Overseas Distribution And Piracy Forum

It's always amazing to me how often I come upon people who think that fansubbing is legal, or legal as long as the series is unlicensed, or even a “gray area,” considering that it's a blatant violation of international copyright laws.

Mostly we think of this as it relates to English-speaking fansubbers working on Japanese anime, but here's a tale of the reverse: a guy in Japan who fansubbed an American movie and released it via BitTorrent. 33-year-old Kazushi Hirata fansubbed the Angelina Jolie flick Wanted, released it prior to its Japanese theatrical release, and was arrested in September.

He plead guilty in November and was sentenced yesterday: he'll spend two years in prison and be suspended for three years after that (I'm guessing that's like parole?). And it could have been worse: he could have gotten as many as 10 years in prison with a $95,000 fine.

Now, American movies reach a much wider audience in Japan than anime reaches in the US-- which means the US (and Japanese) anime industry depends even more on each and every individual sale than American movie companies. Just food for thought.

By the way, can I just offer this: what a crappy movie to go to prison for!

Count_Zero: You should repost that essay as a blog post! That said, you can get region-free DVD players in the US pretty easily.

As for the rest...I'll quote Dark Horse's Carl Horn here, as I so often have: it's not the downloading, it's the downloading and not buying.

So if a fan wants to watch a fansub of a series that is more or less unlicens-able for one reason or another, and they want to do so ethically, I'd say download the episodes but also import the DVDs. The problem is that very few fans will do this; DVDs are extremely expensive in Japan and tend to come with few episodes. Kaiba, for example, is a rare case of 4 episodes (two discs) per release. But each release is hideously expensive-- the first disc is about $65 with an Amazon discount ($81 MSRP), and the subsequent two releases are about $100 each on Amazon / $117 MSRP. So that's $281 to $315 for a single 12-episode series.

...You have to be pretty devoted to be willing to do that.

People. Don't be stupid!

gia said:

"By the way, can I just offer this: what a crappy movie to go to prison for!"

That's just crazy talk.  It may not have been movie of the year but I wouldn't call it crappy.  Maybe you try reading the original material.  They're both similar in the beginning then the movie took a big turn.  The comic was definitely better.

GMan said:

"gia said:

"By the way, can I just offer this: what a crappy movie to go to prison for!"

That's just crazy talk.  It may not have been movie of the year but I wouldn't call it crappy.  Maybe you try reading the original material.  They're both similar in the beginning then the movie took a big turn.  The comic was definitely better."

I was only talking about the movie, not the comic, which I haven't read. As a movie, it was pretty overwhelmingly "meh," IMO.

How and why would subtitles be "illegal"? First of all, aren't you retelling of facts? You're retelling what the characters are saying. If not then all the quotes on the internets are illegal, because that's what it is. A sub is just one, massive, quote. And wouldn't the person who subtitled it be protected by copyright himself, since it's his work after all, and he didn't even get paid for it. That's like saying fanlitterature is illegal. Maybe I'm wrong, so yell at me if I am. In my eyes however, what happened here was that he uploaded the movie, and that was the only big no-no here. 

Suspended could be like suspended sentence, meaning if you violate (the law?) you go straight back to jail without the normal procedures or something.

Part of sales is advertising and in my wild past I probably learned more about Anime through these surreptitious means than I ever would have through normal, commercial means, especially living where I lived.

It may be scary for people to realize, but illegal doesn't always mean wrong, even if you wind up going to jail for it.  You can break the law but be doing something that will later be acceptable and legal.  This is where test cases come from.

Come to think of it, that sentence seems a bit harsh.

Xymox: I'm not going to yell : But while subtitles themselves aren't illegal, distributing fan-subtitled movies, anime, etc. is illegal. So is distributing even just a translation without a video file-- those words and that story are copyrighted. It's the same as if you tried to give away your own translation of a Harry Potter novel as an alternative to an official one...you're taking away from those sales (or, if it hasn't already been released, those future sales).

Fan-written literature based on other works is also illegal in most cases, although not for copyright: it's trademark violation. The characters, the worlds, they're protected under trademark law. That said, the vast majority of fan-art and fan-fiction (and even in some cases fan-subs) are tolerated because they generally assist the copyright/trademark holders in promoting the materials for free, and it's hard to want to go through the PR nightmare of suing your fans. In Japan they also tolerate doujinshi because doujinshi-creators are one of the pools of talents that manga publishers draw from-- but as soon as they start crossing the line into creating violating materials that can be consumed as an alternative to official materials (like a particular Doraemon doujinshi, just in recent memory) you'll find copyright/trademark holders can and often will jump on it.

Now, I want to note that my personal stance is not necessarily in complete and utter opposition to fansubs, and certainly not against fanart or fanfics or anything...but I think it's very important that the creators of these materials be aware that what they are doing is a technical violation of the creators' rights, even if they're doing it with the best of intentions, and even if the creator doesn't mind.