ANN has posted an interview with a fansubber from the group Live-eviL talking about various aspects of subbing, from the technical to the ethical.

I have a few issues with the interview, and thankfully they don’t all involve awkward English (”ethicality”? Technically a word, but…). For example, on page 2, the interviewer– Zac Bertschy, aka Answerman –says that anime downloading can’t be compared to the anime industry because “musicians can still make money with live performances if their product is being passed around gratis. Anime companies can’t. It’s not really the same problem.”

First off, some anime companies DO make money from live performances, such as the big Haruhi event in ‘07 or anime-based stage musicals. Admittedly, that’s not terribly common, but anime companies can ALSO make money off of a little thing called merchandising (maybe you’ve heard of it?). And finally, anime on TV is paid for largely by advertising. So, theoretically, anime companies COULD still make money even passing around the product for free, though it would involve restructuring their business model entirely. Which probably needs to happen anyway.

That doesn’t make fansubbing not still a problem of course, but it’s a point to be made.

I think that the anonymous fansubber makes a really good point on page three; he’s talking about old habits dying hard, how hard it is for people to give up smoking, and then says that fansubbing is a community project. I think what he’s getting at is: it’s hard to give up a community. No one ever wants to take down the circus tents and go home when the party can continue. Perhaps a big part of the “fansubbers are big anime fans” paradox involves that idea.

Bertschy then goes on to press the subber to explain why groups OTHER than his went and subbed GitS:SAC when Bandai asked them not to, which the poor guy does to the best of his ability, and the two chat about the state of the fandom and industry in general. Fansubber-dude makes another good point at the end:

Fansubbing isn’t going to stop no matter what anyone does unless you make it obsolete.


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