom, there is this metafandom bit: ‘oh, you haven’t watched X? how terrible’, or ‘oh, real fans read Y when it’s released in Japan, the newest chapter is already out’, ‘what series are you watching this season’, or so on; there’s this pressure to constantly be on the ball with EVERYTHING. A rat race of fandom, if you will.
These are all pretty good points made here.
Just two things: One, believe it or not, people simply don’t know. There will always be a section that knowingly uses illegal sites and all to get their anime and manga fix, despite knowing there are legal alternatives. But from what I have seen, there are a lot of people who are not informed of what is legal and what is not legal, hence why you’ll see people fall over themselves in using a illegal streaming site in poor quality. I mean, I used to be that way! Then I learned of course. I don’t know if publishers are doing a good job in educating people on how you can get anime and manga, and until that gets fixed, it’s always going to be the case.
Two, in regards to this: “Fans generally want to support creators–” Not every fan. They might not even know who created the work they love xD
[…] Otaku Journalist had some really interesting content this week. First, she tackles her “Ridiculously Simple Anime Piracy Theory” with two main thoughts: (1) anime fans want to support creators but (2) they don’t […]
You know what I’d like a report of? Japanese piracy levels. Cause given what we know of their pricing and sales models, with the understanding that very few shows are shown for profit, AND that they don’t have the whole language barrier to access, how are they still making business? Are their incentives better? Do they just produce faster than we do? Or have they properly trained their fan base to buy up anything to show their fandom?
Also there have been counterpoints made my music and books in one way or another, but is the serial release of manga and anime is why there is the trail off when the piracy of individual albums just has to happen once for a single thing?
@Asterisk, I’m guessing it’s either not as high or not as well known as an option, given this “water is wet” level obvious story in the Japan Times being treated as news: http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001222297
Have you considered learning the Japanese language as another option? All those years waiting for official manga translations… could be spent learning the language to an intermediate or pre-advanced level, which should be sufficient to give you a moderate understanding of most titles.
Of course, this opens up another difficult avenue of acquiring the original Japanese manga to read. Like you mentioned with your iTunes example, I have encountered similar brickwalls in the past just to purchase anime/manga stuff from Japan. It’s quite maddening and frustrating to be an anime fan — both for the language part and the purchasing part.
@Edward, it’s almost like you saw into the future and read my Wednesday post!
Wednesday post? What Wednesday post? Sorry this is my first time here on your blog! ;D
@Edward, look now! The post I put up today. I was telling you you could see the future =)