There's a new Anime convention this year, near where I live . . .

All Nines

. . . but it's run by a vocally anti-piracy organization, so I'd have to be a massive hypocrite to go.

glennmagusharvey

Which con is this?

All Nines

Animaine.

DYRE

99% of the people going there will at least implicitly support piracy, I'm sure of it.  And it's not like piracy is actually encouraged at any other anime convention.  That said, yeah, I'd probably feel weird about going to a con like that too.

glennmagusharvey

How are they "vocally anti-piracy"?

Also, don't they realize that the anime/manga localization industry in the United States is largely built upon a userbase that engages in piracy to some extent in the first place?

ClockworkUniverse

^Yeah, I'm pretty sure that every single localizer is fine with piracy of unlocalized stuff.

glennmagusharvey

Well, granted, there's a difference between downloading fansubs/scanlations of stuff that's not been released locally and downloading professionally-localized stuff.

Though both are technically still digital piracy.

Gelzo

Fuck the haters. Go out and enjoy yourself.

All Nines

Well, their credo is "In defense of anime"; one of their motives is to raise awareness of the decline in anime sales in America, and how that's due to piracy or something. I dunno.

It also looks boring, judging from the panels, and the locale is crappy, so I don't think I'll go anyway.

Gelzo

Why did your post make it seem as though you wanted to go, then?

All Nines

I hadn't found out what the location was yet, or what some of the panels are going to be; I just saw that an anime convention was coming up, and then that it's very anti-piracy.

DYRE

Well, granted, there's a difference between downloading fansubs/scanlations of stuff that's not been released locally and downloading professionally-localized stuff.

Eh.  There is a difference, but it's not like it's enough to make one of them better/worse than the other.  Anyone who pays money for an anime series (or even any non-anime movie or series) that they haven't at least watched some of first is just wasting their money.  Granted, I do that too sometimes, but it's not really a good habit.  Much better to pirate the show first and decide if it's worth buying after.  Of course, if it's not localized, then I guess you can feel slightly better about it if you end up not buying it afterward, but really, the fact that it's not localized doesn't in any way stop you from purchasing the original releases anyway.  And, really, it's actually better for the creators if you do, since they'll make more money off of sales of the Japanese releases than the licensed ones (though it's also expensive as hell so it's not really something I plan to do).

RedEyedAbyss

Isn't the idea behind piracy that you're not paying money to watch a cartoon on TV, so why should you pay to watch a Japanese cartoon? I suppose cartoons on TV get their money through advertising revenue, so I wonder how that would extrapolate to the Net.

ClockworkUniverse

^With ads on the net, naturally.

DYRE

^^ I dunno about other people, but I'd be pirating stuff whether it's on TV or not.  TV is inconvenient to watch, what with having to be there at a certain time and all.  Anyway, yeah, if a TV show wants to make money on the internet, they'll do it with internet ads of course.  Though, if it's anime, they actually don't make money from advertisements anyway.  They pretty much make all their money through merchandise sales, including DVDs and especially (as of recently) Blu-rays.

Malkavian

I bought GiTs S.A.C. at Comic Con today and Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya. I intended to buy Disappearance as soon as I finished it.

Of course there's plenty I haven't bought so that proves nothing.

I guess I just wanted to brag that  I have Disappearance on Blu-ray.

Forzare

Lucky bastard.

Malkavian

I was going to buy TTGL but it was $45 as opposed to GiTS' $25 and I can always watch that on Netfilx Instant Queue.

DYRE

I just got Disappearance on DVD today.  Would have gotten it on Blu-ray, but I don't actually have a Blu-ray player, and the cover art for the BD/DVD combo has that ugly blue header on it, so... nope.

Malkavian

My version is the combo and I don't really care about packaging as much as being able to play it wherever I go.

DYRE

Fair enough.  I do kinda care about packaging though, since it's something I'm going to look at a lot, whereas the actual contents don't really matter so much since I already have fansubs anyway so I don't particularly need a DVD/BD release anyway.  Or something.  I dunno.

Malkavian

wait... wut? You want the actual product.... to what... basically sit on your shelf and look pretty?

DYRE

Sort of?  I don't gain anything from buying a DVD/Blu-ray/whatever, since whatever it is, I could just get it for free anyway, and probably better quality too, since official subtitles tend to suck in comparison to fansubs.  So I buy them to support the companies and also because collecting stuff I like is fun.  So it might as well have nice packaging, since it's not like the content particularly matters.  Or something.

Malkavian

That's... okay, man. Whatever you feel gets you your money's worth.

All Nines

You think that's bad? I've spent nearly $600 on my collection of all the One Piece volumes released in America so far. Though I do go back and reread some on occasion, though.

DYRE

^^ Eh.  I don't see anything wrong with it.  Certainly better than pirating everything and never buying any official releases, right?  I mean, it's very difficult to justify buying any anime if I only consider the actual content I'm getting.

That said, I will actually be watching the Disappearance DVD at least once or twice, if only because I don't feel like downloading a dual-audio version of it.

CommandoDude

" one of their motives is to raise awareness of the decline in anime sales in America, and how that's due to piracy or something."

Maybe if those companies charged reasonable prices, people would be inclined to buy.

DYRE

I don't think the prices are particularly unreasonable.  Unless it's like Bandai Entertainment charging $30 for 3 episodes or something, but even then they eventually rerelease everything as a box set.  Certainly they're nothing compared to the Japanese prices.

Malkavian

^^Dude, anime is cheaper than it's ever been before in the states. I picked up all of S.A.C. for $25. Most American tv shows are way more expensive.

Besides, it is their product. They have the right to demand whatever price for a pure luxury item they want.

Honestly, I'm tired of the rationalizations behind pirating. At least I admit that I'm stealing.

DYRE

Besides, it is their product. They have the right to demand whatever price for a pure luxury item they want.

This is a shitty argument, really.  They can charge whatever they want, sure, but the consumer also has the right to not buy a product if they think it costs too much money, so "it's their product" doesn't really work as a counterargument to "this costs more than I want to pay for this product."

Otherwise though, yeah.  Anime isn't very expensive, at least in the USA.

Malkavian

Yeah, but you can make the choice not to buy it. Making the choice to go online and get a product you haven't paid for is another step.

Which isn't to say that I think anime distributors should charge crazy prices, I just don't think that luxury items being 'too expensive' is a justification to steal.