Well, I’m sure Gonzo felt they were the ones getting rolled, previously. A week ago, I wrote:
While I was looking up Slayer’s references, I ran across more evidence that not all of the Japanese studios are as stupid as Evil Skippy Bandai:
The main administrator of Crunchyroll, a video-streaming website with many unauthorized anime videos, has said in an online post that the Gonzo/GDH anime production company contacted the site. According to Crunchyroll, the two companies have been “trading ideas about what we can do together so everyone will benefit.†… Funimation and Bandai Entertainment issued statements yesterday expressing concern over copyright infringement, and both said that they notified the site of infringing content…. GDH has confirmed that it has been talking with Crunchyroll. GDH is planning a formal press release in the next two weeks or later regarding newer Gonzo titles.
Well, it could be spin, as in GDH might really be sending a lvl 70 tier 6 equipped Mohawk (“Mr. T, there is no such class as Mohawk in World of Warcraftâ€. “Shut up, foo’!â€) to tell Crunchyroll “Die, plz. kthnx.†But I would expect GDH to be clearer if they were really hammering Crunchyroll instead of trying to co-opt it.
Well, it’s been revealed that Crunchyroll has licensed two of Gonzo’s anime series:
more great news about some new stuff coming out in a couple weeks:
Crunchyroll is going to simulcast 2 brand new anime series from gonzo,
The Tower of DRUAGA -the Aegis of URUK- and BLASSREITER, the same day it airs in Japan!The Tower of DRUAGA -the Aegis of URUK- premieres on April 4th and is directed by Koichi Chigira, who also directed some of my favorites like Full Metal Panic! and Last Exile!
BLASSREITER premieres on April 5th and is directed by Ichiro Itano, who’s worked on Gantz and Macross Zero!The best part is the streaming will stay FREE and any ads on it will help pay for the costs and go back to the creators too! There will also be a lot of other cool stuff i can’t talk about yet ^_^
Update: Yup, it’ll be subtitled.
Emphasis added. Now, it’s not just Crunchyroll; there are actually three sites involved, according to ANN.
The Japanese media company GDH has announced that the YouTube, Crunchyroll, and BOST online video services will be streaming new titles from GDH’s Gonzo animation studio — worldwide and on the same day as their Japanese broadcast. The video streams, which will be in Japanese with English subtitles, will start with The Tower of Druaga: the Aegis of Uruk (pictured at right) and Blassreiter anime series. Druaga will premiere on April 4, and Blassreiter will premiere on April 5.
About. Damn. Time. We’ve been doing closed captioning in real time (granted, much easier than translating) so it seems like this should have been possible long ago with scripted works. But don’t start ordering party balloons just yet:
All three video services offer their content via streaming, although GDH also mentioned “fee-based download of high-resolution movie files” in its press release. America’s Viz Media offered NTV’s Death Note episodes for download within half a year of their Japanese broadcast, but GDH’s new initiative is the first global, simultaneous streaming of multiple series from a major anime studio.
So it might be simulcasting with an option to purchase later. What do you want to bet the simulcast will be about 200 x 300, no widescreen?
Now the really interesting thing is this: a number of C&D orders have been received by groups working on the series Rosario + Vampire, leading many to assume that it has been licensed to Crunchyroll. Which would be really, really interesting from several points of view — especially legal. Y’see, Crunchyroll has all the Ayako-Bakawolf fansubs on its site.
If they’ve licensed R+V (which I doubt) its going to be a hoot to see them trying to make money off of someone else’s fansub.
Oh. isn’t that interesting; there’s no more advertising on Crunchyroll’s site, so they can’t be said to be “making money.” Directly, that is…. Things that make you go hmmmmmm. More interesting: Crunchyroll got to where it is and into a position to make these licensing deals because they were a repository of fansubbed works. Illegal fansubs, but not-for-profit — and it’s quite obvious that Crunchyroll is profiting by having made them available to everyone.
Are they gambling that no fansub group will dare surface publicly and sue them? Now that could be interesting if they do….
We talked about this once on Author’s site. Strictly speaking, the fansubbers don’t have any rights.
Their fansubs are “derivative works” under copyright law. That’s why they’re infringing the original studios’ copyrights. The original studios have full ownership rights of all derivative works, including unlicensed derivative works produced by others, which means the studios legally own the fansubs.
So it’s not just that they don’t expect a fansub group to file suit. They would win even if a fansub group were stupid enough to try such a thing — and would not only get awarded their legal expenses, but also then countersue (and win) for the fansub copyright infringement.
It won’t happen, though. No fansubber would be able to find a lawyer willing to take on such a case on a commission basis, and fansubbers wouldn’t have the tens-of-thousands-of-dollars it would take to push such a case to decision — which they’d lose, anyway.
Sorry, “Avatar”, not “Author”.
Oh, well, seems I’m not totally right about this.
Now they have a notice that R+V is licensed and no longer available. It looks like they got the same C&D order.
JB: From the summaries and screenshots, it’s a mercy killing. R+V jumped the tracks completelyEveryone at the school finds out that Tskune is a human.
Toren: at Chizumatic, you mentioned discussions with a lawyer, but based on your description, the lawyer was working for the big guns that would defend the original IP rights — and when it comes to lawyer’s opinions, they’re like a**holes…
I think Avatar is closer to right. Steven is correct in that there should be no *original* elements in fansubbing, but translation from Japanese is sufficiently art as apposed to science, they could skate by that point. At least arguably — not saying it would work in a court, but the judge would probably listen.
Another issue is fan backlash. While most of CR’s fans are positive, I saw a few naysayers in there, who are suspicious of CR and GDH. I think they may have the right of it.
Consider this: I’ve been arguing that the industry should co-opt the pirates, but they’ve gone me one better: they’re co-opting the distributors. The online distributors are natural allies of the businesses anyway, from the companies’ point of view — not the creative people doing the work, who are, after all, just labor.
The sneaky part is, I think the use of fansubs to enable and enrich the fansub distributors is a feature, not a bug. I think it may be GDH’s strategy to so anger and demoralize the fansubbers (by enabling someone else to profit off their work), that they’ll just quit the field.
It’s a brilliant and risky strategy…. that still doesn’t do one damn thing about the illegal Chinese DVD’s being manufactured and sold by the thousands.
Yeah, I knew R+V was running off the tracks based on episode 10, and when I discovered that only half of episode 11 was based on the manga, with the other half being a not-terribly-funny reference to the creation of the new magazine that the manga is running in (“Youkai Square” = “Jump SQ”), I knew they had no intention of getting the big finish right. Blech.
On fansub rights, I think the problem is that the common English word “original” has very little to do with the legal term “original”, as used in copyright-land. A cleverly-constructed faithful translation is, in the real world, something original and never seen before. Unfortunately, the more faithful it is, the more obviously it is derived from the original work, and the translator’s own statements will support that (“we worked really hard to convey the author’s meaning here”).
So, in a context where “original” simply means “not derived from another copyrighted work”, there’s nothing “original” about a faithful translation. The harder they work, the less they own.
For a long-standing example of where “original” doesn’t mean what you would expect, under US law, typeface designs are not copyrightable. All those cool, original designs you can find on myfonts.com? They’re just alphabets, and there’s nothing “original” about an alphabet. Adobe and other foundries have worked around this with the claim that the digital file that contains the font design is actually a computer program, and submitted that program as a copyrightable work. Suits against knock-off fonts try to show that they copied the program and made minor changes (a derivative work), and/or infringed the trademarked name. More recently, the Berne conventions have let them use the European copyrights for their work in US suits, if they’re filed the right paperwork in a country that does allow font copyrights (pretty much “everywhere else”).
-j
Yeah, basically I think they could get in front of a judge, but have a damned low chance at winning. The big question is the issue of end-users, and that’s going to depend on the value to them.
IF CR & co. can simulcast with a good translation at a reasonably acceptable aspect ratio (640×480 or similar widescreen at a minimum), and keep the simulcast free, then they might make a go at it. The revenue would come from localized (i.e.: R1) advertising. This would be of two types: their own DVD’s/Music CD’s, and sales of advertising time to other R1 companies. Probably the latter would start with companies such as Sony USA, etc. (companies with N.A. presence and with which they have established sponsor relationships) and then branch out to other companies, once Crunchyroll, et.al. make connections with the major advertising agencies in the USA — something the Japanese studios will help facilitate if that is the plan.
Bandwidth and server capacity is the big question here; can they deliver a product viewers will watch, and still keep up with the demand? Or is it going to be like the infamous Victoria’s Secret online show a few years ago, which faltered due to too many logins (bad pixelation, choppy sound, etc.)? Also, if it’s simulcast, what time will it be aring in R1?
If Gonzo has really put it all on the line here; if they’ve bet high enough, they might actually manage to make a dent in the fansubbers. Why wait for someone to sub a show and have it out tomorrow (maybe) if you can watch it live today? So what if there’s a commercial or two? By golly, no more of those dastardly RAW watchers and their spoilers!
On the other hand, if it’s 300 x 200 and you can’t even read the subs, or the servers can’t handle the load… we will see. This is going to be interesting.