Busting Barriers: Fansubbing and Distribution in the Age of ‘Piracy’

Interest in faucets of other world cultures has been an active gear for international trade, tourism travel, and educational relocation for almost as long as humans have existed in the universe. Regardless of clashing trends in fashion, ideals, political views and processes, choice in cuisine, religious beliefs, or spoken language people have always been interested in other parts of our vast world. But then a problem emerges…how much is it going to cost? How long will it take to get there? Is anyone actually interested? As with most things, it costs money to keep running, clean, or accessible to the public. Some people want to travel to some far away land and see a landmark, eat unique dishes with the locals, or even just catch up with the family…but not everyone can afford buying a plane ticket to such places. Or afford to learn how to speak the native tongue. Fansubbing, the activity of placing an aftermarket textual overlay on top of a video stream for the sole purpose of translating any audio or video contained within into another language by a member or group of members of the fan community, can trace it roots back to the 1970’s[1] when on military personal from the United States brought or sent VHS tapes home to friends and family from Japan, sparking interest in Anime in the United States. First it started off with small AV club showings in High Schools and Universities. Members would gather together to watch the tapes they received, but would always run into the same issue: What were these people saying? It was one thing to have a person in the room who perhaps spoke Japanese to explain it (perhaps poorly), but it was something else to be able to hear the characters and be able to follow along with text. Around that time, members of clubs who had good or general knowledge of the Japanese language got together with members familiar with video editing to form subbing groups with the sole purpose of translating shows into various languages for others to enjoy. The practice of this form of subbing was not popular until the late 90’s due to line speeds of the Internet from that period being awfully slow, usually taking a video WEEKS to download, as well as the expenses and/or availability of the necessary hardware needed to create the subtitles. Alongside the activities of fansubbers were the risks of businesses attempting to make profit with the broadcasting of Anime on cable television networks. Companies had tried time and again in the past [] to show that Anime was the next big thing in the U.S. …but with a nearly non-existent market niche doing so was nearly impossible.

Toei Animation produced an anime series based on the manga chapters, also titled Dragon Ball. The series premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on February 26, 1986 and ran until April 12, 1989, lasting 153 episodes.
Harmony Gold USA licensed the series for an English-language release in the United States in 1989. In their voice dub of the series, Harmony Gold renamed almost all of the characters; for example, Goku was renamed "Zero." This dub version was test-marketed in several cities, but was cancelled before it could be broadcast to the general public.
(Wikipedia, “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball#Anime_series”)

Anime began making a headway on broadcast Television around the mid to late 90’s with the success of shows such as Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, and others paving the way to what looked like a solid holding on American television…but plenty of fans had gripes about how the production companies were handling shows. Poor dubbing by studios, translations by professional translators in some cases ruining plot points of entire shows, and excessive censorship due to FCC regulations and overall American societally differences in acceptable content that should be allowed to be show to children under certain ages caused fans to seek other alternatives of watching their favorite titles. In one such instance, the producer of a popular voiced his displeasure at the extensive changes that were made to the show. “It is absolutely horrible! They did an enormous and aberrant censorship; they cut Hisaishi’s pieces of music, [not to mention] the changed dialogues. It was a great error of Studio Ghibli and we haven’t given broadcast rights to foreign countries since, and we’ll never again give such rights without an attentive examination of the conditions beforehand. For that matter, the international rights for Nausicaä given to the U.S.A. will be over in 2 or 3 years. All these movies are grounded strongly in Japanese culture and are not conceived with an eye towards exportation. Censoring them is worse than betraying them.” (qtd. Takahata, 12)

Fansubbing began seeing a raise of membership due to the seemingly constant botching of English dubbed distributions, so much so that it was seen by license holders as copyright infringement when people weren’t purchasing their distributions on DVD and instead downloading episodes with subtitles from fansub groups. While many groups asked for donations to help with the costs of hosting download servers and web hosting, some groups worked fully out of pocket and only did it for the small amount of notoriety or ‘fame’ that was attributed to making good or quick releases, and others (during the earlier days of subbing). Regardless of this, Funimation and other distributers attempted to open litigation on individuals or groups of individuals [3] in an attempt to stem the flow of users attempting to download from subbing groups. In one such instance, tying in the “free adverting” of how many programs get fanbases long before they are dubbed into English thus removing some of the harder work at finding who to advertise to by U.S. companies, a company by the name of Urban Vision sent a subbing group named Anime Junkies a “Cease and Desist” order for the distribution of the Ninja Scroll (TV) series for which they held the distribution rights for in the US. The response by Anime Junkies was somewhat typical of people who had put in time and effort into their practice and another party come in to ruin the parade…with an extremely heavy dose of “internet” contained within…

“Just make sure your Ninja Scroll release is not as shitty as all your other releases. Your pretty [expletive][sic] dumb if you think you can stop fansubs, their [sic] are 3 other groups doing this series too. You gonna go cry to more fans that do it for fun, because[sic] your[sic] spending your money on something you know people can get for free. Leave fansubs to fans or do it for free yourselves. All you are doing is getting rich off a series we helped make popular.
Cause [sic] right now you have A LOT [sic] of pissed off people, that are mad at you for making it so they cannot watch it weekly as it airs in japan, and these are the same people you are trying to sell this to. They will buy DVD if they want, and more will buy because [sic] they have seen the fansubs and know they will enjoy it. Who the fudge [sic] are you anyways to buy a series we were doing?
We are already sending this series out to more people than your sorry ass company ever will, why do you feel the need to release it to people? What are you gaining, besides enemy's [sic]. If you really want to sub, come to IRC and do it, charge if you want to. But then see what it is like to not have your
$$ backing you, see how long you [expletive][sic] last with your 3 episodes a month.
And if your[sic] gonna do dubs, then don't worry about our [expletive][sic] subs, people who want dubs will not care about fansubs at all. You knew we were subbing, you know people fansub... So why the fudge did you start a DVD company? Cause you are just fansubbers with rich daddies?
Anyways I have wasted enough time with you sorry fucks.

Rot in Hell,
Me

P.S. you [sic] stopped us on Ninja Scroll, cause I know pieces [sic] of shit like you that only care about money will try to get the law involved, but remember[sic] some group somewhere will release Ninja Scroll, and they will recive [sic] a lot of support from us.
Have a nice day.”
(Online Forum post by “Tempest”, Official Anime News Network (ANN) CEO and ANN Publisher quoting verbatim an email forwarded from Urban Vision to ANN from a member of “Anime Junkies” Fansubbing group. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=19617#19617) The group complied with the order, but not after giving Urban Vision a teenage style tongue-lashing which stated in summary “Why are you acting now? What did we do to you?”. The problem was that Urban Vision had acquired the rights to distribute Ninja Scroll long before the Japanese version of the animation had even been aired…basically they had the rights before production and Anime Junkies Fansubbing of the show once it started airing in Japan before Urban Vision had the chance to distribute was seen as not only an offence to their copyright, but also as a competing issue for their profitability. The idea was that viewers would choose to download the subbed version that had been in existence before the official dubbed release due to the subbed version being free and easy to obtain. What got Anime Junkies angry was the fact that Urban Vision had already knew about the fansubs existence and decided well into the season to send the letter after having Anime Junkies do the dirty work of publicizing Ninja Scroll instead of doing it themselves. The other argument included in the email is the split between dubs (translated audio) and subs userbases. Typically, when a show is to be aired, in an attempt to maximize viewership, production companies will hire native voice actors, translate and modify the original language into the target audiences language into script, and have the voice actors record over the video. New fans of Anime find these releases easier to swallow, since they can fully immerse themselves into the watching experience…they don’t have to worry about reading too much on the screen or don’t have too much need to know the full context of what they characters are talking about on screen. On the other hand, older or more die-hard fans of series will watch subbed episodes. Less information is cut when translated and the subbers have very little to no reason translate anything too far out of context, and if such a situation should arise, they usually make a textual note of it on screen. Users can pause or rewind their video to read the translators note to understand what they missed (cultural jokes that are removed or replaced in the dubs, signs that are left un-translated, etc). When you split the groups into these sections, you have the side that you can actually sell DVDs and merchandise to versus the side that isn’t going to fall for the usually subpar offerings. Anime Junkies saw in no way how they could have possible cut into Urban Vision’s profit when they were not targeting the same niches, and Urban Vision hadn’t began distribution in the U.S. yet. In recent years there has been a rampant surge by content creators and media groups attempting to kill off what they label as “piracy”: the act of users distributing or sharing copy written materials via the internet and other outlets. Despite the constantly clear cases of court cases against copyright infringers, users persist to download their entertainment stating reasons such as the “form of free advertising” by uploaders and “checks of quality before purchase” by consumers who felt that in the past they were purchasing items by companies with no way of knowing if they product was the cost (strong example of this is a user downloads a leaked copy of a “screener” [a unfinished version of a movie to be show to production staff and the press] of a movie to see if they would be interested in purchasing it on a solid medium or digitally from the legal owners point of sale.
Bibliography
An Interview with Isao Takahata Ed. Steven Feldman. Trans. Ken Elescor. AnimeLand (French fan magazine), 1992. 12. web. 4 11 2012. <http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/t_corbeil.html>.
Hatcher, Jordan S. "Of Otakus and Fansubs: A Critical Look at Anime Online in LIght of Current Issues in Copyright Law." SCRIPTed (2005): 514-542. Web (Single page). 4 11 2012. <http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol2-4/hatcher.asp>.
Jenkins, Henry. "When Piracy Becomes Promotion." Reason (2006). Magazine (Digital Archive). 4 11 2012. <http://reason.com/archives/2006/11/17/when-piracy-becomes-promotion>.
Leonard, Sean. "Progress Against the Law: Fan Distribution, Copyright, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation." Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. Web (HTML, PDF). 11 2012. <http://web.mit.edu/seantek/www/papers/progress-columns.pdf>.
Macdonald, Christopher. "http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/2003-06-08/2." 2003. Anime News Network (ANN). Web. 26 10 2012.