When
U.S. anime industry leaders met with fans at Ohayocon, they chatted
about the growth of their business, the rise in the number of fans and
the expanding number of anime genres that are being released in
English. From left to right they're Keith Burgess of Manga
Entertainment, Lance Heiskell of Funimation, and Matt Greenfield and
David Williams of ADV Films. The group also had a warning about a
rising problem, a trend among anime fans which they said was damaging
the business -- fansubs distributed over broadband Internet
connections. The talk about the problem grew out of comments from the
industry group that the North American and European audiences for anime
were larger than the Japanese and Asian markets. They mentioned that
best-selling anime titles in Japan move fewer copies than in the U.S.
and Europe, and that U.S. companies are making larger investments in
anime production.
But
Greenfield and Williams emphasized that the wave of anime fansubs which
can be downloaded is leading to a growing problem of piracy in Asia.
Since there are no limits on who can download the fansubs, and because
the fansubs are of near-broadcast quality, the fansubs are being
downloaded by bootleggers and sold at cheap prices in Asia, said the
ADV representatives. "They (fansubbers) would put it on the
Internet and three weeks later, it would be on sale in Hong Kong as a
bootleg." Greenfield said. "In parts of Asia, there is no market for
anime because fansubs have killed it. When you start giving it away for
free to anyone who wants, it you're stealing and you're killing the
industry."
The
ethical weakness of fansubbing always has been the possibility of
having those recordings bootlegged, and there's a long history of
having fansubs copied and sold on VHS tapes. But now that fansubs can
look nearly as good as the originals, with less of the reproduction
losses caused by using home video machines, and since it's easier to
duplicate the shows onto optical discs, the result is lower sales of
legitimate copies of the shows. Williams said ADV had an example; early
episodes of the Nuku-Nuku series they handled that had been fansubbed
had lower sales than later episodes that had not been fansubbed, while
earlier episodes of other series had higher sales than later episodes.
And while fansubs once got obscure anime titles exposure outside of
Japan, Greenfield flatly said "There's really no purpose for fansubbing
anymore - if it's being made in Japan, it's going to come over here."
When
U.S. anime industry leaders met with fans at Ohayocon, they chatted
about the growth of their business, the rise in the number of fans and
the expanding number of anime genres that are being released in
English. From left to right they're Keith Burgess of Manga
Entertainment, Lance Heiskell of Funimation, and Matt Greenfield and
David Williams of ADV Films. The group also had a warning about a
rising problem, a trend among anime fans which they said was damaging
the business -- fansubs distributed over broadband Internet
connections. The talk about the problem grew out of comments from the
industry group that the North American and European audiences for anime
were larger than the Japanese and Asian markets. They mentioned that
best-selling anime titles in Japan move fewer copies than in the U.S.
and Europe, and that U.S. companies are making larger investments in
anime production.
But
Greenfield and Williams emphasized that the wave of anime fansubs which
can be downloaded is leading to a growing problem of piracy in Asia.
Since there are no limits on who can download the fansubs, and because
the fansubs are of near-broadcast quality, the fansubs are being
downloaded by bootleggers and sold at cheap prices in Asia, said the
ADV representatives. "They (fansubbers) would put it on the
Internet and three weeks later, it would be on sale in Hong Kong as a
bootleg." Greenfield said. "In parts of Asia, there is no market for
anime because fansubs have killed it. When you start giving it away for
free to anyone who wants, it you're stealing and you're killing the
industry."
The
ethical weakness of fansubbing always has been the possibility of
having those recordings bootlegged, and there's a long history of
having fansubs copied and sold on VHS tapes. But now that fansubs can
look nearly as good as the originals, with less of the reproduction
losses caused by using home video machines, and since it's easier to
duplicate the shows onto optical discs, the result is lower sales of
legitimate copies of the shows. Williams said ADV had an example; early
episodes of the Nuku-Nuku series they handled that had been fansubbed
had lower sales than later episodes that had not been fansubbed, while
earlier episodes of other series had higher sales than later episodes.
And while fansubs once got obscure anime titles exposure outside of
Japan, Greenfield flatly said "There's really no purpose for fansubbing
anymore - if it's being made in Japan, it's going to come over here."
