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This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.

by jchw 6y ago

dragontamer 6y ago
Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Naruto and Shippuden never would have found a subtitled audience without that team of translators. (And the English dub was relatively low quality back then, believe it) I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content.
- jchw 6y ago
  I’m not saying it’s a direct comparison, just that bootstrapping off of content theft is pretty par for the course for the internet, be it individual creators or entire websites. I also don’t see it as a good thing, but at least with anime fansubbers it is kind of a begrudgingly accepted reality that this kind of activity helps create the market that allows the legitimate player to exist.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  > I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content. By making it available. This is value added too.
- stryan 6y ago
  During the illegal content days, Crunchyroll wasn't subbing the videos. Those were uploaded by dedicated fansub teams who did the actual work and CR was just another anime tube site.
- tristor 6y ago
  > Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Most of the content on Crunchyroll was fansubbed by various IRC and torrent groups and used without permissions of the original copyright holders or of the fansub groups and without credit to the fansubbers. So, actually, no, they didn't need a team of translators, and there's a lot of anime fans who refuse to do business with Crunchyroll because of their betrayal of the fansub community.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    Its been a while since those times. I remember Dattebayo fansubs, one of those torrent fansub groups you're talking about. I remember when they shutdown and announced support for Crunchyroll, suggesting that legitimate paid streaming was the future for anyone who actually wanted to support the anime subtitle community. Perhaps I wasn't remembering the full politics of mid 00s subtitle culture... its been a very long time since then. But for Dattebayo at least, they were quite clear on throwing their support behind Crunchyroll, to the point where it was rumored that Dattebayo was probably working with Crunchyroll. (Though I'm not sure if that was ever confirmed) With hundreds of thousands of torrent hits per week, Dattebayo fansubs probably was one of the largest torrent fansubbers of that time. I tried to search for a history of those groups, but alas, it seems lost to time. I just got my personal memories to guide me. --------- You're right in that those early fansubber / torrent / IRC groups were all separate groups with different politics. But from my perspective, the big groups (ie: Dattebayo) were definitely all in on supporting Crunchyroll.
    - arbaal 6y ago
      I think your retrospective is very Dattebayo centric and distorted. Most big fansubbing groups hated CR back in the days when CR started, since CR took their fansunbs to fuel their business. Once CR started to make/pay for their own translations (also hiring translators from some groups in the background) the situation got better, since then a clear, legal path was visible for the community.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        I don't know anything about any of these groups (I do like anime), but they had to know from the beginning that voluntary subtitling would never make any money. Even if copyright law were intended to help regular people rather than giant corporations, their work was entirely based on material they had questionable "right" to use in the first place. They scratched their own itch, and later CR had an itch too. It could be that Dattebayo always had a more complete understanding of the situation than other fansub groups had.
makomk 6y ago
As I pointed out the other day in the comments of an article about Crunchyroll, they're actually a much better example than Pornhub. Much like YouTube, sites like Pornhub have the excuse that they ostensibly exist to let people upload their own, often amateur, content - and there was a lot of really good amateur content on there. Which, naturally, the commercial porn industry wanted to eradicate just as much as the pirated stuff because it was their direct competition. Part of the problem was that there's an inherent assymetry to this - it only takes a few really keen exhibitionists wanting to show off to entertain a much larger group of fans across the globe. Another part is that there's all kinds of niche content that, despite being both consensual and legal, isn't well served by mainstream porn (and in some cases can't be due to Masterard and Visa).

This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.

by jchw 6y ago

This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.

Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Naruto and Shippuden never would have found a subtitled audience without that team of translators. (And the English dub was relatively low quality back then, believe it) I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content.

jchw 6y ago
I’m not saying it’s a direct comparison, just that bootstrapping off of content theft is pretty par for the course for the internet, be it individual creators or entire websites. I also don’t see it as a good thing, but at least with anime fansubbers it is kind of a begrudgingly accepted reality that this kind of activity helps create the market that allows the legitimate player to exist.
codetrotter 6y ago
> I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds value to the content. By making it available. This is value added too.
stryan 6y ago
During the illegal content days, Crunchyroll wasn't subbing the videos. Those were uploaded by dedicated fansub teams who did the actual work and CR was just another anime tube site.
tristor 6y ago
> Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Most of the content on Crunchyroll was fansubbed by various IRC and torrent groups and used without permissions of the original copyright holders or of the fansub groups and without credit to the fansubbers. So, actually, no, they didn't need a team of translators, and there's a lot of anime fans who refuse to do business with Crunchyroll because of their betrayal of the fansub community.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Its been a while since those times. I remember Dattebayo fansubs, one of those torrent fansub groups you're talking about. I remember when they shutdown and announced support for Crunchyroll, suggesting that legitimate paid streaming was the future for anyone who actually wanted to support the anime subtitle community. Perhaps I wasn't remembering the full politics of mid 00s subtitle culture... its been a very long time since then. But for Dattebayo at least, they were quite clear on throwing their support behind Crunchyroll, to the point where it was rumored that Dattebayo was probably working with Crunchyroll. (Though I'm not sure if that was ever confirmed) With hundreds of thousands of torrent hits per week, Dattebayo fansubs probably was one of the largest torrent fansubbers of that time. I tried to search for a history of those groups, but alas, it seems lost to time. I just got my personal memories to guide me. --------- You're right in that those early fansubber / torrent / IRC groups were all separate groups with different politics. But from my perspective, the big groups (ie: Dattebayo) were definitely all in on supporting Crunchyroll.
  - arbaal 6y ago
    I think your retrospective is very Dattebayo centric and distorted. Most big fansubbing groups hated CR back in the days when CR started, since CR took their fansunbs to fuel their business. Once CR started to make/pay for their own translations (also hiring translators from some groups in the background) the situation got better, since then a clear, legal path was visible for the community.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      I don't know anything about any of these groups (I do like anime), but they had to know from the beginning that voluntary subtitling would never make any money. Even if copyright law were intended to help regular people rather than giant corporations, their work was entirely based on material they had questionable "right" to use in the first place. They scratched their own itch, and later CR had an itch too. It could be that Dattebayo always had a more complete understanding of the situation than other fansub groups had.

makomk 6y ago

As I pointed out the other day in the comments of an article about Crunchyroll, they're actually a much better example than Pornhub. Much like YouTube, sites like Pornhub have the excuse that they ostensibly exist to let people upload their own, often amateur, content - and there was a lot of really good amateur content on there. Which, naturally, the commercial porn industry wanted to eradicate just as much as the pirated stuff because it was their direct competition. Part of the problem was that there's an inherent assymetry to this - it only takes a few really keen exhibitionists wanting to show off to entertain a much larger group of fans across the globe. Another part is that there's all kinds of niche content that, despite being both consensual and legal, isn't well served by mainstream porn (and in some cases can't be due to Masterard and Visa).