War on Fan subs

[Spriggan]

Well, fan subs have been around about as long as anime has been and it's something everyone's always taken for granted.  Now Bandi is deciding to legally fight fan subs and I think the era of free subtitles anime might be coming to an end.

With most major anime productions having the US rights sold before they finish production fan suber no longer have the "it's not copyrighted in the US" banner to hide behind and Bandi is a huge company (think the Japanese Hasbro or Martel) so this probably won't go away.

It will be interesting to see how the anime fan community responds to this, it is the Fan sub community that one could arguably say made anime as popular as it is today and a lot in the legal translation industry started there.  It will also be interesting to see if any other companies join Bandi in this.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/9204.html

[Linternet]

I think it'll be like every other crackdown in digital media.

You'll still be able to get free subtitled anime, it'll just be harder to come by.  The degree of difficulty will be proportionate to the lenghts the industry is willing to go to put a stop to it.

If the US versions are released fast enough and the translations remain faithful then people will just post the production versions.  If there is a considerable delay or the translations are heavily edited for whatever reason then the fansub community will continue its work.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

This isn't a big deal. ICv2 is just spinning it big to make a news story. This isn't a series the "ethical" fansubbers would have touched anyway, and it doesn't disturb their business as usual.

I like fansubs. I've watched quite a few fansubs of unlicensed series. But once a series gets licensed and is available in stores, it's hard to put the cat back in the bag, and some fansubbers don't play by the "rules." Also, there are lots of people selling fansubs and manga scans on e-bay and through certain websites, and those people should be shut down. I don't understand why certain anime companies aren't more active in prosecuting.