WTF, Funimation?

[elwen]

Apparently Funimation has decided to announce its newest anime licenses (Black Cat, Solty Rei, and Tsubasa Chronicle) by sending cease and desist letters to several fansubbing groups without bothering to announce the license first. If it wasn't so enraging, it'd almost be funny. I mean, on the AnimeSuki licensing list, instead of "Anime Expo 2005" or "DVD Solicitation", under Method it says "C&D letter". Not a very fan-friendly way to transmit information.

So yeah, Tsubasa finally got licensed. Considering a C&D letter isn't generally full of helpful details like release dates and such, it's unclear whether Funimation has both seasons or just the first.

And my Black Cat fix will probably become a lot harder to get. I think it's simple enough, plus I'm familiar with the manga storyline, that I might just go for the raws. Especially since I probably failed the JLPT not on kanji but on listening, reading, and grammar, I should get some more practice in those areas. -_-

Comments

[mergle.livejournal.com]

...okay, I'm upgrading my mental tag on Funimation from "stupid and unable to hire proofreaders" to "evil, stupid and unable to hire proofreaders." Boo.

[azabaro.livejournal.com]

Not so fast. According to ANN:

"Funimation - Shinsen-Subs Follow-up (2005-12-08 20:36:50)
There has been some misunderstanding regarding the events surrounding Funimation's enforcement of its intellectual property vis-a-vis Shinsen-Subs. The fansub group was actively making available several titles that Funimation has already publicly announced. Their copyright infringement was not limited exclusively to unannounced properties."

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Was that the case for all the C&D recipients? Shinsen-Subs wasn't releasing Black Cat, so I assume there are other groups involved, even if they haven't gotten as much attention.

[azabaro.livejournal.com]

The only known recipient of the letter was Shinsen-Subs, and even then only because they went public with it AFAICT - Funimation seems to have tried to avoid making a fuss. I suspect Funimation listed titles that weren't being distributed by Shinsen-Subs (for example, see the mention of Dragonball - from what I understand Shinsen was only distributing Dragonball scanlations, in which case Viz is the licensor). I'm guessing Funimation may have a regularly-updated C&D form letter that lists series they expect or have observed to be regularly subbed.

There might be more information in ANN's discussion thread. If nothing else, you can see Will - or some other omega13 - arguing for tolerance of fansubs (though I have to agree with tempest's rebuttal).

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Which still begs the question why they don't announce their licenses before adding them to the C&D letter.

But according to the news on AnimeSuki, there was another site that got a C&D for Tsubasa and Black Cat: "A few days ago the admin of a certain large anime fansub torrents site received a C&D letter though his server provider (Ev1Servers) from Funimation asking him to remove torrents for Black Cat and Tsubasa Chronicle." Since the site wants to remain anonymous, it's hard to say whether there were issues with any other shows. Personally, I suspect that the group in question may be Anime-Kraze. They were doing both Black Cat and Tsubasa, and they had issues with Funimation previously over Basilisk (which they dropped) and Speed Grapher (which they release IRC-only, so I doubt it was involved in this new trouble).

[azabaro.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that unannounced series get mentioned in the letter due either to the left hand (Legal) not knowing what the right (Marketing) is doing with the delay in announcing a series, or due to some sort of internal politics (where the perceived need to stop the fansubbers outweighs whatever advertising strategy that called for holding off on the license announcement). Anyway, there's nothing wrong with announcing a license via a C&D letter - it's not like they carry force of law or anything. I'm not as happy about Funi notifying Shinsen's network provider, but that may be a requirement of the DMCA...

FWIW, I wouldn't be too surprised if continuing to release a licensed (even solely on IRC) may have contributed to getting this letter; after all, with Shinsen it seems that part of the reason they got hit with this is that they've continued to provide shows that have already been licensed. I wouldn't think it all that worthwhile to go after IRC releases (I can't imagine them comparing to BitTorrent traffic, after all), but Funimation may have been doing this at least partly to send a message to the fansub community about respecting their licenses.

[omega13.livejournal.com]

That was indeed me. The points tempest brought up are entirely valid and unaccounted for in my initial post, but I still think the general idea I presented is solid.

[omega13.livejournal.com]

Given that A-Kraze's torrent page has neither Black Cat nor Tsubasa, yet continues to offer a number of licensed and in some cases commercially fully available series, it's a pretty safe bet to say that they were the other (or one of the others, as the case might be) group involved.