Why the film and especially anime industry is experiencing piracy.

[Drak3]

2 hours ago, AresKrieger said:

Speaking of which where does someone even buy anime from? As for films there hasnt been one I wanted to watch for years

Hastings, when it was alive (so long fucker)

Best Buy

Amazon

Microsoft Store

What ever the fuck Sony's marketplace for movies and shows is called

Funimation's site

Google Play Store

iTunes?

[AshleyAshes]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Hastings, when it was alive (so long fucker)

Best Buy

Amazon

Microsoft Store

What ever the fuck Sony's marketplace for movies and shows is called

Funimation's site

Google Play Store

iTunes?

You should feel bad for not mentioning Right Stuf.   https://www.rightstufanime.com/

[Drak3]

11 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

You should feel bad for not mentioning Right Stuf.   https://www.rightstufanime.com/

Interesting point.

 

Counterpoint:

[AshleyAshes]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Interesting point.

 

Counterpoint:

Randompoint:

 

[ARikozuM]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Randompoint:

Anime in question?

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Anime in question?

The first one is "Kiss Him, Not Me" the second one is S2 of "Nyaruko: Crawling With Love!"

[divito]

Discount Anime DVD was one of the greatest sites, only to be shut down by companies like Funimation due to licenses. It sold import media, toys, figures, etc... and was awesome. It's been a long time since I've searched for anything, does anyone know if someone has gotten around the issue to sell imported media in North America?

As for the initial OP, yes, piracy is a market correction. If something is priced too highly, or difficult to find, or elusive to access in desired forms, piracy rises to fill the void. Companies can limit piracy by listening to their market and being open to change.

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, divito said:

Companies can limit piracy by listening to their market and being open to change.

There's already highly affordable and available streaming.  I don't see what else the market could want.

[divito]

2 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

There's already highly affordable and available streaming.  I don't see what else the market could want.

Sorry, I was speaking generally, not specifically regarding anime at this point in time. What's changed is fantastic for anime lovers in the current climate.

However, before Crunchy Roll, outside of buying imports, sub groups and torrents were one of the only ways to watch anime in a reasonable fashion. That being said, due to licenses, I am still sad that imports are so hard to acquire as I prefer the originals.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, divito said:

Sorry, I was speaking generally, not specifically regarding anime at this point in time. What's changed is fantastic for anime lovers.

However, before Crunchy Roll, outside of buying imports, sub groups and torrents were one of the only ways to watch anime in a reasonable fashion.

For sure.  I've been in this scene for a while, granted not in the early days when people were trading VHS fansubs and such, more like from 1999 onward.  I remember days where you had to wait 1-3 years from it's Japanese air date for a series to come out in the west on DVD and there was NO way that most series would never be broadcast in the west except a select few.  Fansubs were the only way you could consume that material without a sometimes long wait.

 

Now?  Almost all of it is licensed and streamed with subtitles faster than some fansub groups could do it 10-15 years ago.  Wait a month and some series even have DUBS.  Sure SOME anime isn't picked up, we can find example of that and it tends to be fairly obscure material that's not that popular and some of it goes to weirder streaming services that are less than ideal (Netflix or Amazon's Anime Strike).  Hopefully Netflix and Amazon get their game together but they may not, since they are huge companies with deep, deep, deep pockets, their need to adapt rapidly isn't as critical as it would be for Funimation or Crunchyroll.  And the number of devices that you can access those services on?  My god, it's just amazing.  We are so spoiled these days.  Kids don't know how things used to be.

[divito]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

For sure.  I've been in this scene for a while, granted not in the early days when people were trading VHS fansubs and such, more like from 1999 onward.  I remember days where you had to wait 1-3 years from it's Japanese air date for a series to come out in the west on DVD and there was NO way that most series would never be broadcast in the west except a select few.  Fansubs were the only way you could consume that material without a sometimes long wait.

 

Now?  Almost all of it is licensed and streamed with subtitles faster than some fansub groups could do it 10-15 years ago.  Wait a month and some series even have DUBS.  Sure SOME anime isn't picked up, we can find example of that and it tends to be fairly obscure material that's not that popular and some of it goes to weirder streaming services that are less than ideal (Netflix or Amazon's Anime Strike).  Hopefully Netflix and Amazon get their game together but they may not, since they are huge companies with deep, deep, deep pockets, their need to adapt rapidly isn't as critical as it would be for Funimation or Crunchyroll.  And the number of devices that you can access those services on?  My god, it's just amazing.  We are so spoiled these days.  Kids don't know how things used to be.

Funny you mention VHS, as my journey into anime, imports, and the whole subculture started off with a guy in Texas shipping me Akira on a VHS in the early 90s. It's been a long road.

But you're right, this on-demand generation just doesn't know how rough and disappointing it was back in the day.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, divito said:

Funny you mention VHS, as my journey into anime, imports, and the whole subculture started off with a guy in Texas shipping me Akira on a VHS in the early 90s. It's been a long road.

But you're right, this on-demand generation just doesn't know how rough and disappointing it was back in the day.

I really want to find a nice ugly VHS fansub of something just to put on a shelf as a kind of artifact of a bygone era.  But that's not really something you can really find on eBay for obvious reasons.  Commercial VHS, sure, but I'd want a fansub as a 'discussion piece'.

[MoonSpot]

4 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I really want to find a nice ugly VHS fansub of something just to put on a shelf as a kind of artifact of a bygone era.  But that's not really something you can really find on eBay for obvious reasons.  Commercial VHS, sure, but I'd want a fansub as a 'discussion piece'.

Got a box of fairly horrific looking RoboTech VHS tapes, but they're not fansubs.  Got some bad fansub dvds sets(escaflowne, trigun, record of lodoss war) that were bought on ebay, but thats from pre torrent days.

 

Ya got to admit though in the hay day of anime torrents(preceding years before crunchyrol) anime was much more fun.  There were soo many people youd meet and interesting conversations on dozens of forums.  I used to get expossed to all kinds of anime I'd never heard of or would have otherwise discovered because of all the fansub sites and groups geeking out.  Plus  the hunt was part of the fun, but am happy legit non-gouging means are finally a thing.

 

I was buying The Twelve Kingdoms on DVD and paying a very dear premium for it at $45/disc(3eps per disc), only to find the official subs from animeworks were complete horseshit.  Fansub 12k-tp work was phenomenal, and despite owning official ones I'd still watch the fansubs I got once upon a time instead.

Thankfully super-shit subs aren't anywhere near as much of a thing anymore, though they still exist.

Now just need to break some of these V/A unions, and get better and more varied voices for English dubs(some are just bad).

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, MoonSpot said:

Now just need to break some of these V/A unions, and get better and more varied voices for English dubs(some are just bad).

Yeah, most dubs aren't done by unionized actors.  This isn't universally true, some companies are SAG-AFTRA or other union jobs but they are the outlier.  Usually jobs outsourced to companies in LA like what Sony and Bandai would involve union recording studios.  However Funimation and Sentai FIimworks are very much non-union and you'll notice that they both operate out of a Texas as part of this reason.  This makes it easier for them keep wages lower.  This is also why Funimation faced some challenges in getting the original dub cast together for the Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, because Bandai had used a pool of union voice actors in it's original dub.

 

The reuse of voice actors has nothing to do with unions that need to be 'broken up', but with relatively small companies who's pools of actors are only so large.

[MoonSpot]

14 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Yeah, most dubs aren't done by unionized actors.  This isn't universally true, some companies are SAG-AFTRA or other union jobs but they are the outlier.  Usually jobs outsourced to companies in LA like what Sony and Bandai would involve union recording studios.  However Funimation and Sentai FIimworks are very much non-union and you'll notice that they both operate out of a Texas as part of this reason.  This makes it easier for them keep wages lower.  This is also why Funimation faced some challenges in getting the original dub cast together for the Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, because Bandai had used a pool of union voice actors in it's original dub.

 

The reuse of voice actors has nothing to do with unions that need to be 'broken up', but with relatively small companies who's pools of actors are only so large.

Sure, fair enough.  I didn't expand much on my misgivings, nor do I think I really can as anime and I parted ways quite a bit a while ago.  Couldn't tell anyone what new thats worth watching now anyways.  One part I just got sick of the same 3 voices constantly popping up and being shoehorned into mouths those voices didn't fit into; another part being a lot of VA work being straight up bad acting.  Fortunately as a consumer the politics aren't my problem, the end product not being good is.

[AG1233]

8 hours ago, ♠FlamieMeister♠ said:

To elaborate, much anime is not brought to the us, only popular ones on platforms such as crunchyroll. Manga is nearly nonexistent in the us. That means the only way to get them is piracy, crunchyroll, or import. Most people who watch that content outside of japan don't know japanese, so scratch import. Crunchyroll makes you pay to see next  episode, and fills their anime with ads to an unbearable point for a free user. Scratch that. Therefore, piracy is left. And so people pirate. If they would have a tv channel airing anime in the us, piracy would drop.

If you live in the US you can get a majority of anime with Crunchyroll. According to this Reddit post as of Jun 12, you could access nearly 848 anime while using Crunchyroll.If you live somewhere else just use a VPN to access US's Crunchyroll, granted its a pain in the ass but its better than nothing.
For anime movies, you can get BD rips of most major ones from Amazon or Funimation or if the Subs are available in Japan versions(Like it was with Kimi No Nawa) you can just order them from Amazon Japan.
For manga again you can get a majority of them from Amazon.

 

I would have agreed with you for this a while back but nowadays It's getting really easier to stream anime and more and more services are also opening up for the consumers the latest one being Anime Strike by Amazon.

Edited September 9, 2017 by AG1233
Added link for reddit post

[Zodiark1593]

17 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

You can stream the vast, vast, vast majority of Anime, for a small monthly fee, subtitled, in less than  DAY after it airs in Japan, using any game console, any android or iOS device, any desktop PC, and a wide range of Smart TVs.  Crunchyroll (6.95 USD/mo) and and Funimation ($5.99 USD/mo) combined represent an unstoppable firehose of anime for less than the price of a single pizza delivery.

 

I'm not going to go into the morals of piracy, but any suggestion that the anime industry has made products 'hard to get' is about as wrong as you can get.  You will need something else to explain it beyond 'it's hard to get' because frankly, it's easier to get the anime than it is to get the pizza delivered since the anime doesn't need you to wait 30-40mins first.

Some older stuff Funimation even threw onto YouTube, such as Initial D.

 

I did buy some anime myself, the most expensive set being my Cardcaptor Sakura blue ray set. I'm pretty picky about quality.

 

[AshleyAshes]

4 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Some older stuff Funimation even threw onto YouTube, such as Initial D.

I would go so far as to argue that it's harder to watch anime in Japan.  Streaming streaming services simply aren't as popular in Japan and a lot of anime is actually broadcast between midnight-6am, so you either have to stay up late or have a DVR.  Meanwhile, here in Canada where I am, my phone or game console will just pop up with many shows for instant consumption if I use Crunchyroll or Funimation.

[Zodiark1593]

8 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I would go so far as to argue that it's harder to watch anime in Japan.  Streaming streaming services simply aren't as popular in Japan and a lot of anime is actually broadcast between midnight-6am, so you either have to stay up late or have a DVR.  Meanwhile, here in Canada, your phone or game console will just pop up with many shows for instant consumption.

This was also the case in America before streaming services rose to prominence (and cheap DVRs for that matter) I remember having to stay up quite late to catch episodes of Full Metal alchemist, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshion and a few others. If it wasn't mainstream (Pokemon and friends), you were pretty much relegated to late night or early morning, which didn't tend to agree with school.

 

I had a camcorder I would sometimes use to capture some episodes I wanted to keep. It connected directly to the cable box with a Video In, and recorded to my giant 512MB SD card. I couldn't leave the thing unattended though as an episode with commercials would fill past the 512MB limit. After that, it was encoded and transferred to my iPod Nano to watch whenever.

[amancalledoss]

until the day I see someone like Tom Cruise or Jay zee driving around in a clapped out old car looking for cheap gas and somewhere with affordable food prices all this pirating will not loose me 1 ounce of sleep , yes I get its their intellectual property but when you see actors being paid $50m for 6 months of playing dress up or a nobody suddenly sings a song and then is dripping with gold and designer suits driving a bentley when you have to pay an outstanding amount of money for the privilege of owning that song or god forbid if you go to the cinema in the UK where it costs upward of £120 ($!60) for a family of 4 to watch a film then the problem isnt as bad as theyre making out sorry 

[♠FlamieMeister♠]

On ‎9‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 6:43 PM, AshleyAshes said:

You can stream the vast, vast, vast majority of Anime, for a small monthly fee, subtitled, in less than  DAY after it airs in Japan, using any game console, any android or iOS device, any desktop PC, and a wide range of Smart TVs.  Crunchyroll (6.95 USD/mo) and and Funimation ($5.99 USD/mo) combined represent an unstoppable firehose of anime for less than the price of a single pizza delivery.

 

I'm not going to go into the morals of piracy, but any suggestion that the anime industry has made products 'hard to get' is about as wrong as you can get.  You will need something else to explain it beyond 'it's hard to get' because frankly, it's easier to get the anime than it is to get the pizza delivered since the anime doesn't need you to wait 30-40mins first.

So why should I pay? Or if its free for a month why should I wait through ads?

Ontop of that regions like Europe don't get any anime compared to us as services such as crunchyroll have licensing issues.

It may be "easy to get" by downloading an app and waiting through ads or paying to watch but why should I pay when I can get it for free?

[AshleyAshes]

15 minutes ago, ♠FlamieMeister♠ said:

So why should I pay? Or if its free for a month why should I wait through ads?

Ontop of that regions like Europe don't get any anime compared to us as services such as crunchyroll have licensing issues.

It may be "easy to get" by downloading an app and waiting through ads or paying to watch but why should I pay when I can get it for free?

First, you just undermined your entire argument in this thread.  When you ask 'why should I pay' your saying that none of this is about anime being 'hard to access', that's just a false justification, you just want it for free because you can get it for free.  How about you just admit that instead of attempting this thread of mental gymnastics?

 

Second, you are in Texas, so this thread of yours has nothing to do with Europe.

[Teddy07]

I only watch Dragonball super with English sub titles for free. I am not waiting for English translation and I am not paying. 

[♠FlamieMeister♠]

9 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

First, you just undermined your entire argument in this thread.  When you ask 'why should I pay' your saying that none of this is about anime being 'hard to access', that's just a false justification, you just want it for free because you can get it for free.  How about you just admit that instead of attempting this thread of mental gymnastics?

 

Second, you are in Texas, so this thread of yours has nothing to do with Europe.

And how do you know I don't visit Europe for long periods of time, or maybe that I have family there? On top of that what If I said I live in Texas but I might not? There are so many different things. Ontop of that, when I mean by anime is hard to get, I mean by older shows. A lot of older anime can NOT be found on Crunchyroll except for the few popular ones.

[SlipperyPete]

On 9/8/2017 at 5:42 PM, IAmAndre said:

I must agree with that. I'm against piracy and if I don't pirate, it's only because I don't have time to watch all the movies/series I would like to. I'm too busy watching the ones currently available on Netflix.

I remember back in the days I would always use torrents to get my music. Now that streaming services are here, it's so much more convenient. I could say the same for Netflix. Now the problem is that some of the content I would like to watch is region-locked or something, and that's what I would pirate if I had time.

i torrent all my music, but because i buy all my music on Vinyl and converting it to digital is just too much work.

also i know vinyl isn't the most practical medium but its a fun thing to collect