My thoughts on piracy are pretty straightforward. For shows & movies and whatnot, if something already has a legit DVD release, particularly one that’s relatively easily found and purchasable, then of course piracy is dumb, not cool, and thoroughly pointless.
However… sometimes things simply aren’t that cut and dry. Some things out there do NOT have any sort of an official release, or at least an official release that’s easy to come by.
There’s tons, literally
tons of anime out there (particularly much older, older titles) that have simply been out of print or are otherwise just flat out next to impossible to find, be it as imports or in a domestic release. I’m only pro “piracy” or file sharing in these sorts of
extreme circumstances where there’s really no other feasible alternative.
A good non-anime or movie example is video games, or emulation. I’m a huge fan of MAME because I was a major arcade gamer as a kid growing up. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I spent
far more video gaming time as a kid in arcades than I did at home with my consoles. Therefore there are a LOT of seriously obscure arcade titles that I otherwise would have no other means of playing outside of MAME, short of paying a former arcade operator/collector thousands upon thousands of dollars that I don’t have for the original cabinet.
Granted these days there are increasing legitimate alternatives for obtaining more popular arcade titles via arcade collection compilation games and xBox live arcade downloads, and I purchase such official re-releases eagerly as they come out to support old-school arcade gaming in today’s inexplicably anti-2D market as best I can… but these recent re-releases generally only cover major well known hits like Mortal Kombat and Fatal Fury and so forth. MAME & other forms of emulation are still pretty indispensable if you’re an arcade super-dork like me who’ll spend several hours playing something like Elevator Action 2 or The Revenge of Death Adder (aka obscure shit that’ll likely never see any sort of re-release in any capacity any time soon).
Anime especially can sometimes be
exceedingly tough to get around downloading for someone like me. There’s literally dozens upon dozens of some of my favorite anime from my childhood that I literally have NO other means of obtaining short of file sharing, such as subtitled versions of Violence Jack & Devilman. Many of these titles were either discontinued eons upon eons ago (like Ruminko Takahashi’s under appreciated The Laughing Target) or never released in the U.S. at all (like Riki-Oh).
Silent Mobius represents a rare instance; I was a HUGE fan of the original theatrical movie of that series as a kid. It had a dubbed VHS release back in the early 90’s for a little while, but was discontinued shortly after. I lost my old copy during a move, and trying to buy it back proved a futile endeavor; it’s literally one of the most preposterously
RARE VHS tapes you could ever attempt to track down, and on the next to impossible chance that one might come across a copy for sale, it usually would fetch astronomical triple digit asking prices from the seller. Even the Japanese import DVD is difficult to come across. So I had no other choice but to simply download a fansub of a Japanese DVD rip for a time.
Inexplicably, the movie is
finally getting a U.S. DVD release after all these many,
many long years. Why
now all of a sudden, I don’t know; but it just came out a few days ago, and you can be damn certain I’ll be grabbing a copy within the next few weeks and deleting that fansub off my hard drive. Point being, if something I had no choice but to download later on gets a DVD release, I have no issues whatsoever with snapping up a legit copy and trashing my no longer of any use bootleg.
I guess my view on piracy can be boiled down as thus; it should only really be considered “piracy” when you’re taking something for free that other people are supposed to be making money off of. If it’s something old or obscure enough to the point where no company or creator is really selling or profiting off it any longer, then who exactly are you “stealing” from in downloading it?
At least that’s my take on it.
Velasa wrote:Basically, what this lump of text means? The artist behind the work deserves to be paid for it. If something isn't commercially available/is impossible to find, DL is alright. If the company is dragging you through hell (hello, dub-only-anime-releases) and refuses to release the actual version, DL is fine. Fansubs are alright until the show's licensed, because before then it's like watching a show on TV (not available any other way) and after then it's just plain sniping it.
Basically, pay for what you own. The artist deserves it.
And Velasa sums it up better than I ever could.
EDIT: 666th post!
Man, I almost don't wana make another post now, 'cause then I'll no longer have the Number of the Beast under my Takagi icon.
But that’s neither here nor there.
) try to visit concerts instead, as the artists usually get more money then.