| Subject: Re: Fansubs |
Author:
Dena
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Date Posted: 16:55:08 06/09/03 Mon
In reply to:
Jake
's message, "Fansubs" on 13:28:37 06/09/03 Mon
My $.02:
>...So unfortunately,
>I guess fansubs should be illegal except for
>educational/club use.
>
I'm greatly amused by the hullaballoo about the ANN articles. They aren't saying anything we haven't already known for years.
There's no except about it; fansubs ARE illegal, full stop.
They just don't get prosecuted if there's no financial advantage to prosecuting them and there IS a financial advantage to not prosecuting them (in terms of getting free advertising for a series before it comes out commercially). Granted, the advantage of that is reduced almost to nonexistent now that things are being picked up while they're still in production, and I honestly think fansubbers *ought* to go into doing series that *won't* get picked up (for example, Rose of Versailles anyone? As far as I know only 16 episodes of that were ever fansubbed, but there's more than that produced...) I think old series with no financial but lots of emotional/nostalgic value are better served by fansubs than by commercial releases, because that way a company won't lose money and time on the production but people still get to see it. But there was really NO point at all in anyone fansubbing .hack or GiTS or any of the other recent "you know these are going to be picked up in a heartbeat if they haven't been already" series.
We like to say we're treading the moral high ground at JAC by not redistributing things we're showing that have already been picked up, but in terms of strict legality it's all illegal anyway. It always has been. People just like whitewashing it with ideas of "fair use" (which has never extended to retranslating an entire show) and so on.
Personally, I think the club solution is one of the less ethically reprehensible ones out there because (like you said) it gets people interested in a series without providing wholesale piracy of something that's already been picked up -- but less unethical or not, it's still illegal. ^^;;
On the other hand, it's still BETTER than things which are *both* illegal *and* more unethical, such as the continued fansubbing/downloading of series which have already been picked up...
>Another thing that has occurred to me is that maybe we
>shouldn't have CDs in the tape library unless it's a
>series that will probably never be licensed. When
>people check out CDs, they can copy the files to their
>computers and then we lose control of them. We can't
>call the people and say "Hey, you have to delete those
>files now" when the show becomes licensed. I remember
>one guy who used to come in, check out a CD, run to
>his dorm and copy the files, run back, check out
>another CD, etc etc. That's no good. =\
The thing is, the CD library is far from the only source for these things. Even if we don't have the CD library, anyone who has a dorm room still has a relatively high speed connection to IRC and anything they want. The CD library is doing two things:
1) making it possible for people who don't have high speed net connections or IRC savvy to get to see the exact same things that people who DO have the above already get to see, and
2) making it easier for JAC to control when things get pulled out of the library.
CDs get pulled the week a series pickup is announced. Tapes usually waited until the end of the semester because of all the hassle involved in reboxing and renumbering everything. In that sense CDs are easier to control because we can process the updates a LOT faster.
And even if we pulled the CDs and tapes at the same time, anyone who really wants something that's been picked up is still going to be able to get it off IRC.
With the CD library, we're basically just simplifying the librarianship headaches and saving the University some bandwidth (download once, several people view from CD, vs downloads multiplied by the number of people interested in checking things out).
FYI, the person who was doing the serial checkouts had University net access too. Eliminating the CD library isn't going to eliminate University students' access to materials, it's just going to cost the University more bandwidth as everyone individually hunts for things and tries eight to ten times to complete a download that keeps getting interrupted. @_@
Of course, I'd like to have stuff that will never be licensed on CD, because that would drastically reduce the librarianship headaches! The trouble is getting a list of things that are both old/obscure enough to be unlikely pickup candidates AND digisubbed, because it seems like digisubbers focus on brand-new things and the old series usually get left on VHS.
But I think I have a source for a whole bunch of Kodocha on CD to fill in our VHS holes, and everyone seems to assure me that Kodocha is too long, shoujo, and spastic ever to be picked up... although who knows, my curse may apply there too (I mean, spastic is no proof of un-licensability; look at Excel Saga...)
$.02. ^^;;;
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