THIS is why I encourage people not to be cheap bastards and buy the DVDs when they're available in Region (wherever they live) for shows that they profess to be "fans" of, instead of just illegally streaming and/or torrenting them. Simple supply and demand- if not enough people buy a product for it to be profitable for the people who create it, the people who create that product won't produce it. It infuriates me how willfully thickheaded people can be about this issue.
This reminds me of an incident that happened in the anime club that I belonged to in my senior year of high school. I brought in the first Mai-Hime DVD, which everyone in the club was enjoying watching. While the DVD was playing, I saw a freshman girl showing a middle school boy on his laptop how he "doesn't need to buy the DVDs" for Mai-Hime because he can get it "all for free!" online. I was pissed- I paused the DVD and took that as an opportunity to give them a lecture on why watching illegal fansubs online in lieu of purchasing legal DVDs is harmful to the anime industry. I might as well have talked to a tree, for all that it got through to them. (In retrospect, I know that harshly lecturing somebody like that is generally an ineffective way to persuade them to change their behavior.)
But- maybe the looming specter of the anime industry tanking will get a few people to cough up money to support the titles that they like. The same goes for manga. Buy them, borrow them, rent them, ask for them on your /holiday/ wish list, but don't steal them. (I do read scanlations, but I buy the titles that I like when I can.)
No comments:
Post a Comment