Why are so many DB creators becoming subject to Toei's wrath?

[MCDaveG]

I think a major disconnect is the idea that people simply aren't allowed to ever use footage, audio, etc., to help demonstrate and prop up their overall discussion.

It'd be like making an academic paper, but you could never cite sources from other people's works to support your thesis. Actually, scratch that, it'd be like doing an academic paper on the topic of something, but then you were never allowed to use citations from any kind of academic works that actually have solid information about that topic.

That's not illegal, and it can be monetized.

And what's the real difference, anyways? That the cited info, quotes, etc., in our discussion belong to some corporation? Is it because it's a visual medium and not just a bunch of quoted text?

If that's the case, then clearly there needs to be a re-examination of what the world considers "infringement" vs. "research". Imagine how many papers, journals, etc., would be taken down if they were subject to the same strict guidelines as a YouTuber. It's a stupid double-standard.

It's not so simple https://www.enago.com/academy/intellect ... d-to-know/

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I think a major disconnect is the idea that people simply aren't allowed to ever use footage, audio, etc., to help demonstrate and prop up their overall discussion.

It'd be like making an academic paper, but you could never cite sources from other people's works to support your thesis. Actually, scratch that, it'd be like doing an academic paper on the topic of something, but then you were never allowed to use citations from any kind of academic works that actually have solid information about that topic.

That's not illegal, and it can be monetized.

And what's the real difference, anyways? That the cited info, quotes, etc., in our discussion belong to some corporation? Is it because it's a visual medium and not just a bunch of quoted text?

If that's the case, then clearly there needs to be a re-examination of what the world considers "infringement" vs. "research". Imagine how many papers, journals, etc., would be taken down if they were subject to the same strict guidelines as a YouTuber. It's a stupid double-standard.

It's not so simple https://www.enago.com/academy/intellect ... d-to-know/

Yeah I know how complex it is, that's why the current system is bullsh*t.

Nobody's stealing anything for the most part, they're just doing what free speech reporters have doing for literal decades. The whole point of the fair use argument in the U.S. is that fair use is part of free speech, the ability to openly speak out against something without censorship. The addendum of fair use is to protect the ability to do this by giving leeway to people's ability to support their free speech with materials and knowledge that may not necessarily belong to them but is necessary to support their discourse.

We're not talking about taking something that belongs to someone else and then just making money off of it wholly; we're talking about creating an entirely unique product distinct from whatever the source material used to be. That's just basic business sense since originality doesn't exist anymore.

[NeverRamza]

we're talking about Toei, the same company that has been pushing shows like GeGeGe no Kitaro, Galaxy Express 999, and Dr. Slump here in the U.S. to no fanfare. Toei (or someone) is fronting the money on these shows with no audience here so they're gong to need all the help they can get. A grassroots fan effort would only help. Many anime companies still send free screeners to sites like AnimeNewsNetwork which likely get less traffic than a popular YouTube video so I would assume the word of mouth still has some value.

Those shows are ant compared to what TOEI hold IP wise or Media franchise wise Toei hold multiple multibillion dollar properties:-
Dragon Ball- 27.7 billion
Super sentai- 15.6 billion
Sailor Moon-13.9 billion
One piece- 12.7 billion
Pre cure- 8.93 billion
so they dont care about any of that stuff.

It would be in Toei's best interest to keep as many strong pillars as possible and leave open the potential for as many new ones as they can. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Toei themselves somewhere in the 2000's started an endeavor of releasing subtitled Galaxy Express 999 and Digimon without going through the traditional licensors at the time (my searching the news archives of AnimeNewsNetwork is failing me at the moment). They're also doing deals with CrunchyRoll, Netflix, and Tubi to release GeGeGe no KItaro, Saint Seiya, and Dr. Slump. You'd think someone at that company would prefer those series to do better rather than worse, even if it's through outsourcing so that maybe in the future, they can join the high ranks. After all, companies don't want to just make some money, they want to make all the money.

[Yuji]

@MCDaveG and @Jord

The sooner people learn to distinguish law and ethics the better.

[MCDaveG]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.
Inspiration on the other way, is something completely else, for example, Naruto.
Kishimoto was inspired by Dragon Ball but introduced a completely different story, art style but uses simmilar story tropes and pays homage to Son Goku with orange and blue pallete in Naruto's clothing.

That's how it's done

[Yuji]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

If it is transformative enough, why not? That's how it worked for centuries before copyright law existed and nobody really had much of an issue with it.

[VegettoEX]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

Forgive me if I missed it, but are you honestly saying that art critique should not exist as a paid industry? You've noted that you can't understand how other people can't understand things, and this is it for me: I can't understand how you might think this.

Also wanted to mention that I saw "Creative Commons" mentioned earlier, and if Journey to the West is CC... and... just no!

Creative Commons ≠ Public Domain

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that assists creators by outlining a series of possible/suggested licenses they can use when distributing their works. These include things like "my product can be freely distributed, but must always have attribution included" or "my product can be freely distributed, and it can also be remixed in any way, but must always have attribution included" or "this is free just take it and do whatever".

Journey to the West is a 16th century piece of work that predates Creative Commons by... uhhh... centuries. It almost certainly, however, applies under most international copyright guidelines as a piece of public domain work: that is to say, it's so old, and has so outlived its original creator's lifespan, that in effect anyone can take its characters, story, world, etc. and either directly release it as-is, or create an entirely new version of it. (Check out my article about other versions of the JttW story in anime/manga.)

And just because JttW itself is public domain and freely usable doesn't mean that someone else's translation of it, for example, is free to use and distribute! You can't just pass around copies of Anthony C. Yu's revised translation just because the base underlying work is public domain; Yu still owns the rights to his new, original work of translation.

[MCDaveG]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

Forgive me if I missed it, but are you honestly saying that art critique should not exist as a paid industry? You've noted that you can't understand how other people can't understand things, and this is it for me: I can't understand how you might think this.

Also wanted to mention that I saw "Creative Commons" mentioned earlier, and if Journey to the West is CC... and... just no!

Creative Commons ≠ Public Domain

Nope, never said that actually and I don't think that at all, I will try to explain and breakdown the apples and oranges here from the discussion with what I think overall.
About creative commons, my mistake, yes you are right, public domain.

Art critics and journalism in general - paid profession where you can cover anything. But you are paid for your own work.
Most of these people on youtube cover their tracks with using limited amount of stills from movies and shows as they are not asociated with larger entity mostly, plus free or licensed stock music.
I have nothing against that as I am watching a lot of channels like this, including Star Wars Explained and they operate within the rules and ask for permissions, it's like skating on thin ice when you exclusively cover just one franchise.

Many of them also state exclusively, to support their work of coverage through patreon, exclaiming that it is purely educational work and reviews with patreon having a policy on sending DMCAs and filing complaints in case of infringement.
That way they are out of the Youtube loop.

But hell, god help me if I was against the freedom of speech.

[Jord]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

If it is transformative enough, why not? That's how it worked for centuries before copyright law existed and nobody really had much of an issue with it.

That's just it. It's not transformative at all. It's literally a shirt with a drawing picture of Goku drawn exactly in the style of the anime. No unique style. No unique pose. It's a copycat.

[VegettoEX]

Art critics and journalism in general - paid profession where you can cover anything. But you are paid for your own work.
Most of these people on youtube cover their tracks with using limited amount of stills from movies and shows as they are not asociated with larger entity mostly, plus free or licensed stock music.
I have nothing against that as I am watching a lot of channels like this, including Star Wars Explained and they operate within the rules and ask for permissions, it's like skating on thin ice when you exclusively cover just one franchise.

Many of them also state exclusively, to support their work of coverage through patreon, exclaiming that it is purely educational work and reviews with patreon having a policy on sending DMCAs and filing complaints in case of infringement.
That way they are out of the Youtube loop.

But hell, god help me if I was against the freedom of speech.

This just strikes me as old-fashioned, out-of-touch, behind-the-times, etc.

Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV... there's a direct throughline of technological advances and the way we both create our critiques and distribute our critiques. What makes "YouTube" (let's just say "online video distribution" to separate it from the corporate entity) any different? The fact that it's often independent, unsupported by a larger company bankrolling the actual critic? But so what?

Again, strikes me as old-fashioned, out-of-touch, behind-the-times, etc. (I say this myself as someone who really doesn't watch YouTube, really doesn't like YouTube, and doesn't see myself really changing my position on this.)

Another crux of your argument seems to be "focusing on a single intellectual property", and I agree that all eggs in one basket certainly makes it all more difficult, but I think that's a separate issue from "wholly independent art critiques should be allowed to exist as a paid industry on new methods of technological distribution".

[Yuji]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

If it is transformative enough, why not? That's how it worked for centuries before copyright law existed and nobody really had much of an issue with it.

That's just it. It's not transformative at all. It's literally a shirt with a drawing picture of Goku drawn exactly in the style of the anime. No unique style. No unique pose. It's a copycat.

Who drew and colored the Goku picture? Was it anyone affiliated with the series or was it Mark himself?

This is rhetorical by the way. It's not Toei's art and Mark isn't stealing any money away from Toei because no identical product exists being sold by them.

[Mr_CINDER]

I don't see nothing ethical about cashing on somebody else's ideas.

Forgive me if I missed it, but are you honestly saying that art critique should not exist as a paid industry? You've noted that you can't understand how other people can't understand things, and this is it for me: I can't understand how you might think this.

Also wanted to mention that I saw "Creative Commons" mentioned earlier, and if Journey to the West is CC... and... just no!

Creative Commons ≠ Public Domain

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that assists creators by outlining a series of possible/suggested licenses they can use when distributing their works. These include things like "my product can be freely distributed, but must always have attribution included" or "my product can be freely distributed, and it can also be remixed in any way, but must always have attribution included" or "this is free just take it and do whatever".

Journey to the West is a 16th century piece of work that predates Creative Commons by... uhhh... centuries. It almost certainly, however, applies under most international copyright guidelines as a piece of public domain work: that is to say, it's so old, and has so outlived its original creator's lifespan, that in effect anyone can take its characters, story, world, etc. and either directly release it as-is, or create an entirely new version of it. (Check out my article about other versions of the JttW story in anime/manga.)

And just because JttW itself is public domain and freely usable doesn't mean that someone else's translation of it, for example, is free to use and distribute! You can't just pass around copies of Anthony C. Yu's revised translation just because the base underlying work is public domain; Yu still owns the rights to his new, original work of translation.

Toriyama took inspiration from journey to the west The same way George lucas took inspiration from Akira kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, flash gordon, DUNE when creatiing starwars,and ultimately they became their own thing.The concept of dragon ball came from japanese novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden.

[VegettoEX]

Toriyama took inspiration from journey to the west The same way George lucas took inspiration from Akira kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, flash gordon, DUNE when creatiing starwars,and ultimately they became their own thing.The concept of dragon ball came from japanese novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden.

Y-Yeah... you're not telling me anything I didn't already know here, though...? Not sure what the point of this is.

[Desassina]

Elevator pitch kind of response: "Do you want to sell art? Make your own! It's not popular? Get it to be! Could you not be another artist? You could! So don't copy his work."

Is anyone mentioned in this thread repackaging Dragon Ball as it is without any changes whatsoever? No? Then they're selling their own art, as always has been the standard through history that anyone can alter someone else's work.

What qualifies as "any changes whatsoever"? The same character in the same form, drawn in a style that resembles the original, only now it's by someone else? My post was, perhaps, off topic and beyond the scope of this thread, because I was addressing originality, but got caught in the middle of legal disputes. There's reason for somebody to take his work being reproduced by someone else personally, but not to take these matters into court unless it violates some patent, since both were the case in the creation of Pong by Ralph Baer and Atari (for example). You took it out of context when I was the one who posted by disregarding this thread's. I'm sorry.

[TheMajinRedComet]

I do not consider this a free speech issue. TOEI is not stopping people from discussing or evaluating thier IP. More importantly the government is not restricting DB discussions. No one that I know of is getting a copyright strike because they are talking about DB. They are using examples from someone's else product weather it's video or audio. There is always a chance the owners are going to come after you.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I do not consider this a free speech issue. TOEI is not stopping people from discussing or evaluating thier IP. More importantly the government is not restricting DB discussions. No one that I know of is getting a copyright strike because they are talking about DB. They are using examples from someone's else product weather it's video or audio. There is always a chance the owners are going to come after you.

And that's the other side of the debate, that the system shouldn't have come to this and should be amended and updated.

Because in the internet age, it's nearly impossible to put out video-based content that discusses a given IP in-depth without using extensive footage, imagery, audio, etc., to help illustrate the point and provide a backdrop so that the video isn't barebones still images entirely unrelated to the topic at hand as the primary narrator talks; it's just not feasible to garner an actual audience on an economically viable level. People can talk for ages about whether this style of content should be viable or not, but the reality is that this is the modern content most people are consuming nowadays, and regulations need to support and be relevant to it.

Copyright, fair use, and whatever else countries have for related policies haven't caught up with the times and are severely outdated for dealing with the realities of modern content production that isn't at the studio level. Censoring the ability to freely use content to illustrate your point is most definitely a free speech issue, even if one's income is involved, because at a baseline level that's what the entire copyright vs. fair use debate stems from.

Japan in particular is extremely behind the times, being heavily in favour of author exclusivity compared to the U.S.'s favourable (but still inadequate) levels of fair use and administration of this.

I think it's a cardinal sin that we still have to put up with this archaic BS.

[Mr_CINDER]

Y-Yeah... you're not telling me anything I didn't already know here, though...? Not sure what the point of this is.

My bad I forgot to mention that it could be TOEI saw this merch site https://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/Tot ... c1k5_8mql4 that mark opened and since its a one to one copy of Ultra instinct Goku and used it without their permission they pulled off his channel's videos , this could be the same reason they took down his goku drawing videos, although I could be wrong.

[capsulecorp]

The amount of enthusiasm surrounding this issue really speaks to the power of parasocial relationships. If you folks really want to get fired up about intellectual property issues and copyright, there are a lot more clear-cut, unjust and frankly more interesting cases out there.

[PurestEvil]

The amount of enthusiasm surrounding this issue really speaks to the power of parasocial relationships. If you folks really want to get fired up about intellectual property issues and copyright, there are a lot more clear-cut, unjust and frankly more interesting cases out there.

Wow, pack it up guys, apparently we are not allowed to care about more than one issue at once

[capsulecorp]

The amount of enthusiasm surrounding this issue really speaks to the power of parasocial relationships. If you folks really want to get fired up about intellectual property issues and copyright, there are a lot more clear-cut, unjust and frankly more interesting cases out there.

Wow, pack it up guys, apparently we are not allowed to care about more than one issue at once

No one can stop anyone else from caring about things. A lot of the assumptions flying around don't really suggest a lot of familiarity with these issues though.