Fansubs - Attempt to generate discussion

I may be wrong (I hope I am), but it seems that the current system of distributing fansubs over the internet is doomed to fall prey to big business and the DMCA. It seems that the MPAA has a hit squad watching P2P networks and they're going after movie downloaders; can anime be far behind?

So, my question is this; how did fansub distribution work before the internet existed? Was it mostly thru anime clubs? Could some of you old skool people enlighten me?

Thanks,

Why would the MPAA care about unlicensed anime? That'd be like the RIAA trying to go after people for downloading tracks off CDs that haven't been released in the US.

Exactly. Now if people were passing around rips of ADV DVDs, I'd be all for ADV sending out Nazgul to feed on the souls of the offenders. If for no other reason than I'm sick of seeing the never-ending reposts of the same half a dozen series (including Nerd Generator Evangelion) in the binaries newsgroups.

Rembember what MPAA stands for, kiddies: MOTION PICTURE association of america. As in freaking MOVIES. They won't even get you for passing around episodes of Friends over P2P, though if you care enough about Friends to trade episodes over P2P, you've got a lot worse problems than big companies suing you.

Well, I did say I was paranoid. So more of the paranoid mind at work...

What's 'unlicensed'? Seems to me this just means 'not licensed yet'. And technically, distributing copyrighted Japanese material in another country is still a copyright violation. If I were running an international megacorp (can you say Sony?), I'd probably want to squeeze every yen possible from my 'IP'. Of course, I have no idea how these companies feel about fansubbing.

Actually, I'd still like to know something about fansubbing before the internet.

It was mostly mail order until first Usenet, then IRC and P2P killed that off. If an attack is launched against anime, Usenet will be the best place to get it. Usenet is so badly flawed, as a greater whole, that it can be exploited to allow distribution with a high degree of anonymity, if one is careful and skillful enough, and Usenet has fairly strong anti-DMCA traits to keep the files available once they are posted. Then there is the benefit of uploading the file once and walking away while untold numbers of people download it minutes, hours, days, or even weeks later. Additionally, IP traces are fairly easy to do with IRC and P2P, and while Usenet downloaders can be tracked by their news service providers, the resulting log files are so dense and massive they are virtually unusable to a mere human trying to read them.

But you were talking about the MPAA. The Motion Picture Association of _America_, which has no juristiction over international films not officially released in the US. As for the Japanese companies, they seem pretty lax on enforcing trademarks- look at the proliferation of doujinshi over the years. I doubt that they'll go after fansubbers.

As far as I know, it was pretty much through what you said- clubs; conventions too.

Arnold Kim

Until a title is licensed, only the japanese rights holder has any say over what happens, and so far they've been pretty quiet. The big distributers, like scarywater (Anime Suki) are very quick to take down titles once they've been announced. I guess a company could do a stealth acquisition, but the first step in taking action would be a 'Cease and Desist' notice, which would serve the same purpose, but make the company look like major asses. Better just to announce the title when they get it.

Tape trading. Mail worked.

One points out that foreign copyrights are still quite valid, and that every anime that's been made is still under copyright by somebody or other.

Seriously, it's not a matter of technical difficulty of finding people. Sure, you could say that there are ways of schlepping files around that make it difficult to get caught, but at the same time they also make it REALLY difficult to give copies to ten thousand people. ;p I'm myself quite interested in the legal ramifications of a 'swarm' download like BitTorrent, where hundreds of people are all transmitting data to your computer... are those people individual infringers, or engaged in a single conspiracy to infringe? If it's the latter, then you could theoretically file ONE COURT CASE against them, which radically changes the economics of federal legal action in copyright cases (and would probably kill BitTorrent stone dead for all time...)

What's the legal definition of conspiracy anyways? These people don't know each other, aren't physically co-located, have no identifying information apart from an IP (and most people don't bother to check the IPs of individuals transmitting torrent data).

Sounds a bit like SEELE in that sense...

Since the MPAA deals with American and not Japanese releases, the danger from them is not going after anime fansub downloaders but rather if they kill off the underlying technology like they did to Napster.

VHS tape trading. It started with who you know (clubs, personal mail letters, etc), then with the WWW explosion came the websites and mass trading. I still have tons of those old tapes put away. ^_^;;

Laters. =)

Stan