The issue that scares the excrement out of American entertainment conglomerates and American entertainment unions is the piracy thing. And just now it's driving the Japanese animation industry bonkers:
Japan’s cartoons plundered by pirates
Japan’s cartoon industry, a mainstay of the country’s bid to revive the economy through “soft” exports, is losing $2.4 billion a year to Chinese piracy.
The number represents more than twice what the Japanese animation industry made from total global exports of cartoons and cartoon-related goods during its best year. ...
... Chinese cartoon addicts spend, on average, about $70 (£46) a year feeding their hunger for Japanese cartoons, with most of that sum spent on pirate DVDs. ...
As Japan goes, so (perhaps) goes the rest of the globe. And if there is one thing that unites SAG, WGA, DGA and IATSE with Fox, Disney, Time-Warner et al., it's this issue.
Everybody, and I mean everybody, is hard against the theft of intellectual property. For as revenue streams dry up, the whole intricate structure of the entertainment industry will come crashing down, at which point it will be rebuilt in ways that will probably damage the folks who create the work. (SAG, WGA, DGA, IATSE ... and their pension and health plans.)
We've had multiple meetings on this subject. What sends chills down everyone's spines is not pirated DVDs, although those are bad, but theft over broadband internet. And nobody seems to know what preventive measures will work to stop it from happening.
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17 comments:
It won't stop. People will do what they want regardless of laws if they have a means to provide cheaper access that can't really be tracked. I have a couple of co-workers that put on their pirate hats and live on the high-seas as soon as they get home, it's what they love to do. They are like piracy pack rats, they take whatever they can get just cause it's out there.
Also 1.99 an episode is piracy
As should the cases of those who downloaded and file-shared music files, the perpetrators very well may get a knock on the door with fed's on the otherside saying "it has been reported that you ....." At least protect your intellectual properties as best you can.
Technology changes the world and those that are changed must learn to adapt. Consumers are using leverage in the same manner that companies do.
http://tinyurl.com/ycbrnn6
Recently in the Midwest, a pirate was arrested, sentenced to several years in prison and slapped with a heavy fine. I cheered. IMO, Youtube is a major enabler, and it should immediately shut down channels that advertise free movie downloads, but it doesn't. Neither do search engines such as Yahoo and Google. It's not like the pirates are all that secretive about it. They advertise on Twitter and other interactive sites, and ask for "donations". The scum. I report them whenever I find them. It's very satisfying.
http://tinyurl.com/ycbrnn6
I dont see anyway they can stop the massive pirating that the chinese do. They don't even see it as piracy, the ones who do it think its ok and I cannot understand it. Sadly it is wide spread all over asia.
PIracy is just as bad, if not worse, in North America and Europe. Big Business is too lazy and slow to respond to the market, both in regards to content AND distribution. Their ability to "catch up" to the speed to which the internet travels will never be enough.
Until Internet 2.0, which is very slowly making it's way into the mix. It's being hard wired to track digital markers on all copyrighted information.
Well it's not only in the far east,
In Spain to illegally download, share and sell other people's intellectual propiety is a national sport. Just like going for Tapas and taking a siesta.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88552/hollywood-may-quit-selling-dvds-in-spain/
technology has rendered the film an unmarketable product. There is nothing that can be done. Except focusing on that which cannot be pirated, which is the experience of seeing a film in a theater.
People still want to see films in theaters. The question remaining is whether the giant cinema chains will pay heed to this and improve their product. They have a temporary stop gap with the 3D fad, but making their theaters a more pleasurable experience would increase their bottom line.
Playing 15 solid minutes of commercials will create some revenue, but at what cost? People don't want to endure that for $14 a ticket. They aren't going to put butts in the seats that way and they'll go under - and independent theaters will continue to flourish because they actually value the customer. What a concept huh?
What IS it about Chinese piracy discussions that make posters pretentiously want to genericize the discussion to stateside/Euro piracy, as if they think that's what the subject's about?
Not to sound xenophobic, but you'd need good luck finding a legitimate copy of ANYTHING in HK.
It's just sort of become ingrained into the culture, and with the recent isolationist lockdown on capitalist Japanese imports, it's only going to make its own residents that much more desperate to get their Doraemon and DBZ on the back alleys: You can cut off the masses' supply, but you can't change their tastes.
(At least with our early anime days, the college kids had respect for their bootlegs, and wanted to see their favorite series legitimately licensed--I doubt that's the mentality on most of the Chinese streetcorners.)
There is nothing that can be done. Except focusing on that which cannot be pirated, which is the experience of seeing a film in a theater.
I met a guy who watched 2012 opening weekend on his laptop. The pirated film had been shot with a cell phone camera and uploaded online. I also remember two minimum-wage teenagers who downloaded, watched and criticized pirated copies of District 9 and Spider-Man 2 months before either film made it to home video.
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Maybe all the highest-end animation work in the future will be done in commercials. Commercials can't be pirated.
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Or, maybe animated films of the future will rely on heavy product placement for funding instead of ticket and DVD sales. Blue Sky already put a Britney Spears product placement in Robots, so it's not unheard of for American animation.
Nissin Foods commissioned an entire direct-to-video animated series to celebrate its 35th anniversary. It looks great, and there's a Nissin Cup Noodle prominently placed throughout the piece.
If Americans stop buying animation, I see Cup Noodle in the American animation industry's future.
;-)
(At least with our early anime days, the college kids had respect for their bootlegs, and wanted to see their favorite series legitimately licensed--I doubt that's the mentality on most of the Chinese streetcorners.)
In my limited experience, modern American anime fans aren't too different from the Chinese anime fans.
In 2007, a younger co-worker insisted on giving me his Hong Kong DVDs of two animated TV series that had already been legally licensed in the States. From his perspective, he was "promoting" the series by giving me pirated copies.
In the past ten years, I've had other American anime fans try to give me DVD-Rs and CDs containing fansubs of shows that already had official release dates scheduled in the States.
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Most of these anime fans were teenagers and twentysomethings with no real spending money of their own. Most do buy and watch Japanese entertainment legally. They buy manga from Barnes & Noble, and they trade their manga with friends to save money. They rent anime from their parents' NetFlix accounts and watch anime on TV.
They just don't know the difference between a legal DVD and a less-expensive, professionally packaged Hong Kong DVD at a convention.
They don't see the difference between watching anime on TV and watching fansubs online.
When they get more discretionary income, I sincerely hope these kids cut down on the fansubs and start buying or renting legal releases. It's up to them, though.
A lot of pirated anime comes from titles that aren't available in the States any other way. There are whole anime movies of Kimba the White Lion and Astro Boy, for instance, that are in Japanese and have never been seen (legally) in the States. They're beautifully animated, and fans drool over them, but can't buy them legitimately anywhere, and so they're pirated. I'm not sure what the answer to that is. And I have a hard time blaming fans for downloading such product; how else are they going to see them?
A lot of pirated anime comes from titles that aren't available in the States any other way. There are whole anime movies of Kimba the White Lion and Astro Boy, for instance, that are in Japanese and have never been seen (legally) in the States. They're beautifully animated, and fans drool over them, but can't buy them legitimately anywhere...
Not true. Fans can legally buy anime directly from Japan.
I watched all of "The Great Mouse Detective" last night on... Youtube.
It's been there for months. It's like they're not even trying to take infringing stuff down.
I just have to say to the Anonymous at 4:04 PM:
Where else are you going to find a rather obscure 20 year old movie?
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