We Suck Fansubs

Thursday, August 26, 2004

It's past midnight tomorrow in Japan already, which means the second box set of Survive is officially out, which means the torrents for episodes 15-26 are down. And I promise we'll get back on track with the TV episodes soon.

7 Comments:

Anonymous said...: Is there any particular reason why you remove episodes for R2 DVDs essentially stopping me from breaking one flimsy law (copyright), one for which its impossible to prove damages because I can't legally decode/watch the DVDs even if I purchase them at insane (international distributer) rate hikes. All the while encouraging me to break a local laws (DCMA) that are not as forgiving?

I'd rather be in court prooving that there where "no-damages to plaintif", then running up against the DCMA with MPAA's landsharks at its back.

Just my two-cents worth, I've been curious, up till now I figured the reason was in your name.; 9/01/2004 3:40 p.m.
Torgen said...: The answer is that this has nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with what we think is right. As fans of anime, we recognize that it is a product of corporations, and thus must be profitable in order to continue to be made. Also, if a specific anime series is profitable, then the producers of anime will reasonably conclude that another series that appeals to the same group of people as the previous series, for the same reasons, will also be successful. (This is true of all media, not just anime, but anime is the specific example relevent to this discussion.)
So, if a series is good and lots of people buy the DVDs and/or watch it on TV, making commercial time valuable, this is a good thing for the viewers and the industry alike, since the viewers will likely get another show they like, and the industry gets the money they need to keep making it.
If a series is terrible, nobody watches it, and the industry loses money, then (assuming the companies involved didn't go bankrupt) they will do more market research and hopefully their next show will be good enough to be successful, and everyone will be happy again. I am not sympathetic to an industry which can't make a product good enough to be successful.
However, if the industry makes a good product and the consumers like it, but steal it instead of paying for it, this is disastrous! The industry gets the false impression that the show was bad, and will focus its attention on making different shows which are less likely to be popular. In other words, the short term effect is that the quality of programming decreases, and the long term effect is that the industry is unable to remain profitable and collapses, or at least finds a different means of being profitable which is less vulnerable to such subterfuge. I'm much more sympathetic to an industry which loses money despite doing everything right than I am to a 'fan' who loses his favourite show that he was stealing because he wouldn't put his money where his mouth was.
A recent non-anime example of this effect is the Fox show Wonderfalls, which was apparently quite good (I've personally never seen it), and was Tivoed by quite a large number of people, but actually tuned into by relatively few, and thus was cancelled after only four episodes. Even if Fox put the show in a bad timeslot, its fans could still have tuned in instead of doing whatever else they were doing on Friday night--perhaps they'll think of that next time there's a good show in a bad timeslot, but in the meantime they can't complain just because they were asked to choose between two things and were unable to take both.
I watch a lot of anime, and I buy a lot of anime, and sometimes I like a show so much that not only do I want to buy it, but I'll go out of my way to make it so that a lot more people know they like the show so that they too will want to buy it, and then some extra work so that the version that is for sale will be a version that they can buy and use, so that they will buy it. The sole reason the torrents exist is so that people outside Japan who might be inclined to buy the DVDs can have the same advantage as the people in Japan who are the target market for the DVDs: the opportunity to see it once as a means to make the decision. Even then, the people in Japan had a half-hour window for their single viewing; compared to this, the four months episode 26 was available via torrent is preposterous--I've already shortened that period from the original duration (which was until I personally received the DVD in question--this was once artificially extended by nearly a month becuase a DVD was stolen from my mailbox), and I've often considered shortening it again, this time far more drastically. And compound this by the fact that the torrented version can be watched multiple times anyways! If there was a practical way I could have made the experience more similar to broadcast, I would have done it from the start--right now, all we can do is ask that you delete the file once you've watched it, and that if you can't agree to those terms then you shouldn't download the episode in the first place. (see section 4 of the policy statement.)
In conclusion, if you've missed some of the episodes in the 1-26 range, I invite you to start watching from 27--people do this all the time with regular TV, and it's always worked fine for me when I did it. Just don't expect a free ride when you missed an ample opportunity. If you think that defeating region protection to watch a DVD you legitimately own is somehow worse than stealing something you could have bought, I don't think we have much to talk about.; 9/01/2004 7:37 p.m.
Blah... said...: ditto

I salute you big buddy!
We got to support the anime we love!
Good job T!; 9/01/2004 9:59 p.m.
Anonymous said...: Well-written; 9/02/2004 3:04 a.m.
Anonymous said...: Anxiously awaiting Surve 43-45... Wish I knew more japanese, I'd love to help out. Keep up the good work.

- VIrtual1; 9/03/2004 7:58 a.m.
Anonymous said...: Having seen what you had to say just now, I wonder what your take on timeshifting in general is.

As for the whole matter on the DMCA , that's a whole other can of worms I won't go into right now. Suffice it to say, and I don't think many people will disagree, the DMCA is one of the lamest and most heavily-abused pieces of legislation out there. Or at the very least, the more onerous parts of it are, the section of the DMCA which covers circumvention of copy protection mechanisms, e.g. region coding (assuming you can call it one), are anyway.

--IRJ; 9/03/2004 1:15 p.m.
Anonymous said...: Let me further qualify my remark above.

I mean that those provisions are lame if they keep you from enjoying something you legitimately bought.

--IRJ; 9/03/2004 1:18 p.m.

Random Quote

<Torgen> Next I'll claim that my translations are perfect, and any apparent errors are really elaborate typos.
<MSH> typos introduced by the keyboard of course, not by you!
<Torgen> naturally.
<_bla_> Torgen: why is group called "we suck" then not "my keyboard sucks" ?
<Torgen> typo.

<Tyreal|Sucks> Torgen: how DID you do those DVD type subs by the way :P
<Tyreal|Sucks> just got fonts that looked like that, or used an actual dvd subtitling proggie
<Torgen> It's Arial.
<Torgen> I used TextSub.
<Tyreal|Sucks> ahh

<Shouta> <WeSuck> You = my bitch

<Torgen> Yeah, it's like taking the ghost suit of the ghost lego man and putting it on the astronaut lego man.
<Torgen> The ghost lego man is now just a normal lego man with a featureless face.
<Torgen> while the astronaut gets to look out through the ghost suit's eyeholes.
<Spyre> Torgen that has to be the best analogy ever.
<Spyre> Thats EXACTLY what its like!
* Spyre is in awe

<kara|hw> i told crustol...
<kara|hw> '私解析していてちょっぴり濡れちゃった。'
<kara|hw> he hasnt talked to me in a while
(Trans. note: this is Yoriko's line from about 7 minutes into BPS 03-2)

<AWAY-Bomb|AutoShow> Whee!
<AWAY-Bomb|AutoShow> Suck!

<Torgen> no, because Hawaii would have been right
<Torgen> but it was wrong.
<Torgen> so it was left.
<Torgen> :(foot)

<Torgen> Think you could co-produce some Gundam show with cat girls in it?
<Jekichu-clone> gundam....cat girls...
<Jekichu-clone> ...
<Jekichu-clone> ....
<Jekichu-clone> no
<Torgen> Like have cat-girls (and boys, and women, and men) instead of Newtypes or Coordinators...
<Torgen> or whatever other gundam series had.
<Jekichu-clone> laf, thats straight up pornographic
<Torgen> think of the ratings!
<Jekichu-clone> rawwwrrrr

<PyRC> basket, if everything is recursive, maybe there are no fansubs.

<Torgen> And Ensei doesn't sound like I expected him to when I first saw him...
<Torgen> He looks all gruff...
<Torgen> and he sounds so comical.
<arcImpulse> and you expected...
<Torgen> him to sound all gruff, like those assassins...
<Torgen> but he sounds uncultured;
<Torgen> not rogueish.
<Torgen> it's like, if he said "wanna come over and watch the game?" I'd take a moment to realize that was an anachronism.
<arcImpulse> if you think he sounds weird... just wait till we get to Eccentric Kou
<arcImpulse> and you'd be like...holy anachronism~~
<Torgen> what, does Kou sound like a robot or something?
<arcImpulse> damn, I couldn't fool you, ne?

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Thursday, August 26, 2004

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