The same old debate.

[elwen]

The president of Bandai Visual USA is at it again. [You may recall that, last time, he gave a fluffy response to an open letter from anime fans begging the industry to learn from RIAA and MPAA, making it seem like people were listening, but in the end it didn't sound like he'd taken anything to heart.] This time, apparently, he claims that the Japanese anime industry depends entirely on DVD sales for revenue, after "paying Japanese TV stations to broadcast their product." I have two responses.

First, I'm not sure I entirely buy it. Yeah, he probably knows a lot more about it than I do, but he's still the president of a U.S. company, who probably has different incentives from his Japanese counterparts. I'm not saying he'd lie about it, but he might be exaggerating or spinning.

Second, so what? This is no answer to the issue that is at the heart of the piracy debate: piracy is not going to stop. Even if you make a substantial or even a large portion of fans feel bad about it, it will live on. And even fans that feel bad about it aren't necessarily going to buy your $60-for-2-episodes DVDs instead. [American fans always complain about exorbitant prices for anime, but that's what they pay in Japan.] The industry has to adapt. It can work on fighting piracy at the same time, but it simply can't expect that things will ever go back to the way they used to be. If you need to pay stations to broadcast your stuff, maybe you're doing something wrong.

[I can barely imagine how it has worked even up until now, if that's how things really are. I mean, the vast majority of things I only ever watch once. If it's on TV, I'd tape all the episodes and overwrite the tapes as I go. I'd guess that a lot of people are like that. So they're giving a lot away just to make a few sales. How does it work?]

Anyway, I haven't really thought that much about it, and don't really want to, since I suck at business and economics and all those things you'd need to analyze the situation, but . . . I just don't buy it. Either as a fact or as an argument.

Comments

[meril.livejournal.com]

Dude, even me who doesn't pirate anything anymore has stopped paying for anime. I rent it from Netflix. If I think a show is worth rewatching, I buy it. I've been burned on too many bad shows.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I mean, my brain is too full of copyright law right now, so I see it from that perspective, and it comes out as, "Even the things that are legal, like time-shifting (i.e. taping to watch later) and renting, will hurt them!" I just don't see how it was ever economically viable.

I'm glad Netflix has so much anime. My family briefly switched to Blockbuster's program for a while, and it only had random non-sequential discs. But they need to acquire the first season of GTO. >/

[meril.livejournal.com]

Ah, time-shifting--the other thing I do to save money. Sure I'm paying for DVR rental, but it's more efficient and cheaper for me to record things from HBO etc. than renting through Netflix. (Cable TV is an employee benefit for me, so it's free.)

[maoware.livejournal.com]

Dude, Netflix pays royalties.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. But as a matter of copyright law, they don't have to.

[meril.livejournal.com]

Even if they do, the royalty received through a rental is less profit than the sale of a disc.