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

[FPSSJ4_Goku]

Recently, many Dragon Ball creators have gotten copyright strike after copyright strike from Toei due to their content. It started off with Dragon Ball Absalon being cancelled and Deliverance being copyright claimed because it looks kinda like DBS Broly. Then some Dragon Ball fan manga creators were made examples out of. And now, Totally Not Mark on YouTube just got 155 of his videos taken down, losing three years of hard work. Nine of them were drawing videos, and he tries to make all of his videos fall under fair use, since they're already transformative. (Link to video in response here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaeqXWzaizY)

But why? Why is Toei doing this now? What do they get out of destroying the livelihoods of several people? Why were they cool with it when Dragon Ball was essentially dead? I think this is unjust, and those who have suffered under Toei's wrath deserve justice.

[coola]

Toei likes to do such purges from time to time. Unfortunately, that's why you shouldn't make Youtube your main source of income, ignoring unfair copyright strikes, Youtube rules keep changing, what make you money one day, will be banned another. And there is not a thing you can do about it.

[Adamant]

Made a post about this kind of stuff a while back.

Fan art is generally allowed in the manga world to certain extent (for example Comiket wouldn't really be possible if doujinshi based on the existing series would be banned). It keeps the fans happy, and doesn't do that much harm since for example a porn parody generally isn't sold by the same number of units as a regular tankoubon would. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yes. In specific, Japanese rights holders and Japanese fandoms generally operate with an unofficial agreement that while all these fan products aren't actually legal, as long as the fans keep to their fandom circles and in general keep quiet about their works, the rights holders will just pretend they never see any and everyone's happy. Fans get to make fanwork and share it with other fans without the rights holders coming knocking, and the rights holders get happy fans that want to support the franchise with their money.

What TFS is doing is so RIDICULOUSLY far removed from what's considered normal courtesy and acceptable fan behavior there's absolutely no reason for Toei to treat them with anything but contempt. Had they been located in Japan and thus caught Toei's eye earlier, they'd have been shut down HARD long ago with how they're acting.

While you should give the entire thread a read, these "creators" are most likely behaving in ways both Toei and any other Japanese entity considers extremely inappropriate, so they should've probably done their research before gambling their income on making money off other people's copyright. I have a feeling exactly 0 of these creators are actually Japanese.

[WittyUsername]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

[Demon Prince Piccolo]

Spoiler:

Made a post about this kind of stuff a while back.

Fan art is generally allowed in the manga world to certain extent (for example Comiket wouldn't really be possible if doujinshi based on the existing series would be banned). It keeps the fans happy, and doesn't do that much harm since for example a porn parody generally isn't sold by the same number of units as a regular tankoubon would. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yes. In specific, Japanese rights holders and Japanese fandoms generally operate with an unofficial agreement that while all these fan products aren't actually legal, as long as the fans keep to their fandom circles and in general keep quiet about their works, the rights holders will just pretend they never see any and everyone's happy. Fans get to make fanwork and share it with other fans without the rights holders coming knocking, and the rights holders get happy fans that want to support the franchise with their money.

What TFS is doing is so RIDICULOUSLY far removed from what's considered normal courtesy and acceptable fan behavior there's absolutely no reason for Toei to treat them with anything but contempt. Had they been located in Japan and thus caught Toei's eye earlier, they'd have been shut down HARD long ago with how they're acting.

While you should give the entire thread a read, these "creators" are most likely behaving in ways both Toei and any other Japanese entity considers extremely inappropriate, so they should've probably done their research before gambling their income on making money off other people's copyright. I have a feeling exactly 0 of these creators are actually Japanese.

Definitely one of the more level-headed, factually-based responses I've seen on this subject (in general, not just on this post) thus far. Well said.

[JulieYBM]

Toei doesn't like independent outlets having control over the information of their properties because that means the narrative about their work can be altered from what they want to set. Furthermore, the success of independent media creators threaten corporations' ability to control the lives of people since said people are no longer a part of their corporation. So, said YouTubers are committing the cardinal sin of not being controlled by a corporation as well as controlling the information about that corporation, independent of said corporation.

[ABED]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Making a living being an anime FAN?

[WittyUsername]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Making a living being an anime FAN?

Yeah? That’s basically what the YouTubers who focus their channels on discussing anime are doing.

[goku the krump dancer]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Which is interesting considering that doujinshi not only exist but Toei hired a Doujin artist to continue one of, if not their most popular franchise.

[ABED]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Making a living being an anime FAN?

Yeah? That’s basically what the YouTubers who focus their channels on discussing anime are doing.

That seems so ridiculous to me that one would think to make that their primary source of income or that there are enough people that give a damn about some random opinions on the internet that someone could make a living talking about what they like. I'm also suspicious that anyone is making an actual living like that and it's not just an extra source of income, but not the primary.

I've seen a number of these videos and so many of them have so little of anything substantive to say on their subjects.

[WittyUsername]

Making a living being an anime FAN?

Yeah? That’s basically what the YouTubers who focus their channels on discussing anime are doing.

That seems so ridiculous to me that one would think to make that their primary source of income or that there are enough people that give a damn about some random opinions on the internet that someone could make a living talking about what they like. I'm also suspicious that anyone is making an actual living like that and it's not just an extra source of income, but not the primary.

I've seen a number of these videos and so many of them have so little of anything substantive to say on their subjects.

Lots of people on YouTube make their livings talking about or parodying other people’s work, regardless of whether or not they have anything insightful to say. Why do you think CinemaSins is worth millions of dollars?

[DBZAOTA482]

Because the execs of Toei have sand in their you know what. They're eating that world-class Dragon Ball buffet and don't wanna share.

[JulieYBM]

Plenty of magazines in Japan existed during the Anime Boom where anime fans...wrote about anime. They made their livings literally by being anime fans. Hell, in the US we had Animato--a magazine for animation fans! Moving this over to YouTubers makes sense for the change over to new media.

The fact that corporations want to cut the legs off of anime fans by making it impossible to live reporting on and criticizing anime is pretty shitty.

[ABED]

Yeah? That’s basically what the YouTubers who focus their channels on discussing anime are doing.

That seems so ridiculous to me that one would think to make that their primary source of income or that there are enough people that give a damn about some random opinions on the internet that someone could make a living talking about what they like. I'm also suspicious that anyone is making an actual living like that and it's not just an extra source of income, but not the primary.

I've seen a number of these videos and so many of them have so little of anything substantive to say on their subjects.

Lots of people on YouTube make their livings talking about or parodying other people’s work, regardless of whether or not they have anything insightful to say. Why do you think CinemaSins is worth millions of dollars?

Fair enough, and cinemasins has done real damage to the discourse of film criticism. Instead of talking about anything substantive, film criticism these days seems to boil down to "plot holes".

I think these companies need to be more judicious in who they go after but ruining some youtuber's "living" ain't high on my list of reasons why.

The fact that corporations

Does your hatred also extend to LLC's?

[Adamant]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Which is interesting considering that doujinshi not only exist but Toei hired a Doujin artist to continue one of, if not their most popular franchise.

Toyble/Toyotaro was doing non-profit Dragonball fanwork as a hobby and sharing it with other fans under the radar. Toei, valuing the fan community and understanding the importance of keeping fans happy, had an unspoken agreement with him that if he keeps his copyright infringing under the radar, they'll pretend they don't see it and everyone's happy.
These "professional anime fans" mentioned in this thread, on the other hand, literally made it their day job to scream "look at me, I'm infringing on Dragonball copyright, give me money!" at the top of their lungs to attract as much attention as possible. Not only could Toei not pretend they never saw this extremely loud self promotion, they'd also consider these people to be rude profiteering pirates that refused their implied offer of mutual respect to begin with.

Plenty of magazines in Japan existed during the Anime Boom where anime fans...wrote about anime. They made their livings literally by being anime fans. Hell, in the US we had Animato--a magazine for animation fans! Moving this over to YouTubers makes sense for the change over to new media.

The fact that corporations want to cut the legs off of anime fans by making it impossible to live reporting on and criticizing anime is pretty shitty.

Toei isn't going to come knocking if you write an article about Dragonball or upload a video of yourself talking about it. That's not what any of these people were doing.

[WittyUsername]

I feel like at the very least, using small clips from Dragon Ball while analyzing and talking about it should be fair game, especially if you’re not even playing the audio. Then again, I’ve only seen a couple of Totally Not Mark’s videos, so what do I know?

[The Monkey King]

While you should give the entire thread a read, these "creators" are most likely behaving in ways both Toei and any other Japanese entity considers extremely inappropriate, so they should've probably done their research before gambling their income on making money off other people's copyright. I have a feeling exactly 0 of these creators are actually Japanese.

In the case of Totally Not Mark, Toei Animation have contacted him in the past in order for him to help promote their brand. Surely Toei couldn't have found his content that offensive? To work with him and then block over 150 of his videos is pretty gross.

https://youtu.be/WaeqXWzaizY?t=351

These YouTubers bring in a lot of new fans to certain anime properties, we are in the modern age of internet influencers, a healthy symbiotic relationship can exist between corporate entity and content creator. Many YouTubers who cover copyrighted works have said they wouldn't mind paying some kind of "YouTuber Licence" to the copyright holder to use clips in their videos, just for the peace of mind. Maybe 10-20% ad revenue would be appropriate, promoting affiliate links in the description to support the properties officially (Crunchyroll, Viz, Netflix etc.) I feel a system like that will be more common place in the future.

American fair use vs Japanese lack of fair use will still be a headache for some time from the looks of things.

[goku the krump dancer]

Japanese copyright laws sound like a nightmare for anyone who wants to make a living being an anime fan.

Which is interesting considering that doujinshi not only exist but Toei hired a Doujin artist to continue one of, if not their most popular franchise.

Toyble/Toyotaro was doing non-profit Dragonball fanwork as a hobby and sharing it with other fans under the radar. Toei, valuing the fan community and understanding the importance of keeping fans happy, had an unspoken agreement with him that if he keeps his copyright infringing under the radar, they'll pretend they don't see it and everyone's happy.
These "professional anime fans" mentioned in this thread, on the other hand, literally made it their day job to scream "look at me, I'm infringing on Dragonball copyright, give me money!" at the top of their lungs to attract as much attention as possible. Not only could Toei not pretend they never saw this extremely loud self promotion, they'd also consider these people to be rude profiteering pirates that refused their implied offer of mutual respect to begin with.

Hmm the more you know. I guess every company in Japan is different, since according to this little article I just read, Doujinshi as far as Japan goes are in a rare Legally Grey area where its like on one hand "Sure Big Corp could sue the pants off the sap who made money from his what if comic about Goku turning himself into a Sentai Mecha because they legally don't have permission to." and on the other hand its like " Why bother? Most Doujin artist dont make any real money anyway so its not worth it and best case scenario it gets more eyes on the official product which means more money for the Big Wigs regardless so its a win/win"

Here's a link if anyone wants to breeze through it :

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/doujinshi-definition/


Funny enough, Japan seems to view Doujinshi as "Parodies" as opposed to plagiarized material.. Got a little kick out of that because of the recent DB-Abridged thread lol.

[Adamant]

Hmm the more you know. I guess every company in Japan is different, since according to this little article I just read, Doujinshi as far as Japan goes are in a rare Legally Grey area where its like on one hand "Sure Big Corp could sue the pants off the sap who made money from his what if comic about Goku turning himself into a Sentai Mecha because they legally don't have permission to." and on the other hand its like " Why bother? Most Doujin artist dont make any real money anyway so its not worth it and best case scenario it gets more eyes on the official product which means more money for the Big Wigs regardless so its a win/win"

Yeah. As I said, fan creators keep themselves to their under-the-radar fan communities and treat their stuff as "things to share with fans for no profit", rightsholders pretend they're unaware of these fan creations, and everyone's happy. This is how Toei expects fans to behave, and as long as they behave this way, Toei won't come after them. These Youtube self-promotors did very much not behave this way, so Toei did not treat them the same way they treat the fan communities.

[jjgp1112]

Making a living being an anime FAN?

Yeah? That’s basically what the YouTubers who focus their channels on discussing anime are doing.

That seems so ridiculous to me that one would think to make that their primary source of income or that there are enough people that give a damn about some random opinions on the internet that someone could make a living talking about what they like. I'm also suspicious that anyone is making an actual living like that and it's not just an extra source of income, but not the primary.

I've seen a number of these videos and so many of them have so little of anything substantive to say on their subjects.

The entire economy and stardom of Influencers will never not be the strangest fucking thing to me. Idiocracy shit.

Then again, my career choice actively supports, leverages, and collaborates with these guys so who the fuck am I to talk