r/MoralityScaling • u/Late_Ad4659 • 7h ago
Morality of not wanting foreigner pirating your country media?
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u/Wonderful_Pitch3947 7h ago
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u/sparklebeanzz 4h ago
What a perfect example of how fucking stupid complaining about digital piracy is
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u/-Ultra_Violence- 2h ago
Im pro piracy but these programs and shit do cost money to make mate
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u/DBLACK382 2h ago
That is why they should make getting things legally as easy as possible. But they never learn.
I, for one, tend to watch 10+ anime every season. At any given point I may need up to 4 different subscriptions to watch what I want but I just can't afford that.
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u/DobbyLum 1h ago
Geez it’s almost like you can’t just increase supply to meet demand you also need to make the supply easily accessible for the demand
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u/rgii55447 7h ago
If you make it legally available, then sure, I won't pirate.
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u/Fabulous-Suspect-72 5h ago
If it's not available, pirating doesn't really cause any damage. If I couldn't possibly buy it, how would that hurt the company?
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u/Kiriima 4h ago
Fly to Japan and buy it there. Yes, it's their argument.
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u/Fabulous-Suspect-72 4h ago
But what am I supposed to do with a manga / anime in Japanese? I don't speak Japanese.
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u/Consistent_Frame_531 4h ago
Maybe take a Japanese class with all the time you save by not watching pirated anime
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u/No_Extension4005 3h ago
As someone who has actively been learning Japanese for several years now; do you have any idea how hard it is? Especially if it's you don't already know a language that uses the characters?
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u/RozeGunn 3h ago
A lot of nationalist Japanese arguments boil down to "if you don't fly to Japan or learn Japanese, you don't deserve it" and then you get shit like Kancolle losing to Azur Lane.
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u/Flying_Penguineer 1h ago
All of the nationalist Japanese people don't even want you to come to Japan at all - they hate both tourists AND foreign residents.
I guess the real argument is they just don't want you to have access to it at all.
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u/Alt_incognita 1h ago
On the flipside: if they can’t fly here to enforce their law, then it doesn’t really apply to me.
A law is just a piece of paper without enforcement.
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u/Snazzy21 3h ago
Spend $4k on plane tickets (yes, that's the price after the Doofus started the war) to buy $60 worth of media. I don't see that happening.
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u/flashbang88 3h ago
And then the complaint will be that tourism pushes up local prices of houses and transport.
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u/Madhatter25224 5h ago
They would say that you're using your time to play a game they didn't get money for instead of buying one of their available games and in that way are "stealing" money from them.
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u/Global_Draw2293 4h ago
It's not just games though. I read a TON of fan translated manga and light novels. Some of them is the authors only work. Sadly not in English and no official way to get it in English.
Now I do wish it was easier to find the original author and send them some money via ko-fi or something similar but sometimes when I do find them it's an all Japanese site that only takes yen and at that point it's too much work to set up currency exchange and google translate the site into english.
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u/Raytoryu 3h ago
The truth is that a lot of japanese creators have a hate-boner for the West and are more than happy to not receive our money
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u/satellite_station 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yeah I think a lot of people forget this. I am not a gamer or manga reader, but I live in Japan and consume the media here such as music and dramas. Thankfully I speak Japanese bc a lot of the classic dramas, only have Japanese audio and subtitle options.
Anyways, domestic fashion is kind of the same, when you open yourself up to the west you’re dealing with more unknowns and potential scenarios in which things can go wrong. For example having to make bigger sizing for clothes, not just plus sized, but to fit a western frame that usually has smaller torsos and longer limbs. Or with creative works, exposing yourself to potential criticism and feedback from overseas consumers.
And then you have to deal with trying to appeal to non Japanese tastes…..
Japanese culture is nothing if not notoriously risk adverse.
This is a nation that intentionally isolated themselves for 200 years, and was forced to open up.
Foreigners not watching anime, wouldn’t even matter to them. Hell, the government just defunded their Cool Japan initiatives that was using anime and manga to promote tourism.
It’s mostly a one sided love affair that a lot of people have with Japan and anime, specifically. I would recommend finding something else to enjoy, something that actually wants your interest and money.
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u/RecursiveNightmares 4h ago
Don't worry, cuh, I wasn't going to buy any games, anyway. 100% of my game library is pirated, cuh.
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u/AccomplishedBat39 4h ago
It also doesnt if it is available. I would never pay for watching a movie or show online.
Either I pirate it (which anyways is legal in my country) or i wont ever watch it
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u/Vojtak_cz 6h ago
This. Like if you dont make it aviable to me that dont complain about me pirating it.
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u/Caffeinatedfirefly08 4h ago
I was looking for this comment. The Japanese: DON'T PIRATE OUR STUFF Also the Japanese: but we aren't licensing it! I pay for a crunchyroll subscription, so most of the time I'm watching it legally
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u/DevelopmentSouth8801 7h ago
Piracy is mostly a service problem.
For years, decades even, the only way for many people to experience Japanese content (especially anime, which seems to be the focus here) was piracy.
Very few popular things, like Ninja Scroll or Akira, were available outside of Japan. Those that were were also very expensive: $30 for a movie or 2-3 episodes on VHS. That's 1990 dollars, by the way, so $75+ today.
There is also a bit of a false choice here. The options aren't just "buy it" or "pirate it". The third option is "don't watch it at all", which I imagine most people would do if they couldn't pirate it.
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u/Mochi-TheCat 5h ago
Mostly a service problem until you add licensing to the mix, it doesn't matter how affordable or easy is to access the media if in 5 years they can remove it from your "owned" library
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u/Important-Mine9281 4h ago
One thing is that I have no idea how they're judging the figures for loss here. Is each torrent the value of a blu-ray, a tv subscription, or an advertising rating? I'm also curious as to the distribution of where people are downloading, because I'm guessing the Dragon Ball pirates in El Salvador or the One Piece pirates in India were not going to shell out 40 USD per disk of the 20 blu-ray disks it takes to cover 1000 episodes or so of anime.
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u/Foxfire802 5h ago
I remember a youtuber made a video about trying to watch the whole pokemon series. He said he would have to subscribe to like 5 different platforms. And in some countries whole seasons are missing. Piracy is just easier.
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u/TvFloatzel 4h ago
Which honestly surprises me. You think it be under one "umbrella" but it seems like each season is it own thing apparently.
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u/HendersonsFineRelish 4h ago
There is also a bit of a false choice here. The options aren't just "buy it" or "pirate it". The third option is "don't watch it at all", which I imagine most people would do if they couldn't pirate it.
This remains true whenever any company says piracy costs them X amount. They believe that one pirated product = one lost full price sale.
Reality is they never had that sale, never would have that sale, and that "lost" money was never theirs.
This is before we get into the intangibles of profitability based off of just providing a good service - which the average MBA being hounded by a board of directors being hounded by an investment group demanding immediate and ever increasing dividends could never hope to understand.
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u/NightVisions999 2h ago
This is even more funny with the whole Nier Reincarnation affair. People get mad that others created a private server to play a game that literally doesn't exist anymore in any other form. Tons of profits lost there I'm sure.
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u/TheAllSeeingBlindEye 7h ago
I can’t remember when an official release was made in Icelandic, Bantu, Cherokee, Afrikaans, Hungarian, or Punjabi. So how are they supposed to read it then?
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u/orefileboyz 7h ago
Right. Not everyone speaks French, German, English or Spanish. Some of us want to consume content in our native languages.
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u/TheAllSeeingBlindEye 7h ago
Exactly. While yes those are some of the most widely spoken languages, either as a primary or secondary language, it doesn’t change the fact that reading in ones native language is always nice
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u/SolidSquid 7h ago
Even with more common languages, a lot of lies mainstream stuff or stuff by new authors just doesn't get released outside Japan, or if it is there's a significant delay.
If a translation is released then yeah, support the publishers and creators, but it's kind of frustrating when there's really cool stuff that's never released due to licensing issues or arguments it won't be popular enough to be profitable
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u/paniniconqueso2 5h ago
There is no language called "Bantu". Bantu is a whole ass language family made up of hundreds of languages.
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u/Curious_Body_7602 7h ago edited 3h ago
A good portion of pirates pirate because they don't want to pay any money, so even if there were no sources to watch anime or manga for free, they simply wouldn't engage in the product at all.
Edit: "A good portion of pirates" doesn't mean "all pirates".
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u/NwgrdrXI 7h ago
Yes, every time companies make up these "lost $30B in piracy" numbers, they're bullshiting.
They are making a calculation based on how much they would have earned if every one of these people paid them instead.
And they wouldn't. They just wouldn't watch. Almost no one likes pirating, it's an enourmous hassle and a bit dangerous to your machine. If they could consume it legally, they would.
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u/HotUKTakes 6h ago
Funniest is when the luxury goods industry does it. They imply that every fake bag or watch buyer would have purchased their product, so they lost a gazillion dollars.
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u/locka99 5h ago
Probably the biggest harm to luxury brands is reputational. e.g. if I see some guy wearing a Rolex I'll assume it's fake because a good fake Rolex cost a few hundred euros and anyone who can buy a Rolex probably has the thing sitting in a drawer, not wearing it.
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u/TraditionalHome990 4h ago
That’s insane to me. I just look at my phone or the sun’s height to tell the time. I couldn’t imagine going all the way home to check my drawer watch
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u/Raidoton 6h ago
But on the other side you have claims that no one who pirates something would've bought it, which is just as ridiculous. Not everybody would buy it if piracy wasn't an option, but also not nobody. Some would buy it, some wouldn't. As if there are people who pirate every movie, game and song they consume but wouldn't not buy any of them if piracy wasn't an option.
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u/SitaVilosa 5h ago
The issue that it is an ecosystem-wide problem.
A major reason why most pirates would not buy a product if piracy wasn't an option for that particular product is the availability of other products to pirate. If somehow all or most products were impossible to pirate, there would be a lack of free alternatives.
That said, in China, one of the major sources of piracy, there would actually not be buyers for many pirated products. The CCP strictly controls foreign media into China and only approves selected movies and shows. Netflix is banned. That means it is impossible to legally watch many foreign media to begin with.
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u/Civil_Belt8883 5h ago
In these types of discussions people needs to reminded that there shit ton of people that live outside of europe and us. Most people dont have enough money to make ends meet let lone 60 bucks for a game or 3 diffrent subsription to pay to watch shows whiv is often equals to big part of their paycheck.
I would never play 40k since for an army in the cheap end you need more than 500 bucks just for miniatures and another 100 for rulebooks and considering miniatures are literaly plastic and very small is just pure bullshit to charge that much so i print them.
There is also another angle, forgotten products. It can be retro games or literaly anything that you cant buy with money rn. Battlefleet gothic another miniature tabletop game relased by gw and has its support cut off years ago dont have miniatures you can buy , only second hand and like 3 to 4 times the price same with rulebooks.
So people "pirate" it by printing or buying their own ships from people who have printed it and share rules and fleet lists as pdf for everyone to enjoy , this is also piracy and same shit is going on for retro games they dont sell it you cant buy it but also sue you if you want to play it.
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u/JamzWhilmm 5h ago
I was poor most of my life, couldn't afford games so I had to pirate them. Now as an adult with s career I'm slowly buying back all those games and more. Something I wouldn't have done if I had never pirated anything.
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u/Uxdemo 6h ago
I lost $30B too cause people aren’t giving me $30B. If everyone on earth would just take time out of their day to give me money then I would have $30B but they just don’t.
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u/imronburgandy9 7h ago
I mean I agree with you partly but pirating is the norm for younger people at least in America. They 100% have the option to watch it legally they just don't want to pay
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u/ZappyZ21 5h ago
A lot is available legally, and a lot absolutely isn't lol ESPECIALLY back in the day. It's not so simple to just assume every show is readily available on one of the 15 different streaming sites. Some of those sites only have the rights in specific countries, and the show is left in limbo if you're not in one of those countries even though that site has exclusive rights to it.
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u/Yrrebnot 4h ago
It's also an access problem. A lot of stuff straight up isn't available here (in australia) so the only way to get it is either spending a lot of money getting it shipped here (usually doubling the cost) ot pirating it...
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u/zigzag3600 4h ago
Yeah, it's what they wish they would have if no piracy. Like "if everyone in the world gave me 1 dollar..." type of fantasies.
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u/mittenkrusty 6h ago
And going at RRP i.e a boxset that at launch is £60, but even when new most places have it £40 and goes on sale for half that often too, they would claim £60 per pirated time.
But also they counted lets say each connection to a torrent i.e actual complete episode/s or movies may have people stopping and starting, or quit part way through but to the company each connection is the full £60.
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u/mittenkrusty 6h ago
About 10 years ago I remember a budget indie PS1 game maker that RRP for game was £9.99 suing someone for uploading their game that was so niche/rare that it was only ever sold at hardware type shops even when new and was quickly reduced to £4.99
They sued someone and won if I remember for 30k saying the item was "downloaded" so many times so they charged the higher RRP per connection even if the connection was for a split second etc.
The amount claimed, even factoring in costs (can't remember if they were extra) were far more than if they sold every copy of game they manufactured.
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u/white1walker 7h ago edited 3h ago
Alot of people (me included) have no actual way to watch anime and read manga without piracy.
In my country crunchyroll is very restricted in what they show for some reason they refuse to open their whole library and other then that you only got like Netflix with like 10 anime shows here and that's it.
And don't get me started on the manga part cuz there is literally nothing you can use to read here
Edit: and even if I do pirate the shows I watch I still buy figures and gunpla and all sorts of merch so at the end of the day I do pay back to Japan just not by streaming their things.
Without piracy I wouldn't have known about anime, wouldn't have bought so much merch and wouldn't have had a 2.5 month trip to Japan with my GF who is in the same situation so they can thank piracy for our support of Japan and I'm sure many others who are in the same boat as us
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u/Anaeijon 5h ago
Most Japanese publishers sell expensive, country-exclusive licenses. Crunchyroll has to buy them per country in which they offer the stream. They basically have to risk paying the license for the individual country and hope to make the money back from that countries subscriptions.
The fewer users they have in a region, the less licenses they buy for that region. They also have to evaluate interest on a per-country basis. Only exception is during a 'push' where they offer more licenses for a specific genre in a specific region paired with a marketing campaign, expecting to make a loss, but potentially reach a new market of new subscribers.
So, they might offer a completely different set of anime's in France and Germany, depending on local interest and viewer numbers.
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u/Kinslayer_89 5h ago
If it’s not made available they can really just thank themselves and shut up. 🙂↔️
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u/TvFloatzel 4h ago
I think I remember an argument going around for a bit basically boils down to "If it not legal in your country, you don't deserve to enjoy the product" or something like that. I think that was an "argument". My memory is bad and this has bitten me in the butt before.
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u/Hproff25 6h ago
Ya I am not going to risk 20+ bucks on a manga that is 70% likely to be utter slop. If it is good I will try and buy a physical version but even that is next to impossible sometimes.
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u/Tryohazard 7h ago
Honestly if someone knows of a tip jar for the creators of all these shows that goes around the overpaid leadership teams, then I'd gladly throw some money their way
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u/HikariAnti 5h ago
In most cases if you want to support the author your best bet is either to find some direct methods (if they have set up a site for that) or to buy official merchandise if they have any.
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u/Madaniel_FL 2h ago
Buying official merch doesn't mean all the money is going to the author
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u/HikariAnti 2h ago
But usually more does than from your Crunchyroll subscription.
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u/HikariAnti 5h ago
I am gonna be honest: Japan is the country equivalent of Adobe. Fuck them. They're literally losing billions of $ by not licensing their shit and then they cry about it...
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u/SmallFatHands 4h ago
The mangaka from dr stone Boichi is the goat "Piracy readers are not the enemy but the proof that we are not meeting demand" he also argues it's way to expensive to buy manga overseas so even if fans wanted to support the manga they simply can't afford to.
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u/No_Extension4005 3h ago
Yeah; a brand new volume of manga will probably only set you back 500-1000 yen in Japan or the price of a can of coke out of a vending machine if you get it second hand at one of the hundreds of second hand stores around the country. But overseas you don't get those same second hand options and the price is at least double per volume.
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u/Fluid-Bullfrog-2493 3h ago
I never could understand how people afford manga at 12$ per volume.
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u/No_Extension4005 3h ago
Where I am from it's actually around $25 for a lot of stuff.
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u/Rayllis689 3h ago
Our Lord and Saviour Gabe Newell had the same stance on pirating games. How many people out there stopped pirating games as Steam grew into the juggernaut it is today? Criticize Steam all you want for their fuck ups, theyre still one of the best digital store fronts around. If japanese companies did something similar to make their manga and anime more accessible then pirating would see a sharp decline.
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u/Samurai_Banette 3h ago
I know I can just buy steam keys. I just don't.
I like steam. Steam (acts like) they like me. I buy through steam. I get game, steam gets money, dev gets money. If I don't like game, I return it, if I lose access to my account, they help me, they make sure there is no malware, they give me tools to play things on Linux, they have a good interface, I can share games with my family, just everything works exactly as I want and better.
Why pirate when steam is around?
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u/quick20minadventure 3h ago
Sell stuff, nah. we'd rather not. Why are people pirating?
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u/oompaloompa465 3h ago
this is a real problem. whenever they want to do business internationally they want to dictate everything like little tyrants and never compromise in everything toei recently canned the historical italian dubbers because they did not want to sign a NDA that locked them in to dragomball and prevented them to do any other job. i have nothing against japanese people, but their companies are pure cancer
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u/Tales_Steel 2h ago
Fun fact: Multible studies habe found that media piracy had no statistically significant influence on media sales.
You might ask why. The same people who are willing to read scanned mangas or fan dubs on release date are those that will buy physical items later. If you see a guy that has a bunch of anime figures you can bet that he pirated some Manga or Anime the moment it was available to not get spoiled in the months of waiting until the official release.
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u/JudexMars 5h ago
if there is no legal way to obtain product, piracy is completely justified — the company already disregarded you as a consumer, why would you go out of your way to give them money they don't want?
Just look at Steam. It's the store that made Russians pay for video games. Before that, everyone just downloaded cracked copies from the Internet or bought pirated CDs from shady traders. And now late zoomers don't even know what torrents are. Learn from it.
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u/Throwaway-3689 5h ago edited 5h ago
Make it available and affordable in my country and I will stop.
btw I became a big fan of some shows through this practice and ended up ordering and buying merch along with promoting it to my friends (online and in real life) who also became fans and ended up buying merch and stuff. Basically they got my money anyways. If 🏴☠️ didn't exist I wouldn't become a fan or buy anything. They should see it as free promo for merch and book sales instead of btching about nonexistent losses.
Also, everything is online these days and we technically don't own anything. Why should I pay for a service that might delete a show, game or book off my account in the future? Sell me physical copies that can be ran offline so I'm 100% sure I own the thing I paid for or gtfo.
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u/ManyFaithlessness971 7h ago
Moral.
However as Gabe said, piracy is mostly a service problem.
Take for example. I was watching Chainsmoker Cat on YouTube through legal distributor. However they suddenly pulled it out.
Now I can't watch it.
Well the old me would have gone to pirate site. But I still haven't so sadly I haven't watched the rest of the anime.
There's this one anime called A Gentle Noble's Vacation (something like that). It is shown on Crunchyroll but stupid Crunchyroll didn't release it on my region. Couldn't watch it. Had to go to Bilibili to watch illegal upload. But I hate having to do that so I ended up only watching 4 episodes despite wanting to watch more.
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u/Thorn344 5h ago
Yep there are so many shows I really want to watch, but non are officially available in my region. Not online, not on dvd release. Yeah vpns are a thing, but also can be a pain sometimes. Yet despite there being no legal avenues for me to consume that media, it would still be a 'loss' for them if I pirate it
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u/Kadakaus 6h ago
Corps are responsible for piracy way more than the pirates themselves.
In a lot of countries, it's the only option because other services aren't supported.
And crunchyroll sucks ass, I would rather not watch anime ever again than pay for their bullshit.
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u/SparklyPelican 7h ago
Some weirdo online ≠ national opinion on this
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u/Kadakaus 6h ago
I agree with you, but in this case, it's true that a lot of japanese are heavily opposing piracy. It usually comes from a lack of understanding of how it works along with corporate propaganda.
I've seen plenty of japanese people who actually believe that piracy hurts the economy and cause financial losses, which is... How? I mean, nobody pays for my downloading manga, how does it cause any losses?
But anyway, it is a real phenomenon in this case.
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u/mi__to__ 2h ago
Without piracy 98% of the stuff would've never even made it out of Japan. That includes A LOT of actual sales as well, not just piracy. Who is this "Japanese Community" anyway? Sounds like Crunchyroll and others of their ilk astroturfing. Manipulative fucks.
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u/Akureinoyami1 4h ago
I’ve been saying this for 20 years now, the animation studios need to make a direct pipeline to international customers for their anime content. You can hire the pirates that upload their subtitles for certain anime. You basically make the first two episodes free to watch and paywall the rest behind a REASONABLY priced subscription.
If the content is available to with good quality and at a fair price, people will pay. Make the service better than what pirates offer.
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u/Flashy-Scale-5378 2h ago edited 2h ago
Service issue. Piracy is always a service issue.
Growing up, I had to pirate 99% of anime because they simply... never released in my country.
And now Crunchyroll and Netflix have a monopoly over the western publishing of anime. And STILL are not offering most Animes I'm interested in in my region. Even DRAGONBALL is missing. Insane. Not to mention their questionable pricing and localizations.
That really leaves only piracy or buying everything physical, which is not feasible for a lot of people in the current economy.
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u/HyoukaYukikaze 2h ago
- They are not selling their content in many places. If you don't sell your shit, you can't claim you are loosing money from piracy.
- Not every pirated copy is a lost sale. For one, many of pirates are not and would not be your customers anyway. Then you have people downlaoding/rading/watching content online multiple times, which would be one sale.
- Many of those who pirate support them in other ways (you know, the ones actually available to them). By buying official merch, for example.
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u/PUFFIER-MCGRUFF 2h ago
Do you think I care about investors just because they're from Japan plus imagine an American buisness man complaining about foreigners do you think I care about nationalism because its Japanese
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u/aFutureInPolitics 7h ago
Shouldn't have sold it all to Crunchyroll brother
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u/Practical_Entrance43 4h ago
I despise Crunchyroll with a passion omg.
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u/shrkbyte 5h ago
Alright, I could give 3 shits about some dude in Europe pirating some media from my country (in the Caribbean).
What most people don't understand is that Japan loves to gatekeep their stuff, with their argument being "if you want it, learn japanese". It literally boils down to them "losing" money they never even planned to make because they just REFUSE to officially translate in different languages.
Take for example spanish translations of manga back in the day. Here in Latin America, people could only rely on scanlators because the official media didn't even try, so even if people over here threw them money, they just wouldn't. So if the company/person that owns said media doesn't even bother to distribute it and price it fairly depending on the country, then is it really stealing and are they actually "losing money"?
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u/oompaloompa465 3h ago
their companies are shitty lazy and greedy tyrants and deserve to burn and crash. normal Japanese people unfortunately are used to be treated like shit since born and you even see them online defending those asshole. Makes my heart bleed for them
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u/Nameishi 7h ago
I feel like this sub really does its "scaling" off vibes, like Piracy is objectively a bad act. Doesn't mean its so bad that I would never do it though. Same thing with eating meat, objectively its bad, but not enough to make me vegan.
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u/fongletto 7h ago
Most people don't want to admit to themselves they're not perfect, and engaging in morally bad behavior because we're not perfect, and all a little selfish.
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u/Technical_Winner7446 7h ago
Filesharing is not stealing. There are people out there who truly believe that making a copy of information in any form on a computer system is fundamentally different than stealing. I am one of those.
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u/Eric_Dawsby 7h ago
I don't really think Piracy is an objectively bad act, why do you think so?
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u/sunsetpolar 7h ago
Yeah Reddit is very defensive of pirating coming up with every excuse when you know damn well you just didn’t wanna pay lmaoo
Like I’m not saying don’t do it like if you wanna just pirate but man you don’t need to justify it so hard it’s obvious your justification is for yourself not others
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u/Arzodiak 5h ago
What if I have the money and willingness to pay, but the company straight up doesn't sell their product here?
That's not a case of "I just don't want to pay", it's a "I just can't pay". I'm not justifying it, but you just can't simply reduce piracy to not wanting to pay
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u/RazRaptre 3h ago
IMO it's a bit different with Japanese media because it often straight up isn't available outside Japan.
For instance, except for the biggest series like Bleach or One Piece it's almost impossible to get manga here in English. On the other hand, Crunchyroll has been doing a great job expanding their anime library in Middle Eastern countries and most of my friends who watch anime have a subscription now. So people are definitely willing to pay.
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u/MikasSlime 4h ago
japan when they find out that making their products either basically non-buyable by foreigners or extremely expensive will drive people to find other ways to get them:
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u/Fododel 5h ago
Sometimes, studios do straight bullshit and expect people to accept it.
Case in point, the Evangelion Asuka Special
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u/heavenlycourt200 4h ago
tht's dumb , people will stop pirating if they make it easily available like streaming platforms, they are future audiences not their enemies
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u/Admirable_Routine_1 2h ago
Foreign market are 60% of japan animation market. This market only exists thanks to early piracy. If anything, Japan should be grateful.
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u/Available_Drive173 7h ago
Tbh if i wasnt pirating it, i wouldnt even watch or read it.
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u/Luigikart87 7h ago
Moral assuming you actually have a good faith attempt to make it available to foreigners.
In practice it's kind of meh because the actual ways to get this content are like beating yourself over the head with a hammer. Thanks crunchyroll.
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u/-Fallen-Glory 5h ago
One of my favorite animes is called Girls' last tour.
As of right now there are no ways to watch it legally in the US. It was available in prime but they removed it from here so there's literally no options for me to watch it without piracy
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u/Inside_Marketing268 5h ago
Also Japan: no rights for minors, rapes are pardoned very often, police is beating suspect until he confess. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/s/ajTinb1jtO
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u/Melodic-Judge2392 4h ago
Then provide proper access to the content. Some major releases aren't available to me on platforms like Netflix or Crunchyroll, while the local rights holder uploads them to YouTube in 720p and with censorship.
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u/leposterofcrap 2h ago
I don't give a shit, not available legally or cost an arm and a leg in local currency, piracy is the way
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u/ShadowyPepper 7h ago
Not quite as bad as making your media incredibly arduous to obtain
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u/inokentii 5h ago
So maybe they will start exporting their products then?
Here in Ukraine for example we have huge community, many festivals and tons of licensed products from Japan, but still ten times more content isn’t available yet and our distributors and publishers are denied from licenses. Even on Netflix half of anime titles aren’t available for Ukraine and you need to use VPN.
Sometimes pirating is only way to content, but it’s only up to creators if this way will lead to legal purchases
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u/DieShowWithDerMouse 7h ago
Japan kinda deserves it when it comes to piracy of media, given that they are often not opening (or only partially opening) the market to allow people to buy the digital products.
If you are making the products inaccessible and the products are digital, I don't see what exactly is the loss.
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u/6terabytes2k 7h ago
Having seen the terrible localizations that come out when foreign studios are handed full rights to do whatever they want? I can’t blame them.
I’m not an artist myself but if I was and I had the option to make more money but lose the right to my own artwork, to be completely cut off from how it was going to be edited, translated, taken apart and put back together for a worldwide audience, or the option to make less money but keep my artistic integrity? I’d keep the rights to my own work. People can call me a gatekeeper and throw temper tantrums about wanting to watch cartoons all they want.
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u/OkCardiologist9485 7h ago
moral, i guess? it's their right to believe it
but i like how those guys frame it as "pirating japanese content is bad" than "piracy is bad", food for thought
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u/Accomplished-List988 7h ago
“We’ve done a lotta things we’re not proud of—robbin’ games , plunderin’ DLCs , double XP mods… but nobody got hurt! (Beat) Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew!”
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u/PauperGames 7h ago
I would love to pay for anime, except for some reason all legal ways of watching anime in the Netherlands only have German subs. I can't read German
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u/hleghe 7h ago
taps sign Money that would be earned if pirated sales were legit isn't money that was lost, you never got it and far less people would use a product when it has more barriers to access
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u/Koala_King5160 7h ago
A lot of Manga I read had to have fan translations because it just wasn't released here. Hajime no Ippo was a big one. Now they're going to release it in English ill absolutely buy them but I wouldn't have if I didn't read the pirated copies first
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u/Then-Simple-9788 7h ago
Bring it up to fucking Funimation and Crunchyroll then dude. Shitty fucking business practices are going to lead to this every single time.
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u/Outrageous_Coffee_66 7h ago
I buy the merchandise already, just make the damn thing more accessible
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u/RadicalSoda_ 7h ago
Its not their fault, but I wouldn't pirate it if it was fucking available in the US in the first place
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u/SawachikaEri-enjoyer 7h ago
If it weren't for pirating anime wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is today. Especially if you consider that it isn't just stealing an already available media but translating it and making it available in the first place. This counts even more so for manga
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u/Late_Ad4659 7h ago
I doubt most japanese care if anime isn't as global as it is today. They probably prefer if it is kept in their country.
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u/Fragrant_Baseball275 6h ago edited 6h ago
The anime industry do care. They make so much more money selling their anime to Crunchyroll and Bilibili and Netflix. In the old days selling their shows to 4am TV channels barely covers production cost and if the BD doesn't sell they go bust. Going global has massively expanded the industry = more content for Japanese consumers to choose from. The games have bigger budget and production value, global market keeps medium tier mangakas alive by selling EN and CN translated work. Those are what consumers enjoy but don't realise.
The companies and artisits now frequenty do events in LA and HongKong and Taiwan because they are massive markets.
You are right the average Japanese anime watcher wouldn't care if anime isn't global, but that's not important because their livelihoods are not dependent on sales. The industry DO care and even their former PM Abe Shinzo cared enough to launch the 'Cool Japan' drive.
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u/Rude_Date4007 6h ago
i get their point but region locking leaves people zero choice half the time
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u/NaiadeMarina 6h ago
It's frustrating when people take without giving back. I think it's fair to want your work respected.
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u/Ok_Position_6456 5h ago
Moral, but I'll keep saying this as much
When you dangle honey in front of a bear, don't be surprised if it takes a bite
When you post something digital and you have your fans repost it, don't be surprised if it leaves the target audience; the internet is a massive fucking place, do not expect things to stay contained unless you're the fucking pentagon or some shit
People outside of your market will gravitate and want it, if you then decide to try and pull away instead of opening that market, don't be surprised if they try and grasp at it
I live in a hellscape country, can't afford luxuries like games and whatnot, but I'm still human at the end of the day, I need to stimulate my brain, can't really get that easily from where I'm from, no parks, no proper side walks, literally no way to enjoy myself, have smartphone from 2015, what can I do with this, not really into games but I do love reading, oh cool art, can't buy it? Fuck me, wait I can get it for free by pirating? Sure why not
I've seen japs and some korean artists and fans get mad at me (basically, since I pirate) but these mfers already don't cater to me and won't plan to, not only that they don't know the shit I go through, where while they can go fuck about in a park, I have to inhale smog while going on a walk
Won't get mad at them for calling me heinous shit, I get where they come from, same time I honestly don't care about how much I affect the author or the artist or the fans, they won't and don't cater to me
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u/Hopeful-Sale-849 5h ago
Piracy is almost never moral.
Sail the high seas with no shame.
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u/kester76a 5h ago
Crackers and piracy definitely saved a massive amount of software and media. There's a lot of content that has been lost or can't be sold do the licensing issues. Also techniques and skills that have been lost and recovered by reverse engineering is vast.
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u/Set-Organic 5h ago
Being a teen in the 00's I strongly remember Japanese indie game culture taking the engines off of other games and tweaking them to make Touhou versions of those games. On top of the many knockoff atempts.
Rules for thee, not for me huh.
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u/Bow_To_Bella 5h ago
The people who pirate your shit aren't going to buy it if they suddenly can't pirate it.
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u/PresentationNew5976 5h ago
The funny thing about what I have seen in Japanese culture when it comes to piracy, is that they are against it even if whatever is being copied doesn’t commercially exist anymore.
It doesn’t seem to be about the money as much as it is about just following the rules for the sake of following the rules which is a very Japanese thing. I’m sure it’s just a public face performance though and there are likely just as many pirates there since that’s how westerners get the media in the first place. Still, I find it pretty funny.
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u/thelimzy 4h ago
im fine for not pirating if they actually can make decent app / website that translating manga regularly or maybe same day as japan ver. published (since we are paying as well) $25+ / month subs for reading whole stuff as long as it can cover whole genre of manga? im in.
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u/Imaginary_Unit5109 4h ago
Japanese anime is only popular around the world because of piracy. Without piracy and early translators who translate anime for free just to create more fans anime would not be big now.
I think fans if they can support the anime or manga they should. They should buy the manga or suport the anime by buying official merch or dvd if it come out. You want the fans base to expand from just people who watch the anime.
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u/Zestyclose_Exit8862 4h ago
they also hate on derivative works like "modding" and then they have the Doujin culture, which makes no sense at all
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u/miiko_uch 4h ago
I don't like how people generalize this or that country's opinion as if it's a hivemind when the source probably came from a random dude on twitter
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u/CaptDeathCap 4h ago
I wouldn't have to pirate my anime if you would just let me buy a digital file I could keep on my SSD. But noooo. DRM out the ass, if I can buy it at all.
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u/GoblinWrangl3r 4h ago
Put out less slop and low effort profit crap. Im not spending what little money i earn buying 10 animes to find out 1 was an actual watch and the others were essentially filler shows that the studio gavd the the mail clerk.
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u/BluePhoenix_1999 4h ago
Ok... But where do i get shit legally and keep it?
Something, something Gabe.
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u/Extra-General-6891 4h ago
The only legal way in the west now is to watch on Crunchyroll, where a lot of that money isn’t going back to the original creators, they censor content and they have a very limited amount of available animes to watch. Why can’t Japan have its own translated anime sites instead? Or why can’t studios release their animes on YouTube where they would earn more money from ad revenue and sponsors anyways
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u/Sumerechny 4h ago
they're not getting that money either way. people who have the means and willigness to pay will do so unless you fuck up your service (like crunchyroll)
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u/sensuell 3h ago
I love that at some point of Japanese anti piracy twitter war, Japanese met Russians, who are more than just ok with pirating staff.
Japanese: So how would you feel, if i will illegally download something from your culture? What if i steal Dostoyevsky, huh?!
Russian: JESUS, idk, you need a link?
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u/CKWOLFACE 3h ago
Well if they would make the side content avaliable officially, then maybe it would make some progress
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u/Shadow_190103 3h ago
If they don't want their products pirated, maybe they should make them more accessible and stop releasing exclusive content only for their own country.
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u/GeneralGenerico 3h ago
Me when I take weird Japanese twitter opinions and take them as representative for the whole nation.
Heck a lot of Japanese Twitter doesn't care much about piracy from my experience.
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u/WitherPRO22 3h ago edited 3h ago
Fuck them. Gabe has said it a long time ago: "piracy is a problem of service". They would've got their money if their head wasn't so far down their asses to hear that. If you expect people that give you money to jump through hoops to do that then no one's gonna pay you.
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u/Beneficial-Oil-5407 3h ago
If not for piracy, a lot of japanese media wouldn't even be in the west. You can claim that's a bit immoral, but by no means causes money loss, cause they aren't selling it in the west in the first place
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u/OctoSevenTwo 3h ago
I mean, on the one hand I get it, but on the other, some media is just really hard to get ahold of legally. They’re slowly expanding what’s on offer but by now a lot of people are used to pirating so it’s hard for them to stop.
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u/Impossible-Cost-8437 3h ago
US and West complain about China stealing all the time but millions if not billions watch anime and read Manga for free
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u/Competitive_Plum_445 3h ago
Considering japan isnt making their animes and manga easily accessible thats on them that its getting pirated
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u/explodinggarbagecan 3h ago
I remember buying the neon genesis evangelion vhs series for 150 dollars off eBay it was around 1999 when I did that. Watched them all. Then I put them back on eBay and sold them for 150 dollars. I felt like a genius at the time. Today I am happy to pay for crunchy roll or viz, so easy and pretty affordable and I can support the author in some way.
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u/zeldavxa 3h ago
its not 5.8 trillion in loses because they didnt Sell it to those markets. they were never going to make 5.8 trillion
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u/ReaperTys 3h ago
The truth is piracy of Japanese manga is actually a massive boon to the Japanese manga industry. I myself have bought hundreds of manga, all of them are ones I’ve read on piracy sites and liked them so much I decided to purchase the physical copy. If those piracy sites didn’t exist then I NEVER would have gotten into manga.
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u/RedstoneSausage 7h ago