Bandai Claims They'll Sue Fansubbers

[mitsuki lover]

I came across this at the Abhnation Forum today.Apparently,according to
Anime News Network,Bandai says they will sue any fansubbers who try to make a fansub of the latest Ghost In The Shell movie.
IMO,this appears to be just a scare tactic as I hardly think Bandai or any other big corporation would really bother to waste their money on suing
the average Joe or Jane Doe.Plus it also makes for good advertising for the latest GITS movie.

[Nate]

I believe it, actually. They're not going to sue the people who download a fansub, they're going to sue the person or people making the fansub. That's a lot easier to do, and is perfectly within their rights. It sucks, but it's technically illegal, so not much you can do about it.

[Mithrandir]

Because nothing says, "buy our crap" like suing people who give you free market research.

Honestly. Does it even occur to them to do a feasibility study first? Apparently it never occurs to these kinds of groups that there is a direct correlation between the popularity of anime in the US and the amount of fan subs around.

There is a clear way to succeed in their field: Do a better job then the amateurs. If they are unable to do that, and the only way they can stay in business is to sue the competition, then I think fair market economics will win.

Anime fans tend to be (this is a bit of a generalization) smarter then the average person. They won't stand for this. If Bandai does it, they'll go out of business.

The problem takes care of itself.

[Puguni]

Because nothing says, "buy our crap" like suing people who give you free market research.

Honestly. Does it even occur to them to do a feasibility study first? Apparently it never occurs to these kinds of groups that there is a direct correlation between the popularity of anime in the US and the amount of fan subs around.

There is a clear way to succeed in their field: Do a better job then the amateurs. If they are unable to do that, and the only way they can stay in business is to sue the competition, then I think fair market economics will win.

Anime fans tend to be (this is a bit of a generalization) smarter then the average person. They won't stand for this. If Bandai does it, they'll go out of business.

The problem takes care of itself.

I'd really love to send this in an e-mail to all those companies. That was a nice answer.

I was going to say about the same: do a good job first, and then deal with pirates.

[ducheval]

Nothing like profitibility through litigation, hehe

[Mithrandir]

Nothing like profitibility through litigation, hehe

It's working so well for SCO...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM

[Mr. SmartyPants]

It's incredibly easy to bypass this. TXT File. Punch in the duration time for every spoken word, and translate away! Yes, softsubs is the answer.

Technically that's fansubbing, and I don't think doing that is illegal. It's distributing the show itself (hardsubbed or not) that's illegal.

[Kaligraphic]

It's working so well for SCO...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM

You mean that Bandai will be suing fansubbers of other distributors' series?

[Mithrandir]

Or perhaps all distributers will sue all fansubbers. "Here's our catalogue of titles. I'm sure he's fan subbed one of them!"

[MorwenLaicoriel]

To be honest, I kinda support Bandai with this. It's their property. There are the good, nice fansubbers out there who are respectful, support series when they're domestically released, and stop fansubbing when they're licenced, but unfortunantely there's a growing group of fansubbers who have a self-righteous "you-have-no-right-to-make-money-off-anime" mentality that will sub/download series long after they're released domestically, and lead to situations like this. ((Please note: these links have some bad language in them!)) I'm not saying I feel that anyone who fansubs or watches fansubs is evil or rude--I just extremely dislike it when people feel they have a 'right' to get series for free, or when people claim to be 'fans' but refuse to actually support the series when it hits the states.

So, yeah, I'd like to see Bandai sue if someone attempts to go against their request and fansubs it anyway. Then maybe people would get it's not their property.

[Nate]

By the way, those links Morwen posted have some language, so if that offends you, don't click. But wow. I read that and that company makes fansubbers look bad. Fansubbers like that, deserve to be sued and sued hard.

Yay for fansubbers with (semi) ethics.

[Debitt]

I do agree that Bandai is shooting down a good deal of the "kind of sort of" free marketing that fansubs provide. I'm sure for every person who just downloads and runs, another person will download and say "HEY! I should get this on DVD". I know that I feel a bit obligated to try and buy the series I download, if possible.

While I do strongly dislike a handful of subbers out there, they generally do do a bit of good for the anime community and industry.

[Tenshi no Ai]

By the way, those links Morwen posted have some language, so if that offends you, don't click. But wow. I read that and that company makes fansubbers look bad. Fansubbers like that, deserve to be sued and sued hard.

Yay for fansubbers with (semi) ethics.

Wow... read that too and it's like *blink*... no wonder why Bandai would try and do something like this. A popular title and stuff, and reminds me when the MUCH anticipated Advent Children came out, and just HOW many subbers had subbed it and stuff with in mind that it was licensed, just taking a loooooooong time to get here. I finally got my copy, and ok, I was guilty in getting it then (couldn't wait^^) But wow for people to get so MAD about it... heh ironic with Anime Junkies making comments on how "they are doing it for money". It's uhhh kinda the point with anime being produced in the first place^^ No money being made, no anime, period :/ Heh, I remember hearing about different controversies about them, and looked up on a site out of curiousity to see if they were STILL making subs, and apparently they quit just at the beginning of last year (and from what I remember getting a sub or two off them many years ago, they weren't the best subbers anyhow^^)

[MorwenLaicoriel]

Oops! Sorry, I wasn't thinking about the language when I linked them. I'll edit my post to include a warning.

But yeah, I know that not all fansubbers are like that (thank goodness!). And while I don't watch fansubs myself (most of the shows I only hear about AFTER they're licensed, and I'm also worried I'd never have enough money to buy all the series I'd want to download...^^;; ), I don't particularly mind it when series aren't licensed. But additudes like the bad fansubbers really bug me, and I think only bad fansubbers will sub a movie they know will be coming out in the US anyway, so...I do hope Bandai's not just using empty threats or using this as some sort of weird publicity stunt.

[bigsleepj]

Those rude-mouth fansubbers seem like they think they are revolutionaries fighting against exploitive capitalist pigs. Indeed, their Ché Guevara pajamas says it all.

[Rev. Doc]

I remember a couple of years ago there was a Bandai representative at Animazement. Word got to him that one of the Dealers was selling bootleg Bandai titles. He personally went down and that little business stopped fast. It's definitely a company that does not fool around in this area.

[mitsuki lover]

The problem is even if Bandai went ahead with their threat it won't stop the illegal
bootlegs and pirated versions from Taiwan and other countries that aren't signatories to the Berne Convention.
So in the end even if a few fansubbers are sued the main problem is still there
for companies like Bandai.

[Nate]

The problem is even if Bandai went ahead with their threat it won't stop the illegal
bootlegs and pirated versions from Taiwan and other countries that aren't signatories to the Berne Convention.
So in the end even if a few fansubbers are sued the main problem is still there
for companies like Bandai.

I don't see how this is a problem. Taiwan is known for horrendously bad subtitling. If you want to watch the new Ghost in the Shell movie with phrases like "Turn the car around like letter u!" then by all means go ahead. People usually buy Taiwan DVDs just to actually SEE the movie, and get a rough idea of what's going on, but no one is going to keep a Taiwan release over an official DVD release because the official subtitles will be a thousand times better (unless you know Japanese and are able to watch it without subtitles, but I'm sure the number of people like that are rare).

So the Taiwan market has almost no impact on sales. Fansubbers who do a good job, however, would.