YouTube, fansubs, and other “copyright infringements”


The whole issue about YouTube and its copyright infringement policies has always been a big topic among anime fans, and now even more so because of Google taking over YouTube. I don’t know too much about this kind of stuff, but from what I do know and have experienced from having my own YouTube account, I can say that YouTube, or rather the anime companies that enforce these copyright infringement polices, are taking things a little too far…

If you’re wondering what I mean by this, let me give an example. On my YouTube account, I’ve been working on uploading a variety of anime opening clips from many different series’. A while ago, I uploaded the first opening to Code Geass. It was up for a couple of days, then it was suddenly removed and I received an e-mail from YouTube on behalf of Sunrise Inc., saying that the video was copyright infringing. I’m sure I’m not the only anime fan with a YouTube account that has gotten this e-mail before. My only gripe is how in the world could having a video of just the opening of an anime series possibly cause any harm to the creators when there are videos of entire episodes sitting around elsewhere on YouTube. If anything, having just the openings could help promote that series. For example, fans who have never heard of Code Geass before could watch the opening on YouTube and think “Wow, what a cool looking series.” They would then be motivated to watch the actual episodes. Of course, many would turn to fansubs, but I’m sure some would purchase the DVDs when the series is licensed. And even if they don’t, there’s still a good chance they would buy other products pertaining to the series such as CDs, toys, figures, books, etc,. But really, watching just the opening of a series is obviously no replacement for the actual episodes, so the openings could be the spark that gets fans interested in a particular series. Even if it doesn’t help promote the series like I stated above, I honestly don’t see how that little 1 minute 30 second clip could cause Sunrise to lose money or anything. There’s a small chance it could help promote the series and it certainly couldn’t hurt anything, so why bother deleting it? I think Sunrise and other companies that are really out to get people who make videos and/or fansubs of their titles have a way of finding them on YouTube and then getting them deleted, without even paying attention to whether the video is just an opening clip as mine was, or whether it was an entire episode. They probably just go by the tags of the video…if anything, they should go by the tags and the length of the video to determine whether it could be an entire episode or not. If it’s anything under a few minutes, I don’t see what harm it could do. I really think these companies are taking things too seriously and should pay more attention to exactly what they’re deleting. And it’s also a shame that YouTube along with Google, has so many millions of users that come and go, they couldn’t give a damn if any one user’s videos are deleted for such a trivial reason or not.

Ok, so I’ve made it clear why I think it’s stupid to delete short little anime clips, but what about entire episodes? I don’t think entire anime episodes on YouTube are that big a deal either. First of all, YouTube videos are usually much poorer quality than regular AVI or MKV fansubs. And unless the user has a Director’s account, their videos can’t exceed 10 minutes. So they’ll have to divide an entire episode into a few different videos to get the whole thing uploaded. And of course, there isn’t any real way to save YouTube videos onto your computer (I’m sure some people know how, but most people don’t) so whenever you want to watch these anime episodes, you’ll have to have a good Internet connection and hope that YouTube isn’t having any technical problems. Putting all these things together makes for a very inconvenient and poor anime viewing experience, totally inferior to watching the actual DVDs. So there’s a good chance that if someone starts off watching episodes of an anime series on YouTube and gets to like the series enough, they’ll buy the DVDs in order to get the better viewing experience. And even for those who put up with watching poor quality episodes on YouTube and refuse to buy the DVDs, I doubt those people would buy the DVDs even if the episodes weren’t available on YouTube (they would just stop watching the series or get fansubs elsewhere), so why even bother? Of course, there are some users who have Director accounts and know how to upload the best quality anime episodes. So if anything, YouTube and anime companies should go after those people, and as for those of us who upload short, harmless anime clips with the honest intention of promoting anime to other fans, they should leave us alone.

Getting off the YouTube subject for a minute, as for whether I think anime companies should make a big deal about general, good quality fansubs that people download via bittorrent, IRC, etc., the answer is “yes” and “no”, but more towards “no” actually. First of all, there’s the ideal reason that fansubs exist – to promote awareness of a new series so fans will eventually buy the DVDs. For the few fans who do this, fansubs help anime companies and hold to threat to them. But of course, the majority of fans who watch fansubs rarely or never buy DVDs. So will wiping all fansubs off the face of the Internet turn these people around and make them buy the DVDs of all the series’ they’ve downloaded? Possibly, but not likely. First of all, just from my experience of being an anime fan and talking with other fans, I know for a fact that most fans who only watch fansubs would not buy the DVDs of a series if the fansubs were taken away, either because they’re too cheap and lazy, or for the more positive reason, they simply can’t afford it. It’s the former that gives fansubs their negativity, but for the latter (myself among them) fansubs allow us to experience a more variety of anime that we could not watch otherwise, and thus we become more knowledgeable and open-minded in our passion. Without fansubs, many of us could not watch shows like Kanon and Nana and experience a truly Japanese-y, non-mainstream series. Also, if we really like a fansubbed series that has or will be licensed, there’s a good chance we’ll use what little money we have to buy it. And because fansubs allow us to become familiar with a much greater variety of anime than we can afford to buy on DVD or are able to watch on TV, we would still be inclined to buy other cheaper products promoting those series’ besides DVDs. For example, as much as I’d like to, I don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on all the Naruto, Bleach, and Eureka 7 DVDs. So I watch the fansubs, and because the fansubs have gotten me to like these series’ so much, I buy other products from them such as key chains, plushies, posters, calendars, etc,. Sure, it’s not as profitable as the DVDs, but it’s still something, and without the fansubs I wouldn’t buy anything from these series, especially the DVDs. I’m also very inclined to buy products from unlicensed series such as Nana and Ginga Densetsu Weed, and if it weren’t for fansubs, I wouldn’t even know about these series (take the fansubs away, you really think non-Japanese fans would buy the raw DVDs?) So to sum up the whole fansub thing, I think they could do some harm to the anime market, but I actually think they do more good. Fansubs allow non-Japanese anime fans from all over the world to become much more educated and fluent in their interest, with the potential to promote all kinds of series from the hard-core to the mainstream. Even if it’s not through DVD sales, the overall awareness and prospective licensing of series’ is just as important. As I said, I think only a small percentage of fansub-only fans would buy the DVDs if the fansubs weren’t available, so it’s not worth making a big deal about them. Luckily, most anime companies don’t, otherwise sites like Tokyo Toshokan and Box Torrents would’ve been shut down a long time ago (apparently they think it’s more important to delete people’s short little anime clips on YouTube XP) I’ll just say that if it weren’t for fansubs, both of licensed and unlicensed series’, I wouldn’t be nearly as passionate an anime fan as I am today.

But there is at least one anime company that’s been going out of its way to crack down on fansubs of its licensed series’. Which leads me to something really screwy that happened to me a few days ago. Out of nowhere I got a DMCA Copyright Infringement e-mail not from YouTube, but from the anime company ADV! Straight from the ADV Anti-Piracy Team, it listed 5 series’ and said that my site, animeyume.com, had material from these series’ posted and to please remove them immediately. I knew right away that something wasn’t right because I don’t have any material from the 5 series’ they listed; Cromartie High School, Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu, Grrl Power, Happy Lesson, and Kimagure Orange Road, on my site (I’ve never even watched those particular series’). I do have anime opening/ending clips and mp3s on my site, but certainly not from those series’. So I e-mailed them back, saying that maybe they made a mistake or perhaps got my site mixed up with animeyume.org (they also sent me a notice in the postal mail as well). They didn’t reply to my e-mail until a few days later, saying that they did indeed mean to send the notice to animeyume.org but mistakenly sent it to my site, animeyume.com. Sheesh, can you believe that? I’d like to meet the idiot that made that mistake! XP They should’ve offered me free ADV DVDs!

Well, just want to add one more thing before I wrap up this post. Does anyone know why some people are able to get away with posting certain anime clips on YouTube, while other people who post the exact same clips (or from the same series’) get their clips deleted because of copyright infringement? I know it must have something to do with the tags you give your clip, but it seems like even for videos that use the same tags (for example, the name of the anime series in the tags) some are able to get away with it and some aren’t. For example, I was going to post one of the Full Metal Alchemist openings, and I used the tags “full” “metal” “alchemist.” But YouTube wouldn’t even let me upload it because it was copyright infringing. But when I do a search for “full metal alchemist”, I find a ton of FMA related videos, many using the same tags I used. So why could they get away with it and I couldn’t? Another good example is LittleKuriboh and his ever popular Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged Series. He not only uses Yu-Gi-Oh! footage, but also audio and songs from a variety of copyrighted movies and CDs (he puts “yugioh” in his tags as well). Yu-Gi-Oh! is much more well known than a lot of other anime, and it’s not like he has some dinky little account that nobody knows about (the guy has over 25,000 subscribers!), so I wonder why YouTube lets him get away with it. It’s really tricky trying to figure which series’ (or which tags) are prone to getting deleted, and why one person’s clip gets deleted and another’s doesn’t even though they’re the same video with the same tags. I don’t understand it all…all I know is that I just want to post anime openings to help promote the series’. Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to be really careful about it, but hopefully YouTube and anime companies will leave us unoffending fans alone.

No Comments… read them or add your own.

  1. Sana Jisushi says:

    I’m trying to focus my financial efforts on buying the DVDs for things. And stuff like school and food. That comes after.

  2. Ronin says:

    Social justice does not seem to work in your favor. :V

    Hinano was dealt with the same injustice with her Otaku Idol Dance (Hare Hare Yukai was the song used), so it could mean some would be migrating to other video sharing sites, like she did.

    Will this mean the start of another dorama? We will know in the future.

  3. Sai says:

    But this “viewing experience,” most people don’t care about it. Youtube’s been up quite a lot lately, and the only real sacrifice is lower video/audio quality – but it’s still tolerable, so most watchers don’t care.

    I still watch my anime the half-proper way (fansubs), because I like my anime shiny, big, and preferably with some HD thrown in too. Youtube can’t give you THAT, now can it? :D

  4. topleka says:

    For the record, Sunrise is espcially picky about having their works posted on YouTube. I lost my account because of a My HiME AMV. Although, reading the comments on it, at least three people said they wanted to check out the series after seeing my AMV. It’s less YouTube’s policy as it is Sunrise’s. Many other animation companies don’t seem to mind nearly as much.

  5. Sami says:

    I have to agree with you. It’s stupid that they’ll delete an Opening clip or an AMV but there are billions of users with entire episodes uploaded but they haven’t been suspended.
    A poor friend of mine’s account was suspended twice b/c of that. She didn’t upload episodes, just AMVs.
    And because of Youtube, I watched some Ouran Host Club episodes and got hooked enough to start collecting the manga for it.
    And I plan on buying the DVDs for Ouran, DeathNote and Haruhi Suzumiya when they come out.

  6. TP says:

    I have to agree that it’s not the Youtube managers’ way of banning accounts and all: the big production companies are complaining about it, and being a small anchovy compared to the great white shark, Google isn’t in a position to take up arms.

    Let’s face it: a truly utopian world of creative content licence and distribution would be the creator of a creative content, e.g. a manga, doing all the distribution, marketing & quality checking by himself, then we’ll be only deal with the creator him/herself. No excuse for “I’m pirating this stuff ‘cos I hated the middlemen.”

    Until there’s such a program that can minimize the hassles of content distribution & marketing, and I mean a one-in-all suite that can handle all the stuff big production companies are doing right now, you just have to deal with these corporations stamping on everyone’s toes whenever they wished for…

    …I would suggest you signed up with the Global Liberation Army, though.

  7. 1 winged angel says:

    One thing i also noticed was all of the fullmetal alchemist videos disappearing. Which sux big time because i was on episode 37… It seems that they also keep all of the stupid spanish ones though! and i think a few others of different languages…wtf is up with that?

  8. SailorCardKnight says:

    *points to the screen saying, very loudly* My thoughts exactily!!!

    Why can’t these companies get it though thier heads? If they don’t want people to download thier anime they should at least lower the prices on the DVDs!
    Before I got a faster internet connection, I was very limited to the anime I could watch (I don’t have the money, I could rent the DVDs but even THAT can be costly after a while). After I got the connection, it was like a (wonderful) door had opened for me and I was able to see series I had never seen before without having to spend a dime to see it. If its a series I really like, usually I stop downloading it and buy the DVDs/manga (usually I do this to support the series, but I really do it because I love it so much I want a copy of it!)
    Youtube really does help get people into anime (it happened with me with a few series, like Azumanga Daioh after watching some AMVs of it), I even know some people where the only way they can watch anime off of the net is Youtube.
    It also amazes me how some videos get removed from Youtube and others stick around. Its also a real shame that Fullmetalcan got the boot (shes one of the greatest FMA AMV makers of all time), while Youtube is still loaded with other FMA AMVs……

    I would love to talk more about this subject but it would be way to too long to post, so i’ll end it here.

  9. Psycho Midnight says:

    I’ve always had strong feelings about this myself. It really buggers me that liscensing companies are quickly cutting off our resources for anime. I’ve been a fan of tons of series like Naruto, Death Note, Full moon o Sagashite, ect. long before they were liscensed. Now, when i want to watch the newest episodes of some animes, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do so.

    I cannot stand dubs. I don’t hate without reason, I usually at least try to watch the first episode or so of an anime that has been liscenced, just to give the dub a chance, but i never like the voice acting. My ears are typically bleeding so bad just 10 minutes into most dubs that i can’t focus on what’s actually happening. And on top of that, many liscensing companies completely butcher the original series by cutting out scenes and editing out itty bitty splurts of blood in a stupid attempt to be “politically correct”. Thats one of the main reasons i refuse to buy dubbed dvds. Because i won’t enjoy them, so why waste my money? However, if i want to buy the original series on dvd, uncut and unedited, as it was meant to be, I can’t because either 1. The liscense has completely ruined the market of the original japanese version in america or 2. I can find an original japanese dvd, but there are no english subtitles. Hence the reason i turn to fansubs.

    One thing I don’t entirely understand how watching a fansub or watching an anime on youtube is any different than having watched it on tv when the show was aired. Maybe the hype is over people burning their own dvds on their computers instead of buying them. But seriously, i could’ve just as easily popped a blank vhs(or even a blank dvd since they have dvd recorders now) into my vcr and recorded the anime on tv as i could’ve burned it off of my computer onto a dvd.

    [/rant]

    sorry for writing a novel XD;

  10. Miken-chan says:

    My good friend, I suggest veoh.com, for more popular series, and dubs – and maybe a couple lesser-knowns. The site is basically youtube with just a bit more quality, no time limits and they don’t really check anything you put on…it’s just that some people complain of how it’s hard to get the right encoding to upload anime onto it…

    Plus, I find it much easier to use than crunchyroll if you’re looking for series that have been liscensed…because some of us just abhor certain dubs…

    —-

    Anyways, I agree with your rant of the OP video you put up…the copyright thing is especially annoying if you’re looking for lesser-known series by better-known companies. I see that FUNimation, Sunrise and Production I.G. take the most liberty of ‘stopping copyright infringement’.

    And sometimes it’s easier to UL lesser-know clips…like my karaoke-sub series for the Tales games openings…I have had no notification that any of that was copyright infringement…but I do hold some liberties since I personally subbed those videos…

    I guess sometimes you get past ‘the man’…but not always…

  11. Better_than_L_and_Kira_Combined says:

    I need to get another hard drive for my computer, the one I have now is an 80 gigabyte with over 50gigs of fansubbed anime LOL. Where would I be without Bittorrent……probably watching anime on Veoh.com like I usually do when I wait for the fansubs to completely download. Why the hell would I want to spend nearly $100 for Crest of the Stars (Sekai no Monshou)? …There’s no way I would have wanted to wait for Code Geass to come out on dvds easily accessible to me………the Hellsing Ultimate OVAs cost how much!?!?

    If there were not any fansubs for these series I wouldn’t spend money on them anyways. More likely I would learn Japanese, move to Japan, and watch the anime as it came out on television.

  12. jcl007149 says:

    I understand your gripe here becasue a simlar thing has happened to me(referring to your first example). I make sing-along/karaoke video’s so that people can learn the lyrics to anime songs, so far I’ve had 2 deleted for copyright infringement. I understand that by using the song itself or by using a single picture from an anime is “copyright” but as you said, it’s annoying, especially when there are full episodes from said anime that are allowed to stay.
    I also find it quite pointless to put disclaimers in the video information- as I did- stating who the song is by, which anime company the pictures belong to etc. because the video’s are removed anyway.

    Sorry, this turned into a rant XD

    I enjoy reading your articles- I agree with you on fansubbing btw :D

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