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Illegal download or not?


Bulletje76

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I was wondering about this. Are you guys in favor of downloading anime illegal? I am not sure when downloading is illegal and when not btw.

But what is your opinion?

I pay for 2 site subscriptions on anime sites. And i figure, if it is not there, i just download it. I am still supporting the industry. OR are there websites where i can download against a fee? Then i would do that

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34 minutes ago, Bulleje76 said:

I was wondering about this. Are you guys in favor of downloading anime illegal? I am not sure when downloading is illegal and when not btw.

But what is your opinion?

I pay for 2 site subscriptions on anime sites. And i figure, if it is not there, i just download it. I am still supporting the industry. OR are there websites where i can download against a fee? Then i would do that

You can buy anime on certain app stores - not sure about the quality. I stick with Blu Rays. 

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3 hours ago, Bulleje76 said:

I was wondering about this. Are you guys in favor of downloading anime illegal? I am not sure when downloading is illegal and when not btw.

But what is your opinion?

I pay for 2 site subscriptions on anime sites. And i figure, if it is not there, i just download it. I am still supporting the industry. OR are there websites where i can download against a fee? Then i would do that

Anime download sites are a progression from the VHS fansub distros of an earlier time. Both have always been a grey area, but generally getting a fansub either on VHS or via a download site was viewed by many fans as being OK providing that you purchased the commercial DVD release when it came out, and most reputable distros would withdraw a fansub from their lists when the commercial release was announced.

In the early days the anime studios didn't usually take much notice of the activities of fansubbers, but they started to take more notice when they realised that selling the rights to their series to Western distribution companies could bring them extra revenue.  The widespread availability of fast Internet connections and the belief among some groups that everything on the Internet was free led to people downloading anime series with no intention of ever supporting the producers by purchasing the commercial releases. This in turn led to downloading anime moving from being a grey area to being regarded as an illegal pirate activity in the same way that downloading Hollywood films is, and some uploaders and downloaders have been arrested and fined large amounts of money.

Personally, I'll stick with legal streaming sites like CR and DVD/Blu-Rays.

 

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19 hours ago, Android Rebel said:

Well, I don't have an overabundance of storage on this device, so downloading anime wouldn't be practical for me. So I just buy DVDs and blu-rays since I've got a dual blu-ray/DVD player. 

Most Blu-Ray players will also play DVDs. I only play Bru-Rays on my BR player as I have a separate DVD player which is multi-region. This is important because the UK is region 2 and while we now have quite a decent range of region 2 DVDs in the early days all the really good anime was released in the USA which is region 1, hence the need for a multi-region player.

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4 hours ago, Animedragon said:

Most Blu-Ray players will also play DVDs. I only play Bru-Rays on my BR player as I have a separate DVD player which is multi-region. This is important because the UK is region 2 and while we now have quite a decent range of region 2 DVDs in the early days all the really good anime was released in the USA which is region 1, hence the need for a multi-region player.

I don't think I knew that. lol Here I am trying to be all knowledgeable about it but I didn't know something so important. Mine is Region 1 locked because I think it's all you can really get in stores in America. But I may be wrong, it's just a guess. I wish I had multi-region, but just isn't what I ended up getting for Christmas, and yet I still cherish it. It's the only blu-ray player I've ever had.

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5 hours ago, Android Rebel said:

I don't think I knew that. lol Here I am trying to be all knowledgeable about it but I didn't know something so important. Mine is Region 1 locked because I think it's all you can really get in stores in America. But I may be wrong, it's just a guess. I wish I had multi-region, but just isn't what I ended up getting for Christmas, and yet I still cherish it. It's the only blu-ray player I've ever had.

You can't by multi-region DVD players in shops here either, mine came from Amazon. 🙂

Officially there's no multi-region Blu-Ray players because there is no Blu-ray equivalent to the DVD region 0, any Blu-Rays that claim to be multi-region have been hacked with a software patch, and as some buyers have found out, the patch can come off!

There are, of course, Blu-Ray disks that are coded for multiple regions.

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7 hours ago, Animedragon said:

You can't by multi-region DVD players in shops here either, mine came from Amazon. 🙂

Officially there's no multi-region Blu-Ray players because there is no Blu-ray equivalent to the DVD region 0, any Blu-Rays that claim to be multi-region have been hacked with a software patch, and as some buyers have found out, the patch can come off!

There are, of course, Blu-Ray disks that are coded for multiple regions.

I didn't know that either. Makes sense you got yours from Amazon though. I thought the UK was more PAL friendly with their stores or something. I haven't seen a blu-ray disc coded for multiple regions yet, but I'll certainly keep an eye out.

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2 hours ago, Android Rebel said:

I didn't know that either. Makes sense you got yours from Amazon though. I thought the UK was more PAL friendly with their stores or something. I haven't seen a blu-ray disc coded for multiple regions yet, but I'll certainly keep an eye out.

Yes, PAL is the TV standard for the UK, but the PAL/NTSC thing doesn't matter so much with DVDs as it did with VHS. Back in the days of VHS I bought a VHS player that could play NTSC tapes on a PAL TV. 🙂

Fun fact: In the UK you can only buy USA DVDs and Blu-Rays mail order because it's illegal for shops to sell DVDs or Blu-Rays that have not been passed by the BBFC and given an age rating.

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I think here in the Netherlands things are a bit different because we are a country with one of the best internet coverage. Between 100mbit and 1 gbit is normal here. So i personally do not know anyone who still has a dvd or bluray player (besides playstation). Streaming is the way to go and if that is not possible, we use a mediaplayer with usb stick

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I have used both illegal and legal sites both in the past and currently. 

I pay for multiple streaming services but if the show i want to watch isnt on any of them then i will watch it wherever i can and then support the show by buying the dvds when they get releashed in future.

 

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I never buy blurays to be honest. because 1 out of every 4 shows i start, i do not finish. I dont want to waste my time on mediocre animes. So it would be a waste of money to buy blurays. I waatch mostly on CR and disney+

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1 hour ago, Animedragon said:

Yes, PAL is the TV standard for the UK, but the PAL/NTSC thing doesn't matter so much with DVDs as it did with VHS. Back in the days of VHS I bought a VHS player that could play NTSC tapes on a PAL TV. 🙂

Fun fact: In the UK you can only buy USA DVDs and Blu-Rays mail order because it's illegal for shops to sell DVDs or Blu-Rays that have not been passed by the BBFC and given an age rating.

I never would've figured it'd be illegal. Geez. Is it illegal to own them?

27 minutes ago, Bulleje76 said:

I never buy blurays to be honest. because 1 out of every 4 shows i start, i do not finish. I dont want to waste my time on mediocre animes. So it would be a waste of money to buy blurays. I waatch mostly on CR and disney+

Can't go wrong there. I just wish we could stream, but that'd require faster internet with a bigger data limit. Or even unlimited data, which we don't have.

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3 hours ago, Bulleje76 said:

I never buy blurays to be honest. because 1 out of every 4 shows i start, i do not finish. I dont want to waste my time on mediocre animes. So it would be a waste of money to buy blurays. I waatch mostly on CR and disney+

I can go along with that. When I buy DVDs or Blu-Rays I make sure it's a series I really want to watch before I buy it.

CR is very useful in that respect.

Edited by Animedragon
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3 hours ago, Android Rebel said:

Fun fact: In the UK you can only buy USA DVDs and Blu-Rays mail order because it's illegal for shops to sell DVDs or Blu-Rays that have not been passed by the BBFC and given an age rating.

Nanny-government at its worst.  Why outlaw something simply because it doesn't have an age rating?  Just ship it with a disclaimer or something.  Adults with kids can always go looking for the rating and refuse to buy products that don't have it if they're that concerned for their kiddies.  If there's enough buyers and any market value in it the producers will succumb to market pressures and find a way to get their products rated.  If there's an extra cost then the buyers can pay for it.  That's the way a free market is supposed to work.  With the current rules even adults who shouldn't be affected by the rating don't have the option of buying it.  Clearly something else is at play here.

And for the record, the only time I fly the skull-and-crossbones is when I can't find a stream to try before I buy.  Also some content is not available in any form at any price except the pirate sites.  You can thank the copyright laws - promoted mainly by the US - that basically never expire and that encourage the copyright owners to hide the generally unprofitable long-tail stuff rather than allow it to enter the public domain.

So much for the Constitution's directive to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".  (Copyright was originally 14 years BTW, after which time the work was supposed to enter the public domain as compensation to the public for being allowed to use the government to enforce the copyright monopoly.)

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9 hours ago, efaardvark said:

Nanny-government at its worst.  Why outlaw something simply because it doesn't have an age rating?  Just ship it with a disclaimer or something.  Adults with kids can always go looking for the rating and refuse to buy products that don't have it if they're that concerned for their kiddies.  If there's enough buyers and any market value in it the producers will succumb to market pressures and find a way to get their products rated.  If there's an extra cost then the buyers can pay for it.  That's the way a free market is supposed to work.  With the current rules even adults who shouldn't be affected by the rating don't have the option of buying it.  Clearly something else is at play here.

I think the BBFC's original purpose was to rate cinema movies so that people had a guide as to the content and make their own minds up based on that if they wanted to watch a particular movie. Cinemas would usually bar those who were under-age for a movie's rating. When VHS came out and people could buy movies on VHS the cinema ratings were included on the packaging and it became the norm for any VHS release to have to get approval by the BBFC. The UK had, and still has, a powerful child protection lobby, which is not of itself a bad thing, and this I think is where the legal restrictions on who shops could sell to came from. (there's quite a few age-restricted products in the UK).

The BBFC rating thing has had some interesting unexpected consequences. When the Hunger Games films were made the producers had to be careful with the dialogue and visual effects so as to keep the film's rating from being so high that it prevented fans of the books, who were mostly under 15 from seeing it.  

And when anime started being released in the UK one distributor decided that their target audience was older teens who wouldn't be see dead buying anything with less than an '18' certificate because it would wreck their street cred.  So the the distro added lots of swearing and other bad language to the dub dialogue, that wasn't in the original, just to force the BBFC to give their release an '18' rating. Initially it worked, but it backfired when knowledgable anime fans called them out over the practise and the distro ended up with a rather bad reputation.

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while I don't download anime, I have used illegal sites before. I can't exactly pay for subscriptions on anime sites, so I often have to watch them on random sites, which sometimes may be illegal. But I don't usually use those sites unless I'm absolutely desperate to watch an anime.

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