Is Usenet Dying? Or anime?
Ged
that time there were literally dozens of different threads posted
daily. Now, I am seeing less than twenty postings a day. Have people
found a new place to discuss anime? I'm reading this group after a
long absence. My interest has severely waned to the point where I
hardly care about anything that has come out in the past five years.
The animation now looks too clean and computer-generated. I guess my
personal tastes are stuck in the 90's.
But seriously, is this newsgroup and Usenet almost dead?
Dave Baranyi
"Ged" <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f1247b02-4ac0-4d7a...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
Like any other social space, Usenet, and in particular, r.a.a.m., are what
YOU make of them.
If you are no longer interested in anime, why bother coming to an anime
discussion newsgroup?
If you feel that you have something to add, then POST.
If you just want to lurk, don't complain about the Quantity of posts.
If you want to read large quantities of anime posts, go to anime blogs,
anime blogger collectors, or major anime social sites such as "Myanime".
(You will have to read through tons of posts from teens and college
students, but there will be Quantity.)
Why not post about the anime that you liked 5 or 10 years ago? Maybe other
folks here like the same anime and will want to discuss them. (Look at
recent threads about Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura for examples
of a 20 year old and older anime being discussed again.)
Dave Baranyi
Aje RavenStar
"Dave Baranyi" <a_nospam.b_nospam@sym_nos_p_am_atico.ca> wrote in message
news:72b7dlF...@mid.individual.net...
It comes and goes, actually. I came home several days last week to find 80+
new messages. Came home yesterday, there was 1.
Usenet does have a lot of competition (lousy word for it) currently. Blogs,
etc, that D. Baranyi mentioned. Add to that, that a lot of IP's are
dumping Newsgroups, cutting off the access, leaving the true believers (such
as myself) scrambling to find other ways to participate (not just watch,
like through Google Groups).
Someday, though, fandom will regain the urge for a central idea exchange, as
people get too tired or busy to discuss the same show on eight different
websites in eight to the X conversations. We'll be waiting.....
The Relic
Usenet has been generally on the downturn for a number of years
(some would say since as far back as the mid-late 90s). I agree that
things don't look good for Usenet. I've been with this group since
late 1995, when I subbed through the Greater Columbus Freenet.
But many things have changed since then, not the least of which being
how people use the internet (Facebook, MySpace and the blogosphere,
among some examples), and worse, many have never even heard of Usenet.
Even when ISPs do support Usenet, they often don't let you know they
do. And in the last year or so some ISPs have dropped Usenet
altogether.
As for the state of Anime nowadays, what was popular 10 years ago
may not even be heard of by the current (new) crop of fans. Think
how it was when Gundam Wing started showing up on Cartoon Network.
It was a runaway success. So Cartoon Network shows the original
Mobile Suit Gundam (which I liked better, btw). It pretty much
craters. Why? Because it looked dated, I suspect. Kids
like the new hotness, even if the old ain't busted.
I like new shows as well (Bleach, FMA, Death Note, Moribito),
and some can tell you that I loathe Code Geass (I think it is
jingoistic crap myself), but I also enjoy (usually more) the old
stuff. But tastes, like art, is subjective to the person who
likes or dislikes it.
But the good thing about Usenet and this group, is that you can
discuss your feelings about a given anime, new or old. and you
can usually find someone interested in it, as long as you come
with a sincere interest in your subject, and don't demean someone
else because their opinion isn't compatible with yours. This
isn't alt.games.video.xbox ^_^
But Dave is right. It's what you put into a group.
DBBrandell
Others have put in their two bits on the above, let me just say that the
Anime on DVD forums ( Chris Beveridge's stuff ) are now on a site called
Mania.com, and, while there isn't the depth of discussion there that I
find in the threads here, I think there is more variety. Or more posts,
at any rate. :) I'm not crazy about the site, but that's because of
material problems with the interface on my slow DSL connection and 4
year old computer; basically, it's scrolls like sticky mud. And the
style of forum posts feel really 'cluttered' compared to the minimalist
posts from Usenet. But there are sometimes some interesting posts.
There are probably lots of other forums ( Anime News Network, Adult
Swim, etc ) and blog sites, AoD just happens to be the one I find I
tolerate best compared to here. If you hunt around a bit, you may find
one that works for you. Your mileage will vary, etc.
DBB
ged...@gmail.com
Truth be said, I have lost interest in a lot of anime, but I recently
caught the new Slayers episodes which is pretty faithful to the old
series. Out of curiosity, I went back to this newsgroup to see what
people are watching now. It was a little depressing to see that the
number of participants had dropped like the stock market. I was
thinking about posting something, but was afraid that there would not
be any discussion due to the lack of people. For example, the last
time there was any posting on the new Slayers series, it was in
September.
Dave Baranyi
<ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:bb537a21-48e2-4ce0...@q27g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
Well, you won't know unless you try. What do you like about the new Slayers
series? Have you checked out the sequel that is on right now? If you post on
it, other people who are watching that series may well answer you.
And remember, even if you aren't able to get a long thread going, there are
plenty of lurkers here who will appreciate reading your views and comments
on the series, especially since no one else is writing about it at this
time.
Dave Baranyi
The Wanderer
> <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:bb537a21-48e2-4ce0...@q27g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
>
>> On Mar 17, 11:17 pm, "Dave Baranyi"
>> <a_nospam.b_nospam@sym_nos_p_am_atico.ca> wrote:
>>> Why not post about the anime that you liked 5 or 10 years ago?
>>> Maybe other folks here like the same anime and will want to
>>> discuss them. (Look at recent threads about Maison Ikkoku, Ranma
>>> 1/2, Urusei Yatsura for examples of a 20 year old and older anime
>>> being discussed again.)
>>
>> Truth be said, I have lost interest in a lot of anime, but I
>> recently caught the new Slayers episodes which is pretty faithful
>> to the old series. Out of curiosity, I went back to this newsgroup
>> to see what people are watching now. It was a little depressing to
>> see that the number of participants had dropped like the stock
>> market. I was thinking about posting something, but was afraid that
>> there would not be any discussion due to the lack of people. For
>> example, the last time there was any posting on the new Slayers
>> series, it was in September.
>
> Well, you won't know unless you try. What do you like about the new
> Slayers series? Have you checked out the sequel that is on right now?
> If you post on it, other people who are watching that series may well
> answer you.
>
> And remember, even if you aren't able to get a long thread going,
> there are plenty of lurkers here who will appreciate reading your
> views and comments on the series, especially since no one else is
> writing about it at this time.
Quite true; I was interested to hear about the series when it was
announced, but I hadn't even been aware that it had actually arrived,
and I haven't had the time to go looking for quite a while.
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Blade
"Ged" <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f1247b02-4ac0-4d7a...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
What age were you ten years ago?
Find ten average people of that age and ask them if they post on USENET.
The blank looks at least nine of them will give you answers your question.
On the bright side, in ten years they will also say "all the new anime is
crap". ;p
-
Blade
sanjian
Nah, it's just that GRIT is gone.
Blade
"Tobias Weber" <to...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:towb-010C93.1...@news.individual.de...
> In article <gpqrvo$cd$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Find ten average people of that age and ask them if they post on USENET.
>
> The question is if you want to talk to average people. Many web forums
> have high postcounts, and much of it is...entertaining. But worthwhile?
You're talking about cartoons on the Internet. Why be snobby about it?
-
Blade
(Not that I'm not. It's really a rhetorical question, but still.)
nonodel
usenet, so, they don't serve them as before. In other words, i was not able
to enter for years.
True that some groups are almost dead, but some are becoming classic, like
this one ^^
Good stuff will never die
---
Please visit anizeen.com and share your thoughts with us!
Blade
"Tobias Weber" <to...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:towb-D3A155.1...@news.individual.de...
> In article <gpr490$c5a$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Why be snobby about it?
>
> It's more about form than content. For spending a nice evening
> discussing a hobby I don't want to deal with people who can barely read
> and hardly type.
I'll give you the serious answer, then. Communities are formed by the people
who take part in them. To get a community you're really comfortable with,
you'll have to put effort into it, into establishing your niche and finding
the people you like and the people you like to avoid, and to sway the
general conversation in the direction you want. The smaller the community,
the easier this usually is.
I too find the discussion here a lot more tolerable than most web forums,
but that's in no small part because I've been part of the community off and
on since 1996. If I contributed to a web forum for five years, I'd be
pretty comfortable there too. It's really just a matter of finding a place
that's interesting/tolerable and then working from there. Breaking it in
like a new pair of shoes, as it were.
As far as "average people" goes... I just felt it was rather an inflammatory
comment (I know, I know). "Like-minded people" would probably be a more
accurate and less demeaning description, at least as far as I read your
position. It may be you're only comfortable at MENSA meetings, but really,
the people here are as average as a whole as most nerdy forums. They're
older than the average forum, but there's plenty of webforums with older
audiences too. Since you can't really expect this group to become more
lively on its own given the facts about USENET, you'll either have to do
your part to make it so (by starting threads and discussions that many
community members can take part in) or find another venue you can tolerate
with a less high barrier for entry.
-
Blade
Traveler
Rob Kelk
wrote:
>Usenet is dieing because of relentless spam.
There's relentless spam everywhere. The servers that take pains to keep
spam off their systems (individual.net for Usenet, yuku.com for webfora,
etc.) are the ones that thrive; the others die off...
--
Rob Kelk <http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/> e-mail: s/deadspam/gmail/
"I'm *not* a kid! Nyyyeaaah!" - Skuld (in "Oh My Goddess!" OAV #3)
"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear
of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up." - C.S. Lewis
Chika
DBBrandell <NoSuc...@NoSuchAccount.net> wrote:
> Ged wrote:
> > I used to be an avid r.a.a.m follower about ten years ago. Back in
> > that time there were literally dozens of different threads posted
> > daily. Now, I am seeing less than twenty postings a day. Have people
> > found a new place to discuss anime? I'm reading this group after a
> > long absence. My interest has severely waned to the point where I
> > hardly care about anything that has come out in the past five years.
> > The animation now looks too clean and computer-generated. I guess my
> > personal tastes are stuck in the 90's.
> >
> > But seriously, is this newsgroup and Usenet almost dead?
It isn't dead yet, but the big influx of new users (stoodents, mostly)
that we once had is a mere trickle now. Mind you, to gauge the health of
Usenet in general by the traffic in one group, even a relatively high
traffic one like raam, is not a good idea.
> Others have put in their two bits on the above, let me just say that the
> Anime on DVD forums ( Chris Beveridge's stuff ) are now on a site called
> Mania.com, and, while there isn't the depth of discussion there that I
> find in the threads here, I think there is more variety. Or more posts,
> at any rate. :) I'm not crazy about the site, but that's because of
> material problems with the interface on my slow DSL connection and 4
> year old computer;
Ne, Miyuki! 4 years old? That's a youngster! ^_^
> basically, it's scrolls like sticky mud. And the style of forum posts
> feel really 'cluttered' compared to the minimalist posts from Usenet.
That's often more to do with the people posting. We had similar probs here
at one time with giant sigs, ASCII art, cascading and so forth. (We called
it NUTT!!!)
Seriously though, there are always those that want to change things, and
not always for the better. Instead of a single forum that covers everyone,
everybody suddenly wants to be their own mod, much as what happened with
IRC. Hence the whole fragmentation of our fanbase across so many websites
and blogs.
> But there are sometimes some interesting posts.
Quite so, but the trick is finding it in all the crud.
> There are probably lots of other forums ( Anime News Network, Adult
> Swim, etc ) and blog sites, AoD just happens to be the one I find I
> tolerate best compared to here.
Horses for...
> If you hunt around a bit, you may find
> one that works for you. Your mileage will vary, etc.
That's the point, though. Hunting around makes it that more laborious.
That's one reason why I post my reviews here *as well as* on my blog. If
anyone is really bovvered, they can find it here.
--
//\ // Chika <miyuki><at><crashnet><org><uk>
// \// Mitsuo... Menda... naha naha...
... So many idiots... too few flame-throwers...
Arnold Kim
> In article <0a6dnRebXof0L13U...@vnet-inc.com>,
> DBBrandell <NoSuc...@NoSuchAccount.net> wrote:
>> Ged wrote:
>>> I used to be an avid r.a.a.m follower about ten years ago. Back in
>>> that time there were literally dozens of different threads posted
>>> daily. Now, I am seeing less than twenty postings a day. Have people
>>> found a new place to discuss anime? I'm reading this group after a
>>> long absence. My interest has severely waned to the point where I
>>> hardly care about anything that has come out in the past five years.
>>> The animation now looks too clean and computer-generated. I guess my
>>> personal tastes are stuck in the 90's.
>>>
>>> But seriously, is this newsgroup and Usenet almost dead?
>
> It isn't dead yet, but the big influx of new users (stoodents, mostly)
> that we once had is a mere trickle now. Mind you, to gauge the health
> of Usenet in general by the traffic in one group, even a relatively
> high traffic one like raam, is not a good idea.
Indeed. I dropped off for a year and a half (seemed like longer) and found
that I still recognized every single regular in the group. If anything, the
"regulars" had eroded somewhat - No Eternal Lost Lurker, no 8-bit Star, no
Ethan Hammond.
>> basically, it's scrolls like sticky mud. And the style of forum
>> posts feel really 'cluttered' compared to the minimalist posts from
>> Usenet.
>
> That's often more to do with the people posting. We had similar probs
> here at one time with giant sigs, ASCII art, cascading and so forth.
> (We called it NUTT!!!)
Not to mention....
<pauses for dramatic tension>
... CUTE WARS!!!
(Though these days I'd probably replace "AkaneAkaneAkaneAkaneAkane..." with
"MikuruMikuruMikuruMikuruMikuru...")
> Seriously though, there are always those that want to change things,
> and not always for the better. Instead of a single forum that covers
> everyone, everybody suddenly wants to be their own mod, much as what
> happened with IRC. Hence the whole fragmentation of our fanbase
> across so many websites and blogs.
I think the greater ease of obtaining anime these days is also a factor- so
many more series are available out there with just the click of a mouse, the
percentage of series that everyone can bring up as a common discussion point
is rather low. (I for instance have not seen a single episode of Naruto,
Death Note, or Bleach).
Arnold Kim
Arnold Kim
> In article <gpr490$c5a$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> discussing a hobby I don't want to deal with people who can barely
> read and hardly type.
You did -not- want to be on this newsgroup 12 years ago, then...
Arnold Kim
Arnold Kim
RAAM isn't deader than any other newsgroup.
Let's face it, usenet's becoming a thing of the past. As yonger and younger
people get online, fewer of them are going to be aware of what a newsgroup
is. Many servers don't even carry usenet anymore.
With the explosion of the web, there are a lot more places to discuss anime
than ever before, so that decentralization combined with the slow death of
usenet is why RAAM isn't as busy as it was 10-12 years ago.
Arnold Kim
Chika
> <pauses for dramatic tension>
> ... CUTE WARS!!!
I thought you weren't going to mention those!
> (Though these days I'd probably replace "AkaneAkaneAkaneAkaneAkane..."
> with "MikuruMikuruMikuruMikuruMikuru...")
Heh. I'd still be happy with Nene... *_*
> > Seriously though, there are always those that want to change things,
> > and not always for the better. Instead of a single forum that covers
> > everyone, everybody suddenly wants to be their own mod, much as what
> > happened with IRC. Hence the whole fragmentation of our fanbase
> > across so many websites and blogs.
> I think the greater ease of obtaining anime these days is also a factor-
> so many more series are available out there with just the click of a
> mouse, the percentage of series that everyone can bring up as a common
> discussion point is rather low. (I for instance have not seen a single
> episode of Naruto, Death Note, or Bleach).
I've avoided them to a great extent, but not completely. Know your enemy!
I tend to put discussions on the latest fan faves out of the way, though
as I find that, in many cases, the whole discussion can be distorted.
--
//\ // Chika <miyuki><at><crashnet><org><uk>
// \// Mitsuo... Menda... naha naha...
... Experience: What you get when you don't get what you want
Chika
Hmm... 1997?
wasn'tthattheyearofazzzzzzzdrubal? ^_^
--
//\ // Chika <miyuki><at><crashnet><org><uk>
// \// Mitsuo... Menda... naha naha...
... File not found. I'll load something *I* think is interesting.
Arnold Kim
> In article <gpr490$c5a$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> discussing a hobby I don't want to deal with people who can barely
> read and hardly type.
Oh, and if you want a place to talk anime that cuts down on the silliness,
if you will, I do reccomend the Anime on DVD forums.
http://www.mania.com/aodvb/index.php
I also post to the animenation.com forums, but then- I -like- the silliness.
Arnold Kim
Arnold Kim
> In article <49c19d4d$0$20298$607e...@cv.net>,
> Arnold Kim <arno...@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Tobias Weber wrote:
>>> In article <gpr490$c5a$1...@news.albasani.net>,
>>> "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Why be snobby about it?
>>>
>>> It's more about form than content. For spending a nice evening
>>> discussing a hobby I don't want to deal with people who can barely
>>> read and hardly type.
>
>> You did -not- want to be on this newsgroup 12 years ago, then...
>
> Hmm... 1997?
>
> wasn'tthattheyearofazzzzzzzdrubal? ^_^
Also known as the year that me, you, and a whole bunch of other CAPOWers
nearly killed any semblance of rational discussion on the newsgroup. :)
Arnold Kim
Chika
We aimed to please! ;)
--
//\ // Chika <miyuki><at><crashnet><org><uk>
// \// Mitsuo... Menda... naha naha...
... If it's not broke, let me take a crack at it.
Andrew Floyd
Blame the New York Attorney General for bullying Verizon and Time
Warner's Road Runner for generally cutting off access for millions of
subscribers who have been using Usenet groups for lots of LEGAL
ACTIVITIES instead of trying to understand the "bad" newsgroups they
don't want their people in their own state to be able to get could be
filtered out.
So instead of cutting off Usenet on Verizon's and Road Runner's networks
only in NY State, it got cut off for EVERYONE. It looks like AT&T's DSL
network may be the best option now.
All this even after Comcastic got punished by the FCC for fucking with
people who used filesharing software on their network.
Oh hey, get this - Time Warner is even considering trying to charge
people based on the bandwidth they use! I mean WTF!??! The electricity
they use didn't get more expensive. I consider this also against FCC
rules if they dare go that route. We pay for the electricity to power
the damn cable modem in return, so what gives? I'd hate to have to drop
Road Runner Light just because those assholes think they can charge more
for people who get a lot of data off their network.
That's what really killing usenet. About all I have left is an ISP on
dialup with usenet access I can't get outside of their network.
"Read this very carefully, I shall type this only once nyo!"
"There would be little point in typing it twice nyo!!" - 'Allo 'Allo nyo
"They make crayONs; do they make crayOFFs?"
sanjian
> Blame the New York Attorney General for bullying Verizon and Time
> Warner's Road Runner for generally cutting off access for millions of
> subscribers who have been using Usenet groups for lots of LEGAL
> ACTIVITIES instead of trying to understand the "bad" newsgroups they
> don't want their people in their own state to be able to get could be
> filtered out.
>
> So instead of cutting off Usenet on Verizon's and Road Runner's
> networks only in NY State, it got cut off for EVERYONE. It looks like
> AT&T's DSL network may be the best option now.
>
> All this even after Comcastic got punished by the FCC for fucking with
> people who used filesharing software on their network.
>
> Oh hey, get this - Time Warner is even considering trying to charge
> people based on the bandwidth they use! I mean WTF!??! The electricity
Try not to laugh too hard, old-timers.
> they use didn't get more expensive. I consider this also against FCC
Nooooo, but the bandwidth they have available is fixed and the more you use,
the more of a strain you put on their bandwidth. By pricing the usage as if
it was not an unlimited commodity, the are able to ration without setting
hard bandwidth limits. That is the function of prices in an economy,
whether you ask Milton Friedman or John Keynes.
> rules if they dare go that route. We pay for the electricity to power
> the damn cable modem in return, so what gives? I'd hate to have to
Your paying for the electricity to power your cable modem does not reduce
their operating expenses.
> drop Road Runner Light just because those assholes think they can
> charge more for people who get a lot of data off their network.
And I'm going to have to stop going to the local gas station, just because
those assholes think they can charge more to fill up a twenty-gallon tank
than a five-gallon one!
Andrew Floyd
AT ANY RATE... If Time Warner can't make enough money for the executives
to make their yacht payments fast enough from Road Runner, they're doing
something wrong.
"Nooooo, but the bandwidth they have available is fixed and the more you
use, the more of a strain you put on their bandwidth."
I refuse to believe there is a strain on "bandwidth." All this new
technology coming out that helps alleviate the levels of "network
traffic" and this is no longer an issue. It is not fixed, it's just a
matter of whose packets get there first, that's all.
"By pricing the usage as if it was not an unlimited commodity,"
Thing is, bandwidth is not a commodity. There is no "strain". It's the
engineers and tech people trying to come up with more excuses as to why
they feel they could charge more for the same service (or less in this
case, without Usenet access in their own network).
"Try not to laugh too hard, old-timers."
Laugh at me all you fucking want - I'm likely older than some of you
anyway!
I just keep getting disgusted with the actions of greedy companies and
their excuses.
I vote with my money, as does anyone else.
ged...@gmail.com
> > "Blade" <kumonr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Why be snobby about it?
>
> > It's more about form than content. For spending a nice evening
> > discussing a hobby I don't want to deal with people who can barely
> > read and hardly type.
>
> You did -not- want to be on this newsgroup 12 years ago, then...
>
> Arnold Kim
I was here 12 years ago. Used to remember quite a few heated
discussions, and the seemingly frequent flame wars. Has the Eternal
Lost Lurker disappeared?
Dave Baranyi
<ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:72e8bb28-daf7-48cb...@m36g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
Lurker left after one of the "regulars" publicly wished him to die in a
hurricane that was hitting his town...
Dave Baranyi
The Wanderer
> <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:72e8bb28-daf7-48cb...@m36g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
>> I was here 12 years ago. Used to remember quite a few heated
>> discussions, and the seemingly frequent flame wars. Has the Eternal
>> Lost Lurker disappeared?
>
> Lurker left after one of the "regulars" publicly wished him to die in
> a hurricane that was hitting his town...
That would have been Katrina or one of its near successors, IIRC (though
I thought he came back after that one, and didn't get the final straw
for a couple of months longer). And despite widespread predictions at
the time that "he'll be back in a month", he hasn't been seen around
here since.
He's still alive and still at least somewhat active in other areas,
though; he just doesn't consider it worth the hassling he gets to post
here.
sanjian
> AT ANY RATE... If Time Warner can't make enough money for the
> executives to make their yacht payments fast enough from Road Runner,
> they're doing something wrong.
Don't like it? Start an ISP and stop bitching.
> "Nooooo, but the bandwidth they have available is fixed and the more
> you use, the more of a strain you put on their bandwidth."
>
> I refuse to believe there is a strain on "bandwidth." All this new
> technology coming out that helps alleviate the levels of "network
> traffic" and this is no longer an issue. It is not fixed, it's just a
> matter of whose packets get there first, that's all.
Leveling traffic only goes so far. Eventually, you need more lanes.
> "By pricing the usage as if it was not an unlimited commodity,"
>
> Thing is, bandwidth is not a commodity. There is no "strain". It's the
If bandwidth isn't a commodity, try going without it, or generating your
own, for your own use. The hell it ain't.
> engineers and tech people trying to come up with more excuses as to
> why they feel they could charge more for the same service (or less in
> this case, without Usenet access in their own network).
Ok, so let's route the interstate right past your front door. Tell me that
bandwidth isn't a commodity as you're trying to back out of your parking
spot.
> "Try not to laugh too hard, old-timers."
>
> Laugh at me all you fucking want - I'm likely older than some of you
> anyway!
Old timers know how to properly quote. They also remember when fixed-price
internets was a fantasy.
> I just keep getting disgusted with the actions of greedy companies and
> their excuses.
While you happily use their services.
> I vote with my money, as does anyone else.
Then vote.
Derek Janssen
> Dave Baranyi wrote:
>
>> <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:72e8bb28-daf7-48cb...@m36g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>>> I was here 12 years ago. Used to remember quite a few heated
>>> discussions, and the seemingly frequent flame wars. Has the Eternal
>>> Lost Lurker disappeared?
>>
>>
>> Lurker left after one of the "regulars" publicly wished him to die in
>> a hurricane that was hitting his town...
>
> the time that "he'll be back in a month", he hasn't been seen around
> here since.
> He's still alive and still at least somewhat active in other areas,
> though; he just doesn't consider it worth the hassling he gets to post
> here.
"Provocateurs" tend to eventually get bored with themselves as fast as
they get bored with the rest of the regulars, once they become taken for
granted and swept into the corner as a standard overlooked fixture--
It's not easy just having to sit there and watch normal, serious
non-shock human interpersonal conversation going on, day in and day out.
Derek Janssen
eja...@verizon.net
The Wanderer
If this is intended as an assessement and/or indictment of the Eternal
Lost Lurker, I don't think it's a very fair one. If nothing else, you'll
have to admit that he was here *long* after he would have become "taken
for granted"... indeed, he left precisely *because* he was provoking (a
certain kind of) reaction, not because people were ignoring him.
I don't tend to think that the rest of it is a very fair assessment,
either, but most of my own interaction with him on which I base that is
far enough in the past that I couldn't back that up very well.
Terrence Briggs
<a_nospam.b_nospam@sym_nos_p_am_atico.ca> wrote:
> "Ged" <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:f1247b02-4ac0-4d7a...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
>>I used to be an avid r.a.a.m follower about ten years ago. Back in
>> that time there were literally dozens of different threads posted
>> daily. Now, I am seeing less than twenty postings a day.
No complaints from me. I can actually follow the discussion now :-)
>> Have people
>> found a new place to discuss anime?
New places (plural), I bet. There are more options these days, so
it's not realistic to expect folks to congregate in the same (virtual)
places they did, say, 5 years ago.
>> I'm reading this group after a
>> long absence. My interest has severely waned to the point where I
>> hardly care about anything that has come out in the past five years.
>> The animation now looks too clean and computer-generated. I guess my
>> personal tastes are stuck in the 90's.
I tend to believe that, too, but I obviously haven't tapped out of the
animation game because of it. Frankly, my decade-long semi-obsession
with animation includes all kinds of people who lost interest after a
certain point. (Fans of classic Looney Tunes seem to be the most
ubiquitous example; some of those cats hate EVERYTHING. <g> ) That's
their bag, so I wouldn't worry about those feelings. They'll either
wane, when you rediscover what you REALLY love about what you love, or
they'll push you into another area of interest. No big.
>> But seriously, is this newsgroup and Usenet almost dead?
Seriously, no. Rec.arts.anime.misc, in particular, is so active
that's it's almost impossible to follow EVERY thread without
committing several hours a week to reading them. And that's just
lurking; POSTING in this place can require significantly more time, is
you want to perpetuate a discussion with the rest of us.
Ergo, USENET cannot be "almost dead", if one of its most-trafficked
parts is so active.
> Like any other social space, Usenet, and in particular, r.a.a.m., are what
> YOU make of them.
> If you are no longer interested in anime, why bother coming to an anime
> discussion newsgroup?
> If you feel that you have something to add, then POST.
> If you just want to lurk, don't complain about the Quantity of posts.
> If you want to read large quantities of anime posts, go to anime blogs,
> anime blogger collectors, or major anime social sites such as "Myanime".
> (You will have to read through tons of posts from teens and college
> students, but there will be Quantity.)
> Why not post about the anime that you liked 5 or 10 years ago? Maybe other
> folks here like the same anime and will want to discuss them. (Look at
> recent threads about Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura for examples
> of a 20 year old and older anime being discussed again.)
This. All of it. In fact, it proves a point: How many USENET posters
does it take to say EXACTLY what you wanted to say? :-)
In such an instance, who needs a bloated discussion between hundreds
of hit-and-run posters, barely contributing anything worthwhile?
So... I guess I'm done with this thread :-)
Terrence Briggs, who's been reading about the death of USENET since he
first posted
Peace to you...
Terrence Briggs
> On Mar 17, 10:17 pm, "Dave Baranyi"
>
> <a_nospam.b_nospam@sym_nos_p_am_atico.ca> wrote:
> > "Ged" <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:f1247b02-4ac0-4d7a...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
> >> But seriously, is this newsgroup and Usenet almost dead?
> > Like any other social space, Usenet, and in particular, r.a.a.m., are what
> > YOU make of them.
> > If you are no longer interested in anime, why bother coming to an anime
> > discussion newsgroup?
> > If you feel that you have something to add, then POST.
> > If you just want to lurk, don't complain about the Quantity of posts.
> > If you want to read large quantities of anime posts, go to anime blogs,
> > anime blogger collectors, or major anime social sites such as "Myanime".
> > (You will have to read through tons of posts from teens and college
> > students, but there will be Quantity.)
> > Why not post about the anime that you liked 5 or 10 years ago? Maybe other
> > folks here like the same anime and will want to discuss them. (Look at
> > recent threads about Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura for examples
> > of a 20 year old and older anime being discussed again.)
>
> This. All of it. In fact, it proves a point: How many USENET posters
> does it take to say EXACTLY what you wanted to say? :-)
>
> In such an instance, who needs a bloated discussion between hundreds
> of hit-and-run posters, barely contributing anything worthwhile?
> So... I guess I'm done with this thread :-)
This certainly wasn't a slight at any of the fine people here; I'm
just distinguishing between quantity of traffic and quality of
traffic.
> Terrence Briggs, who's been reading about the death of USENET since he
> first posted
> Peace to you...
Terrence Briggs, who actually joined USENET to respond to questions
about Beverly Hills Teens and Exosquad. Can you believe that?!?!
Peace to you...
darkst...@gmail.com
places to get anime that both Usenet AND anime are basically already
dead.
Mike
Arnold Kim
Then you'd also remember how mind-numbingly stupid (but fun!) threads like
Cute Wars and NUTT nearly brought the newsgroup to its knees. A lot of us
here -were- the "people who can barely read and hardly type." I was a big
part of some of those threads; now I can look back with fondness but at the
time a lot of people got upset over the total waste of bandwith.
> Has the Eternal
> Lost Lurker disappeared?
According to Google, ELL last posted in September of 2007. So I'd say so.
Arnold Kim
Arnold Kim
> In article <49c19ce0$0$20292$607e...@cv.net>,
> Arnold Kim <arno...@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Not to mention....
>
>
>> <pauses for dramatic tension>
>
>
>> ... CUTE WARS!!!
>
> I thought you weren't going to mention those!
Nah, I was just telling you not to mention them!
>> (Though these days I'd probably replace
>> "AkaneAkaneAkaneAkaneAkane..." with
>> "MikuruMikuruMikuruMikuruMikuru...")
>
> Heh. I'd still be happy with Nene... *_*
I have to admit, "Nene" rolls off the tongue better for that kind of
thing...
>>> Seriously though, there are always those that want to change things,
>>> and not always for the better. Instead of a single forum that covers
>>> everyone, everybody suddenly wants to be their own mod, much as what
>>> happened with IRC. Hence the whole fragmentation of our fanbase
>>> across so many websites and blogs.
>
>> I think the greater ease of obtaining anime these days is also a
>> factor- so many more series are available out there with just the
>> click of a mouse, the percentage of series that everyone can bring
>> up as a common discussion point is rather low. (I for instance have
>> not seen a single episode of Naruto, Death Note, or Bleach).
>
> I've avoided them to a great extent, but not completely. Know your
> enemy!
Well, to be completely honest, I did buy the first volume of the Death Note
manga, because of a good review on Anime News Network, and I wanted to see
what the hubbub was about...
> I tend to put discussions on the latest fan faves out of the
> way, though as I find that, in many cases, the whole discussion can
> be distorted.
I've seen a few posts online from maybe 18-20 year old anime fans who were
Naruto fans 4-5 years ago but now look back at it and think the series is
kind of lame. :)
Arnold Kim
sanjian
> Derek Janssen wrote:
>
>> The Wanderer wrote:
>>
>>> Dave Baranyi wrote:
>
>>>> Lurker left after one of the "regulars" publicly wished him to
>>>> die in a hurricane that was hitting his town...
>>>
>>> And despite widespread predictions at the time that "he'll be back
>>> in a month", he hasn't been seen around here since. He's still
>>> alive and still at least somewhat active in other areas, though; he
>>> just doesn't consider it worth the hassling he gets to post here.
>>
>> "Provocateurs" tend to eventually get bored with themselves as fast
>> as they get bored with the rest of the regulars, once they become
>> taken for granted and swept into the corner as a standard overlooked
>> fixture-- It's not easy just having to sit there and watch normal,
>> serious non-shock human interpersonal conversation going on, day in
>> and day out.
>
> If this is intended as an assessement and/or indictment of the Eternal
> Lost Lurker, I don't think it's a very fair one. If nothing else,
> you'll have to admit that he was here *long* after he would have
> become "taken for granted"... indeed, he left precisely *because* he
> was provoking (a certain kind of) reaction, not because people were
> ignoring him.
And, to be fair, even with all of his flaws, ELL contributed far more to the
group than many regulars. Granted, most of it WAS lolicon...
Dave Watson
Don't you have traffic to go out and play in?
Watson
Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
posting this.
sanjian
The fact that Mikey is willing to sermon to such a dead format suggests that
he may have a very different interpretation of "dead" than we do. Maybe, by
"dying," he means "thriving wildly?"
Blade
"Derek Janssen" <eja...@nospam.verizon.net> wrote in message
news:uczwl.1209$SU3....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
> The Wanderer wrote:
>> And despite widespread predictions at
>> the time that "he'll be back in a month", he hasn't been seen around
>> here since.
>> He's still alive and still at least somewhat active in other areas,
>> though; he just doesn't consider it worth the hassling he gets to post
>> here.
>
> "Provocateurs" tend to eventually get bored with themselves as fast as
> they get bored with the rest of the regulars, once they become taken for
> granted and swept into the corner as a standard overlooked fixture--
> It's not easy just having to sit there and watch normal, serious non-shock
> human interpersonal conversation going on, day in and day out.
...you could use this post to cure anemia.
-
Blade
(I suppose some would say the same of mine, of course.)
darthmark
remember he posted a lot of funny stuff.
--
In Soviet Russia, websites visit you!
sanjian
No, he posted a little bit of stuff, that was funny the first time, a lot of
times.
Rob Kelk
>Dave Watson wrote:
>> On Mar 19, 8:43 pm, darkstar7...@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
>> Don't you have traffic to go out and play in?
>>
>> Watson
>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>> posting this.
>
>The fact that Mikey is willing to sermon to such a dead format suggests that
>he may have a very different interpretation of "dead" than we do. Maybe, by
>"dying," he means "thriving wildly?"
Or maybe he thinks it's pining for the LCL tank...
http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.arts.anime.fandom/msg/27f76aaf086fcbc3
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others
to laugh at him."
- Thomas Szasz, "The Second Sin", 1973
Giovanni Wassen
>> I tend to put discussions on the latest fan faves out of the
>> way, though as I find that, in many cases, the whole discussion can
>> be distorted.
>
> I've seen a few posts online from maybe 18-20 year old anime fans who
> were Naruto fans 4-5 years ago but now look back at it and think the
> series is kind of lame. :)
It is. But it's also kind of fun. Except the frakking fillerarc shit.
--
Gio
http://www.watkijkikoptv.info
http://myanimelist.net/profile/extatix
http://watkijkikoptv.info/animeblog
Giovanni Wassen
> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
> posting this.
Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
--
Gio, latest: Fullmetal Alchemist complete, Batman: Gotham Knight
B Sellers
then with a company in the gaming field. Increasingly he ran out of
time to read and post. I think he may have grown up a bit too and
his regular routine of being the husband of Nuku-Nuku, the all-purpose
cultural cat girl, may have seemed less funny and less fun even to him.
later
bliss
Dave Watson
> Dave Watson <dwbeingupfr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
> > posting this.
>
> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
Funny thing is, I do download (or get them from others), but I never
downloaded Nadia. In fact, the only trace of it I had before that was
Streamline's LD of the first four eps (complete with crap dub), which
I bought from a liquidation sale. It took sacrificing a GST refund
cheque, but I thought the ADV Perfect Collection tin box set was a
pretty good bargain at ~$70 CAD for a 39-ep 10-disc set (and the
extras, as few as there are, aren't stripped). The Motion Picture
wasn't included, but I was able to score that for $4 at a Zeller's.
That's in the player now. So smoke the banger, Mikey.
Watson
(and yes, he's prepared for it to suck in comparison to the TV series).
Blade
"Giovanni Wassen" <ext...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9BD497242C...@217.19.16.66...
> Dave Watson <dwbeing...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>> posting this.
>
> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and the
beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
-
Blade
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
> "Giovanni Wassen" <ext...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dave Watson <dwbeing...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>>> posting this.
>>
>> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
>> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
>
> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
substantial data to support this claim.
I for instance would be buying a lot less anime if I weren't able to
"test-drive" them first. Chances are, "Strawberry Panic" and "Maria-sama
ga miteru" might never have caught my interest, if it weren't for
fansubs. Instead, I now have "Strawberry Panic" and the first three
seasons of MariMite on my shelf. Plus what has been released of manga
and light novels for both series.
cu
59cobalt
--
"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight
flaw in my character."
--Li Kao (Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds)
Blade
"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in message
news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> "Giovanni Wassen" <ext...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dave Watson <dwbeing...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>>>> posting this.
>>>
>>> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
>>> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
>>
>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>
> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
> substantial data to support this claim.
And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime, as
numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
It is also accepted as fact by anyone with a basic understanding of human
nature.
It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely hard
times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and Japan.
-
Blade
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes
>>> and the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>
>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with
>> any substantial data to support this claim.
>
> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create
> anime, as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have
> shown.
Which still doesn't make it a fact.
> It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely
> hard times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
> Japan.
It's also worth noting that there is a significant difference between
coincidence and cause.
Robert Sneddon
<kumo...@hotmail.com> writes
>
>
>"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in
>message news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>
>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
>> substantial data to support this claim.
>
>And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
>as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
That they accept this as a fact does not make it true. It is incredibly
difficult to measure and to ascribe a monetary value of the cost to the
anime industry of piracy and downloading. It is similarly difficult to
put a value of the benefits of such piracy to the DVD sell-through
market.
Without piracy and fansubbing Western audiences would not see first-run
TV anime, as it is sold in bulk only into the Japanese, Korean and
Chinese markets (the US broadcast anime market is tiny and very
restricted in content, with lots of repeats). Without fansubbing and
widespread downloading sell-through licencing of English-language anime
DVDs would be very limited as there would be no widespread knowledge of
what a given series is really like, no trustworthy reviews other than
word-of-mouth within a very small circle -- see the anime con circuit of
the late 80s and early 90s and compare it to, say the anime con circuit
of today.
>
>It is also accepted as fact by anyone with a basic understanding of
>human nature.
Anyone with *only* a basic understanding of human nature would accept
it as a fact. Someone who has more than a basic understanding of human
nature might investigate beyond the surface to find out how pirates and
downloaders go on and buy licenced copies of the stuff they like.
>It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely hard
>times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
>Japan.
There is more anime being made and broadcast in Japan now than there
ever was. In part this is because production costs have come down due to
extensive use of computers to automate and simplify the animation
process, in part because of the increasing popularity of anime and
slipsteam anime activities such as books, models, special editions,
Webcasts etc.
Profits are down for various reasons. One of them is that broadcast TV
advertising rates are falling as people move away from watching
over-the-air TV directly, preferring Netflix or delayed home recording
(TiVo) or downloading (legitimately or otherwise) content from the
Internet. Piracy may be depressing the profits but it may also be
boosting the bottom line by encouraging lots and lots of Western licence
deals (too many deals to be sustainable perhaps but that is another
argument). Without getting real (commercially sensitive) financial
numbers out of the industry we onlookers can only speculate.
--
To reply, my gmail address is nojay1 Robert Sneddon
Blade
"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in message
news:gq0gu4...@news.in-ulm.de...
> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes
>>>> and the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>>
>>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with
>>> any substantial data to support this claim.
>>
>> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create
>> anime, as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have
>> shown.
>
> Which still doesn't make it a fact.
Unlike your assertions that allowing people to have stuff for free makes
them buy more stuff, based entirely upon your anecdotal evidence?
How about you show how letting people download anime makes them buy more
anime? Or how about how letting them download music makes them buy more
music? Oh, and how are legitimate software sales in China going, again?
>> It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely
>> hard times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
>> Japan.
> It's also worth noting that there is a significant difference between
> coincidence and cause.
Yes, of course it's a complete coincidence. The significant drop in CD sales
over recent years, far exceeding the volume of usage of services like
Itunes - also a coincidence. The fact one-quarter of US record stores went
out of business since 2003 - complete coincidence.
Meanwhile, you bought a Marimite novel and somehow that proves no company is
ever hurt by filesharing. Hell, the fact you assert it has any relevence at
all to the issue whatsoever is damning proof of your disinterest or
inability in holding an intellectually honest or logically coherent opinion
on the matter.
On this subject, the only difference between you and the troll is what side
you're on.
-
Blade
Blade
"Robert Sneddon" <fr...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:prX944LY...@nospam.demon.co.uk...
> In message <gq0fdc$obl$1...@news.albasani.net>, Blade
> <kumo...@hotmail.com> writes
>>
>>
>>"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in
>>message news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>>>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>>
>>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
>>> substantial data to support this claim.
>>
>>And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
>>as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
>
> That they accept this as a fact does not make it true. It is incredibly
Funny how you say that about the beliefs held by the creators and
professionals in the industry, yet accept as true without question or
evidence that filesharing somehow benefits the industry. Where's your
evidence?
> difficult to measure and to ascribe a monetary value of the cost to the
> anime industry of piracy and downloading. It is similarly difficult to
> put a value of the benefits of such piracy to the DVD sell-through
> market.
It's a good thing I didn't measure or put a value to it beyond "It is bad
for the industry", isn't it?
> Without piracy and fansubbing Western audiences would not see first-run
> TV anime, as it is sold in bulk only into the Japanese, Korean and
> Chinese markets (the US broadcast anime market is tiny and very
> restricted in content, with lots of repeats). Without fansubbing and
> widespread downloading sell-through licencing of English-language anime
> DVDs would be very limited as there would be no widespread knowledge of
> what a given series is really like, no trustworthy reviews other than
> word-of-mouth within a very small circle -- see the anime con circuit of
> the late 80s and early 90s and compare it to, say the anime con circuit
> of today.
Proof, please. The anime companies (on both sides of the Pacific) virtually
unanimously and vehemently do not agree with you on the benefits of
file-sharing and they're the ones that would actually be using this
information. In fact, one time we do know they acted on the information
based on fansub distribution, the series was a flop in sales.
In the age of file-sharing, sales of all sorts of physical media have gone
down across the board. In countries where piracy has always been rampant,
such as China and Taiwan, sales of legitimate copies of software, DVDs and
CDs have been infinitesimal compared to other countries. Virtually every
major company involved in the distribution of physical media with
copyrighted content denounces filesharing and asserts it is an ongoing and
persistant threat to their business. That most certainly includes anime
companies.
Against all of that, you have your assertion that filesharing somehow makes
a series sell more, based on nothing other than your gut instinct as some
guy with the professional credentials of having access to a computer.
Perhaps you can understand why it doesn't impress me, especially since it's
also the credentials of Ansgar and everyone else I have ever heard arguing
that filesharing is good for the businesses it affects (in fact, a large
number of pro-filesharing people assert that it will destroy the old
businesses and their models and argue this is a good thing, which of course
would be directly in opposition to your and his point).
There is not the slightest shred of evidence in your paragraph above. There
is not even a reference to anything in the real world beyond the fact that
more people attend anime cons now than did in 1994, the ludicrousness of
attributing primarily to filesharing (as opposed to, oh, say, the dozen or
so hugely popular anime series that have appeared on North American TV since
then, the astonishing rise in distribution of anime in different venues
since then, the incredible penetration of manga into youth markets since
then, et cetera, et cetera) ought to be entirely obvious (especially since
that popularity boom was well on its way before filesharing became popular).
Frankly, as far as I can see, you pulled that paragraph out of your ass. You
might as well have said "filesharing creates rainbows and happy puppies and
if we stop then Ahura Mazda will smite us with fire". Provide some evidence
to back up your assertions, which are not accepted by any major professional
entity in the industry. If you can't, then why exactly do you hold them?
>>It is also accepted as fact by anyone with a basic understanding of
>>human nature.
>
> Anyone with *only* a basic understanding of human nature would accept
> it as a fact. Someone who has more than a basic understanding of human
> nature might investigate beyond the surface to find out how pirates and
> downloaders go on and buy licenced copies of the stuff they like.
Please provide evidence of this. Not anecdotal evidence, since that is
worthless.
>>It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely hard
>>times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
>>Japan.
>
> There is more anime being made and broadcast in Japan now than there
> ever was. In part this is because production costs have come down due to
> extensive use of computers to automate and simplify the animation
> process, in part because of the increasing popularity of anime and
> slipsteam anime activities such as books, models, special editions,
> Webcasts etc.
Articles I have read indicate the likelihood of a considerable drop in
broadcast anime despite the relative cheapness of production costs, due to a
variety of reasons including piracy and the limiting of the audience due to
more and more anime now being marketed at otaku rather than the general
public. If you have articles to the contrary, would you provide them?
> Profits are down for various reasons. One of them is that broadcast TV
> advertising rates are falling as people move away from watching
> over-the-air TV directly, preferring Netflix or delayed home recording
> (TiVo) or downloading (legitimately or otherwise) content from the
> Internet. Piracy may be depressing the profits but it may also be
> boosting the bottom line by encouraging lots and lots of Western licence
> deals (too many deals to be sustainable perhaps but that is another
> argument). Without getting real (commercially sensitive) financial
> numbers out of the industry we onlookers can only speculate.
Why, it's boosting the bottom line so much that the profits of the anime
industry dropped 20 billion yen from 2006 to 2007. That's an actual,
legitimate number from the industry (specifically from Yasuo Yamaguchi,
executive director of the Association of Japanese Animations). That's
approximately 10% of the entire industry's profit, again according to the
numbers of Yamaguchi - I.e., a drastic loss. Would you mind providing your
numbers to support your assertion that this not only has nothing to do with
filesharing, but that filesharing is actually helping fight the tide? Would
you mind providing your statements by industry professionals supporting your
viewpoint? Would you mind, in other words, providing anything other than the
theorising of the people on the Internet who directly benefit from
filesharing and have a vested interest in arguing that it isn't a direct
threat to the industry?
And if you can't provide that hard evidence, then ask yourself exactly how
you're different than the troll. Other than, hopefully, not having a history
of stalking celebrities.
-
Blade
Derek Janssen
> darthmark wrote:
>>>
>> What about Ethan Hammond? I used to lurk here a few years ago and I
>> remember he posted a lot of funny stuff.
>>
> Ethan graduated from college and got jobs, first with TRSI and
> then with a company in the gaming field. Increasingly he ran out of
> time to read and post. I think he may have grown up a bit too and
> his regular routine of being the husband of Nuku-Nuku, the all-purpose
> cultural cat girl, may have seemed less funny and less fun even to him.
He came from a world of other 90's groups where having a funny Gen-X
"trademark" made you a wacky, random, postmodern gadabout--
And then the 90's ended without him, and he became just a stuck,
conversation-halting broken record who didn't appear to know what
everyone else was talking about.
Derek Janssen (sic transit Usenet mundi)
eja...@verizon.net
ged...@gmail.com
> "Ged" <ged...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:f1247b02-4ac0-4d7a...@e5g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
>
> > I used to be an avid r.a.a.m follower about ten years ago. Back in
> > that time there were literally dozens of different threads posted
> > found a new place to discuss anime? I'm reading this group after a
> > long absence. My interest has severely waned to the point where I
> > hardly care about anything that has come out in the past five years.
> > The animation now looks too clean and computer-generated. I guess my
> > personal tastes are stuck in the 90's.
>
>
>
> Find ten average people of that age and ask them if they post on USENET.
>
> The blank looks at least nine of them will give you answers your question.
>
> On the bright side, in ten years they will also say "all the new anime is
> crap". ;p
>
> -
> Blade
All I can say that my age is older than 30, which means that if I was
an anime character, there is a 99% chance I would be dead. Of that 1%
who survive, 99% of that 1% are automatically warped to the ago of
60.
Or, am I imagining that 0.01% of anime characters are between 30 to
59?
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
>
>
> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in
> message news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> "Giovanni Wassen" <ext...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Dave Watson <dwbeing...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>>>>> posting this.
>>>>
>>>> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
>>>> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
>>>
>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>
>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
>> substantial data to support this claim.
>
> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
> as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
It's accepted as BELIEF. There are people who also believe the earth is
flat.
There's plenty of business evidence that they're wrong. As I've
discussed with Chicken Little multiple times, with his responses all
boiling down to "**IRRELEVANT NUMBERS!*** DOOMSAYING! **CALCULATIONS
BASED ON IRRELEVANT NUMBERS!** PANIC!".
>
> It is also accepted as fact by anyone with a basic understanding of
> human nature.
Nope. There's current businesses demonstrating that this idea is pretty
much dead wrong.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> B Sellers wrote:
>> darthmark wrote:
>>>>
>>> What about Ethan Hammond? I used to lurk here a few years ago and I
>>> remember he posted a lot of funny stuff.
>>>
>> Ethan graduated from college and got jobs, first with TRSI and
>> then with a company in the gaming field. Increasingly he ran out of
>> time to read and post. I think he may have grown up a bit too and
>> his regular routine of being the husband of Nuku-Nuku, the all-purpose
>> cultural cat girl, may have seemed less funny and less fun even to him.
>
> He came from a world of other 90's groups where having a funny Gen-X
> "trademark" made you a wacky, random, postmodern gadabout--
>
> And then the 90's ended
When did that happen? It's STILL the 90s, *90s*!! **SHAKES FIST**
B Sellers
reader until after 2000. As a matter of fact in 2001
something vile happened that drove me to expand my interest in
anime. When I arrived Ethan was still going strong. And he
continued for a couple of years after that until his jobs
took up more and more of his time.
I think that it was his real life that took him away
from his participation in raam. Maybe sometime in the future
it will bring him back again. BACK AGAIN!
Double Fist Shake!
later
bliss
Derek Janssen
>>>>
>>> then with a company in the gaming field. Increasingly he ran out of
>>> time to read and post. I think he may have grown up a bit too and
>>> his regular routine of being the husband of Nuku-Nuku, the
>>> all-purpose cultural cat girl, may have seemed less funny and less
>>> fun even to him.
>>
>> He came from a world of other 90's groups where having a funny Gen-X
>> "trademark" made you a wacky, random, postmodern gadabout--
>>
>> And then the 90's ended
>
> When did that happen? It's STILL the 90s, *90s*!! **SHAKES FIST**
I dunno, is AOL still in business? ;)
Derek Janssen (no, really, I wasn't paying attention!)
eja...@verizon.net
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
They're even bigger than they were, BIGGER! *SHAKES ETHAN'S FIST*
Robert Sneddon
<kumo...@hotmail.com> writes>LYl8w...@nospam.demon.co.uk...
>> In message <gq0fdc$obl$1...@news.albasani.net>, Blade
>> <kumo...@hotmail.com> writes
>>>
>>>
>>>"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in
>>>message news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
>>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>>>>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>>>
>>>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
>>>> substantial data to support this claim.
>>>
>>>And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
>>>as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
>>
>> That they accept this as a fact does not make it true. It is incredibly
>
>Funny how you say that about the beliefs held by the creators and
>professionals in the industry, yet accept as true without question or
>evidence that filesharing somehow benefits the industry. Where's your
>evidence?
I don't know if piracy and downloading of fansubs is a net gain or a
net loss. There are no public numbers to base an informed judgement on
and no control sample to compare it to either.
>
>> difficult to measure and to ascribe a monetary value of the cost to the
>> anime industry of piracy and downloading. It is similarly difficult to
>> put a value of the benefits of such piracy to the DVD sell-through
>> market.
>
>It's a good thing I didn't measure or put a value to it beyond "It is
>bad for the industry", isn't it?
Some numbers to prove your bald assertion that it is a net loss to the
anime industry would be nice.
>In the age of file-sharing, sales of all sorts of physical media have
>gone down across the board.
This is true for all media, legal and otherwise. iTunes and Netflix
downloads don't sell physical media, just the content. Amazon are
selling more and more ebooks. The age of distributing entertainment on
physical media generally is on the wane and has been ever since the
advent of widespread digital coding systems for audio, video and text
data.
>Against all of that, you have your assertion that filesharing somehow
>makes a series sell more, based on nothing other than your gut instinct
>as some guy with the professional credentials of having access to a
>computer.
You keep missing my point -- my gut instinct isn't telling me anything
(or rather I stopped listening to it a long time ago after the bones
knitted and I got out of the plaster cast -- no, Mr. Gut, I really
couldn't make it round that corner at that speed on my motorbike.). My
rational mind is saying it's not clear how much money the anime industry
is gaining or losing by filesharing and fansubbing. Stating it as a fact
that is it a net loss without being able to assign numbers to the
purported losses is the problem. Claims need proof, and claims about
money need numbers.
>
>There is not the slightest shred of evidence in your paragraph above.
Ah, finally you understand! There is no proof, either way.
> There is not even a reference to anything in the real world beyond the
>fact that more people attend anime cons now than did in 1994,
> the ludicrousness of attributing primarily to filesharing (as opposed
> to, oh, say, the dozen or so hugely popular anime series that have
>appeared on North American TV since then,
A dozen or so series? More like twenty or thirty series over the past
ten years, although not being US-based I can't give exact numbers on
that.
> the astonishing rise in distribution of anime in different venues
>since then, the incredible penetration of manga into youth markets
>since then, et cetera, et cetera)
There's a chicken-and-egg situation here -- did filesharing encourage
that growth in youth markets (btw I'm over 50 and I've been an anime and
manga fan for over twenty years now), did it hinder the explosion or did
it have no neutral influence? I don't know.
> ought to be entirely obvious (especially since that popularity boom
>was well on its way before filesharing became popular).
Was it? Do you have numbers for that claim that the anime boom was
"well on its way" before filesharing? I recall the early days of
licenced anime (from a UK standpoint). I bought Urusei Yatsura and
Project A-Ko tapes back in the early 90s from specialist dealers over
here. There was a couple of shelves of such tapes, and none available in
the regular stores -- indeed I bought US tapes when I couldn't find
certain series over here. Nowadays there are racks of anime in the high
street shops, not just the specialist dealers, and many licence
producers, not just the handful of ten years ago.
Correlation is not causality but I see a match in the rise of
filesharing and the rise in attendance at anime conventions. Without
filesharing I believe (without having real numbers to prove it) that
anime in the West would continue to be a narrow niche interest with few
anime series being licenced to be translated at great expense into
English and other Western languages. A lot of the oddball stuff probably
would never make it -- Bottle Fairy, for example, or Genshiken.
>Please provide evidence of this. Not anecdotal evidence, since that is
>worthless.
How about lots of anecdotal evidence, as that's about all that's
available? Quite a few of the people posting on this group download
fansubs, and a lot of them have stated they go on to buy licenced copies
of some of what they watch when it becomes available in the West. I'm
still waiting for the chance to do so for a couple of animes which have
never (and probably will never) got Western licences. I've not seen
anyone claim that they never buy licenced anime while downloading and
filesharing. How much they buy is another matter (Dave Baranyi scares
me...)
>>>It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely hard
>>>times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
>>>Japan.
>>
>> There is more anime being made and broadcast in Japan now than there
>> ever was. In part this is because production costs have come down due to
>> extensive use of computers to automate and simplify the animation
>> process, in part because of the increasing popularity of anime and
>> slipsteam anime activities such as books, models, special editions,
>> Webcasts etc.
>
>Articles I have read indicate the likelihood
So this drop hasn't actually happened, right?
> of a considerable drop in broadcast anime despite the relative
>cheapness of production costs, due to a variety of reasons including
>piracy and the limiting of the audience due to more and more anime now
>being marketed at otaku rather than the general public.
Why are the production companies narrowing their marketing to otakus, I
wonder? Is it because TV broadcast advertising revenues are falling for
reasons other than filesharing and piracy, and the otaku market is
growing and willing to pay top dollar/yen for anime even while they rip
and fileshare it?
>Would you mind providing your numbers to support your assertion that
>this not only has nothing to do with filesharing, but that filesharing
>is actually helping fight the tide?
I didn't say that filesharing helped "fight the tide". It doesn't
affect the main markets for anime which are, other than the small OAV
sector and the hentai/porn market, based on sales to TV companies for
broadcast, satellite and cable release. There is a small but difficult
to measure market segment for sales of anime DVDs that derives from
filesharers who, having sampled the original series via fansubs actually
lays out cash and buys the licenced product later. What is very
difficult to ascertain is the loss of revenue from the case where a
filesharer likes the series but decides not to buy the discs. In many
cases when I have sampled a series I have quit on it after a few
episodes or one (or in at least one case, half-way through the
introduction...) How that affects the production company's bottom line I
wouldn't care to speculate.
> Would you mind providing your statements by industry professionals
>supporting your viewpoint? Would you mind, in other words, providing
>anything other than the theorising of the people on the Internet who
>directly benefit from filesharing and have a vested interest in arguing
>that it isn't a direct threat to the industry?
The only real financial loss the anime industry faces from fansubbing
and filesharing is the case where a prospective purchaser is deterred
from purchasing their product (in the Western case, a licenced DVD or
set of DVDs) because they have downloaded the items and only decided not
to buy the product only because they already have a copy of it. That's
it, the entire impact to the anime company's bottom line profit-and-loss
is that decision not to buy a licenced copy. How many yen is that taking
off the bottom line?
>And if you can't provide that hard evidence, then ask yourself exactly
>how you're different than the troll. Other than, hopefully, not having
>a history of stalking celebrities.
I'm still waiting for hard evidence from you about the real effect of
fansubbing and filesharing on the anime market. The pros in Tokyo aren't
providing that proof either, of course and I'm not really surprised as
it's very difficult to quantify. Even educated guesses are just that,
educated guesses.
Galen
culture is not actively hostile to industry, I suggest
you spend a few days on 4chan/a/. (Usenet society
isn't noticeably representative of download culture.)
Actual degree of harm may be difficult to show, but
any failure to achieve is not from lack of deliberate
intent.
-Galen
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes
>>>>> and the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>>>
>>>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with
>>>> any substantial data to support this claim.
>>>
>>> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create
>>> anime, as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters
>>> have shown.
>>
>> Which still doesn't make it a fact.
>
> Unlike your assertions that allowing people to have stuff for free
> makes them buy more stuff, based entirely upon your anecdotal
> evidence?
I'd say some evidence, anecdotal as it may be, is still a lot more than
no evidence at all.
[...]
>>> It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely
>>> hard times since the downloading boom began, in both North America
>>> and Japan.
>>
>> It's also worth noting that there is a significant difference between
>> coincidence and cause.
>
> Yes, of course it's a complete coincidence.
Maybe, maybe not. However, since you were the one claiming a causality
here, it's your job to prove your claim, not mine to disprove it.
> The significant drop in CD sales over recent years, far exceeding the
> volume of usage of services like Itunes - also a coincidence. The fact
> one-quarter of US record stores went out of business since 2003 -
> complete coincidence.
>
> Meanwhile, you bought a Marimite novel and somehow that proves no
> company is ever hurt by filesharing. Hell, the fact you assert it has
> any relevence at all to the issue whatsoever is damning proof of your
> disinterest or inability in holding an intellectually honest or
> logically coherent opinion on the matter.
All your lame rhetorics and ad hominem attacks can't hide the fact that
you still haven't brought any evidence to support your case.
> On this subject, the only difference between you and the troll is what
> side you're on.
Then at least there's *some* difference between me and the troll.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> If anyone here seriously believes that the download
> culture is not actively hostile to industry,
No one CARES.
You can be as hostile as you like.
The question is whether it's HARMFUL -- in pure monetary terms.
What little HARD data exists on similar activities points in the other
direction, mostly; make your stuff available for free, and provide
*EASY, CHEAP* purchase options, and you make money. (Make the "purchase"
download hard to manage, require multiple registrations, or too
expensive, you'll lose your shirt, but that's your fault then.)
darkst...@gmail.com
> On Mar 19, 8:43 pm, darkstar7...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > places to get anime that both Usenet AND anime are basically already
> > dead.
> Don't you have traffic to go out and play in?
Not unless you have a gun to shoot me first.
> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
> posting this.
Of course, he conveniently ignores the illegal anime he probably has
been viewing for the 24 hours previous...
Mike
darkst...@gmail.com
> The fact that Mikey is willing to sermon to such a dead format suggests that
> he may have a very different interpretation of "dead" than we do. Maybe, by
> "dying," he means "thriving wildly?"
No. I'd really like to know what alternate universe you shit-heads
are in.
Seriously.
Mike
darkst...@gmail.com
> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet I
> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
Which, of course, means that the animation is worthless and that any
expectation of "sale" is false.
Otherwise, you owe for TWO copies -- the one you stole, and the one
you bought.
Mike (which see present viewing legal-stream models for how the
animation has basically become abject worthless, in the face of
massive illegal piracy)
darkst...@gmail.com
> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and the
> beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
Whose side are you on??
If downloading is bad for the anime business, then I'm not an idiot.
If I'm an idiot, then downloading is not bad for the anime business --
the whole premise is fucked -- and the anime companies have been
committing rampant fraud against the fans for years.
What you're saying makes no sense.
Mike
darkst...@gmail.com
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Galen wrote:
> > If anyone here seriously believes that the download
> > culture is not actively hostile to industry,
>
> No one CARES.
>
> You can be as hostile as you like.
>
> The question is whether it's HARMFUL -- in pure monetary terms.
>
> What little HARD data exists on similar activities points in the other
> direction, mostly; make your stuff available for free, and provide
> *EASY, CHEAP* purchase options, and you make money. (Make the "purchase"
> download hard to manage, require multiple registrations, or too
> expensive, you'll lose your shirt, but that's your fault then.)
So completely demonstrated that the industry is doing so poorly that
the 2008 sales figures for total were never released to the public by
IcV2, unlike the several previous years...
One has to wonder... Under $200 million now for the US DVD market?
$175M??
Mike
Derek Janssen
> On Mar 19, 6:54 pm, Dave Watson <dwbeingupfr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Mar 19, 8:43 pm, darkstar7...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Yes. There are new places to discuss anime, and so many new (illegal)
>>>places to get anime that both Usenet AND anime are basically already
>>>dead.
>
>>Don't you have traffic to go out and play in?
>
> Not unless you have a gun to shoot me first.
Aw, whatsamatter?...Haven't ANY of those mean bigger kids tried to come
over and kill you in the last two years?
(Guyy-yys!--Are you just trying to be mean? We're just not killing
him!) :(
Derek Janssen (that hurts his feelings!)
eja...@verizon.net
Arnold Kim
Hey, anime teens have parents, don't they?
Arnold Kim
Blade
<darkst...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:40bca984-082c-497d...@w1g2000prk.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 20, 8:05 am, "Blade" <kumonr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>> the
>> beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>
> Whose side are you on??
>
> If downloading is bad for the anime business, then I'm not an idiot.
Shut the fuck up, you stupid fucking cunt. You are half the reason I feel
the need to make these arguments, since you have tainted the "piracy is a
bad thing" viewpoint on the newsgroup via your odious association with it.
-
Blade
Dave Watson
> On Mar 19, 6:54 pm, Dave Watson <dwbeingupfr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 19, 8:43 pm, darkstar7...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > Yes. There are new places to discuss anime, and so many new (illegal)
> > > places to get anime that both Usenet AND anime are basically already
> > > dead.
> > Don't you have traffic to go out and play in?
>
> Not unless you have a gun to shoot me first.
Ooh, tough. Like fried shit.
> > Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
> > posting this.
>
> Of course, he conveniently ignores the illegal anime he probably has
> been viewing for the 24 hours previous...
Nah. The DVD-version eps of Kodomo no Jikan can wait.
Watson
Who mainly got it to add Kyoko "Boin-Sensei" Houin to Being Upfront.
Galen
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>Galen wrote:
>> If anyone here seriously believes that the download
>> culture is not actively hostile to industry,
>
> No one CARES.
>
> You can be as hostile as you like.
>
> The question is whether it's HARMFUL -- in pure monetary terms.
>
> What little HARD data exists on similar activities points in the other
>direction, mostly; make your stuff available for free, and provide
>*EASY, CHEAP* purchase options, and you make money. (Make the "purchase"
>download hard to manage, require multiple registrations, or too
>expensive, you'll lose your shirt, but that's your fault then.)
... Then we can agree that the existing sales and distribution
model is under deliberate attack intended to destroy it, that
this attack is effective, and that the industry is thus being
compelled to adopt a radically different model or collapse?
And that the pressure being used to force this change is
causing significant hardship in industries that have thus far
resisted change? Your argument seems to be that "survival
of the fittest" doesn't harm the weak because it's their own
fault for not adapting; it may not harm the industry, but it
is certainly harming the companies.
-Galen
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:09:05 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Galen wrote:
>>> If anyone here seriously believes that the download
>>> culture is not actively hostile to industry,
>> No one CARES.
>>
>> You can be as hostile as you like.
>>
>> The question is whether it's HARMFUL -- in pure monetary terms.
>>
>> What little HARD data exists on similar activities points in the other
>> direction, mostly; make your stuff available for free, and provide
>> *EASY, CHEAP* purchase options, and you make money. (Make the "purchase"
>> download hard to manage, require multiple registrations, or too
>> expensive, you'll lose your shirt, but that's your fault then.)
>
> ... Then we can agree that the existing sales and distribution
> model is under deliberate attack
No. I think the "community" you talk about is a tiny splinter of
irrelevance not much larger, in actual important participants, than this
newsgroup. If that's worthy of being called a deliberate attack, etc.,
then so are all the Linux geeks griping about Windows and Microsoft.
And just exactly as effective. That is to say, not at all. They are a
SYMPTOM of the situation, but not a CAUSE.
> intended to destroy it, that
> this attack is effective, and that the industry is thus being
> compelled to adopt a radically different model or collapse?
No.
I think that the change in technology is forcing this to happen. I
predicted this was going to happen back in 1991; I sent a letter to that
effect to three of the larger media companies at the time.
Physical media is doomed, has been doomed ever since decent digital
copies have become available. Books will take probably another
generation to go away because the technology hasn't quite reached the
right level, and because the current generation is too used to paper.
But as even the DISPLAY technology for video has converted to digital,
and the digital imaging and acoustic recording technology has reached
the level that it is indistinguishable from the analogue methods, the
audiovisual media are ALREADY on the downslope.
And things like iTunes have already stepped right up to do what the
idiots in the regular recording and movie companies were TOLD to do
years ago.
> And that the pressure being used to force this change is
> causing significant hardship in industries that have thus far
> resisted change? Your argument seems to be that "survival
> of the fittest" doesn't harm the weak because it's their own
> fault for not adapting; it may not harm the industry, but it
> is certainly harming the companies.
The companies are not the industry. Companies come and go. They always
do, unless you have a monopoly.
Companies that make buggy-whips and won't convert to auto-horns when
buggies go away and autos come in are companies that won't survive. The
change in technology for entertainment media is AT LEAST as
transformative as the invention of the automobile.
Now, if you view The Industry as buggy-whips -- or, in this case, as
the physical media selling companies, and that if no physical CDs or
DVDs are sold then there is no industry, then yes, you're correct, the
industry is DOOOOOMED.
On the other hand, if you view The Industry as the provider of some
function -- in this case, entertainment -- then it's just shifting to a
new approach, and potentially a HUGELY improved approach which could
open the field to hundreds of new players, given that it's no longer
necessary to have a huge physical manufacturing plant to be a media
producer.
sanjian
When your own side is your own worst enemy...
Galen
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
> Now, if you view The Industry as buggy-whips -- or, in this case, as
>the physical media selling companies, and that if no physical CDs or
>DVDs are sold then there is no industry, then yes, you're correct, the
>industry is DOOOOOMED.
Then can we agree that the industry which sells plates
of plastic with data encoded into them is being destroyed
by unlicensed internet distribution of that same data?
-Galen
Blade
"sanjian" <mun...@vt.edu> wrote in message
news:3vidnYT4ANQs-1nU...@posted.internetamerica...
I've love for you tell me what viewpoint, what argument, what creed, what
moral stance is so pure and brilliant that blithering idiots haven't
associated themselves with it.
Hell, I can't even find an anime I like that stupid people don't also like.
;p
-
Blade
Blade
> In message <gq0kfu$vb1$1...@news.albasani.net>, Blade
> <kumo...@hotmail.com> writes
>"Robert Sneddon" <fr...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:prX944
>>LYl8w...@nospam.demon.co.uk...
>>> In message <gq0fdc$obl$1...@news.albasani.net>, Blade
>>> <kumo...@hotmail.com> writes
>>>>> substantial data to support this claim.
>>>>
>>>>And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
>>>>as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
>>>
>>> That they accept this as a fact does not make it true. It is incredibly
>>
>>Funny how you say that about the beliefs held by the creators and
>>professionals in the industry, yet accept as true without question or
>>evidence that filesharing somehow benefits the industry. Where's your
>>evidence?
>
> I don't know if piracy and downloading of fansubs is a net gain or a
> net loss. There are no public numbers to base an informed judgement on
> and no control sample to compare it to either.
And yet there is considerable evidence that it is. Evidence you ignore,
while touting an opposing viewpoint supported by no evidence whatsoever.
>>> difficult to measure and to ascribe a monetary value of the cost to the
>>> anime industry of piracy and downloading. It is similarly difficult to
>>> put a value of the benefits of such piracy to the DVD sell-through
>>> market.
>>
>>It's a good thing I didn't measure or put a value to it beyond "It is
>>bad for the industry", isn't it?
>
> Some numbers to prove your bald assertion that it is a net loss to the
> anime industry would be nice.
Sure. The anime industry lost 10% of its profit between 2006 and 2007. The
people who oversee that indicated file-sharing was a direct cause.
Your move. Counter only with hard evidence and not your baseless
guy-on-the-internet speculation.
>>In the age of file-sharing, sales of all sorts of physical media have
>>gone down across the board.
>
> This is true for all media, legal and otherwise. iTunes and Netflix
A fact that is in direct opposition to your viewpoint that it does not harm
the distributors of said physical media.
> downloads don't sell physical media, just the content. Amazon are
> selling more and more ebooks. The age of distributing entertainment on
> physical media generally is on the wane and has been ever since the
> advent of widespread digital coding systems for audio, video and text
> data.
So, therefore, you would agree that this is a bad thing for companies whose
business model relies upon the distribution of physical media to recoup
costs of production? I.E., every single anime company, amongst many others?
>>Against all of that, you have your assertion that filesharing somehow
>>makes a series sell more, based on nothing other than your gut instinct
>>as some guy with the professional credentials of having access to a
>>computer.You
>
> You keep missing my point -- my gut instinct isn't telling me anything
> (or rather I stopped listening to it a long time ago after the bones
> knitted and I got out of the plaster cast -- no, Mr. Gut, I really
> couldn't make it round that corner at that speed on my motorbike.). My
> rational mind is saying it's not clear how much money the anime industry
> is gaining or losing by filesharing and fansubbing. Stating it as a fact
> that is it a net loss without being able to assign numbers to the
> purported losses is the problem. Claims need proof, and claims about
> money need numbers.
You will never be satisfied with "proof", because you can always say "that
doesn't prove it" in economics. There are people running around right now
arguing loudly that deregulation of the financial industry was not the cause
of the current financial crisis (which may include Sanjian; my apologies,
it's just a simple analogy to show that a wildly unpopular viewpoint will
still be held and argued by people in the economic field).
Proof does not exist anywhere in this world except in mathematics. There is
certainly no such thing as a specific number, because any methodology used
to estimate numbers will be questioned by file-sharing apologists such as
yourself.
But here are some facts.
Fact - Filesharing has become more and more popular in this decade, starting
with music and software, and then branching out into movies and tv shows as
more people got the bandwidth to download such things and the technology to
rip/burn them.
Fact - This has been accompanied by a reduction in sales across the board of
physical media. This has affected industries to greater or lesser extents -
particularly hard hit have been niche industries that cater in good part to
computer-savvy crowds, like the anime industry or the record store industry.
Fact - The companies who are in a position to benefit or be harmed by the
effects of file-sharing, virtually without exception, roundly condemn
file-sharing as a threat to their business. None seem to see the obvious
benefits you do, despite the fact that they are far closer to the actual
financial facts than you will ever be, that they have more evidence of sales
and studies about why things sell or don't than you ever will, and that they
are business professionals while you are probably not.
Fact - In real world situations where copyright has become essentially
worthless, such as Taiwan, the notion that file sharing increases sales of
legitimate product has proven to be laughably inaccurate. Instead,
legitimate sales in those areas have shrunk to almost nil.
Against this, you and your ilk have yet to produce a fact more substantial
than "more people attend anime cons now than did in the 80s and 90s". Your
entire position rests on baseless speculation and a belief that the world
works the way you want it to, and rather than how experts in the field
perceive it works, and how real-world case studies have demonstrated it to
work. You have no explanation for why filesharing benefits industry, and yet
has, in fact, failed to benefit industry in the timeframe it has been
active.
It is probably needless to add, yet I will anyway, that the short-sighted
viewpoint of the vast majority of "it helps the industry" file-sharing
apologists directly benefits them right now, whereas taking a stance against
it would inconvenience them.
You can rant about the proof you are presumably aware can never be given all
day, but the fact remains that the evidence overwhelmingly supports a
conclusion that filesharing is bad for the companies, and the people who
know the most about the business agree.
>>There is not the slightest shred of evidence in your paragraph above.
>
> Ah, finally you understand! There is no proof, either way.
Of course there isn't. We're not talking about math. There is also no proof
that this is a USENET newsgroup. There is no proof you are a carbon-based
lifeform. There is no proof that the President of the United States is
Barack Obama. There is no proof there is a United States. There is no proof
there is a financial crisis in the world. There is no proof there was an
Adolf Hitler.
You make every (and I do mean every) decision in your life based not upon
proof, but upon weighing evidence and your own desires and going with the
conclusion that seems most likely or beneficial to you. In this case, you
choose to ignore the evidence, hiding behind a call for "proof" that does
not, and can not, exist. Why?
>> There is not even a reference to anything in the real world beyond the
>>fact that more people attend anime cons now than did in 1994,
>> the ludicrousness of attributing primarily to filesharing (as opposed
>> to, oh, say, the dozen or so hugely popular anime series that have
>>appeared on North American TV since then,
>
> A dozen or so series? More like twenty or thirty series over the past
> ten years, although not being US-based I can't give exact numbers on
> that.
You are incorrect. I said "hugely popular". There has not been anywhere near
twenty by any reasonable definition of the phrase. In fact, my initial
inclination was to say "five or six", but I decided to up the estimate for
the sake of argument about series' that were not really popular but had a
notable effect on fandom (like Gundam Wing).
>> the astonishing rise in distribution of anime in different venues
>>since then, the incredible penetration of manga into youth markets
>>since then, et cetera, et cetera)
>
> There's a chicken-and-egg situation here -- did filesharing encourage
> that growth in youth markets (btw I'm over 50 and I've been an anime and
> manga fan for over twenty years now), did it hinder the explosion or did
> it have no neutral influence? I don't know.
It had virtually nothing to do with why there is a huge manga rack in
Borders and Chapters now, as any examination of the timeline of this and
what led it to happen would show you. Google it.
>> ought to be entirely obvious (especially since that popularity boom
>>was well on its way before filesharing became popular).
>
> Was it? Do you have numbers for that claim that the anime boom was
> "well on its way" before filesharing? I recall the early days of
Yes. Most people couldn't download anime in 2002. Anime cons were already
bigger and more numerous than they had been in 1998, which in and of itself
were far bigger and more numerous than they had been in 1994.
> licenced anime (from a UK standpoint). I bought Urusei Yatsura and
> Project A-Ko tapes back in the early 90s from specialist dealers over
> here. There was a couple of shelves of such tapes, and none available in
> the regular stores -- indeed I bought US tapes when I couldn't find
> certain series over here. Nowadays there are racks of anime in the high
> street shops, not just the specialist dealers, and many licence
> producers, not just the handful of ten years ago.
It's too bad you have not the slightest shred of gratitude for the people
who made that possible, and instead reserve your thanks for the people who
are actively trying to destroy them.
> Correlation is not causality but I see a match in the rise of
> filesharing and the rise in attendance at anime conventions. Without
Oooh, ooh, I can do that too!
The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ALSO correlates with the rise
in attendance at anime conventions!
> filesharing I believe (without having real numbers to prove it) that
> anime in the West would continue to be a narrow niche interest with few
> anime series being licenced to be translated at great expense into
> English and other Western languages. A lot of the oddball stuff probably
> would never make it -- Bottle Fairy, for example, or Genshiken.
You also believe this without any evidence to prove it. You also believe
this in opposition to the views of the people who actually translated and
released those series'.
(You're also ignoring that Dragonball Z made more anime fans than ten years
worth of fansubs, including DBZ fansubs, but hey.)
>>Please provide evidence of this. Not anecdotal evidence, since that is
>>worthless.
>
> How about lots of anecdotal evidence, as that's about all that's
> available? Quite a few of the people posting on this group download
Wrong. There's plenty of evidence available. You just don't like it because
it doesn't support your viewpoint.
> fansubs, and a lot of them have stated they go on to buy licenced copies
> of some of what they watch when it becomes available in the West. I'm
Whee, I have anecdotal evidence too! Lots of people on this newsgroup have
admitted they download and watch things then don't buy them. In addition,
the only anime fan I know in Ottawa beyond myself who has anywhere near a
1:1 ratio on buying legitimate releases to the fansubs he downloads is Rob
Kelk. That makes about 1:20 ratio, with at least five out of those twenty
virtually never buying legitimate releases at all.
This anecdotal evidence is also worthless.
> still waiting for the chance to do so for a couple of animes which have
> never (and probably will never) got Western licences. I've not seen
> anyone claim that they never buy licenced anime while downloading and
> filesharing. How much they buy is another matter (Dave Baranyi scares
> me...)
Who gives a shit whether they "never" do or not? The question is not whether
downloaders never buy. The question is whether easy access to free fansubbed
anime encourages people to buy more anime than they did when they had to pay
to get their anime fix.
All the evidence points to "no", much like it does for CDs and software. The
real world test cases resoundingly point to "no". The companies involved all
say "no". The sales figures indicate "no". Everything indicates "no" except
the beliefs of a bunch of guys on the internet who (entirely
coincidentally!) benefit from file-sharing.
>>>>It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely hard
>>>>times since the downloading boom began, in both North America and
>>>>Japan.
>>>
>>> There is more anime being made and broadcast in Japan now than there
>>> ever was. In part this is because production costs have come down due to
>>> extensive use of computers to automate and simplify the animation
>>> process, in part because of the increasing popularity of anime and
>>> slipsteam anime activities such as books, models, special editions,
>>> Webcasts etc.
>>
>>Articles I have read indicate the likelihood
>
> So this drop hasn't actually happened, right?
I don't know. I'm actually only accepting on good faith that there's "more
anime now than there ever was", since I've not heard that anywhere.
>> of a considerable drop in broadcast anime despite the relative
>>cheapness of production costs, due to a variety of reasons including
>>piracy and the limiting of the audience due to more and more anime now
>>being marketed at otaku rather than the general public.
>
> Why are the production companies narrowing their marketing to otakus, I
> wonder? Is it because TV broadcast advertising revenues are falling for
> reasons other than filesharing and piracy, and the otaku market is
> growing and willing to pay top dollar/yen for anime even while they rip
> and fileshare it?
No, it's probably because otaku have disposable income and will buy
associated merchandise more reliably than children (a decision which may
well have been influenced by declining media sales due to filesharing). It's
the exact same reason why American comics over ten years ago focused the
vast majority of their marketing on existing comic book fans rather than new
ones. It is probably worth noting that this has turned out to be a
disastrous decision for them, and is a generally accepted contributing
factor for why manga stole the youth market out from under them.
It is also worth noting, yet again, that following this strategy, most anime
companies are now in greater financial difficulty. Whoops.
>>Would you mind providing your numbers to support your assertion that
>>this not only has nothing to do with filesharing, but that filesharing
>>is actually helping fight the tide?
>
> I didn't say that filesharing helped "fight the tide". It doesn't
Yes you did. You have stated it benefits the industry. In other words, since
the industry has been doing more and more poorly as filesharing becomes more
and more common, there must be some malevolent force depressing the anime
industry (and the music industry, and the software industry) that the
distribution of free product is somehow counteracting (but fighting a losing
battle!). And only guys on the Internet (who coincidentally benefit from
file-sharing) are smart enough to see it.
> affect the main markets for anime which are, other than the small OAV
> sector and the hentai/porn market, based on sales to TV companies for
> broadcast, satellite and cable release. There is a small but difficult
> to measure market segment for sales of anime DVDs that derives from
> filesharers who, having sampled the original series via fansubs actually
> lays out cash and buys the licenced product later. What is very
> difficult to ascertain is the loss of revenue from the case where a
> filesharer likes the series but decides not to buy the discs. In many
> cases when I have sampled a series I have quit on it after a few
> episodes or one (or in at least one case, half-way through the
> introduction...) How that affects the production company's bottom line I
> wouldn't care to speculate.
Except, of course, you have.
>> Would you mind providing your statements by industry professionals
>>supporting your viewpoint? Would you mind, in other words, providing
>>anything other than the theorising of the people on the Internet who
>>directly benefit from filesharing and have a vested interest in arguing
>>that it isn't a direct threat to the industry?
>
> The only real financial loss the anime industry faces from fansubbing
> and filesharing is the case where a prospective purchaser is deterred
> from purchasing their product (in the Western case, a licenced DVD or
> set of DVDs) because they have downloaded the items and only decided not
> to buy the product only because they already have a copy of it. That's
> it, the entire impact to the anime company's bottom line profit-and-loss
> is that decision not to buy a licenced copy. How many yen is that taking
> off the bottom line?
Quite a bit, according to them. About 10% total for which they point to
file-sharing as the leading cause.
>>And if you can't provide that hard evidence, then ask yourself exactly
>>how you're different than the troll. Other than, hopefully, not having
>>a history of stalking celebrities.
>
> I'm still waiting for hard evidence from you about the real effect of
> fansubbing and filesharing on the anime market. The pros in Tokyo aren't
> providing that proof either, of course and I'm not really surprised as
> it's very difficult to quantify. Even educated guesses are just that,
> educated guesses.
Except some guesses actually are educated. And some are pie-in-the-sky
wish-fulfillment.
-
Blade
Blade
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
news:gq0obe$9r1$2...@news.motzarella.org...
> Blade wrote:
>> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in
>> message news:gq0en7...@news.in-ulm.de...
>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> "Giovanni Wassen" <ext...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Dave Watson <dwbeing...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Who will be watching some anime he legally bought not long after
>>>>>> posting this.
>>>>>
>>>>> Weird huh, the guy keep saying my downloading is bad for business yet
>>>>> I
>>>>> find myself buying anime I watched and enjoyed.
>>>>
>>>> Downloading is bad for the anime business, your personal anecdotes and
>>>> the beliefs of an idiot troll nonwithstanding.
>>>
>>> Neither you, nor Chicken Little, nor anyone else ever came up with any
>>> substantial data to support this claim.
>>
>> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create anime,
>> as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters have shown.
>
> It's accepted as BELIEF. There are people who also believe the earth is
> flat.
Oooh, ooh, I can do that too! There's some people who believe you've
published a book! Ha!
> There's plenty of business evidence that they're wrong. As I've
Go ahead and present it, then. The two people I've been arguing with
certainly don't have any.
However, since it was already revealed down the line that you actually think
filesharing will destroy the companies and force new business models of
uncertain profitability, you either hold two completely contradictory
viewpoints or your evidence doesn't indicate that at all.
> discussed with Chicken Little multiple times, with his responses all
> boiling down to "**IRRELEVANT NUMBERS!*** DOOMSAYING! **CALCULATIONS BASED
> ON IRRELEVANT NUMBERS!** PANIC!".
Perhaps you wouldn't be so sure of yourself if you argued viewpoints with
someone who isn't a mentally deranged idiot.
Well, okay, yes you would. I know you. ;p
-
Blade
sanjian
Dude. Take a breather.
Blade
"Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote in message
news:gq11j8...@news.in-ulm.de...
> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create
>>>> anime, as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters
>>>> have shown.
>>>
>>> Which still doesn't make it a fact.
>>
>> Unlike your assertions that allowing people to have stuff for free
>> makes them buy more stuff, based entirely upon your anecdotal
>> evidence?
>
> I'd say some evidence, anecdotal as it may be, is still a lot more than
> no evidence at all.
No it isn't. It is evidence of nothing. LRN2LOGICPLZ.
> [...]
>>>> It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely
>>>> hard times since the downloading boom began, in both North America
>>>> and Japan.
>>>
>>> It's also worth noting that there is a significant difference between
>>> coincidence and cause.
>>
>> Yes, of course it's a complete coincidence.
>
> Maybe, maybe not. However, since you were the one claiming a causality
> here, it's your job to prove your claim, not mine to disprove it.
Sure. Kindly respond to the list of facts I gave the other guy. For a real
challenge, try responding without personal attacks!
>> The significant drop in CD sales over recent years, far exceeding the
>> volume of usage of services like Itunes - also a coincidence. The fact
>> one-quarter of US record stores went out of business since 2003 -
>> complete coincidence.
(BTW, this is evidence of a causal link that you didn't respond to. Not a
good start!)
>> Meanwhile, you bought a Marimite novel and somehow that proves no
>> company is ever hurt by filesharing. Hell, the fact you assert it has
>> any relevence at all to the issue whatsoever is damning proof of your
>> disinterest or inability in holding an intellectually honest or
>> logically coherent opinion on the matter.
>
> All your lame rhetorics and ad hominem attacks can't hide the fact that
> you still haven't brought any evidence to support your case.
Oh dear, Ansgar. Ad hominem? Your grasp of Latin isn't any better than your
grasp of English, it seems. Allow me to educate you:
Your argument - I buy anime material based on downloading fansubs, thereby
indicating that downloading fansubs benefits the anime industry.
My response - You think anecdotal evidence means anything. You either have
no grasp of how to construct a logical argument, or you are intellectually
dishonest.
Your response: "An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem
(Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of
replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a
characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather
than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence
against the claim."
To simplify:
The substance of your argument: "My anecdotal evidence means something."
Response to your argument: "Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean anything, and
you are either ignorant or foolish for thinking so."
Or, if you prefer: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAno."
That's not an Ad hominem attack, but an attack on the substance of your
argument. It is, in fact, the opposite of an Ad hominem attack for that
reason. If I said "You're an idiot and therefore we can't use what you do to
judge what normal people would do", that would be a classic Ad hominem
attack. What I said was certainly insulting, but "insulting" |= "ad
hominem". My insult was based on my rebuttal, it was not the substance of it
(note: this is true even if you think I'm wrong about the worthlessness of
anecdotal evidence). If you're going to use words to make yourself sound
smart, learn what they mean first.
>> On this subject, the only difference between you and the troll is what
>> side you're on.
>
> Then at least there's *some* difference between me and the troll.
Well, that's true. The troll never spent a week vehemently insisting
(between insults) that something I said was not, in fact, what I said, but
rather something else entirely.
-
Blade
Blade
"sanjian" <mun...@vt.edu> wrote in message
news:XeCdnfT9vKhBRlnU...@posted.internetamerica...
> Blade wrote:
>> "sanjian" <mun...@vt.edu> wrote in message
>> news:3vidnYT4ANQs-1nU...@posted.internetamerica...
>>> When your own side is your own worst enemy...
>>
>> I've love for you tell me what viewpoint, what argument, what creed,
>> what moral stance is so pure and brilliant that blithering idiots
>> haven't associated themselves with it.
>
> Dude. Take a breather.
I can't. People are WRONG.
On the USENET.
Don't you understand?
-
Blade
(Actually, I was mostly just legitimately angry that that twat had the gall
to associate me with him.)
Galen
wrote:
>
>
>I don't know. I'm actually only accepting on good faith that there's "more
>anime now than there ever was", since I've not heard that anywhere.
http://espanol.geocities.com/gapc/animetv-jp/index_e.html
If anyone cares, they can count the number of series for each year.
However, since series are becoming shorter, it may be more relevant
to weight each series for the number of weeks it ran, to determine
how many new episodes of anime aired in each year.
-Galen
Blade
"Galen" <ga...@nekomimicon.net> wrote in message
news:ctp9s411j1k9cqmei...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:01:23 -0400, "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>I don't know. I'm actually only accepting on good faith that there's "more
>>anime now than there ever was", since I've not heard that anywhere.
>
> http://espanol.geocities.com/gapc/animetv-jp/index_e.html
Thanks for the link!
> If anyone cares, they can count the number of series for each year.
>
> However, since series are becoming shorter, it may be more relevant
> to weight each series for the number of weeks it ran, to determine
> how many new episodes of anime aired in each year.
You'll also have to factor in that the implosion of the once-healthy OAV
market, since many series' now (especially 13-episode late night series')
are basically their replacements.
-
Blade
sanjian
> "sanjian" <mun...@vt.edu> wrote in message
> news:XeCdnfT9vKhBRlnU...@posted.internetamerica...
>> Blade wrote:
>>> "sanjian" <mun...@vt.edu> wrote in message
>>> news:3vidnYT4ANQs-1nU...@posted.internetamerica...
>
>>>> When your own side is your own worst enemy...
>>>
>>> I've love for you tell me what viewpoint, what argument, what creed,
>>> what moral stance is so pure and brilliant that blithering idiots
>>> haven't associated themselves with it.
>>
>> Dude. Take a breather.
>
> I can't. People are WRONG.
>
> On the USENET.
>
> Don't you understand?
>
> -
> Blade
> (Actually, I was mostly just legitimately angry that that twat had
> the gall to associate me with him.)
Not a problem, actually. I was commiserating. I've had many people, even
here, drag my side down (Ethan was especially good at that).
sanjian
By the time you've factored in everything that needs to be considered, it
seems one would need a doctorate and a few copies of MatLAB running on a
distributed network to actually understand what's going on.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
No. It's being destroyed by the fact that you CAN sell it over an
internet connection.
IP Piracy did not start with the Internet. Every time a new technology
has come along, it has been stupidly resisted by the companies who would
have to actually make an effort to adjust, until it became clear that
fighting the change was asinine. And then they changed.
You insist on pointing to the downloaders and say "They're CAUSING the
problem." I'm saying "no, they're an inevitable SYMPTOM of the problem
which could easily have been avoided for the most part if the companies
involved were willing to make plans and act on them over a period of
longer than a couple of years.
In other words, the plastic discs-o-music industry was DOOOOMED from
the moment it became clear that (A)the Internet was heading for
universal or near-universal connectivity, (B)music was shown to be
easily encoded digitally (which of course the more recent incarnations
of discs-o-music had done, and (C) the bandwidth existed, or would soon
exist, to distribute this data in a reasonably fast and easy way to most
of the users of the Internet.
Even if there WEREN'T any deliberate pirates out there, you were doomed
from that point on. It would just take longer to become obvious.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
They're wrong, of course.
I've published THREE so far.
>
>> There's plenty of business evidence that they're wrong. As I've
>
> Go ahead and present it, then. The two people I've been arguing with
> certainly don't have any.
I've presented it plenty of times before to Dorky. Or do you avoid
those threads?
iTunes is a pretty much unanswerable piece of evidence. Billions in
business, selling stuff -- requiring a password, mind you, which is to
some people a significant hassle! -- which is for the most part EASILY
AVAILABLE FOR FREE. Most of that music on iTunes I can find for free
from your oh-so-terrible criminals, and it has no DRM (well, Apple's
getting rid of that now, I hear), etc. By Dorky's arguments, iTunes
SIMPLY CANNOT EXIST. No one will pay for something they can get for
free, well, no one of a significant number, nothing that would support
an industry.
Yet THERE IT IS. A billion dollars is a bloody industry by itself, and
iTunes is ONE subdivision of ONE company.
In other media, there's Hulu making money from making content available
for free. There's multiple "download this movie" operations making
money, some of them by actually charging for the movie, others with ads.
The Baen Free Library has demonstrated that people will download free
e-books AND THEN PAY MONEY FOR THE EXACT SAME E-BOOK (aside from them
also running out and buying the physical book).
There is really no usable counterargument to these facts. People are
not inherently crooks, they WILL pay if they feel the price is fair and
if they have reason to believe the money is being at least partially
sent to the creators of the material they like, AND if they can do this
fairly easily.
Reiterating, the basic rule is simple and clear: if you make the
product available easily, for a price that doesn't seem piratical (i.e.,
we KNOW that those CDs cost you a couple pennies apiece and you want us
to pay $20 for them???), people will pay. They LIKE to feel legitimate,
for the most part.
The "industry hate" I've heard is mostly "I don't like being
overcharged for my entertainment, and some of what X company did was
really dickish anyway". They're still watching anime, so the industry's
PRODUCT is still in demand. I'm sure there's some dickheads who would
not pay anything and insist on getting it illegally even if there were
easy and legitimate ways to get it at equal or better quality by paying
a small fee, but they're not a majority, probably not even a significant
minority.
>
> However, since it was already revealed down the line that you actually
> think filesharing will destroy the companies and force new business
> models of uncertain profitability, you either hold two completely
> contradictory viewpoints or your evidence doesn't indicate that at all.
No, I hold perfectly consistent ones.
The companies are not the industry. The industry is "production of
profitable anime".
Wipe out all the currently "stuck on the DVD/BluRay" model companies,
either there already are, or will be, other companies who will have a
clue producing anime that won't depend on shipping tiny discs of plastic
across the ocean to sell.
The above evidence PROVES this. With a billion dollars in business,
iTunes has already ESTABLISHED the new industry paradigm. Some people
are just still trying to pretend it can't work, for some reason I can't
fathom.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Easily. It all interconnects.
You have the current economic woes, which are affecting all industries
-- and then those effects echo back and forth between different
industries. You have changes in current entertainment tastes, and the
fact that the typical lag in the industry to react to such shifts is
between two and five years. You have the shift to different methods of
distributing the product. You have the change in behavior of the
viewership, and their age distribution, and how THEY may be affected by
economic changes. And there's tons of other factors involved.
So figuring out what should or shouldn't be based on "Look at this
factor" doesn't work. Can't work. Either you need a LOT of work looking
at so many factors that you can be reasonably sure there aren't any
other significant ones left (and even then, chaos theory may bite you on
the ass) or you need a PRAGMATIC answer based on something that
falsifies one of the theories; i.e., if you believe that downloading
dooms the industry and there is no way for it to survive, this is a nice
absolute theory which can be falsified if you can find a strong example
of something that appears to be in the industry and is making money from
downloading in a manner that appears sustainable. E.g., iTunes.
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> "Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers" <usene...@planetcobalt.net> wrote:
>>>> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> And yet it is accepted by fact by the people who actually create
>>>>> anime, as numerous articles, interviews, and cease&desist letters
>>>>> have shown.
>>>>
>>>> Which still doesn't make it a fact.
>>>
>>> Unlike your assertions that allowing people to have stuff for free
>>> makes them buy more stuff, based entirely upon your anecdotal
>>> evidence?
>>
>> I'd say some evidence, anecdotal as it may be, is still a lot more
>> than no evidence at all.
>
> No it isn't.
Yes it is. Now you again.
>> [...]
>>>>> It is also worth nothing that the anime industry has hit extremely
>>>>> hard times since the downloading boom began, in both North America
>>>>> and Japan.
>>>>
>>>> It's also worth noting that there is a significant difference
>>>> between coincidence and cause.
>>>
>>> Yes, of course it's a complete coincidence.
>>
>> Maybe, maybe not. However, since you were the one claiming a
>> causality here, it's your job to prove your claim, not mine to
>> disprove it.
>
> Sure. Kindly respond to the list of facts I gave the other guy.
If you're referring to your reply to Robert Sneddon: what "list of
facts"? What you gave there was a list of claims, with "the sales have
been going down" being the only thing that may actually count as a fact.
This fact, however, may have any number of reasons, and neither you nor
anyone else has yet presented any kind of evidence that downloads are a
significant cause of this, much less *the* cause as the industry claims.
> For a real challenge, try responding without personal attacks!
Look who's talking.
[...]
The purpose of my example was not to prove the claim that downloads
would benefit the industry in every case (a claim I didn't make at all),
but to disprove your claim that downloads would hurt the industry in
every case. Since unlike you I wasn't generalizing, the evidence I
presented doesn't even count as anecdotal. Hence your attempt to
discredit it as such and subsequently label me as either ignorant or
foolish (i.e. discredit the source of the argument) is by all means an
attack ad hominem.
cu
59cobalt
--
"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight
flaw in my character."
--Li Kao (Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds)
The Wanderer
> "Robert Sneddon" <fr...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:B$e3t+W9c$wJF...@nospam.demon.co.uk...
>> I bought Urusei Yatsura and Project A-Ko tapes back in the early
>> 90s from specialist dealers over here. There was a couple of
>> shelves of such tapes, and none available in the regular stores --
>> indeed I bought US tapes when I couldn't find certain series over
>> here. Nowadays there are racks of anime in the high street shops,
>> not just the specialist dealers, and many licence producers, not
>> just the handful of ten years ago.
>
> It's too bad you have not the slightest shred of gratitude for the
> people who made that possible, and instead reserve your thanks for
> the people who are actively trying to destroy them.
I don't think that rhetoric is fair.
I don't think there are very many people out there who say "we want to
destroy these people, and we are going to use
filesharing/piracy/what-have-you as a means of accomplishing that"
(which is what "actively trying to destroy them" means by my
interpretation); indeed I wouldn't be surprised if there were exactly
zero such people.
There quite possibly are (large numbers of) people who say "I want (to
do) this, and I don't care what effect it has on these people". That is,
however, a very different sort of motivation, and imputing active intent
to destroy to that seems like bad argument to me.
>> I've not seen anyone claim that they never buy licenced anime while
>> downloading and filesharing. How much they buy is another matter
>> (Dave Baranyi scares me...)
>
> Who gives a shit whether they "never" do or not? The question is not
> whether downloaders never buy. The question is whether easy access to
> free fansubbed anime encourages people to buy more anime than they
> did when they had to pay to get their anime fix.
Er, no.
The question is whether easy access to free fansubbed anime encourages
people to buy more anime than they otherwise would, not whether it
encourages them to buy more anime than they once did.
These are related questions, but they are not the same.
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
sanjian
> Blade wrote:
>> Go ahead and present it, then. The two people I've been arguing with
>> certainly don't have any.
>
> I've presented it plenty of times before to Dorky. Or do you avoid
> those threads?
Would you blame him?
sanjian
>> By the time you've factored in everything that needs to be
>> considered, it seems one would need a doctorate and a few copies of
>> MatLAB running on a distributed network to actually understand
>> what's going on.
>
> Easily. It all interconnects.
Which makes linear regression an absolute bitch.
> You have the current economic woes, which are affecting all industries
> -- and then those effects echo back and forth between different
Which is bad enough, but then you have to figure what the beta is for anime?
We can't assume that it moves with economic conditions. And if it does, are
changes for demand in anime amplified or dampened? These questions aren't
just pesky details. Very important fields of financial Risk Management are
devoted to this, when it comes to diversification.
> industries. You have changes in current entertainment tastes, and the
> fact that the typical lag in the industry to react to such shifts is
> between two and five years. You have the shift to different methods of
> distributing the product. You have the change in behavior of the
But, first, you have to convince people that the means are changing. Then
you have to figure out how to do it in a way that won't be obsolete within
the payback period.
> viewership, and their age distribution, and how THEY may be affected
> by economic changes. And there's tons of other factors involved.
>
> So figuring out what should or shouldn't be based on "Look at this
> factor" doesn't work. Can't work. Either you need a LOT of work
> looking at so many factors that you can be reasonably sure there
> aren't any other significant ones left (and even then, chaos theory
> may bite you on the ass) or you need a PRAGMATIC answer based on
> something that falsifies one of the theories; i.e., if you believe
> that downloading dooms the industry and there is no way for it to
> survive, this is a nice absolute theory which can be falsified if you
> can find a strong example of something that appears to be in the
> industry and is making money from downloading in a manner that
> appears sustainable. E.g., iTunes.
But that doesn't help when you change "dooms" to "harms."
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
> Fact - Filesharing has become more and more popular in this decade,
> starting with music and software, and then branching out into movies
> and tv shows as more people got the bandwidth to download such things
> and the technology to rip/burn them.
Agreed.
> Fact - This has been accompanied by a reduction in sales across the
> board of physical media. This has affected industries to greater or
> lesser extents - particularly hard hit have been niche industries that
> cater in good part to computer-savvy crowds, like the anime industry
> or the record store industry.
The first sentence may be a fact, the rest is an assumption for which
you still haven't given any proof at all.
> Fact - The companies who are in a position to benefit or be harmed by
> the effects of file-sharing, virtually without exception, roundly
> condemn file-sharing as a threat to their business. None seem to see
> the obvious benefits you do, despite the fact that they are far closer
> to the actual financial facts than you will ever be, that they have
> more evidence of sales and studies about why things sell or don't than
> you ever will, and that they are business professionals while you are
> probably not.
The fact that they do say so doesn't make their claim a fact. And JFTR,
"they are business professionals while you are probably not" is yet
another ad hominem argument from you.
As for those studies you're referring to: that's exactly what people
like have been asking for for quite some time now. If they actually
exist, and if they so clearly show that downloads have a significant
adverse effect on sales, then why are they not being published?
> Fact - In real world situations where copyright has become essentially
> worthless, such as Taiwan, the notion that file sharing increases
> sales of legitimate product has proven to be laughably inaccurate.
> Instead, legitimate sales in those areas have shrunk to almost nil.
Even if that should be the case (I haven't seen any data on that): car
sales been going down as well. I suppose that's also due to downloads
rather than the economic crisis?