 | "On fansubs" by Konstantin
(2006-01-17) |
An interesting discussion has brewed up on the
forums in the past week about the legality and morality of fansubs. The first part is dead simple - fansubs are illegal, period, end of story. There's no legal grey area (at least for the US subbers of Japanese shows, since both nations are party to the
Berne Convention) and while the law is not always enforced or easily enforceable, it still seems pretty unambiguous even to a non-lawyer such as myself. The ethical question, however, is a lot more complex, as evidenced by the number (and length) of well thought out and reasonable posts on the thread advocating a full spectrum of positions. Frankly, I'm rather amazed that a forum thread on such a sensitive topic could last a week and grow to three pages without deteriorating into a flamewar (guess I should spend less time on WoW forums and 4chan ^^;).
All of this was pretty straightforward in the 90's. With the US industry still in its infancy, the VHS fansubbers' turnaround times (half a year to a year after the initial showing, in the best of cases) were years ahead of the official distributors', and in fact the stated mission of the fansubbers was to build up enough interest in a particular show to convince someone to take the risk of licensing it. The biggest ethical flamewars at the time usually involved people trying to present the activity as maybe possibly not quite illegal, or were about the acceptability of the distributors' practice of charging people $5 for the cost of tape and shipping rather than requiring people to send them tapes with self-addressed stamped envelopes. Due to the extremely high barriers to entry (just the hardware needed to produce reasonable quality master tapes cost in the thousands of dollars, and that's not counting the cost of the raw LDs or the translators), the fansubbers were few, well-known, and extremely dedicated. Distribution ceased pretty much universally once a show got licensed, which in turn was a pretty rare and special event.
Things changed pretty drastically and rapidly at the turn of the decade, though. The popularity of anime skyrocketed at the same time that computers got fast and powerful enough to allow for an fully digital process of subtitling and distribution. On one hand, the expanded market for anime led to a heated competition for licenses between the growing US distributors, snapping up just about every recent show of note. On the other, the newly digital nature of the fansubbing allowed for cheap entry of new subbers, most of whom ended up congregating on IRC, which was culturally dominated by the warez scene, in turn leading to competitions on speed, presentation, and quality of releases and less respect/regard for the rights and wishes of the Japanese creators and the American licensors. Things have evolved since then, and over time a top tier of fansubbers has emerged which generally held to some of the old ethics, albeit adapted for the new situation.
The way I see things as standing now is as a pretty efficient but precariously balanced equilibrium. On the one hand, the US licensors clearly have the legal authority which they can wield (and have wielded, though so far sparingly), to demand that distribution of their shows stop, and shut down the sites of those who refuse. In light of this power, the most popular tracker site (Animesuki) and most of the top tier subbing groups stop distributing and subbing shows once they get licensed. On the other hand, fansubs have proven to be an effective tool for bringing exposure to new shows and the anime industry (unlike the music or the movie industries) still has a significant amount of good will from their consumers which they are so far hesitant to risk by going in full-force with heavy-handed lawsuits. As a result, a number of subbers still sub shows as they get shown on Japanese TV, but usually stop distributing them once the DVDs start coming out in the US so as not to antagonize the companies so far that they would risk going through with a lawsuit in spite of all the potential consequences.
This setup seems to be pretty much ideal from my standpoint, at least until such a day when my Japanese gets good enough for me to fully enjoy the raws off of Japanese TV or the official distributors start releasing quick-and-dirty subs of the shows they just licensed in an effort to get rid of fansubbers without antagonizing the fans (hell, I'd pay good money for such a service if it were offered with the official blessings of the license holders). I get to see what's coming out on Japanese TV as it comes out, and don't feel any particular moral qualms about it since I know I'm going to be buying the box set when it hits the shelves (since frankly, I don't have time to watch stuff I don't like enough to want to own). As a side bonus, I gladly advertise the shows I like to all who'll listen, doing my part to spread the fandom and build up the hype that will help sell the next big thing or two.
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