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Sakura Con - Sunday - Fansubber
Ethics
 Is there honor
among fansubbers? There is among this group: from left to right they're
Mike Marcelais, William Chow and Sean Kemp. They got together at Sakura
Con to talk about the ethical way to handle fansubs, which technically
are illegal but remain a popular way for fans to see shows that are hot
in Japan but unreleased outside of Asia. |
 Kemp styles
himself as the "fansubber cop." "I'm not anti fansub. I am anti distributing
a commercial title fansub," he said. Kemp told how he keeps track of web
sites wich offer fansubs for sale, and notes if they are selling titles
that are on store shelves. If a fansubber is handling a commercialy available
show, Kemp E-mails that person and tells them they need to remove the show
from their Internet distribution list. If that fansubber doesn't drop the
title, Kemp notifies the license holder - and that can lead to a cease
and desist order against the fansubber. |
 "As soon as
a company is interested in a title, that's when the fansubbing should stop,"
said Marcelais. In those cases, fansubbers should stop distributing a show,
he said. The Rurouni Kenshin series, of course, is the best-known example
of a case where a company has warned fansubbers to back off from a title
before it's been commercially released. But, the panelists noted that some
fansubbers don't care whether a show has North American license holders
or not - they want to keep selling tapes through their web sites. |
 Fansubbers
defend their practice as a way of spreading the word about a title and
generating enthusiasm for a show. "You don't want to take sales away from
a U.S. company who wants to make money on a project," chow said. "You want
to have something of value so people can watch it and be converted over
to anime." However, the author notes that there's still no way that fansubbers,
no matter how hard some way try, can keep their work from falling into
the hands of bootleggers. |
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