November 26, 2007
Sue, sue, sue! Or... don't
One of the things that people assume, when talking about the fansub debate, is that the industry is poised on the precipice of some kind of RIAA/MPAA-style legal crackdown, legions of lawyers ready to swoop in and reduce the eeeeevil fansubbers to smoking financial craters.
Nope. Not gonna happen. Ever.
Copyright law in the US is federal law. Any case of copyright infringement, even the little dinky minor ones, are federal cases. This means filing in federal court. This means significant legal costs - not significant if you are a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise, but a whole lot if you're an anime company.
And, the way the law is set up, you pretty much have to file the suit before you get the person's identity, assuming they're not suing me or Steven or Jeff, or the other half-dozen fans whose real names are easy to identify. So that money is a sunk cost, even if it turns out that "narutofan1340" is a penniless college student, or a penniless little kid, or a penniless model otaku whose entire assets are tied up in plastic Gundams. (What? We're talking anime fans here, who's an anime fan and still has money? Give 'em credit for knowing that much about the audience, huh?) That's on top of the normal land mines of "oh crap, it's a single mom" or "Senator's son, uh oh" or what have you.
To put it bluntly, the anime companies can't individually afford an effort on this scale. Not "can't afford the negative publicity attendant upon filing a large number of lawsuits". Just plain ol' "can't come up with the scratch." Sure, in two or three years you might score a few big judgments, but your chances of recovering on them are virtually nil to start with - how much is a $250k judgment against a broke college student worth, after all? - and in the meantime, the capital investment you put into enforcement might mean losing a hit license and real revenue to a competitor.
I did say "individual". "But Avatar, obviously they'll just set up a collective agency and tag-team everybody!" Too late - it happened years ago. Anybody even remember JAILED? I honestly don't expect a second attempt to succeed any more than the first. We're not talking about huge conglomerates where there's layers of management to insulate the companies from each other.
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Nope. Not gonna happen. Ever.
Copyright law in the US is federal law. Any case of copyright infringement, even the little dinky minor ones, are federal cases. This means filing in federal court. This means significant legal costs - not significant if you are a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise, but a whole lot if you're an anime company.
And, the way the law is set up, you pretty much have to file the suit before you get the person's identity, assuming they're not suing me or Steven or Jeff, or the other half-dozen fans whose real names are easy to identify. So that money is a sunk cost, even if it turns out that "narutofan1340" is a penniless college student, or a penniless little kid, or a penniless model otaku whose entire assets are tied up in plastic Gundams. (What? We're talking anime fans here, who's an anime fan and still has money? Give 'em credit for knowing that much about the audience, huh?) That's on top of the normal land mines of "oh crap, it's a single mom" or "Senator's son, uh oh" or what have you.
To put it bluntly, the anime companies can't individually afford an effort on this scale. Not "can't afford the negative publicity attendant upon filing a large number of lawsuits". Just plain ol' "can't come up with the scratch." Sure, in two or three years you might score a few big judgments, but your chances of recovering on them are virtually nil to start with - how much is a $250k judgment against a broke college student worth, after all? - and in the meantime, the capital investment you put into enforcement might mean losing a hit license and real revenue to a competitor.
I did say "individual". "But Avatar, obviously they'll just set up a collective agency and tag-team everybody!" Too late - it happened years ago. Anybody even remember JAILED? I honestly don't expect a second attempt to succeed any more than the first. We're not talking about huge conglomerates where there's layers of management to insulate the companies from each other.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at
11:51 PM
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1
How successful was JAILED, anyway?
Posted by: grgspunk at November 27, 2007 12:12 AM (RHgfY)
2
You're quite right that the R1 release companies can't afford it, and won't do it. But how about the Japanese companies?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 27, 2007 03:04 AM (+rSRq)
3
In the sense that Bandai or Shogakukan or the other big players in the market can theoretically afford to throw an infinite amount of money at the US legal system, yeah, theoretically they could afford it.
In the sense that they're likely to do it, no way. They're at a much bigger disadvantage than the US companies in this respect. Not that the legal protections are any weaker, but they have to incur significantly higher expenses to file those suits, because they have to hire counsel in the US and translate a lot of legal documents back and forth; this is higher-paid work than anime translation. ;p Their chances of recovery are even smaller yet, because there's a significant chance they could lose even a slam-dunk court case in front of a jury (something you don't confront in the Japanese legal system), especially in front of the argument "you're going to sue this kid for watching a TV show that you don't actually sell in this country, on the off chance that you might want to one day?" Legally it's not a fair argument, but man, were I a defense lawyer I'd lay that on with a trowel...
So, higher cost, higher chance of losing, different legal culture, the added stress... I don't see it happening.
As for JAILED, how effective was it? Not too effective. Don't think it ever did anything, actually; if it did, said actions were lost to the fog of history long ago.
In the sense that they're likely to do it, no way. They're at a much bigger disadvantage than the US companies in this respect. Not that the legal protections are any weaker, but they have to incur significantly higher expenses to file those suits, because they have to hire counsel in the US and translate a lot of legal documents back and forth; this is higher-paid work than anime translation. ;p Their chances of recovery are even smaller yet, because there's a significant chance they could lose even a slam-dunk court case in front of a jury (something you don't confront in the Japanese legal system), especially in front of the argument "you're going to sue this kid for watching a TV show that you don't actually sell in this country, on the off chance that you might want to one day?" Legally it's not a fair argument, but man, were I a defense lawyer I'd lay that on with a trowel...
So, higher cost, higher chance of losing, different legal culture, the added stress... I don't see it happening.
As for JAILED, how effective was it? Not too effective. Don't think it ever did anything, actually; if it did, said actions were lost to the fog of history long ago.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at November 27, 2007 12:05 PM (LMDdY)
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