CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

After hearing conflicting things from various people, I am now thouroughly confused about fansubs. Is it OK to download episodes of anime from the Internet? Please don't turn this into a war zone.

Links would be helpful ^_^

this questions is common it depends on your believes

until know fansubbing is only illegal in the united states and the laws are barely enforced

kinda like the texas sodomy laws.

the truth stand in yoru morality

these animes cannot be obtained in english and therefore are not distributed here.

so do you think its ok to download it if you cant buy it??

I personally think its fine

I don't know about American laws, but as far as Canada goes my understanding is this: If a series has not been licensed for distribution, than downloading/showing fansubs is legal. It ceases being so when the rights to a series have been picked up. That said, many companies tolerate fansubs to an extent as they are essentially free publicity for a series and are a good way of getting a feel for the potential market. Ethical fansubbing is essentially a "try before you buy" thing. You can get a good idea of a series' quality and then choose to rent/purchase it.

I'm gonna take a slightly more negative view than others have. I mean, if you download a few clips just to see how the series handles action, that's fine. But if you can essentially avoid ever having to purchase the series due to fansubs, I'd call that stealing. Whether or not it's legal, I wouldn't call it right.

not if the series hasnt been licensed in the us
and if your really really broke and a kid .

Well, you have to remember that the original idea behind fansubbing was to allow fans in North America access to anime. Just a few years ago most anime wasn't available period, and few companies had any interest in North American distribution. Fan interest in bringing anime into the mainstream has changed this. Moreover, I wasn't arguing for out and out piracy. The accepted ethics on fansubs are (or were) that a few episodes are translated or watched, allowing the viewer to come up with an opinion on the series, the remainder being left for the viewer to acquire. This to me seems fair, especially if you don't have access to a rental store that specializes in anime. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the internet are such that distribution is considerably easier, which has tossed out a lot of the old ethics.

Another perspective on this can be read up on at:
http://animextreme-inc.ca/featuredarticles/pirates-03.html

the article is by someone who works in the industry himself, and was the former club president at OSAMU.

Personaly I think it is wise to DL if you can...I mean personaly, I do not own a DVD burner...so I would not be burning these dvds...so I would only DL to get a sample...if I like it I would buy it from Animeniacs, Best Buy or some other source....I think its foolish to buy anime with no idea of its content or anything else...then you end up with a 20 dollar paper weight. IMO

Either way, I don't think it's that wrong to download fansubs because you don't want to buy them. I've done it with Evangelion...
I mean, anime products are kinda expensive. And if that wasn't enough, they put like 2 episodes per VHS sometimes (Cowboy Bebop does). Blue Submarine #6 was a 4 episode serie and while they could put them in a single VHS, they put it in 4. And DVDs aren't an exception, the first RahXephon DVD had 5 episodes on it, then the second, 4 and third, 3... Noir is a 25 episodes serie I think, but there's 7 DVD, the first had 5 episodes on it, so they could've just continued that way and they're could've been only 5 DVDs.
I want to watch anime but I have other more important things to spend my money on. I think they're pushing it a little...
Anyway, that's the way I see it. Don't go dropping bombs on me

no no your right kirika the truth is thought the dvds are cheaper in the us than in japan

in japan dvds cost 80 dollars a piece while here wer getting the cheap 20 if you really dotn have money go get it throught netflix

but i dont live in the us i cant see anime here so I download fansubs

Animeniacs has cheap dvds...and they ship world wide too! (man that was a shameless plug)

of course theyre cheap theyre hkdvds

plus if yo usend it here it would get stolen before it entered the country

i see nothing wrong with D/L fansubs.....

it's stuff you can't find on the US market and the majority of the stuff i download i end up buying on DVD when it's eventually released (many years later :rolls_eye ) in the states.

like i stated in the Wolf's Rain thread.....(lemme copy/paste since im lazy)

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"as far as fansubbing being stealing.....heh.....thats how the anime companys push the market here in the states. they wouldn't have an overseas market if it wasn't for people fansubbing and doing AMVs. the downloads are usually low quality and people buy the legit DVDs anyway for the shows/movies they think are worth it....

thus the anime companies see it as necessary and encourage it. we get fresh anime.....they make mad cash......everyone is happy."

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if you want to call fansubbing theft, then you better toss out any burned CDs/VHS/Cassettes you have, period.....be it music, games, movies whatever......because if you follow that line of rigid copyright enforcement nazi thinking, then just about anything you do with an entertainment product besides watch/listen to it alone in a dark room is illegal.......

I'm a semi-successful house/tech dj btw........did you know that it's technically illegal for me to make a mix cd of my own records? and that it's technically illegal for me to play in front of other people without paying royalties to all the big liscensing companies?

stuff like that is why a good majority of us are boycotting cds and fighting the current copyright laws and money grubbing companies like the RIAA that are trying to keep an iron fisted control over the cashflow.....

little do they seem to know that file sharing and fan subbing and things like that are why they actually have a market in the first place.

ahem....

hehe sorry.....i'll quit ranting now.

of course there's limits i might add.....

i don't try to sell fansubs.......just like i don't try to sell my mix cds without proper authorization from the labels.....

making money off someone else's stuff is a no no....

but free exchange of information is what the internet and technology is about.....most stuff you get from D/L are very low quality anyway.....so pesonally, if i want a quality product, I'll pay for it.

> the first RahXephon DVD had 5 episodes on it, then the second, 4 and third, 3...

Well, this may not only be a marketing gimic. The DVD encoding scheme is non-linear. A 30 minute clip of someone talking and staying relatively still will take WAY less space than a 30 minute action packed anime. If you want to know the technical specs, PM or AIM me and I'll explain it further. Suffice to say, just because the episodes are the same length doesn't mean they will fit on the same DVD. The 'length limits' on DVDs are only estimates. Plus, there's the issue of quality. Some anime are released for VCD and use MPEG-1 encoding, or roughly 1/4 the space of MPEG-2. I can look up all the specs if someone wants a complete analisys, but I suspect that would just bore people.

The general rule of thumb is this: anime that has lots of action or panning will take more space then anime that has lots of stills/slow mos/dialigues. Since lots of anime start out slowly and build at the end, it's relatively common to have serious compression issues in the latter DVDs. Gee, sounds like I'm teaching a class in compression again...

I download fansubs for two reasons:

1) to preview stuff before I buy it
2) because anime is very hard to get in the uk.

However I'm finding that the second problem can be remedied by logging into Ebay

oldphilosopher wrote:> the first RahXephon DVD had 5 episodes on it, then the second, 4 and third, 3...

Well, this may not only be a marketing gimic. The DVD encoding scheme is non-linear. A 30 minute clip of someone talking and staying relatively still will take WAY less space than a 30 minute action packed anime. If you want to know the technical specs, PM or AIM me and I'll explain it further. Suffice to say, just because the episodes are the same length doesn't mean they will fit on the same DVD. The 'length limits' on DVDs are only estimates. Plus, there's the issue of quality. Some anime are released for VCD and use MPEG-1 encoding, or roughly 1/4 the space of MPEG-2. I can look up all the specs if someone wants a complete analisys, but I suspect that would just bore people.

The general rule of thumb is this: anime that has lots of action or panning will take more space then anime that has lots of stills/slow mos/dialigues. Since lots of anime start out slowly and build at the end, it's relatively common to have serious compression issues in the latter DVDs. Gee, sounds like I'm teaching a class in compression again...

Well thats not a 100% true. Even when encoding 5-7 episodes on a dvd that only 2:30 hours. bitrate can be adjuste to make a total filesize so non moving scenes use less bitrate and action scenes use more. so basically its very easily to get 5 episodes on a dvd. heck you could put 10 episodes on a dvd without any problems!!

> heck you could put 10 episodes on a dvd without any problems!!

... no offense, but this would probably have the image resolution of a 8mm film photographed through a dirty window. No lossy compression algorithm achieves greater compression ratios for free.

Also, compression artifacting in MPEG-2 streams is bad enough without making it worse by stressing the algorithm to provide a smaller data rate.

oldphilosopher- I know this is sort of off topic, but where did you teach? Just curious really, I know the mathematical theory behind comression, but never had the opportunity to take the Multimedia Signal Processing course here for the more practical side

I d\l eps to preview and cause i'm 15 and don't have a job i'll be getting one in about 4 monthes or so and plan on buying a TON of dvds i d\l now cause i want to see various series and shows i'm not selling them and i'm not getting money so i think i'm not doing anything wrong here, plus i really am only downloading a bunch of stuff thats already on tv anyway so it really doesn't matter

Fansubbing, legal perspectives and a code of ethics, from Anime News Network. . .I would post another article from there about some fansubbers who are DEFINITELY unethical, but the language is too raw for this board in the e-mail exchanges and flames recorded there.

I'm not sure if those are quoted in these articles since it's been a while since I read them-if they are please edit the links at once and don't ban me. . .

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature.php?id=144
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature.php?id=142

Not targeting anyone person...just a think about it comment...while its easy to villanise people that do fansubs, HK dvds, R1 rips etc etc etc...how true are we to our devoted anti-pirate stance. I mean...I hope we don't tape any sports games or movies off tv...lets also hope we don't have mp3s on our computer....most copy right laws are a joke...there ludacris really....watch the end of an NFL telecast sometime...they dont want you talking about the game to anyone...personaly, I own no fansubs...but if someone was selling something I wanted a lot...like oh a censored copy of Outlaw Star...as aired on Toonami, I would buy that from them in a heartbeat. Plus, most people that like an anime buy the real deal...not a cheap fansub that is kinda iffy quality...but if they do? Eh, thats there call. It really does not matter either way what I think. Fansubs will stay around forever...as will HK dvds, R1 rips, mp3 file sharing groups, and all the other homes for pirates. *lobs 2 pennies on the table and leaves*

good words Shatterheart.....

What if the anime hasn't been officially translated? For example Star Ocean Ex? For people that only understand English, they face an indefinite time before the anime is available to them. Fansubs allow them to see the series without having to take up a Japanese Course to find out what the series is about. Same goes for manga scanlations. I have many of them, simply because i can't get the translated manga normally, and don't want to be getting the manga just to look at the pictures.

God Bless

Shoorajin no it owuldnt be bad qaulity if you knew how to encode it would be exactly the same as orginal

I'm afraid not. There are mathematical limits for lossless compression, and Huffman coding (which is generally what's used for this part) is about as close to the limit as possible). In addition, MPEG is DCT based which can bring in some heavy artifacts for high compression ratios (although, a new wavelet-based standard should improve this to a degree). Also, as others have already pointed out, the difference signal between frames is going to have a higher variance for action intensive scenes thus requiring more bits to encode.

I don't doubt that some companies shave episodes off their DVD's to increase their profit margins, but realistically it's not going to help that much (and it also means the companies are able to provide higher quality video)

Technomancer wrote:(and it also means the companies are able to provide higher quality video)

which is what i do want, and am willing to pay more for it.

Not if you use enought pases bassicaly up to 100 passes are allowed for an mpeg 2 file. Also using the right qauntizer matrix for animation .

It doesn't matter if it's illegal or not it's whether it's right or wrong. If you are going to buy the DVD anyway and just want a sample. I think it's ok as long as you don't burn it and try to sell it. Or just burn it period. If you want anime cheap look on ebay. I got the entire series of evangelion and both movies for $50 not bootleg. Oh, and BTW it doesn't matter if your a poor kid. I am and I still don't DL. Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong. That's the way it is.[color=darkorange]

the problem with encoding is that most .avi files use weird screwed up codecs and compression which causes horrible evil problems, and it generally takes 10-20 hours just to do a 25 min episode.

plus.....most DVD players still don't play VCDs.

for all the time and headache (and RAM usage) you'd put into encoding and VCD burning a fansubbed series, you might as well just order the DVD from overseas....there's a ton of good cheap websites out there.

fansubs kill me sometimes though, for instance......im still pulling my hair out about Wolf's Rain. Live-Evil was up to EP 22 out of 30, when Bandai liscensed it, so now the project got dropped by all the major fansub groups, and all the wolf's rain fans across the globe are screaming for underground subbers to finish the series.

They were just approaching Jagara's Castle too

Of course Bandai will probably sit on if for a good long time......and its going to be another year or so before the Japanese companies have imports to order....

....so can anyone here read Japanese?

> most DVD players still don't play VCDs.

That's not really true of new models. Even my almost two-year-old Toshiba plays VCDs (NTSC only, though).

But your point, that you might as well just buy it overseas, is well taken Just make sure that your DVD player is region-free, and that you get an NTSC (or Japanese Region 2) disc, unless you have a PAL converter. I suppose you could play a PAL disc on your computer, though, too.