Ask John: Why Does the Industry Ignore Big Unauthorized Distributors?
Question:
In today’s world fansubs are quite common for licensed and sadly unlicensed shows. But worst of all, often times this ventures off into outright piracy and bootlegging. Perhaps the most notorious offender is the American fansite narutofan.com. On the site “Tazmo” offers a subscription service in which he sells online downloads of hundreds of licensed and unlicensed shows, especially Naruto. Because it’s the number one Naruto American anime site he’s able to attract millions of viewers, many of whom buy into his download service. It’s been rumored that he’s earned at least several hundred thousand or maybe even more than a million off of selling bootlegs of other people’s work. I can understand tolerance of fansubs or even free downloads of unlicensed anime, but why on earth would an American anime company seem to tolerate and condone such a major pirate like Tazmo? Viz has shut down illegal download sites before, so why do they seem so unconcerned about Narutofan’s pirate activities?
Answer:
It’s come to my attention recently that the NarutoFan website and its owner, “Tazmo,” are the subject of a tremendous amount of speculation, controversy, criticism, and outrage within the English speaking anime fan community. I have only a passing familiarity with the NarutoFan site, so I’m going to avoid discussing the most contentious rumors and speculation surrounding the site, including the NarutoFan site having commercial affiliations with Viz Media or Viz financially sponsoring Tazmo personally. I’m not aware of any concrete evidence supporting these accusations. However, the NarutoFan website does undeniably violate international copyrights by distributing anime and manga without proper authorization. And unlike the majority of fans that engage in unauthorized distribution, the NarutoFan website charges and presumably profits from its illegal activity.
Speaking as a representative of the legitimate international anime distribution industry, I do think I have justification to condemn the NarutoFan website and its affiliated commercial distribution sites. However, that’s not my intention. Rather than express a personal reaction, I’d prefer to deliver an objective statement. Calling the NarutoFan.com’s business illegal is not an insult. It’s merely a statement of fact. All commerical anime and manga is the copyrighted property of its creators, publishers, and legal distributors. Only those entities have a right to grant permission to distribute anime. Copyright law is international. There’s no evidence that the NarutoFan website delivers any of its content in accordance with international copyright law nor with the formal approval of appropriate copyright owners. So if the NarutoFan website and its affiliates illegally sell property belonging to companies including Media Blasters, Section 23, Nozomi Entertainment, Manga Entertainment, FUNimation, Crunchyroll, Bandai, Sony, and Viz Media, why have none of these companies taken measures to oppose NarutoFan? The answer is money.
Anime and manga are a commercial product and nothing speaks louder in the business world than money. Allotting manpower and funds to pursue copyright violations is a luxury for many of America’s remaining anime distributors that are now struggling just to stay solvent. Regrettably, due to the complexity of legal copyright challenges and the glacial pace of the legal system, pursuing copyright violation accusations is an arduous task for official copyright owners. Theoretically ease and rights should fall in favor of copyright owners. But too frequently legal demands to prove official ownership and unapproved distribution require so much evidence that favor seems to advantage the pirates instead. While copyright owners have to prove, in triplicate, beyond any reasonable doubt, their own legal right and the offender’s guilt, bootleggers don’t have to do anything except continue their business as usual. With so many American anime companies already operating on slim margins, they’re obligated to concentrate on getting new product to market instead of focusing on parallel concerns.
While limited funds are part of the reason domestic distributors don’t seriously challenge bootleggers, generated revenue is another reason. Ironically bootleggers are a threat while they’re small or medium sized. But when they’re big, the benefit they create may outweigh their detriment. The prominent example of this situation is Crunchyroll. The Crunchyroll website originated as an unlicensed distribution platform. But its unprecedented success made it impossible to ignore. The international anime industry simply couldn’t resist the allure of the site’s massive audience, so exemplifying the adage, “if you can’t beat ‘um, join ‘um,” the anime industry did precisely that. NarutoFan.com may not be big enough and influential enough to negotiate distribution agreements and partnerships with legitimate businesses, but the site is successful enough to assist the anime industry. In a 2005 interview with ICv2, Liza Coppola, Viz Media’s vice president for sales and marketing, Coppola identified NarutoFan.com as a market response resource. She also explained that Viz Media is eager to reach the fan community/consumer audience that congregates at unofficial fan sites like NarutoFan. In other words, while recognizing NarutoFan as an “unofficial site,” Viz also recognizes NarutoFan as a useful resource and point of opportunity.
Diligent efforts to shut down unlicensed anime distribution sites like NarutoFan simply aren’t practical for the legitimate anime distribution industry. Legal challenges are costly and time consuming for resource depleted domestic companies and foreign companies that may not be fluent with English or the American legal system. Furthermore, sites that reach millions of potential customers, like NarutoFan, are as much a potential resource as they are an unfair competitor. Unlicensed distribution unquestionably compromises legitimate sales. But unlicensed distribution also provides valuable advertising and stimulates legitimate sales. Domestic anime distributors have to constantly remain conscious of a balance between minimizing losses due to piracy and illegal, unfair competition, and encouraging fan interest instead of offending or alienating potential customers. A strictly black and white perspective demands that legitimate distributors should oppose bootleggers. But reality isn’t so distinctly polarized.
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It’s really a sick reality when the pirates become so powerful that the legitmate venues are more or less forced to turn to them and their massive audience of lazy, narassistic viewers to survive. Add in the fact a large chunk of anime on eBay are pirated box sets, and it’s amazing the industry makes any money at all. What’s worse is what John says is true: if a distribution company takes away the “fans’ ” illegal anime, they’ll likely turn their backs on the company altogether and continue watching stolen anime somewhere else. I’m sure they wouldn’t like it if someone broke into their house and stole their stuff, yet they’re willing to do basically the same thing to the industry they happen to be interested in that particular week.
I’ve pretty much washed my hands of these posers. I’ll just hang out in my little corner and make 3 digit purchases from AN per my usual.
Good column; as soon as I read the question I thought the same thing: “money.” The same goes for Japanese animation production studios, they’re too small and without the proper funds to pursue the legal efforts necessary to resolve such unfortunate cases.
Also, a solid example of the slow, sometimes ineffectual international legal process is to take a look at The Pirate Bay… ’nuff said.
I do however, thing one thing will be helpful to point out: some anime distributors, as implied, are still doing something; however small their efforts may seem when juxtaposed with the enormity of the problem. For example, I know FUNimation has a couple of people on staff precisely to pursue the unauthorized distribution of their content on the net, and they work tirelessly to do so.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t like it if someone broke into their house and stole their stuff…”
I’m so sick of this analogy to use in comparison. Listen, “stuff” is tangible goods that, once taken, is gone forever.
Distribution of digital materials is NOT tangible, and thus, money does become an issue when trying to shut down legitimate sites.
It would be, using this analogy, that the anime industry continues calling the cops because the stuff in their house gets stolen, but instantly re-appears. Think the cops are going to give a damn?
Piracy is here to stay and nothing is going to change this. I praise Coppola’s stance on this in that *trying* to work with sites like Narutofan are better than shutting them down, forcing these costs to consumers in the long run.
It’s a difficult business world for digital distributors (DVD or streaming) who once relied on a system that worked for its generation. But this world is gone forever.
Any company willing to adhere to the old world while remaining stagnant deserves all their profit losses. That’s a fact most won’t agree with, but as one person put it best: “Giving away my works is the best form of advertisement I’ve got, and it’s free. Now it rests upon my shoulders to figure out what these fans are willing to buy.”
This pertains to all industries, not just the anime.
So you’ll pardon me if I don’t buy into these CEOs whining about profit losses but refuse to adapt to the market that changed beneath them.
Oh, and before there’s any quips: Yes, I do buy both DVD and merchandise but stream for free because my wallet can only buy so much. Excuse me if I don’t like being called a damn pirate because I can’t buy everything out there.
There’s a bootlegger B&M/etailer in my city that survives exactly because they’re too small a fish to justify the cost of shutting them down. Of course, they still do damage to the local legit fan-owned retailer that’s less than a mile away.. I’m not aware of any digital offerings on their part, because I’ve never visited their website.
Pirating and streaming online both helps and hurts companies. Collecting anime dvds i’d consider my hobby. And much of what I bought has been influenced by things i have “illegally” watched off of streaming sites or torrents. More recent example is is Spice and Wolf. I’ve been watching the seasons since they began last year…but I can’t wait for the release in America because I’m buying it when it comes out! I know a lot of my friends end up seeing something online first, which then influences them to want to buy the dvds. For an industry that is tight on funds and can’t spend a lot on mainstream advertising. Pirating becomes somewhat like free advertisement. Sadly as some have said before hand it goes to far in many cases. Many of the companies though such as Funimation has started streaming the same shows they are trying to sell for free on thier website and on their youtube channel. But they have a couple commercials and as everyone has said earlier…its all about money lol.
If “piracy is here to stay”, then it’s all over and anime won’t be here to stay.
Neither will copyright, which basically kills any IP-based entertainment.
PetrifiedJello: It’s not really the perfect example, but how else can you relate to consumers? How about they try to sell a used DVD so someone, and that person decides to borrow it to see if they like it, copy it, and hand it back without paying a cent? Not a perfect example, but it’s the same basic idea. Sure, they aren’t losing the item, but they lose the sale, and that’s just that much less money going towards new anime.
It’s a slow process to evolve into the new realm of pay digital distribution, but anime companies are getting there. It doesn’t make piracy right, though.
Good for you for putting money into the industry; that’s exactly what we need. But just because you don’t have money doesn’t mean you should steal anime. It’s illegal no matter what the justification behind it. I can’t afford everything that’s out there (oh, how I’ve tried), but I will purchase it all eventually, or at least keep trying.