Lovely! Now the ISPs around the world can be just as draconian as the ones in Australia. Thanks, but no thanks.

Yeah, I think that this isn't a bad idea in theory but won't this just destroy the entire internet? Either ISPs will constantly hemorrhage money because of lawsuits or the ISPs will just start patrolling the internet for potentially lawsuit ridden sites and kill them.

This might change the DLing for a bit but people will find away around it, they'll start doing what the music pirates do and change names, or find another way to encrypt the bit torrents. I don't know how effective this will be, what are they going to do to the free city wifi signals? Are they going to punish the cities over unknown users use? Are the ISP's going to shutdown users accounts as they claim they initially would if they found users pirating content? Imagine if everything reverted back to physical trading. I would shit myself with laughter.

I've always been a strict supporter of the golden rules of fansubs. If this can make more cash for the companies, then good. However I'm not too keen on the idea of any type of decisions driven by a small group of people when it comes to the content of the internet. Small measures like this to protect property can give way to other types of restriction on behalf of the ISP or a plaintiff.

What I don't get is why they need this when many of the sites hosting fansubs & scans willingly remove pirated content when presented with a DMCA notice.

I think eventually (and this may take a LONG time, but eventually), people are going to stop expecting to make revenue on things that can be easily digitized, and make their money on things where scarcity is still an issue-- merchandise, experiences, etc. Some bands have been giving away their albums for free and making their money by touring, because no one will ever be able to offer the concert experience for download. I know people who DL most of their anime in fansub form, but spend half of their income on pvc figures and such.

I don't think it's okay for people to just download everything and feel like they have no responsibility to give back, but the fact remains that there's a paradigm shift going on in terms of how entertainment is enjoyed, and companies will make money when they work with the new paradigms, not fight them tooth and nail.

So based on what I've observed, I don't approve of this law-- not even getting into the fact that forcing ISPs to become the copyright police presents a host of other problems.

with all the talks of net neutrality and this with ISPs, i fear that we may lose the freedom that has been so enjoyed the past few years here on teh internets.
It was bound to happen, so lets enjoy it while we still can.
AND GOD'S SAKE, KEEP SEEDED!

The problem is all those sites that have an immense amount of possibly copyrighted content. We're talking Flickr, DeviantArt, YouTube. This will also hamper the acquisition and creation of works protected under Fair Use.

IMHO: These things are being made by people who don't understand the technology *at all*. Instead of restricting, they need to find a new way to allow the promotion and spread of content.

@serial but they also have to protect their content lest its value decrease.

In theory this would work, but in reality, it will never work. They should give up trying to police the world and just find a new way to make their money.
Offer the world something that can't just be downloaded.

This is true, but I think the potential for abuse is very high. They're essentially shooting the messenger and forcing ISPs to employ content control. If these agreements are put into place it opens the door to many other forms of control that extend beyond copyrighted material.

We don't know the details yet, but as far as I'm aware it's difficult for ISPs to determine which content is and isn't copyrighted without express notification from rights holders. As a result, ISPs might start to employ blanket tactics and ban or throttle down anyone downloading from sites known to host pirated material. It becomes a form of preemptive punishment, and that does not sit well with me at all.

To use a road analogy, the case here might end up being something like toll booths refusing passage for all vans, because vans have enough space to hide illegal immigrants in.

One giant problem that will effect everyone even those who don't pirate. ISP could just raise the service rates either because they have to pay off suits. Or because they need to upgrade their hardware in order to monitor the network.

This will have an effect on everyone, whether they pirate or not. The raising rates is not the only thing it will do. Some people above have mentioned those.

I honestly see this being a bigger issue for American companies than for things from Japan. And yet, for American content, there are alternatives popping up to pirating movies and music outright. Hulu and Last.fm come to mind as good starts.

Now, if this law does start affecting fansubs, and there are no suitable alternatives that I would use, then I'd complain. But if they were to set-up a Hulu-like service (free but paid for through advertising) that I could even stream to my TV (even if I had to pay a small fee per month like with Netflix) that puts content out in a reasonable timeframe like is done for anime like One Piece and Naruto, then I wouldn't mind seeing fansubs completely die.

This is the single most retarded, inane, and generally illegal idea I've ever heard of for countering pirates.

First off, the only way to know someone is "pirating" is by monitoring their data traffic in the first place, thus, every person using the internet is instantly labeled as "potential criminal". It was less than two years ago that everyone was getting at Homeland Security for doing the same damn thing spying on people's traffic except in that case it was intended to keep PEOPLE safe instead of wallets, so why should this be any more acceptable?!

Current methods work fine, the only problem is they need to be executed on a larger scale. Any RIAA agent with half a brain can jump on a torrent stream write down the IPs. Honestly the very thought of this makes me so furious I'm having a hard time corralling my thoughts on the matter.

Secondly, even with methods like this, pirates will always find a way around it. It'll be another classic case of DRM vs. User. The only people that will be affected are the ones that are following the rules, and nothing good is going to come from it.

I just hope that Net Neutrality stuff gets through, cause this is the exact shit (and yes, there is no other word for it) that it's trying to prevent.

They don't sue companies that make knives every time someone uses the knife illegal, either by committing murder, robbery or any other crime.

RIght now, I wouldn't mind fansubs disappearing. While I do watch fansubbed shows, at the rate it's going, there won't be a need anymore. I use my Crunchyroll subscription everyday, and the amount of anime they add is quite good and the amount of DVDs I buy is high enough where I still see new things almost every month. .

But, the actual punishing of ISPs for its consumer's actions is utterly ridiculous.

Like Heero Yuy said, Net Neutrality needs to get passed.

@Scottfrye: That's a good point.

You're a defeatist and a weakling. Thinking this is the way things are going to go eventually is just giving up, thinking like a defeatist.. that you have no control. I refuse to give up. Yes I read scanlations.. for things that aren't available in English. I'll buy what I like of the what like

I'm prepared to give my life for a war for the internet. I am just as much a resident of the internet as I am a resident of a country.

That probably sounds as dumb to you as this whole premise does to me.

There are traditional business practices that have been in place for decades. Many of them are greedy (music labels, Hollywood, etc) that stifle innovation, rape the content producers and developers by pinning them against a corner with a contract and continue to leverage to keep their business models because it makes them so much money.

Here's the thing, though, there is a new breed of entrepreneurs that have found a way to use the internet to their benefit. They're the new blood who need to overtake the old blood.

When there is a cry about the artists who are losing money because people are pirating his music, you have to remember, the artist isn't losing money. The artist isn't making ends meet through CD sales, he's making ends meet through touring. It is the label who is making money through CD sales. (Look at NiN and Radiohead for examples of "big names" who are pioneering new ways of doing things that use the internet as a tool, not an opponent.)

So to create, international no less, laws that aim to stifle the natural progression to new business models and ways of doing things, especially that which makes it much more serviceable and convenient for the consumers... I can't agree with it. In fact, I strongly disagree with the premise, and the worst I do is download fansubs of shows I can't get or cost an unnecessarily exorbitant amount of money.

No good can come of this. I disagree with you that this won't become 1984, I very much see that potential. And I'm fixing to dip my torches in kerosene and sharpen my pitchforks. It's almost time to get pissT.

That's cool, just make it legal to watch the stuff online in the UK?

Won't do that?

Then fuck off.

Getting back to the idea of these people passing laws not even knowing what they're talking about, I don't think they necessarily know the difference between downloading an episode of an unlicensed show as soon as it airs-- like Kimi ni dokore- from downloading a licensed show that is available on DVD commercially. I mean, they might TECHNICALLY know the difference, but I don't think they really know the difference in the sense that even the most judicious fans, who buy all the DVDs, don't feel like they are morally corrupt just for wanting to discuss what's airing on TV this week without having to wait a year or more for a commercial release. Not even getting into those shows destined to legal hell forever, like when a company buys the rights to a show and decides that no one should be able to see it because they just don't feel like bothering to release it (ahem Pichi Pichi Pitch.)

Actually, building on that, I think it's unethical for a company to buy something, sit on the rights and then sue other people for wanting to see it, and as a consumer the only power I have over that is to vote with my wallet. In theory I should just abstain from their products rather than downloading them, but that won't make a difference to their bottom line. It's hard to get people to believe that pirating is wrong when abstaining from giving companies money when you feel they are exploiting you is part of being a consumer- that's not new to the internet age, that's always been true. Cracking down on all pirating is saying that abstaining from giving money to a good company that sells a good product at a fair price, and abstaining to give to a company with which buying their product is tantamount to bending over and hoping it will be quick, is the same thing. I think most people intuitively believe that it is not, that refusing to pay the $200 that ADV wanted for the Sailor Moon Season One boxset (still can't believe that), and refusing to pay for a respectable product are actually two different things.

See, this is all a part of the brilliant anime industry strategy.
1. Broadcast your anime on Japanese network TV only.
2. Offer very limited digital streaming, or none at all.
3. Give the show a ludicrously overpriced DVD release in Japan.
4. License the show with an American company who gives it a crappy dub and bad subs. (Alternatively, never license the show in the U.S. at all.)
5. Release the show in the U.S. with cheaper (but still overpriced) DVDs.
6. Whine, complain and threaten lawsuits when people choose to download fansubs.
7. Five years later, release the show as an "Anime Classics" box set.

I don't really care if the fansub scene goes away, but I think we're going to lose the Internet we have now if this gets passed. Even the potential of lawsuits could cause ISPs or sites like Flickr and Wordpress.com to get out of the game.

I'm less concerned over fansubs but more about the fate of the internet of something like this gets passed. Net neutrality is specifically what allows the internet to thrive so well. Getting rid of that pretty much guts the majority of it, leaving it an empty shell propped up by the government. Not a good thing.

I'm more or less with Brad here. As far as anime and manga are concerned, this sort of thing wouldn't change much. Much like the doujinshi scene in Japan, anime studios are in a sort of wink-nudge copyright enforcement situation with fansubbers.

Unless a studio is airing its shows with official subs online (in which case why bother with fansubs?), the only way that their work can BE exposed to overseas audiences is with the technically-copyright-violating sub scene, and that exposure creates demand for licensing here in the States and elsewhere. And since copyright enforcement is left to the discretion of the copyright holders, fansubs and scanlations of unlicensed (and non-streamed) will probably be left as they are right now.

Deb Aoki would be right with her warning, except that there are certain situations where Anime/Manga copyright holders pick and choose where to enforce, whereas there are no such situations for the RIAA/MPAA.

@Pangloss: You talk as if this were the Best of All Possible Worlds ^_~

Im going to try to explain the consequences of the ACTA treaty for those who don't seem to have a problem with it.

First of all, the ACTA treat is not so much a treaty as it is a series of demands of the United States entertainment industry ,who wish to enforce it on the rest of the Westernized nations. The goal is to stamp out "piracy" . The problem is that most pirated material is from the two nations that WONT sign the treaty, Russia and China.

What would be the effect on piracy? None, since Russia and China will now have sole monopoly over the bootlegging industry (yes it is an industry, and no individual downloaders are not bootleggers).

What will this affect then? First of all, the treaty is demanding "three strikes" long term internet disconnection. This portion has been enacted in France and soon Britain. What it entails is that the entertainment industry provides an accusation (not proof, as it is not required to prove someone did something wrong to cut their internet), where in a 10 minute (in the case of France) review by a Judge ( who will invariably choose the easiest decision to work through the backlog) at which point the user's internet connection is cut and the user is blacklisted for UP TO A YEAR.

Consider that most commerce is now online, and frequently most work is also done online, this would be undue punishment or Cruel and Unusual. The fact then is that the entertainment industry now has effective policing rights , that only the state and its associations are only allowed to have under all western democratic governments.

People, the moment the entertainment industry gets what it wants ,it will want more. These are corporations, if legislation maximizes their profit with little effort , then they will do what they wish. They have already done so with draconian measures in the DMCA which requires people with no access to lawyers to defend themselves against giant corporations.

Normally, I believe that corporations can manage on their own without government intervention. But the entertainment industry is saying that they are so impotent and so useless that they need to effectively punish people for things they may not even have done, with sanction from the government.

This is definitely not good.

"extend criminal enforcement to both (1) cases of a commercial nature; and (2) cases involving significant willful copyright and trademark infringement even where there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain. In other words, non-commercial infringement could lead to criminal penalties"

So what of Japanator Radio you say?

The thing with most fansubs is that they stop releasing new episodes if a series gets licensed. A fair few of this seasons new anime was licensed by Crunchyroll...IN AMERICA! So, the main fansub groups stopped translating them leaving those who aren't in America (like me) without anime if it wasn't for the rebel groups who are against Crunchyroll.

Did I also mention that, even if the episodes on Crunchyroll were available here in the UK, I still wouldn't be able to watch them? My internet is 0.68meg. That's a download speed of around 86KB/s. Not good, especially for streaming video.

The only way people will stop getting fansubs is if one of the following happened:
1) Anime shown subtitled on TV channels (probably subscription) in relevant countries (namely UK and USA for the bulk of people)
2) Release DVDs at a similar point to the Japanese releases (using the time between Japanese TV broadcast and DVD release to translate the shows and record the voice acting).
3) Offer official downloads of the episodes within a reasonable time from the Japanese broadcast. Probably laden with DRM, but that's likely necessary. Maybe iTunes or something, as long as the videos are subtitled.

You'd also expect, once a series has been licensed, for the international licensor to get all info on the series, whether it's been broadcast yet or not. So they'd have a head start on translating it.

Right that's it. Enough rambling now.

[/walloftext]

...I really don't intend on coming into this thread and interrupting, but that post image is amazing - it's been way too long since I've seen anything from Cromartie High...

Truly I appreciate the fact that the content creators are looking to protect their property, but how many times do we have to go down this road before than learn? You WILL NOT ever stop piracy. There will always be ISPs that will be lax on enforcement. Even if BT died some other non-web based app would come along that would be harder for ISPs to police. Barring that everyone would just move to USEnet. So the scenario pitched by Brad that a sea-change is coming for those that download anime and manga isn't going to come to fruition any time soon.

So what should the content creators do? Crunchy Roll type services are a great first step. There are generating revenue from a place where once there was zero. DVD sales are dead, let them die and move on.

The money wasted on policing scanlators and fansubbers on ISPs could be much better spent researching better ways to provide content in a digital manner in a timely fashion.

This will in turn make the ISP's cut off the user that's identified as downloading the illegal material. Besides, wouldn't you have to find who is downloading it in the first place to figure out what ISP they're getting it from?