legal anime downloads

One of the big problems anime has is piracy. However, the thing with anime is it's not quite the same beast as with other forms of piracy.

The main difference is that anime is Japanese but very popular outside of Japan. That popularity means that potentially there's a ready market available to buy your products, except it's being pirated left, right and centre. However, without the piracy it wouldn't be as popular as it is - it's like a double-edged sword.

In order to feed the popularity it needs fansubbers - people who add subtitles to the anime so that us foreigners can watch it too. I'm not going to explore why they do it, but suffice to say Fansubbers are basically volunteers. But they're also the enablers for all the copyright theft that goes on, so they're the target to beat fansubbing.

And it is theft, btw. It's not normal theft - you didn't take a five-finger discount from your local DVD shop - but it is the same basic thing. If you've not paid for something or the something isn't being given away (or the copyright hasn't expired) then you are basically abusing Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.

Anyway - back to my point - the issues are complicated.

In the case of western mainstream films and music the main differences is the speed of availability. Western media comes to us in all sorts of forms - at the cinema, in live concerts, DVDs, CDs, rentals, broadcast on TV, as well as all the legal internet stuff - streaming, downloads, MP3s, the iStore, etc, etc.

So it's available. It's around. You can go down the shops and buy it, you can get it legally via the internet. And if you're willing to wait you can get it cheaper or even free on the telly. Also, radio and television as well as magazines and the net can provide us with reviews and previews and free samples and all sorts.

It's pervasive so the point is there is really no excuse for piracy.

For anime the situation is different. I mean, you're still talking about infringing copyright, but the available is just not the same.

I can't go down the shops and buy the latest anime shows. I can't watch them on TV. Until very recently I couldn't even get them legally online either.

So, if there were no avenues at all for people to watch anime would there be as many fans? Well, clearly not. If people could only get at anime by buying expensive DVDs the scale of the fandom would be too small to support itself. It's that combination of word-of-mouth and availability that feeds the popularity.

Unlike music or western films, that illegal route has traditionally been the only way to try-before-you-buy. Especially when you're talking about the more unusual shows. I mean, I don't mean the whole Naruto, Bleach side of anime - the popular face that would almost certainly make it over here anyway, I'm talking about the weird odds-and-sods.

The classic example is Azumanga Daioh. Without the huge popularity generated through fansubs, none of the western companies would have touched it, but because of the fansubs, they did and so it got its day in the sun.

If there were no fansubs, that could never have happened.

But then on the flipside - looking at the Bleaches and the Narutos - what are the effects of fansubs on their sales? The trouble is it's almost impossible to quantify.

Another crucial issue is the speed of availability. These days we get near-simultaneous film releases at cinema and for DVD for films and music, but it can be months (if not years or even never at all) before the DVD version of a show becomes available in the west.

For some shows fansubs are literally available within a week. Much as I have issues with fansubbers, I have to give it to them - that's a phenomenal turn-around time for volunteers.

And what's more that's part of what anime fans are there for. They type of person that is an anime fan is much more likely to be of the frame of mind that getting it first is more important. These are the people at the frontiers, they're the early adopters. To them, knowledge is a currency - if you're not up-to-date you're no-one.

And part of the problem there really lies at the feet of the anime companies. The impression we're given is that they expect very large sums of money for distribution rights. They've also been horribly, horribly slow to take advantage of the opportunities the internet offers. They do not understand the western market, as they are so used to how the otaku behave in Japan, spending huge sums of money, happily being ripped off by the anime companies.

They have, in short, sat on their bums doing nothing expecting the gravy train to keep running for ever.

And they've paid the price in many ways for that attitude. Many western companies have effectively pulled out or folded and so any license money they were getting has dried up. Let's put it this way - a bit of money for all of your shows, or no money at all?

Thankfully things seem to be improving. There are finally moves to get legal forms of anime up and available to foreign consumers. It's the only way they'll ever manage to "beat" the fansubbers, but I have to wonder if it's not coming a bit late.