Internet Crisis : between Legal & Piracy

[Joyjason]

I think they don't want those site shut down but to better comply with DMCA alike, and guide people to sites that do provide legal content, something like crunchyroll?

On that thought, how would sites like anime-sharing "comply with DMCA"? It's not like we have licences to the anime like crunchyroll to the point we can stream it, nor do we have any permission to "share" games as we do here. (For which, by the way, I thank you for uploading a large majority of the games I want)

Yes, maybe they want these sites to comply with DMCA, but there's no way in hell it can be online without going against it.

To be fair, on the plus side, most if not all eroge―those are what you're referring to by games priced at ~$100 each, right?―come with trials.

Your reasoning for this one is flawed due to your assumption that trials are a good representation of the game as a whole, and boy are you in the wrong. Just as how advertising involves the emphasizing of the goods while sweeping the bads under the rug, that's exactly what happens in trials of games.

One of the prime examples is Sakusaku. People who played the trial was screaming about how it should be released earlier, but what happened to the game itself? Shit. (I skip through the details because people who have actually played the game would know what I mean)

Plus, people like me have no time to play trials, THEN play the game if I like it. Call it a crappy excuse as you'd like, but I'd rather get the full steak instead of the sliver of meat on the side.

To be fair, I think you're underestimating the value of Fanservice Unleashed™ that blu-rays bring. (Or, in other words, let's artificially limit the value of our fanservice by imposing visual censorship on TV and then unleash its full potential on overpriced plastic discs! Yay!) But, in fact, that adds more credibility to the notion that customers purchase something because they see value in it, not because they have no other option: when someone buys a blu-ray, she's getting all the extra value that the other option―watching TV―doesn't provide: uncensored content, better visual and audio quality, the ability to watch at her convenience, etc, etc.

This is the exact reason why I would download my anime instead of streaming them. Despite this, I never really understood the point of Blu-rays except for the fanservice, which only the low self esteem, sex-driven weeaboos would go for.
Fanservice is the very reason why I left anime completely, too. It's just stupid and unnecessary; and if I wanted to fap, there's so many other things I'd use instead of peach-colored melons pressing against my screen.

Oh wait, Blu-rays come with bonuses: I forgot about those. I know of people who buy these CDs exclusively for these bonuses and pretty much throws the CD aside, which defeats the entire purpose

And then the argument about "losses" loses a great deal of credibility when you extend it to non-blu-ray anime downloads: for those living in Japan, it's akin to being lazy and downloading a copy from someone who took the liberty of recording a show with her DVR instead of doing it on your own. For foreigners, what other choice do foreigners have? Oh, sure, it'll only take a couple years for most anime currently airing on TV to be available on foreign cable TV networks (not to mention the fact stereotype that most foreigners interested in Japanese stuff are probably cord cutters).

I mean, they gotta send letters to each other to clear the licensing matters and then ship the copies of those shows to the other countries, right? What's that? The Internet? No, no way a network with such capabilities exists. You young hippies and your fantasies.

Now I'm not sure how this works, but it's actually possible to watch Korean Dramas in the US (insert the most obnoxious and sarcastic gasp here).

Same with anime. All you need is a channel that broadcasts the anime to the other countries, and there you have it: the foreigners watching anime the same way as the Japanese and it's strangely not illegal.

What? Translations? Fuck those and the weebs who need it. (Okay, fine. The broadcasters can translate them)
What? That costs money? Well, isn't that what are the anime goods for? Oh wait, the anime has sponsors too. Leech more money off of them.

/sarcasm

 

[Sakimichi]

It was there for a couple days in the sticky of the chatbox.
Sold the front but not sukebei sitting on the same domain name?
Selling the site then build a new one right after with the same crew or even the same data?
No one in the right mind would NOT put a non-compete clause and NOT taking control of the domain name?

IMO it is quite a nasty, uncalled for, smear campaign towards the Japanese.
At the same time, free advertisement worldwide for Nyaa and most likely extra Ad income for them.
Or do anyone think this prank benefited the wider anime community?

Its probably a prank. I don't see any thing serious happening, except discussion about endless possibilities in topics.

 

[jade_titan]

This is just my 2 cents on this topic, nothing more. Agree with me, disagree with me, I really don't care.

Anyway, as my sister always said, "if they eliminate piracy, then they eliminate my business with them." She said this a few years ago (more like 10 years ago, boy am I old) when the music industry was trying to eliminate music downloads. What she meant by that was that she downloads things as means of gaining access to things that she normally wouldn't be exposed to. If she likes what she downloads, she starts buying merchandise, or going to concerts that she normally wouldn't buy or go to. The bottom line is that in the end, the music industry gets her money, even though she didn't pay for whatever it was that she downloaded.

In my opinion, this applies to everything that can be pirated online, including Japanese animation. If it wasn't for me downloading anime, then I would have never been exposed to most of the anime that I watched. Therefore, I would have never spent money on their merchandise. In the end, it would be better for them to let me download the anime, since it's more profitable to sell me other merchandise. Take away piracy, and I don't even spend my time on their products.

 

[Ignis]

^ You're not alone. Many, many, many people have been saying that for years, but the copyright industry was never one to listen to its customers.

On that thought, how would sites like anime-sharing "comply with DMCA"? It's not like we have licences to the anime like crunchyroll to the point we can stream it, nor do we have any permission to "share" games as we do here.

Simple: they complain, you take stuff down. No questions asked. The DMCA was never about adversarial process and is big on "notice and takedown" procedures instead of "notice and notice". Copyright holders aren't looking to license their content to more channels. They're looking to take down content coming out of anything other than their existing channels.

More to the point, the DMCA is a US law. Yes, there are international equivalents such as the WIPO Copyright Treaty (from which both the DMCA and the EU Copyright Directive was derived), but it still remains a procedural violation to threaten someone outside the US citing the DMCA. It's more ridiculous when the fact sinks in that the very same people who refuse to sell their stuff to foreign countries just because they are foreign countries wave around the DMCA as if it were the be-all, end-all answer to vanquishing piracy when that very law doesn't even apply to their country.

Your reasoning for this one is flawed due to your assumption that trials are a good representation of the game as a whole, and boy are you in the wrong. Just as how advertising involves the emphasizing of the goods while sweeping the bads under the rug, that's exactly what happens in trials of games.

No one denies that. Trials and trailers showing all the shine of the product and hiding all the dirt is the norm, not the exception. You assumed that I assumed trials "are a good representation of the game as a whole", but that's not where I'm getting at.

Here we have an industry comprising largely of players with few staff and limited budgets, churning out works that by their very nature (i.e. intended for adult audience) are niche, going through the effort to make sure most of their games have a trial version. That extent of effort deserves credit if you compare it to the alternative employed by most other industries: set up a beautiful, eye-catching heavy, Flash-laden, slow-loading website; make a trailer that abuses CG effects to the worst extent possible; and leave the rest to supreme marketing power.

Oh wait, Blu-rays come with bonuses: I forgot about those. I know of people who buy these CDs exclusively for these bonuses and pretty much throws the CD aside, which defeats the entire purpose

Not really. I don't know whose room you've seen that gives you that impression, but many people who both buy and pirate treat the physical goods they buy as collectibles. They line them up nicely in shelves and the like. Yes, they often just play the music/video on their PC and don't touch the CDs past the point of buying, because they're well aware that those stupid plastic discs degrade fast.

Same with anime. All you need is a channel that broadcasts the anime to the other countries,

Does this exist, other than cable TV channels? If so, how's that done? By setting up a receiver so strong that it could capture over-the-air broadcast from public spectrum in another country? Colour me sceptical, though I sure would like to know the details.

 

[Murakumo]

Hm...so if anime-sharing gets shut down, I will no longer be a forum hikkikomori but just a regular hikkikomori....
so is anime-sharing getting shut down? I hope not. I've grown too used to relying on this place as a forum to talk my woes and curiosities. Not sure I can imagine going to another forum site unless kami-sama of this site decides to make a new forum if this one is shut down.

 

[Satanswarrior]

^
Does this exist, other than cable TV channels? If so, how's that done? By setting up a receiver so strong that it could capture over-the-air broadcast from public spectrum in another country? Colour me sceptical, though I sure would like to know the details.

Well there are two ways. Some satellite companies do offer foreign Channels.They just aren't advertised on their sites. You have to ask. My dad is married to a Chinese woman. Cant remember if he has Dish Network or Directv but he paid extra to receive Chinese channels for her that aren't normally available.

The other way is if the channels are FTA (free to air) meaning they are free satellite channels available to everyone. There are some FTA channels available in pretty much every country. You just need an fta receiver and a huge satellite dish with a motor to pick up channels from other countries which most people dont use anymore since they are inconvenient. Then you just have to take the time to tune into the countries satellites you are looking for unless you have an advanced receiver and an advanced motor with auto tune.

DN and DTV took care of that in the U.S. making big dishes obsolete for most. Also very few companies (at least in the U.S.) work on big dishes anymore so if you pretty much have to fix any issues and upgrading to the dish,cables,motor, lnb`s, etc. yourself.

Depending on how the channels are broadcast you may be able to pick up local tv in that country. Also there are package channels you can still buy for other countries channels for people with gigantic dishes. Most people use the small dishes though now and use the satellite provider companies available in their countries.

 

[Animegirl1993]

What I do not understand is why Japan will go through with this. I uploaded some Anime OP and ED on different video sharing websites (YouTube and Dailymotion) and they deleted it. I can understand I do not have any rights to upload this, but if it was not for those who did upload anime, OP/ED, and etc to YouTube, I would have never found Japanese anime at all. First anime I watched was through YouTube. Since then I have found, downloaded, and shared my anime with my friends. Those big websites like YouTube cannot easily be shut down. It's like those who upload game playthroughs to YouTube. Yes, sometimes some get removed but then again there are those who say it's okay for those YouTubers to play those games to begin with. Piracy is not something that is easily stopped as long as someone can easily ask/buy the game and share it with others

Example: http://www.ihav.net/vb/offtopic-for...ember-me-game-need-full-game-torrent-312.html

 

[TougeSil80]

Just upload to different sites. They can buy off politicians and judges, we'll never out campaign/bride them. What we can do is use technology to circumvent their restrictions. Instead of YouTube/Dailymotion, use Youku. Tudou. Instead of Google/Bing use Baidu, DuckDuckGo. With the recent domain name seizures, we'll probably need to switch to I2P or TOR in the future. But one thing is true so far, after every shut down of the previous P2P sharing system, there's always another better replacement. We just need to keep one step ahead in the technical game. Let them spend years and millions trying to pass the laws, with a few (thousand) lines of code, it'll all be circumvented.

 

[Satanswarrior]

I seriously doubt we will need to go to deep web for media ever unless you live in a communist country that controls the web.Even they cant control their own countries with all the fake clone products, stores, etc. Same with Russia. Lots of movies in theaters come out of Russia.

Ive been in the game since the early 90`s. Every so often the game,music,movie,porn,media industries get their feathers ruffled and try to bust people and websites and shut them down. Its happened lots of times in the past 20 years or so.

They do shut some down and bust some uploaders ,site owners, and even a few end users every once in a while but when sites shut down more pop up.

Basically it cost to much money for the corporate companies and the governments to go to courts and try to police the web and after everyone for piracy. Plus the police aren't going to go knock on everyone's door and check all the hard drives (100`s of millions, maybe even a billion people or more) in the world to check for piracy uploading or downloading or unpaid for saved media, games, etc..

If they did every country in the world would be 3rd world countries and bankrupt. It costs money to go after even a single person so unless you are in a group of the biggest uploaders in the world you really dont have anything to worry about.

Most of it is nothing more than scare tactics. Another thing is unless you are wealthy or at least in the above average income bracket its a waste of time even as a civil suite. Most people couldn't afford the excessive fines imposed even if you were caught and found guilty. Then most of these people would claim bankruptcy so all the legwork is money down the toilet.

That said its still not smart to say you commit piracy on the net even though many people do it. Written statements on the net are as good as written confessions on tape or on paper. So if you do it cool just dont advertise that you do. Ive read of a lot of people getting busted for pictures and statements on Facebook, Youtube etc. by the IRS , FBI, etc. Most people dont care on the net or are to stupid what you type is as good as a confession as long as it can be traced to you. Most people still have nothing to worry about even then for petty things like piracy but I look at it this .....better safe than sorry......and would never type out on the net that I ever commit any acts considered illegal.