Over the past few days, Bruce McFarling posted a recap of the animesfree.com situation from a few weeks ago while pointing out that a bunch of their backup embeds are hosted on Myspace and followed it up with an inquiry into Hours of Action this Friday, wherein participants would mass-download FLV's of uploaded fansubs of anime Crunchyroll is currently simulcasting such as Letter Bee, Fairy Tail, and 11eyes so that 20th Century Fox (the registered owner of the specific video hosting domain myspacecdn.com) would take notice - and OF COURSE, delete the downloaded content afterward because all the participants will be morally upright people!
 
Though this is a noble attempt to alert Fox about intellectual property infringement, I think another potential group effort that may work better would be to gather links to those same illegal uploads to MySpace Video as well as MegaVideo and Veoh, which other mass streaming embed sites also mainly use, and send them to the Japanese copyright owners for them to use in DMCA notices to those video hosting websites. 
 
It's a bit more tedious and still relies on the hope that figures in authority will take heed that something is happening that is detrimentally affecting their products but it could bring more attention about this issue to the Japanese studios and if anyone needs to know about this, it's them. Also, any US licensors like FUNimation could also be included in this effort, though I have a feeling that its legal department may already be aware of this particular problem, given the service of a DMCA notice to animesfree.com that started this thread of discussion.
 
This crowdsourcing effort is just something that came to mind after I read Bruce explain the Teaspoon Model in his first posting and said this near the end of it: 

There'd have to be at least one person at the company actually sending out the letters to the sites streaming the bootlegs - but they would be far more effective if backed up by ten or twenty people contributing a couple of hours a week tracking down where the material is located. Indeed, the "white hats" could drop in info on where to get the material legally while at the bootleg bloodsucker streaming sites, including the proliferating opportunities for legal free streams.

I needed to get these thoughts out of my head but didn't really want to use my proper anime blog to do it so that's why I typed one out here.

Gawker Media blog io9 recently posted a list of "The Top 100 Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows" and its validity was criticized fairly quickly by some of the people I follow on Twitter including ALF ranking ahead of GitS: SAC and Get Smart being listed at all (at #67) since it doesn't seem like it fits in the category. (I guess the site thinks tech counts as sci-fi, which I'm so-so about, or spying part of fantasy, to which I'd say "no".) Though I'm not a big fan of the increasing practice of "listbaiting", I'm also often curious to see what made certain lists so I suppose they've got me in their traps.
 
(Each section, for your convenience: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, 81-90, 91-100)
  
Here are the animated entries that made their list: 

#14 - Futurama
#15 - The Tick (animated series)
#23 - Cowboy Bebop

This gritty, fun anime series about bounty hunters in the 22nd century probably helped inspire Firefly, and it definitely gave us one of the most memorable characters in science fiction — the super-fighter with a dark past, Spike Spiegel.   

#28 - Venture Bros.
#29 - Batman Beyond
#35 - Robotech

The show that helped introduced space opera to a whole new generation (along with Starblazers), Robotech gave us humans struggling against not one, but three alien invasions, using bootstrapped alien technology. And more importantly — super robot armor.

#46 - Invader Zim
#60 - Starblazers

A plucky crew of humans takes to space in the sunken battleship Yamato, repurposed as a spacecraft, in this melodramatic, thrilling animated space opera. The crew of the Yamato are never anything less than awesome, and the show really gives a feeling of space travel being slow and dangerous — but the show's real standouts are the villains, especially the sly Desslok and the chilling Comet Empire.     

#61 - The Jetsons
#89 - Transformers
#91 - Static Shock (I'd honestly forgotten about this show!) 

The Big Bang, an industrial accident in the city of Dakota, turns many of the city's residents into powerful metahumans. Though many "Bang Babies" use their newfound powers for evil, quick-witted teenager Virgil Hawkins uses his electromagnetic powers to fight crime, aided by the gadgets built by his genius best friend, Richie. But it's trickier hiding his identity as Static Shock from his widowed father Robert and strong-willed sister Sharon. Even amidst a glut of superhero cartoons, this is one of the most memorable.

#93 - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 

#94 - Serial Experiments Lain 

Shy junior-high school girl Lain is living a quiet life — until she gets an email from her dead classmate Chisa Yomoda, who claims she's not dead, but has just transcended the flesh world and moved to cyberspace. Lain gets drawn into a journey of cyber-discovery, hallucination and weirdness, as she's encouraged to ditch her flesh body and help bring down the walls between our world and the cyber-world. Trippy and bizarre, Serial Experiments may be the best cyberspace-as-drugs show ever.

#96 - Aeon Flux 

Aeon Flux originally debuted on MTV's Liquid Television as a series of shorts about Aeon Flux, the bondage-clad agent of an anarchist nation battling the forces of the restrictive Bregna government, only to be repeatedly thwarted by her own death. But Aeon eventually got her own half-hour show, where she locked horns (and occasionally naughty bits) with her nemesis Trevor Goodchild in a surreal, disturbing, and yet sexy dystopian future.    

#97 - Thundercats 

#99 - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 

Cybernetic police officer Motoko Kusanagi keeps New Port City safe from cybercriminals, maniacs and terrorists, using an array of surveillance toys that includes optical camouflage and mini-tanks called tachikomas, while she tries to get to the bottom of the mysterious "Laughing Man" incident. It's been praised as one of the most fully realized cyberpunk futures, and for having the best depiction of cyberspace environments, ever created. Plus, cyborgs with tanks versus mysterious cybercriminals FTW!

Here I am again, writing about anime characters appearing on "best X" lists. I generally dislike the general concept of list stories, especially if individual items are broken up into their own "slideshow" pages (such as UGO and Forbes) but I feel like I should mention whenever anime/manga characters make appearances in such features.

Since I misplaced the jacket that would have been a key part of an America (Hetalia) costume, I bought some reading glasses and ties earlier this week for a C.T. Smith (Zombie Powder) costume, which I have wanted to do for a couple years. I haven't been able to find a silver pistol around so I'm not going to sweat it - it'd have to be peace-bonded anyway. I doubt many people will recognize it at first glance but if they do, I'll be glad. I'll be wearing it on Saturday and possibly street clothes on Sunday. It'd be interesting to see a Wolfina cosplayer sometime with a Tripod of Justice.

[cross-posted from Nigorimasen!]

A few days ago, I read something from ANN’s The Gallery series for the first time. In that series, they profile fan artists that could use a bit more exposure and this time it was about Stephanie Kao. I’d never heard of her before but she said some things I’d like to comment on, particularly since I’m going to a con this weekend and will take at least one cursory walk through Artists’ Alley.

Kao mentioned having to deal with negative reactions to her art style - a mix of traditional, anthro, and anime influences - from both the anime and the anthro (aka “furry”) fan communities. The first time it came up, she admitted it wasn’t easy to stick with the style she likes to draw in; the second time concerned putting together a recent sketchbook and deciding to push away some of the anthro-stuff from the front of it so more readers might be drawn in. I personally don’t mind anthro and I think it’s gotten a bit of a bad rap based on skewed perceptions about that broader community, such as a certain episode of CSI from 2003.

I don’t participate much in artists’ communities, fan art or otherwise, mainly because I’m not much of one myself. I can appreciate art on aesthetics (what it makes me feel) and mechanics (e.g. use of lines, empty spaces, etc.) and support a level of artistic freedom that lets artists work with as few restrictions as possible so that less diluted expressions of their intentions might be produced.

Kao also said “it makes [her] sad when artists feel like they must do fanart that they have no passion for”. I’m more inclined toward original works since their reception is not potentially hampered like prior conceptions about characters held by a collective audience, like fan art is, and because I get more pleasure in seeking out and experiencing new things than settling for what’s familiar. A potential risk for original stuff, though, is its lack of instant familiarity/recognition of their subjects that could be achieved through fan art. Determining at what place on that continuum an artist is most comfortable seems like it might help him/her in producing better work and enjoying it as well.