According to Anime on DVD, BOST TV– the ugly middle child in GONZO’s release of Tower of Druaga and BLASSREITER –has given up on making people who didn’t sign up early pay for the episode and is now offering the episode for free to everyone who signs up. (Those who already used points to buy the episode will have them refunded.)

Their free offering includes a streaming 640×360 copy of the episode– higher res and smoother looking than YouTube, and way less choppy playback than Crunchyroll –and DRM-free downloadable versions for iPod and PSP. BOST’s iPod and PSP versions are slightly higher-res than Crunchyroll’s, though of course BOST doesn’t have the high-res downloadable CR does.

So now there’s even less reason to download fansub versions (Druaga now has three such releases, which have been downloaded over 6,000 times)– the BOST streaming version is pretty decent quality.

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.

Okay, ANN’s headline is “Tokyo Anime Center’s Kubo Offers Proposal on Fansubs,” but I don’t actually see a proposal in there anywhere. I see mention that fansubs have played a role in the decline of anime sales, and a single suggestion that someone deal with the “10 fans” (?!) who put subbed videos on YouTube, BitTorrent, etc (preferably by “officially making use of their abilities”), but uh…wait, did he count right? Ten fans?

I mean, first off, a lot of fansubs get put up on YouTube by people OTHER than the subbers, and probably by people whose “abilities” are…uh…to upload videos to YouTube. And the number of subbers– or even just the number of fansub translators –has got to be bigger than ten.

Not to mention, does that even count as a proposal? They DO say they want to find a way to make some content on NicoNico and YouTube and the like legal, but there’s no actual “how” in here. I even went and checked the original article…nothing.

I’m so confused.

Original source: MyCom
Secondary source: AnimeNewsNetwork

Some of you may remember that Arthur Smith, the President of GDH International (parent company of Gonzo), provided some of the kindling that has set the fansub debate on fire throughout the innernubs. And at last, Smith himself has responded to the buzz.

He has one very valid point, that a lot of people assumed based on the ActiveAnime interview that he was doing nothing about the piracy problem when in fact he has been pushing for faster releases and even subtitled episodes from JP companies for some time now. But most of the rest? Honestly, I have to say that I think he mostly answered the straw man comments (for those not in a philosophy class, the weakest arguments / weakest versions of arguments).

He addressed why it takes so long to get shows to the U.S. from Japan, some of which is valid but the rest is mostly just corporate politics and back-and-forth mucking about. If the various companies’ system of dealing with each other prevents the product from coming out when it best suits the market, perhaps a new system is in order?

He also addressed the suggestion I (and many others) made about Japanese companies jumping over the heads of U.S. ones and releasing some materials directly. His argument against that went something along these lines: the U.S. anime companies made anime big with their efforts, and now we need to pay too much money for DVDs that come out too late.

Nuh-uh, sir. I won’t deny that the U.S. companies have done a lot and spent a lot of money to help make anime as big as it is today, but we don’t owe them back pay for that or something. Anime DVDs aren’t pro-rated. If they can’t come out with the product when and how the fans want it then their sales will suffer. I’m not saying that justifies piracy, only that it seems like a pretty silly way to run a business.

He DOES make the valid point that the U.S. companies are better equipped to get anime on TV, dub it, etc. But the system I saw most suggested (and suggested myself) didn’t preclude anime being licensed to U.S. companies for dubbing and television broadcasting– only from quickie subtitling. Which they’re not doing anyway!

So, there you have it. I’m not making any personal attacks on GDH or Arthur Smith– whose attempts to push forward ideas for getting anime out faster and better I absolutely appreciate. I am, however, pointing out that much of his defenses of the industry seem to rest on “this is how the industry is,” without mention of the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to be that way (particularly on the timing front).

Wow, that was long. Oh, and I almost forgot: double question marks and exclamation points do not look professional!!??

Original source: ANN

So far it’s mostly been a lot of babble about who the company is and what they do, but interestingly, they seem to be talking a lot about trying to get through to the Japanese companies about getting a faster turnaround time for top anime titles. Which makes since, since the author of the open letter to the industry re: subbing was ANN founder Justin Sevakis, who is also the manager of strategic development and programming for ImaginAsian.

I’m probably going to scoot out of here in a second to hit up the Go! Comi panel, but I am out of power and these rooms don’t have power outlets. (I asked a guy who worked here about it, and he said no one wants to pay for the power. I’m like, I just paid $70 to use your internet, what the hell are you talking about not paying? *grumble*)

I was going to write an open letter to anime fans regarding fansubs one of these days, but now I think I can convey the same information by linking Justin Sevakis’ awesome open letter and quoting a line from this response editorial:

You, the [Japanese] studios, can get the scripts into the hands of an English translator long, long before the fansub groups have ever seen them…Remember that ultimately, all a fansubber can offer is subtitles. You can one-up them. Tie something to [a] membership.

Allow me to add to this one point:

Fansubbing and downloading fansubs (or even fan-uploaded raws!) ARE ILLEGAL.

I’m not going talk about the ethics of them, and I definitely think that the anime industry needs to wake up and take positive action towards meeting the demand that fansubs meet rather than negative action towards closing down fansubbers, which is a waste of time.

But that doesn’t make fansubs legal. They are a violation of international copyright law. Stop making shit up to say that it isn’t.

Seriously, how can no one have picked this up yet?

That’s Moyashimon, by the way. (I’m fairly confident that the actual show is regular 2d animation.) But, seriously?

Also, Neuro? Anyone? Bueller?

When I talked earlier about Odex possibly using a.f.k.’s subs as a reference for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, I noted that I’d like to see some shots side-by-side. Obliviousity has provided one in which the two versions were the same word-for-word.

Someone mentioned that this is not illegal. I *believe* (but do not know for sure) that a.f.k. is based out of the U.S., so there’s kind of a fun tangle: in the U.S. once any work is completed it is considered copyrighted, even if you don’t register the copyright. So technically it could be considered copyright infringement for the translation. But the translation itself also infringes copyright, so it probably wouldn’t be protected very well in court.

But that’s all just hypothetical goofiness– no one would sue Odex over this.

However, this company actively seeks to cause financial harm to fansub downloaders. (After all, they’ve said NUMEROUS times that they’re not in it to make money, so clearly their motivation is to be a pain in the ass to downloaders, not to profit.) For a company with that attitude to use a fansubber’s translations is awfully shitty. Either you’re okay with them, or you’re not, Odex. Trying to have it both ways just makes you look like even more of a dick.

The fun never ends with Singaporean anime distributor Odex, it would seem.

In the past, Odex has been accused of using fansubs as reference material for subtitles, which leads to better subs than translating off of Hong Kong subs, which they’ve also been accused of. But surely now that they’re going after people for downloading fansubs they would quit doing anything like that, right? RIGHT?

Well, at least ONE blogger thinks that Odex “very heavily referenced” a.f.k’s subs of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I’m waiting to see some shot-by-shot comparisons, but damn.

Oh, also, when Odex offered an olive branch to fansub downloaders– that they cease downloading by a certain date and then won’t be fined –many asked what would happen to those who had already been sent letters requesting money? Well, they’re still being persued, apparently– at least one downloader claims he has actually received a phone call from Odex requesting the money.

Oh, Odex. I’m so glad you’re not American.

The Electic New Paper of Singapore has an article up about the crack-down on anime downloading that’s been going on in Singapore via the company Odex, which was originally reported on back in May. But their article has a somewhat different take: talking to the young students who were caught - and their parents. The youngest of the downloaders was nine years old. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he got one of the lesser punishments, as opposed to the highest - up to $20,000 in fines and six months in prison.