Monday, December 8, 2008

Anime downloaders being sued by the anime studios

I read on the 'Banzai Effect' about how downloaders managed to get a lawyer for two folks currently being sued by the anime studios. The case would set a lot of precedents about the details for online unauthorised download.

Other than the legal stuff, I'm actually quite puzzled by the studios' actions. I guess over the past many years, we saw how music studios first decided to sue unauthorised downloaders, and later realised that there is actually money to be made from online sales of songs. It took Apple iTunes and others to show the music studios about the business models, which means Apple iTunes would be the main beneficiary of the system. A real pity, since the music studios are the guys who 'produced' the files.

Now, anime studios deciding to sue downloaders. Haven't they learn anything from the music studios examples? I think anime fans are simply that - anime fans! They would pay, given the right incentives, e.g. faster availability of animes with good subtitles. Look at the amount of money and effort put in for the anime related events - cosplay!

It doesn't help that the local newspapers always portray the downloaders as illegal pirates - it would be good if the journalists at least put in some sane reasons instead of quoting official statistics about the 'number of people bothered about infringement'. People are not bothered by the so called infringement precisely because there is a mis-match of views about what constitutes infringement.

Give the downloaders and studios a chance to work things out in a business sense. Lawsuits benefit no one except lawyers!

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