Thursday, July 31, 2014

Japan is finally cracking the whip on Anime & Manga Piracy

You may remember back in October of 2012, the Japanese Government created new laws on piracy. They were targeting file-sharers and the punishment if caught was up to 10 years in prison. It seem the Japanese Government (Cultural Affairs Agency) along with 15 anime production and manga publishers will bring this to a head. They are starting a sweep next month and will send out letters to about 580 sites across the globe.

The push seems to be lost revenue, especially with China. As we all know as the hub for anything bootlegged. They are noting that China's piracy has cost about 560 billion yen ($5.45 billion USD) in losses for the anime and manga industry. Maybe however, if Japan brought down the exhortation prices of their disks, then it could help sales. People will always pay what they feel something is worth - even if it is a pirated product. If you have a site that has pirated anime or manga, look for a letter or possible email to remove the content from your sites.

They are developing a website for fans with about 250 titles that they can watch for several hundred yen. As noted by Nakai Kenta's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau,“We want to create a project so that anime fans overseas can enjoy Japanese content legally and without infringement worries while the profits are paid to anime production companies and publishers.

Legal streaming from Crunchyroll, Hulu Plus and Netflix will be fine of course. I myself subscribe to Shonen Jump and Netflix. It is the ones that are doing scanalations and subbing which will be hit. I understand that this needs to be done, but us fans will feel the heat as well. Thought I don't download, I do watch anime on sites that upload recent shows that are subbed. I know this also leads into the same issue, but how do we watch some of the shows otherwise. Not everything gets translated and placed onto the legit sites.

Here is a PDF (in japanese) of the banned sites from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan.

What are your thoughts on all this? 


Sources: Crunchyroll | NHK (japanese) | Oro Jackson


2 comments:

  1. At times, the problem is anime from right means maybe take long and fan sub honestly did a better job before DVD or Blu-Ray release. We do support anime through original franchises. So I think Bandai is heading the right direction of providing free streaming for fans to watch and like the mecha then buy their Gunpla.

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    Replies
    1. I agree that we do support them by buying the merchandise and other outlets. It is hard to wait to watch something when you don't know if it will hit the US or not. We will just see how things progress and hope for the best.

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