I doubt the ads do much more than cover the cost of the free-stream (or maybe just defray the cost!), but the members on Crunchyroll are of course a potential source for subscribers, or "premium" members, who get access to the shows an hour after Japanese air time.
The flip side of the Teaspoon Model of ongoing guerilla war against the leach streaming sites is, of course, that the distributor has to be able to attract the commitment of fans in order for the model to work, so its something that one of the niche companies like Nozomi (RightStuf) or Manga would be more likely to be able to pull off than Viz Media or Funimation. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
As for as torrents - that's how the original bootlegs are distributed, which are then uploaded to various free streaming sites that are then leeched by these "free anime" sites. But if you are relying on a torrent model, and build the torrent feed into the streaming player you use, you either have spotty availability, or else you need a seed farm to get the process started, and that seed farm includes the bootlegged copies that are vulnerable to copyright enforcement efforts.
Meanwhile the legal distributor can accept stream advertising from sources that are blocked to the bootleg distributor, so can offer a direct stream and better resolution with less buffering than a torrent player ... as long as the legal distributor can hold a large enough share of the audience within an actual market. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
But online distribution is what AnimePlanet was talking about in:
AnimePlanet @Yuricon Good point, and makes complete sense; with the advent of pay per episode and such I think that's helped a lot too. I'm sure a lot of us remember paying hundreds of dollars for a 26 ep series and that was totally horrendous - nowadays much more attainable
of us remember paying hundreds of dollars for a 26 ep series and that was totally horrendous - nowadays much more attainable
At RightStuf.com, a 13-episode season of the programme that the tip jar ending song came from is $37.49 (the five 50-minute episode OVA is $29.99) for a four DVD thinpack box set. No individual volumes, no collectors boxset, and to get a trinket (mobile phone charm), you had to pre-order, so no longer any trinket.
If the programme were available at a pay per episode site (though as far as I understand, its not), that's normally $2/episode, so $26/season (but of course, you provide the storage).
Via Netflix, on a two-at-once $10/month subscription, you'd get the four disks within a month, and if you had the time to watch fairly close to the day they arrive, anywhere from four to eight other DVD's as well.
If it were available on a streaming site like Crunchyroll (but its not), $7/month would get as many of the shows they carry as you care to watch, including catching up on their back catalogue.
Note that Crunchyroll abandoned selling downloads on a pay per episode basis, so evidently they feel that the ad-stream with early release to premium subscribers model is a better return on their investment of time and money.
If a leech site like AnimesFree.com launched people into the Crunchyroll page for the episode when the person is from an area that Crunchyroll is licensed to stream, and played the bootleg when the person is from a different area - while the original content creator would be in a position to follow that up, Crunchyroll would not have a legal complaint to make, and under the Teaspoon Model would point the volunteers to a different free anime streaming site. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
I think part of the reason I got treated as a more "constructive" commentator early on is because I focused on that
Another part is most likely that you didn't fall back on boilerplate IFPI talking points. Such talking points tend to elicit a (very understandable) knee-jerk reaction from people who should be sympathetic to the case you're trying to make.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Big-label record industry shills. They're the reason that you pay a fee to 20th Century Fox when you buy a case of blank DVDs to make backups of your personal filesystem. Because obviously, blank DVDs are only used to bootleg music and films. For added fun, the fee only goes to the big labels - so the niche companies actually subsidise the big labels out of their CD and DVD turnover.
They also have some decidedly questionable ideas on what DRM software should be allowed to do on (and to) your computer. Oh, and they're at the forefront of the assault on the common carrier principle, which is one of the cornerstones of a pluralistic internet.
So you can see why their talking points would generate no small amount of animosity...
My concern is how to squeeze income through the terrible system they have built to get it into the hands of the producers of the media.
Indeed, as I said in the Direct Action diary:
And I don't really care. For me, the point is that Fox is massively "in your face" when it comes to its copyright rights. There was a documentary of the making of an opera where the stagehands had a TV on backstage and a couple of seconds of "The Simpsons" were airing, and the documentary maker couldn't afford the clearance, and had to paste a different image onto the screen. But does it have a "respect copyright" culture in terms of "think about the poor starving artist at the trickly end of the money pipe"? Hell no.
But does it have a "respect copyright" culture in terms of "think about the poor starving artist at the trickly end of the money pipe"? Hell no.
