Japan Asks America to Stop Illegal Net Releases of Anime The Japanese government issued a formal statement of requests to the government of the United States on regulatory reform and market competition policy on October 18, and included a request for the United States to help stop the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of Japanese animation online. Specifically, the formal statement mentions the spread of Japanese animation and other materials on video-sharing sites and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
According to Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the distribution of copyrighted materials in the United States has increasingly damaged the creative industries of Japan. Despite frequent requests to remove unauthorized material from sites with user-submitted videos, the ministry says the fundamental problem remains unresolved for the foreseeable future. The ministry also says that the high legal costs and complex procedures of copyright infringement cases against peer-to-peer file-sharing are issues.
Japanese copyright holders have been sending increasing numbers of requests to remove unauthorized material from video-sharing sites such as Google's YouTube, and anime is its own category in several sites — inside and outside the United States — that link to file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent. The issues in the statement of requests were discussed in the fourth Japan-U.S. Trade Forum meeting which was held on October 18 in Tokyo.
*sigh*
Point 1Fansubs + Scanlations help promote the Anime and Manga and allow more people to get to know much more manga / anime and boosts the market demand instead.
BUT
we'd need actual statistics to prove this,
AND
if the amount of
people who just read manga / watch anime online and stop buying them exceeds the number of
people who buy the manga / anime as a result of getting interested after viewing them online, this argument would not stand.
And just by simple assumption this could be very much the case. I mean if a viewer sees manga/anime as cheap, disposable entertainment, why would they still spend money on them when they have an option (and the time) to view them online for free? Of course, I do assume that a lot of these people who make a difference in the actual market reside in Japan (thus making up a huge portion of the viewer-ship), since for a lot of foreign viewers, these things weren't available to them (cheaply) anyway before they became available online, thus I wouldn't think they are a big part of the market anyway? Just my assumptions though.
Point 2Fansubs / Scanlations, giving viewers a clear idea of the quality of the product, would only push up the general standard of the products in the market.
This is... according to me, true, but beside the point of financial concerns, lol. I mean the people who make money wouldn't care about this. Wouldn't consumers be better if they're ignorant? More stupid money spent lol. If they like an author, let them buy everything by that author, despite the actual quality of the works. Of course there could be cases that are reversed.... hmm.
But then again, wouldn't scanlations let more people know of more good manga? Wouldn't the digital preservation of an anime allow more people know about more anime, and for people who couldn't find time to watch an anime aired on TV a chance to watch them too? But then again, this would bring things back to
Point 1... and again, more people MIGHT purchase manga/dvds if they find something good or worth it, but how big is that number compared to those lost?
Point 3I don't even know what I'm making these points for anymore. And I'm sleepy.
In my mind, this "piracy problem" is becoming a problem in Japan because a lot of Japanese people get access to these things thus affecting the market demand there (and the amount of profits the Japanese companies make). I don't think, if this "piracy" is limited to America, or any country but NOT JAPAN, would "hurt" them as much.
Of course, unless the overseas market is a big part of the Japanese manga/anime profit zone? Which I do not think so. Given the relatively limited amount of licensed manga/anime compared to the amount available in Japan. So I say, because these "piracy" stuff are leaking into Japan (through the net), the Japanese consumers got access to these resources through the net. And as the blame goes, because of these resources, the general profits from this industry has been decreasing, blablabla.
Blame blame blame.... It's not gonna make a difference. cus believe it or not, I wouldn't be buying the expensive graphic novels over here in North America anyway (I used to buy manga back in Hong Kong, and I still do when I went back, but their prices were REASONABLE). And surely not the anime DVDs, be it subbed or dubbed (or bootlegged, that's the worst - given the choice of an accessible original, that is), because I just don't have that friggin money.
Watch your own price levels, JAPAN.
Tags: -_-, anime, news
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