Features

As a subscriber to the Animexx newsletter, I found it in its October issue that Connichi 2009 (a large anime convention in Germany) had a fansubbing & publisher panel that was similar in format to the ones at Otakon over the past few years.

I tried to watch the videos of the hour-and-a-half panel but my listening comprehension has become somewhat rusty so I decided instead to translate the panel’s description and a summary I found online. You can watch the panel or listen to the audio version here. (Those of you who are better versed at German, feel free to correct me in the comments.)

Description (translated from this):

Panel Discussion: Is the Anime Culture Faced With Ruin?
…because fewer and fewer fans want to pay for anime.

Many places on the Internet can one download anime for free or watch on a stream.
On video platforms like Youtube, websites of fansub groups and relevant plundered copy portals, all of what the anime heart demands is provided – for nothing, of course. More and more anime fans therefore take it as normal that anime costs nothing and are not ready to pay money for their hobby. However when nobody no longer pays for anime, there will soon be no more businesses to produce and distribute the new anime. No money – no new anime! That is not a distant vision of a decline but a development that is already in full swing worldwide.

Fault for this crisis in the anime business is naturally always placed on someone else: the publishers who want too high a price for DVDs and video-on-demand, the fansubs that ruin the market with their pioneering zeal, the notorious pirates who consider themselves Robin Hoods of the Internet age, and the anime fans who think it’s normal that everything is free on the Internet.

Recently, publishers, fansubbers, and fans are sitting in the same boat. To keep this boat from sinking, old rivalries must be given up and new cooperations must be forged. At Connichi 2009 representatives from all groups of the anime culture will sit on a public stage at one table for that purpose.
There’s never been anything like it!

The panelists included moderator Andreas Vogler from Animexx; two people from German distribution companies (Anime Virtual & Tokyopop); two people from fansub portals; three “fan activists/campaigners” (Fanaktivisten); Dr. Matthias Leonardy, CEO of GVU, a group that prosecutes copyright infringement; and Claude Moyse from Koneko magazine.

A summary of the panel, translated from this post on anisearch.de (parentheses kept in):

Is the Anime Culture Faced With Ruin?
…concedes a somewhat scorching title for the panel discussion that would be conducted on September 19 at Connichi 09. Representatives from the fan(sub) scene and from industry had been invited to discuss the overall situation of the (especially) German anime market.

The problems should have been openly addressed, to unite themselves around a common denominator. In the foreground stood however the communication between the scene and the industry.

Central themes of discussion were:
What are anime DVDs, what are fansubs and how did both originate?
What are the effects of fansubs, DVD rips and bootlegs on the German anime DVD market?
What are the approaches/method of resolution in order to not burst the anime bubble?

And the organization/arrangement was also correspondingly structured, in which the debaters first introduced each’s own area of operations. The most interesting showed to many the process of how an anime makes its way to Germany. By way of lengthy license negotiations, the sophisticated localizing, to the point of distribution. As currently in the region, many fans partly have very illusory ideas. Mostly as myths that passed around between forums.

The second part concerned itself with the effects of the illegal (to put it simply) stolen copies on the industry. That DVD-rips and bootlegs on the market, not only those in Germany, damage be allowed still the most evident. That but also fansubs – especially in English – partly more damages throughout the make use of publicity effect, be allowed for many still a shock. Intolerance helps however on the sides not straight by a possible approach.

The third and last part is a so-called brainstorming, with various ideas coming up from them, about the anime market getting back on the right track.

Obviously the discussion wound up being not really professional, which began with the moderator’s rather clumsy beginning and the clear gap in knowledge of (most) participants – primarily and regrettably from the fandom. Nevertheless I think that, with this recording, many prejudices, myths, and legends can be cleared up. Even though I personally consider so many proposals and objections very naive.

That such a panel happened at a German convention shows American anime companies aren’t the only ones in the West concerned about piracy. Even though it seems like not much was accomplished, it brought some awareness of the issue to the audience that attended and contributed to the overall effort of combating illegal downloading.