Postby Happosai » Fri Jan 21, 2005 8:46 am
Whilst there is little I can (or will) do about people selling copies of Star Fleet for a profit (regardless of how large or small), I thought I'd point out to people on here that the sellers are basically profitting from these sales, with little justification, and that it is possible to obtain copies for 'free'.One of my interests is anime (Japanese animation), and there is a long history of people supplying copies of shows to fans that otherwise would not be able to get hold of them in a form that they could enjoy. 'Fansubs' (shows only available in Japanese language which are translated and subtitled by fans for fans) have been produced for the last couple of decades.Before the popularity/practicality of producing/distributing digital videos, fansubs were produced and distributed on video tape. The people translating and subtitling the tapes did so at no cost to others, even though it required special knowledge and equipment (multi-format VHS decks and a computer with a genlock to add the subs). The tapes were generally distributed by third-party distributors, who would handle the duplication. To be considered a legitimate distributor, rather than a bootlegger, they could only charge other people the cost of the media (or people could supply their own) and distribution costs, plus a nominal amount for 'wear and tear' on equipment (VCRs would suffer from this over time) -- this was in the order of pence, usually by rounding up the total figure to the nearest pound or something. If fans considered that a distributor was overcharging, then they would generally be blacklisted as a bootlegger.With the advent of cheaper/higher spec computer equipment, it became easier to produce and distribute fansubs digitally (i.e. on CD). The same rules regarding costs applied as for tapes, except 'wear and tear' was considered less of a real issue, and distributors were expected to keep their prices in line with the ever falling cost of CD-R media.With the rise in popularity of high-speed Internet access, physical media fansub distribution has all but dried up. Fansubs are now distributed via P2P networks at no charge to the end users. There are numerous shows being fansubbed at any one time, both the latest series being shown on Japanese TV and older, more difficult to obtain shows, including some obscure shows that aren't even readily available in their original Japanese. People are sourcing, ripping, translating, subtitling, encoding and distributing these at no cost to others.Fansub ethics say that once a show has been licenced for a commercial release in the language that they were fansubbing it in, they should no longer produce or distribute fansubs of it. Also, anime studios will sometimes request that shows are not fansubbed, or it is obvious that a show will be getting a non-Japanese language release, in which case ethical fansubbers will leave it alone. Unfortunately, there are a few unethical fansubbers and distributors out there.The antithesis of the fansubbers are the bootleggers, who sell pirated copies of anime shows for profit -- these are either blatant rip-offs of commercially translated releases, other people's fansubbed releases, or, in the case of many Far Eastern pirates, poorly produced in-house translations. The commerical bootlegs are packaged to make them look legitimate, even though their contents are often poor quality (worse than fansubs, which are produced for free).Whilst I'm not saying that the people selling copies of Star Fleet are out-and-out bootleggers, they certainly aren't comparable to the anime fansubbers, who put a lot more effort into their creations for no money whatsoever, or the off-line distributors, who only charge to cover media/distribution costs.[Happosai]