I know that writing about fansubs is something which has probably been written about to death, but I wanted to add my own opinion on the matter in it’s own post.

Fansubs are kind of both a curse and a blessing the anime industry in the US. Would series like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (or a wide variety of other series) sold as many discs as they had if people hadn’t become familiar with them through fansubs? Probably not. This is the promotional side – the good side – to fansubs, where people view fansubs, and then decide on whether to actually buy the series based on watching the fan sub.

However, fansubs have a flip side and that is, once people are familiar with the series because of fan subs, large chunks – perhaps even a majority of people – who not only watched the series but liked the series keep the fansubs as their copy of the show instead of buying the licensed copy. This is the negative side of fansubbing and it the problem that needs to be addressed.

This dichotomy is probably largely why domestic companies haven’t gone after fansubs all that much. They realize that they’re hurting sales in that people keep the fansubs instead of buying their discs, but at the same time they realize that they probably sell quite a few DVDs because people watched the fansubs on their shows. After all, if fansubs didn’t exist, many people who bought the DVDs may not buy the series because they don’t know what it’s about, but that doesn’t mean that people who downloaded fansubs would by the DVDs either, because they might not know what the series is about either.

So, how can one deal with the problematic side of fansubs? There are kind of two methods, both of which may or may not be effective.

The first method is to try to essentially make fansubs irrelevant by offering what amounts to official versions of the shows which serve largely the same purpose.

One idea could be something like the Japanese anime production studios setting up a website where their shows are posted online for streaming – with English subtitles – very soon or even concurrently with the airing on the show on Japanese TV, for a nominal price – perhaps a dollar or less for an episode on average (you could charge per an episode or have a monthly subscription).

This service would have many advantages over fansubs :

First, they would be faster than most fansub groups. Yes, some groups are able to get fansubs out within 24 hours, but many others you have to wait at least a day, and perhaps longer if not for weeks.

Second, quality would, if anime production studios hire capable translators, be at least equal to, if not superior, to the best fansubbing groups, and a great improvement over the lower quality groups.

Third, again if this were to become widespread, every show in Japan could be given a timely, professional subtitle in a centralized location, eliminating the need to go searching the web for fansubs that may or may not exist.

This system also advantages both the Japanese and American anime industries as well. First, since it would be a pay service, even a nominal charge – like 50 cents per an episode – would give Japanese companies that much more money than they would have otherwise earned (and don’t forget advertising on the website itself). Also, everything is digital so there are no DVDs or anything to worry about. The only costs are server and bandwidth costs (which wouldn’t be exactly negligible to be sure) and translation costs. For American companies, it gives series the promotion they want, but since the shows would be streamed online, no one would have a permanent digital copy (at least easily), and thus the risk of people keeping a digital copy instead of buying DVDs is reduced.

So, is this option viable? That depends on a few factors. The first factor is whether fans would be willing to pay a nominal charge to see a quality streamed subtitled version of a show very soon after it aired. Those who refuse to ever pay anything for anime probably will continue to look for torrent fansubs that still exist. However, hopefully enough honest and respectable fans exist that would make this option viable. If not, it’s hard not to condemn a large portion of the anime fanbase en masse for pretty much not supporting an industry they supposedly like.

The second option for trying to minimize the bad part of fansubs basically amounts to trying to convince or teach people why keeping fansubs instead of buying official DVDs is bad. However, activity like this has gone on in fansub debates for a while, seemingly with little success. There appears to be an attitude of “if I can get it for free, why shouldn’t I?” with no regard to whether it is actually legal or not.

However, this problem is an issue larger than just anime, and infects things like music and movie downloads as well. This signifies that it is a societal issue where people just aren’t taught what is right and wrong, or if they are, why it matters. Part of this deals with the question of why do some people, like myself, believe it’s wrong to download anime in place of buying it and refuse to do it, while others not only do it, but some believe that it is morally OK to do it.

Some people just don’t care – they’ll take it for free even if they know it’s illegal and wrong. These are the people that you can’t do much with unless you can some find them and fine/jail them for piracy. They’re going to refuse to pay for anything, no matter what it is, and until there is a sufficient threat of punishment, they’ll keep on doing it.

Some people may not understand the idea behind copyrights. I don’t know how many times in a fansub debate I’ve seen a comment along the lines of “It’s not stealing. If I take a copy, they still have their copy, so I’m not really stealing anything.” However, this misses the point.

If I sell chairs, I, presumably, have a master copy, or at least a master design, for that chair, and I make copies of that chair to sell to people. I make my money by selling my chairs to other people.

Intellectual property works basically the same way. The costs of copying are small, and the thing being sold is digital rather than physical, but the same principles apply. Their business is to sell something, and if you take a copy of that thing without paying for it, it’s stealing. It matters little whether it’s digital or physical, or whether the owner is able to keep his copy or not.

It’s easy to visualize someone stealing a chair from someone, as you now have the chair but the other person doesn’t, and people seem to think that if you replicate the chair (for free) and take the copy, everything is just fine because the first person keeps their copy. However, there are several problems with this idea.

The first is that the design for the chair itself is probabably intellectual property as designs are copyrightable. As a result, if you copy the chair design, you’re still stealing something – by creating an unauthorized copy of the chair in violation of the copyrights of the chair’s designer (see, even if you’re dealing with something physical, it still may very well come down to intellectual property).

Second, if you built the chair yourself, chances are you couldn’t do it for free. You’d need supplies from somewhere, and you’d likely have to pay for them. As a result, justifying downloading fansubs in place of buying DVDs by analogizing it to making a free copy of a physical item starts breaking down.

Thirdly, even assuming you could find supplies for free, you’re still not buying the chair, and thus costing the original chair maker a sale. You’re still taking what is essentially his product without paying for it. The fact that you made it yourself still doesn’t diminish the fact that the person who actually designed the chair gets nothing for your copy.

This is perhaps the biggest point of hypocrisy for those who want to use fan subs in place of DVDs: the fact that they want their anime, yet create a giant disincentive for people to create anime in the first place. If people make anime, they want to be paid for it. The only way people can get paid for it is if people who like their shows to actually pay for them. The inability of people to grasp this basic economic concept often amazes me. If no one pays for the show, how do they expect those who make the show to get paid, exactly? Or do they think that the money comes out of a magic fountain, or do they expect people to make anime for them for free?

One final note: one of the more common reasons for downloading fansubs is “I can’t afford anime!” This isn’t so much of a problem if this is a legitimate reason (if you don’t have the money, anime companies won’t get it whether fan subs exist or not). However, that is they key phrase: if it is a legitimate reason.

For many people, I suspect, it’s not a legitimate reason and just an excuse. They spend their money on other things and then, wouldn’t you know it, they just don’t have enough left over to buy that anime, and so they have to resort to fansubs. This is the disingenuous side to “I don’t have the money.” They actually do have the money, but they decide to spend it on other things that they don’t have to spend money on. Not having money after paying rent, gas, food, power, etc. is one thing, but not having money because you just spent $1000 on clothes, games, and whatever else doesn’t constitute “I don’t have the cash.”

Of course, for those of us who may be rather cash-strapped, this problem can be somewhat alleviated by waiting for affordable box sets to be released if one is willing to wait for them. Then there is also the other legal way to view anime which I utilize pretty much more than anything – using online DVD rental services like Netflix, Blockbuster Online, or RentAnime.

In any case, I think both those who are in the “fansubs are absolutley evil!” camp and those who are in the “there is absolutely nothing wrong with fansubs at all!” camp are both wrong. Fansubs have both positive and negative effects. The thing that we as fans and the anime industry must try to figure out is how to promote the positive aspects of fansubs while trying to decrease the negative side-effects.