ダウンロード生活

The issue I can never wrap my mind around is this: alot of what we download we would have never bought in the first place, not that we don't like it, but it is plain too expensive. What we have happening is a digital dark ages where only a select few will have access to entertainment and the rest of us will depend on others to explain what happens.

So how is this going to effect the overall fansub community?

OMG!!

This would make me a crimminal instantly XD

Piracy is the the way of life here. It's the bread and butter for a lot of people that they'd kill the law enforcement if the stuff they're selling are going to be confiscated.

How will Japan stop people from uploading stuff to YouTube? Good question there Danny.

Everything I download is stuff I would never actually pay for anyway. Besides, if it weren't for downloading I never would've gotten into anime, I never would've found 99% of the music I listen to, I never would've found out about half the games I have.

When I like something I will buy it, but I have to actually know it exists before I can know whether or not I like it.

BT downloading wont be stop!

Maybe those publisher should think of a way to earn from it, place commercial in the internet version!

If u cant win them, Join them!!!!!

And by the way aint ODEX against the law by checking on wat ppl dl or doing online! They should be sue!!!

Here we download anime for 3 reasons. 1- Because we like it. 2- Because we don't have enough money to import animes. And 3- Because anime is very scarce here with barely no series at all and the ones they show are really old or are just for kids.
I will keep downloading anime, piracy has always existed since the first audio tape came out and I think the Japanese anime, manga market suffered a boost because of fansubs, because otherwise we wouldn't be waisting a lot of money buying figures, gunpla, manga, dvds, artbooks, etc....

I wonder. Which one considered illegal and which one is not? When you're in the US, is it illegal to d/l Japanese eroge that's not being released in US?
And in Japan, is it illegal to d/l other country games/music that is not released in Japan?

The governments are going to do what they think is right (and by that I mean profitable, and more convenient), and people are going to do what they want (by that I mean "get away with"). Its kind of like speeding out here, everyone speeds.. a LOT. Sometimes people get caught, and then they are good for a while... then they just do it again when they feel they wont get caught. The truth is, if the greater majority of people download from P2P sites, then there is not much any Government or organization can do to stop it. It would cost them more than it is worth. BUT,.. they WILL make examples of some people.

Plus, if Danny didnt share pictures and videos with me, I wouldnt have learned of all this new anime and figures and such that I like. He is actually PROMOTING these products, and opening my limited (because I live in the USA) Horizons. So kudos and tell "the man" to go play a game of hide and go F*#k himself.

Agreed. The stuff I download I would never actually buy.

But Danny, perhaps your poll should have been a little more expanded on the 10gb + end. I think I'm currently hitting about half a terabyte a month. At least I'll have a big supply of stuff for when the interwebs die...

btw, Kyoji - you can encrypt your torrent traffic so it's not detectable as a torrent. ISPs could not block it.

We have legal vendors of pirated movie, anime, software, games, etc. Remember how the police assisting those rackets? Not that I complain or everything when I can buy anime and PS2 DVD for 50 cents each or licking my pirated software for 2 bucks each.

Don't think those pirated products will be steamrolled anytime soon and I hope not :p. According to some article, my hometown is the biggest, if not, one of the biggest haven of pirated software. Ahh, the irony of living in 3rd world country.

I don't know about the situation over here but back at home, people aren't really able to afford anime as

1.) Each DVD set (R2) cost 5000 Yen and above, which is equivilent to about the price of a PC game.

2.) The upkeep of Anime DVDs will cost you alot of money unless you've got a money printing machine at home ^^;

3.) There are local anime companies available but I don't know how many people would like that. Otaku pride or something.

So people 'prefer' downloading them instead. I personally like the doujinshis and illustrations more ^^;

I agree with NeuroRelay in that as customers we are generally on the losing side because the only options we have are:

- To pay the price they set (and companies like to set random numbers when they want to);

- To refuse and maybe wait until it becomes cheaper and that demand lowers compared to the offer;

- To go for alternative ways, which are more or less illegal.

I know some behaviors are unacceptable, like doing mass download and resell it for personal profit (something rather lucrative but dangerous), but setting outrageous prices that do not reflect quality or durability is no better.

So well, I do download anime stuff, but I truly keep it for myself and try not to go for a target that is too big for me to chew on.
And I'm the "bargain bin guy" normally, so I can be considered as a "bad consumer".
I don't like this idea of consumerism, and I try to limit my participation to the max (without being stingy either).

And by the way, I did use torrents a lot when completing my collection of "ultimate PS1 games" (RPG and fighting games mostly), way after this console met its demise...
So I can't be guilty of that.

I don't download many anime episodes either and most of what I watch (3 series now) is via streaming.

The only thing that goes against me is anime music (but I only have 40 of them on my playlist)...
So yeah.

There's also an organization, called B.I.G. (Ban Illegale software en Games) here that tries to ban illegal downloads, but other then the existence of this organization I haven't seen them doing anything. ^^
BTW Danny, that's not Erika, but Haruna. =)

Hard to get obviously pirated stuff here, but if you look around you can find it.

I don't really bother myself...the internet is more than enough for me for either downloading or ordering stuff.

Waiting for Fortune Aterial tho :3

What bunch of freeloaders. Seriously who be satisfied with downloaded anime? Anime on dvd isnt expensive anymore (least in the uk) & your cheapening the experience for yourself. I never keep what I download & gets deleted after a week. When an anime series gets licensed in the uk I buy the official dvds.

pirated anime/movie/drama series are all available in malaysia, hell we've even been exporting pirated stuff for years!!!

I even got tricked into buying pirated anime with an government certified original sticker on it!!!

IMHO watching anime on dvd somehow gives me more satisfaction as compared to downloading it.

Well, in Brazil it goes something like that: Most gaming companies still don't have official retailers here because pirating in Brazil is sky high.

That's how pirating is over here.

But the government has only themselves to blame for it. The thing is: Our country is the one which charges most taxes for imported stuff.

A recent research showed that you'll pay more for an iPod here on Brazil than any other country in the word.

Electronic taxes can go up to more than 60% the original price, that with taxes only, I'm not even including shipping.

The result is, you have people selling pirated stuff everywhere. Not only movies, games and media... you have electronics, toys, clothing and everything you can imagine.

But I don't buy pirated stuff. Sometimes I download stuff for testing. Games I'm playing right now , I paid for them all. Animes I only get those that doesn't exist here in Brazil, which unfortunately are almost every anime out there.

I'd probably pirate more stuff if I had the time to use/watch/enjoy them, but nowadays, movies for instance, I usually watch only when I go to the movies.

Law like this are basically worthless as they are next to imposable to enforce fully. The MPAA and RIAA have been trying to stop internet download for years and they haven't be able to stop it.

Industry has to stop trying to stop it and start finding way to make money off of it.

Subaruhess, as long as there are Japanese subtitles and that the English dub is not awful, why not?

But I feel I'm not committed enough to anime to buy DVDs. I am too outdated to be a true anime fan, anyway. T_T

at an average, i download more than 10GB worth of files from the great internets ^^

piracy here in the philippines is illegal and the governmenr even created a special task force called Optical Media Board (OMB) that keeps pirated audio and video materials at bay but during the past few month, they've only be able to raid several retailers who sells pirated material and they've only apprehended only a few of the big fishes who mass produce pirated materials

i agree that companies should invest and monetize this kind of technology instead of stopping it. prevention is costly while embracing it will grant them more money ^^

Well, if they've got the balls to come to Texas to arrest me, they can go for it. :p

In Canada its legal to download any digital media, as long as its for "backup" purposes only. This means we can download games, anime, movies and just about everything else we want as long as we have the original. So using the guise of "I lost the original right after I downloaded the backup" you can get away with anything.

That said, I don't really think its all that bad because if you take something like Japanese music which doesn't get released here, my downloading isn't costing them anything because they were never expecting to make any money from sales in North America anyways

And... Would you go for a series of 100, 200, 300 or even more episodes on DVD?
If so, you earn a "Wow".

13 or 26 episodes are easy enough, if you got enough money... I reckon.

Please excuse me if I went a bit harsh there, but money is sometimes really hard to get and I may go too far in my "no unnecessary waste" reasonings.

erm..ODEX is not an organization, but a company...and it's still suing people around for downloading animes...

and regarding the creator of Bit Torrent, does he plan to create a bittorrent client to legally download movies that require u to pay while u download? if that's the case, good!! cos hikikomoris will not have to step out of the house again to watch a movie!!

If they know a better way to get anime in latin america where only have license over very clasic anime is a good moment to say it

And i belive México don´t have laws agaist that, and if they have are very unusful like the other laws here (but that is other topic).

The said that is wrong but, they know that the need us to download and buy stuff and make quicks license posible.
They love us in the inside (of their wallets)

10GB!? Hell Danny. I down more than that every day...

Most movies and games were pirated in Russia, but hey, they were really cheap!
But there is nothing like that in where I live now.
I dont know how but my internet provider somehow found out that I was using bittorrent to download movies. The letter said next time I would have to pay a fine. So now I have to look for direct download -_-;.

too bad you dnt have the option for more than 100gb a month ^_^

average i dl about more than 70GB, not so sure, because monthly bandwidth usage for me is 80GB++, if my line speed stable i think i can use more than 100GB a month..

Well its obvious what people do with their bandwidth when ISPs keep offering higher download speed. If i'm not gonna download stuffs, why would I subscribe to unlimited high speed broadband plan.

Ouch, big hit for the anime community, especially us bloggers. I really hope this doesn't come to pass, many bloggers in Thailand are already getting hit. I know there will be attempts to stop this but it won't be that easy for the government.

I wouldn't mind paying for my animes if they are released fast enough and of a high quality.

Can't wait to get HD 720p HD-DVD/Blu-ray version of Darker than Black.

if thast the case i rather buy the official copy -.-"
at least the box looks nice =P

There are few English langiuage channels here 6-8 (inc 4 movie channels)so I tend to download US tv. Actually did try to get some shows via iTunes but alas the US iTunes does not allow people outside North America to buy....so until there is an alternative (and waiting two years for the DVD or till it is finally on tv here is not a good option)I'll get my daily tv dose from bit torrent. Movies I buy or see in the cinema. Anime is hard to get with English subtitles so I download the fansubs....

D_blade; Official dvds have both the original japanese & dub audio format. Honestly, is a fanmade subtitled tv recording better than the official licensed product?

Today's world is an internet world. Any thing can be shared instantly. People want to access different things NOW. No one want to wait.

Every thing should be internationally available. They should sell any show in a low price via the internet the very moment a show had just aired.

Music should be internationally available. No one should import a CD or download them on line illegally. I admit that I download musics, but only those that I can't find.

Movies and games should not have regional code. I want to watch foreign movies on any DVD players.

No mater what laws are passed, the power of the masses (people) will make any law obsolete or unenforcable.

FIGHT THE POWER!!!

As long as they don't give the subbing to a team that is absolutely unknowledgeable of the original spirit (the worst being deforming names and locations), then all is for the better.

Take Inuyasha for example... Hachi the Tanuki, was called a racoon-dog...
Really a shame. But there are worse examples I can't remember.

*raccoon

I will return to silence now. Sorry for commenting so many times. -_-;

Copyright is always such a touchy subject.
There such a strong human desire of 'want' in this day and age.
At the end of the day though the publishers determine whatever copyright is to apply to their product and people must abide by it.
You can be all against it, hell I certainly am at the best of times myself. But its not our say.
Its just a product, you want it you get it the way the supplier says.
There’s no golden ring around anyone’s head that gives everyone the right to do whatever the please.

Oh and by the way I have a very shady background, the name uradox in particular is known a few years back. I spent a very long time removing copyright protections from products... so im not one eyed in my views. I see things from both sides these days.
If you break the law that’s fine, just as long as you acknowledge that you are and can live with whatever might or might not happen to you :)
Enough of my rant :)

In Finland the copyright law illegalizes uploading and downloading copyrighted stuff.. but they just can't keep an eye on every person using internet. The current law would say that if you have music in your mp3-player and a policeofficer doubts that you've illegal music in it, you should prove it somehow that you have bought it from internet instead of ripping it to your computer and then copied it to your player.. quite difficult, huh? :-p but i'd like to see if they could get it illegalized and BETTER

i agree with the bit toreent guy.. the man should find a wayy to change with the times instead of trying to enforce old copyright laws.. the same thing happened when vhs came out and the companys try to make THAT illegal.. but they didnt' and changed.. so downloading isn't going to stop..and the MAN just needs to deal with it.. instead of cracking down on a 70y/o granny with a $10000 fine...>_>

Subaruhess, actually, they are. If you compare the fansubs to the production subs, sometimes you find out how much you are missing with the production. I never realized this until someone showed me both on the same series. The dialogue gets washed out, and dumbed down because they dont really care if you understand the in-depth meaning to a word or phrase. I cant tell you how many times fansubs have posted explanations at the top of the screen to a japanese word I dont understand.

D_BLADE, Im with you. Enough said.

average of 30GB per month but used to be around 70GB per month before the ISP throttled BT speeds. We don't get good speeds(max at 4Mbps), but at least we get the stuff we want, illegal or not. No action is taken at all against this in Malaysia until now, so yeah... sooner or later it'll happen i guess.

That's a bit what it is happening over here. After having tryed to forbid those illegal downloadings, which was a failure, now concerned folks (music companies principally) are trying to monetize buy making agreements with Internet providers.

Over here, it's all about Odex.

Here in Italy the situation isn't that bad, if someone download illegal material for private use only it's all ok. I mean, law say "don't download movie from internet! It's the same as steal a wallet from someone, will you do it?" But only if u monetize from it could be very bad. Still we have a very big underground illegal market. Like in my city Florence, the evening streets are full of people selling illegal material as console games, DVD, audio cd and more. This is more problematic beocuse the money they earn go straight into "dangerous hands"

Hm, I have almost a Terabyte of HDD space and I manage to refill it everytime I buy a stack of DVDs (usually 50) very quickly. I have prolly close to 600 GB of anime across 3 hard drives now, however I will probably never watch all of it *glares at several 100 DVD spindles collected from 2004-2007 sitting in the closet waiting to be viewed*

btw, they'll never enforce that law absolutely. People always find a way to get things online, american tv companies were all up in arms alongside the mpaa (yes, I'm not capitalizing on purpose) last year and part of the year before and you can still find -- and could still find then -- american television everywhere online. I know it's incredibly specious reasoning, but if I pay for my cable and pay for my cable internet through the same company then I kinda feel entitled if I miss a show, to download it =P (Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that the network gets the ad revenues and not the cable company). If I can't possibly see a Japanese show anyway, then what's the difference in me downloading it with/without subs to watch it, they wouldn't have been getting my ad dollars anyway.

live and use pirated anime, and movies.
getting use to it, as those legal stuff never got any cheaper even if it not sells good and already a year.

and some fanservice content deleted(cencored) by those stupid legal company, and they work like in amoeba speed, lacking in good title, making piracy are more efficient in this part of the world

and the war goes on between making the thing illegal and going around the law downloading and uploading copyright items.

odex way:

Step 1. hire firms to track down downloaders

Step 2. gets courts permission to access ISP database of downloaders

Step 3. sends threatening legal letters to downloaders (youngest being 9yrs old)

Step 4. demand settlement of S$4-5K (approx US$3K) as "reimbursements"

Concurrently. Releases backdated, poorly sub, low res, poor packaging animes... and wonder why their sales of animes is poor.

Also to point out, they used to sub anime by ripping off fan subs directly.

wtf!

Downloading copyrighted stuff is an odd subject, or rather weird. And a very touchy one too(strange enough).

Anyway, here in Sweden it is illegal to download copyrighted stuff BUT, authorities has basically no way to prove it. They can't ask ISPs for our IPs and information about us(the user).

Occasionally they do try to take down big torrent sites(PTB for you that know) but usually fail because what they(the authorities) do end up being illegal. :)

Personally, I see no reason why it should be illegal. It's just like when the tape recorder & VHS saw daylight. Both are now accepted, but they break the same rules that downloading does.
Downloading on the other hand, can give a show/game/movie/artist/whatever a new audience that was unreachable before, thus generating new sales for merchandise, DVDs, albums, concert revenues, etc etc...

Oops, booboo by my fingers, I meant TPB not PTB *ashamed*

Generally speaking, unless you download a massive amount of western copyrighted media (like hollywood movies and music) then they pretty much leave you alone here in the UK (unless you break your ISP fair usage policy)

I download at least 2 eps of unlicensed anime everyday and, even though it's considered illegal under law, you haven't had any stop orders sent to me. But some groups can go way over the top in their heavy handedness in these issues

I used to burn all my fansubs onto CDs back when I didn't have a DVD-burner.
At some point I realized it was a total waste of time and money (well not that the CDRs would cost much, but anyway) to do that. Not only do all the CDs/DVDs occupy space, most of them also remain untouched. That's why I recently saw through the CDs and DVDs and threw a lot of them away (containing anime which I wouldn't want to see more than once). Nowadays I delete most of the episodes right away after I watched them.
(Sorry for being a bit offtopic here ^^;)

People Will Continue To Download , Burn , Send , Share etc

no one can really stop them :)

Animes main source is from Japan with this law coming down is GG to fansub.

the recent crackdown on illegal downloading of anime here in singapore has been the talking point of the town for the past few months.

ODEX, the company responsible for all these nonsense is heavily flamed by the online community.

What irk me is the way they did the crackdown. they started sending out the letters this may to catch people who illegally downloaded animes before may. This means that even if you stopped downloading after may, they can still catch you for your animes downloaded before may.

no warning letters no nothing was given at all!

read more here if you are interested
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odex%27s_actions_against_file_sharing

From what you say Danny, its illegal for them to uplaod the content, which has proven to fail utterly since its already out there. But not its illegal to watch/download them, think Japan will have to do as ODEX did to enforce that. WHich if they did, it may own the fansub community, but I seriously doubt they would take that step.

I have been proven wrong before though... >_

I used to download lots of different Anime all the time, then one month, after boosting the internet download total to 16GB my dad told me we have an 8GB download limit -.-, luckily we didn't get fined because it was the first time...so now i get to download 1 Anime episode a week...

and i was wondering what erika is doing in this post. (lol)

if this law is passed, i guess fansubs are gonna take a major hit ..wont they ?

Dragun; Official dvds have notes too, no offense but to me its just sounds like your a freeloader. So a tv recording is better than dvd quality?

They try to block/prevent downloading of anime and they'll see that it's a big bad move. I'm 100% sure sales will flop for these companies if they ever did.

I mainly buy anime merchandise because I've seen the shows they were part of. You take out the show and you take out the reason for people to buy your products. It's very simple reasoning really. What these companies should do is track down those that profit from their media. Although I know this is hard to implement. Take microsoft for example, didn't take long for vista to get cracked and they worked so hard to make it uncrackable. ;)

i rarely downloading anime from the net. as it took lot of Gb and take long time to finish it.

i got lame internet service here
1gb for 25 US$(Rp250.000) per month
3GB for 45 US$ per month
non limit for 75US$
75US$ is not cheap in indonesia

end up buying loaded DVD-R (pirated movies) in mangga 2 ITC.

i hope they dont arpove it, in my country torrent its the best way to find new anime

@neberus
same thing for us here without torrents there is no way you can watch anime but we have also a large pirated dvd market in rabat you can find anything from movies to games and more recently animes last week a friend of mine bought a dvd pack with all the episodes of ranma 1/2 for 60 dirhams wich is about 7.50 dollars

wait... this means no RAW for American viewers... or is this just for YouTube like video sharing website? Regardless, if this law pass', American RAW viewers are going to get sacked... And also, it won't stop Chinese provider/subbers to torrent them... Sometime I wish industries would stop doing this... I mean, people STILL buy DvDs...

sigh...

When are Japanese and American companies going to learn that content downloads and uploads when done in good taste are loads and loads of free advertising??!! How many people have gone to youtube and watched an amv or clip (not a whole episode...that's understandably not good to do) and would have never seen or heard of both anime series or the music artists..then tell all their friends about it? I fear that the PR people in these companies are a bunch of old farts who fear the internet and are ignorant to the power of decent legal viral advertising and good old word of mouth. It will backfire on all of these companies to loss of sales and public neglect to them and all they represent.

I usually download tv programs so I'm not really affected by ODEX that much. But still they are having the worst business practices around here.

Well.... for starters I'm form Mexico....guess one of the 1st place countries when it comes to piracy(not that i do any).....but one part of me thinks its bad for a lot of people to work hard on a title so in the end it only gets downloaded by someone....by the other hand, i think the price for their products is somewhat big(maybe because i dont earn the enough money to buy it XD)

About the ODEX thing, isn't that a breach of privacy law or something to monitor how your using your internet!?

ODEX are Pirates the Corsair will ride the Torrents and sink them.

ODEX use fansub and sell animes to make money but they are losing money cause nobody buying their anime. So they give out letters to make ppl pay them SGD$5,000 per Eps or per Season.

The Pirates are greedy for the Treasure....

My torrent activities are limited to TV shows and a few other items.

I like to have my Japanese drama and anime. I don't download what is already available on DVD. When someone suggests a new Japanese music artist, I will download an album to decide if I like their music. I guess they can lock me up for that one.

I do move personal files by P2P often with services like Pando. Although that has become hard since my service provider Comcast has been using software to block seeding.

This is what irritates me the most about all the subject. This current notion that anyone who uses P2P is a criminal engaged in illegal activities. That would mean when anyone uses something like Skype, Pando or any of the other services that use P2P are involved in illegal activities.

Here we are again, more people divorced from reality as we know it.

Everyone gets in an uproar over these sorts of things until something bigger happens or until the people "enforcing" it realizes the futility of their actions/manages to make a klutzy mistake. For instance, here in the us, I found it really funny that the mpaa was in everybody's crawlspace for the longest time and then ultimately ended up suing a few children and elderly people on accident and then managed to somehow try and sue a billionaire last year for having an illegal copy of some movie on one of his private computers or somesuch, and after that well I haven't heard anything big on the mpaa's part of suing anyone lately.

I didn't see the end of the article until just now.... monetization -- like Napster -- of any of these programs is the best that the creator can hope for (because the alternatives are usually pretty bad), even though the hypocrisy is overwhelming, can anyone say they'd do it differently? It may JUST be coming to that state as an entertainment delivery medium, but for online games and such, BT has been used to deliver content for a little while now, and I'm sure the creator has received quite a handsome recompense for it.

I've also noticed a lot of comments mentioning bootleg DVDs and CDs and such, those tentacles reach further than ebay, too. There's a local anime shop around here, actually about 2 or 3 of them, that not only sell HK bootlegs a lot of the time for DVDs/CDs/wallscrolls/posters/younameit, but then they have the gall to charge even beyond what you would pay at Japanese retail for a product of superior (read: authentic) quality. Before I knew better I used to shop at these places, it makes me chuckle now that I have a clearly bootlegged copy of the Hellsing series. It really makes you think, in like 3-4 short years access to a lot of this stuff over the net has really improved. In general I like to buy authentic CDs or commercial Japanese DVDs, but a lot of the time I'll download fansubs, because most of the time they're lovingly crafted by people who genuinely like the series. That's why it burns me up all the more to see Joy's Japanimation (yes, the real name of a store -_-;) charging like $189 for the full series of say, YuYu Hakusho, or $100 for 50 eps of G Gundam. There's a difference, to me, between appreciating someone's work and making a profit off of someone else's blood, sweat and tears. --sorry for the book ^^;

ewwww, not sure about exactly our laws here, but I believe that if you download it its illegal as well. Big Companies are trying to push for more control and even want ISP providers to monitor what we are doing. I know Comcast provider is doing that and they are actually banning torrent downloads because it slows down their network. They are having issues with competition with better new technology. So some are trying to get our Congress to pass bills that would allow internet providers to monitor our activities and prevent us from doing things. However Google is fighting that so I hope it won't come to life.

well, maybe next time even blogging might be illegal since you are peeping on others privacy.. and it will be called illegal webby..

seriously, the world is really getting the "nice boat" phenomenen somehow..

Downloading here in the states is illegal, but is not entirely enforced because you don't hear about 5 million US Citizens being sued for illegal downloading.

The MPAA and the RIAA have both gone after people but they target the ones who are downloading a mass of files. I do my best to stay away from it, anything I can buy in the store I would not illegally download.

I would be sad if they enacted this law, I like seeing anime that won't reach the states in a couple of years, but I was going to buy anyway. Real shame too.

Whats illegal?

I'd probably buy more anime, but the only place locally that sells anime generally asks between $70-$100 per 3 or 4 episode DVD of anime. That's completely outrageous. I buy mine as bootlegs off ebay or not at all.

I wanted to get the Last Exile box set, but at that shop it's $440. *_*

This is ridiculous, I don't see what's wrong with downloading copyrighted materials, since I download things that I, otherwise, wouldn't buy, or can't buy, since the things aren't sold in my area.

You should have posted a pic of Kiriha instead of Haruna :3