| Subject: Re: Fansubs = money lost to companies? |
Author:
Jake
|
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Date Posted: 11:03:05 06/12/03 Thu
In reply to:
Pasha
's message, "Re: Fansubs" on 10:34:08 06/11/03 Wed
>>It doesn't have to be a majority for it to hurt the
>>industry. Sure, anime companies are still gonna make
>>a profit on most of their releases. But the reduction
>>in sales hurts their ability to license new series and
>>pay for good people to work on the releases.
>
>Of course. But at the same time you have to look at
>the amount of money that is being brought in due to
>the pirating. A few things to consider:
>
>1. There will be people who view the pirated versions
>and then go and purchase the official versions.
>
>2. There will be people who view the pirated versions
>but never purchase the official versions.
>
>The major question is: If pirated versions of the
>show do not exist, how many of these people would have
>ended up purchasing the show? If it is fewer then
>with pirated versions available, then the company has
>gotten overall fewer sales.
>
>Of course, something like this is difficult (if not
>actually impossible) to measure ... ^^
>
>In the end, if the companies make more money with
>pirated versions available, then that will be the
>route that they have to take. Yes, there will be
>people who only view the pirated versions, but oh well
>... ^^
This is in response to the other posts where you raise this question as well. I will grant that fansubs both increase and decrease sales and that's impossible to prove which effect is greater. But I'm very skeptical of the claim that fansubs increase sales more than they decrease them. In the small population sample consisting of people I know who purchase/download media, there's basically 2 kinds of people: people who download stuff and buy almost nothing, and people who buy stuff instead of downloading. The only people I know who both download and purchase heavily are a few people at JAC, 1 of my brothers, and 2 friends outside of JAC.
You could argue that the people who download raise hype and cause the people who buy to buy more, and this is really the crux of the debate. I would argue that in the past, this was the case, but that this is becoming increasingly untrue. Nowadays, we really don't need fansubs to generate interest in anime. Fans hear about what's popular in Japan, they take interest in anime being created by their favorite creators, they see trailers of it as it's being translated, etc. When the anime is released in the states, a lot of people will buy it right away, others will rent it as that's becoming increasingly possible. These people will spread the word to others, who watch it and spread the word some more.
If anything, fansubs speed up the process because they are released sooner and to a wider audience. But I doubt this speeding up outweighs the sales lost from people who don't buy it because they don't have to.
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