Question Has there been anyone that got sued for not asking for the rights to translating the novel ?

Ok we agree that in the early era yes, it was promoting because those fan subbers cared enough to take down content when it was licensed.
About licensing fees, I guess I made a mistake including Netflix.
I am referring to when the streaming service also owns the original content so no licensing fees. The studios earn based on what the content earns. Netlfix and Amazon might license popular shows but what about the avant garde/niche shows that no one pays millions to license? That is why I mentioned Darker Than Black, we do not see anime like that nowadays
Just like Yen Press, Crunchyroll is owned by Japanese companies now.So I doubt there is really much to licensing fees
TV Studios still make money but anime studios do not
Reminds me of the Korean drama industries, actors get paid but secondary staff do not

 

The problem of studio funding is more a japanese inner market problem than an international one, especially with the way they envisionned the world wide global market.

A long time ago, it was really hard to find animes, mangas and everything else outside of Asia and any media that had the luck to get an official international license was only distributed in very small amounts, be it physical mangas or video tapes, and the licensing cost were certainly very small (stuff like Akira or Eva Video tapes for exemple were first sold in really small numbers and in only a very limited amount of stores).
Then the big anime wave came, with a lot of stuff being licensed, diffused on TV or even in theaters, and a lot of them were sold for ridiculously low licensing fees because a huge number of japanese publishers always downplayed the international market, focusing only on their internal market, seeing selling something outside of Japan a way to get a little more from a license. They took an incredibly long time to understand how big the world market was compared to Japan inner market. And a lot of japanese publisher still don't understand it, as quite a lot still refuse to license stuff nowaday because they can't be bothered with it (my sister worked for CR France since the establishement of the french branch so I heard quite a lot about the stupid stuff that japanese studio and publisher managers said when her team leader was trying to get license for french distributions). Only a few big publishers are slowly starting to extract their head from their navel, and this is quite a slow and clumsy process as most of them still think that the oversea market will work just the same as the japanese market.

So the japanese studios worked for a long time getting money only from their inner market, and everything they get now is a bonus.
The quality issues we see nowaday in anime is just because of the over industrialisation of japanese media production.
They don't take risks and try to limit the cost to a minimum, churning seasons after seasons an endless pile of pre-formatted contents based on concepts and templates that had a big succes before, leaving most of the actual work to chinese or korean sub contractors which does low quality work for a dirt cheap rate.
There is almost no more craftsmen in the japanese anime industry nowaday (except some big name seniors that most studios will never be able to afford thanks to the huge reductions of production budgets), as the focus is now on quantity instead of quality (for exemple now the standard length for most animes is one cour (11 to 13 episodes) and 2 cour animes (23 to 25 episodes) became quite sparse).

For manga the issue is on the editorial attitude of pushing authors to make their works closer to something that previously worked instead of fine tunning what suit the author technique and narritive style the most. The view of endings as a full fledged part of the complete work and a way to make the readers eagers for the author next work had disappeared since quite a long time too as endings are seen as something that need to be pushed away as long as the chapters do well in the weekly enquetes, and need to be sloppily be taken care of when the work stop being profitable.
So author have to stretch their initial vision of the work so thin that they lose the fine balance that make it work well, churning filler content and uninspired arcs one after the other until they can finally put it to rest with a rushed sloppy ending, botched up in a few chapters and certainly giving quite a bad after taste to the readers who then come here on NUF to say that they are making shitty stuff nowadays...

 

Studio sticking to old practices is a, problem. I am using it as a loose example to explain why I don't see piracy as the biggest issue to novels but subscriptions.
Take Qidian for instance, they own the original content, they are not licensing guaranteed popular content. Many stories might even be unpopular.
Expecting a $5 monthly abortion subscription fee to cover all costs is not feasible.
Movie industry has had to rely on few blockbusters to break even among their plethora of flops.
That's why we have few big studios. Barrier of entry is too high.
Platforms like munpia eliminate cost of production by only paying creators based on their sales. No licensing costs. If munpia was a subscription based service, it would fail.
The same way no author worth their salt uses Kindle Unlimited

 

No, it is much easier to just simply ask the unauthorized translator to take down the translation. Unless some publisher want to gain some publicity.

As a fan translator I really wish that Qi could DMCA my blog as soon as possible. Because it means that the official translation will be out soon. Then I'll be reading novel and discussing thr story with other readers instead of translating.

 

It's called "freelancing." Many of the most talented animators don't have to and don't want to work for any single company. It has nothing to do with a studio not having the money to hire them permanently, it's just the way the animation industry works in Japan. Besides, why have someone on your payroll who's really great at drawing, for example, explosions, or robots, when not every show you make is going to have those things? A good animator's talent is wasted on assembly-line walk cycles and both they and the studios know it.

 

That is a pretty ignorant statement.
I recommend that you educate yourself. No one wants to be freelancer over a good company job with benefits.

 

Well, CR is owned by warner brothers now, they bought all the shares back from Japanese companies this year. You're right tho, it's mostly TV studios that make the money, not the production staff. Tbh, it's not even an anime industry issue, or even an entertainment thing, this is a huge problem in every field. For example, in the old insurance company I worked at, there were 10 workers including me who earned the company millions of dollars a year, and at least 70% of that went straight to the boss.....Who did nothing. I saw the dude only on paycheck days.

 

Well I say let the little guys disrupt the industry.
I saw a video on living on minimum wage in America. The lady wants McDonald's to pay her better. I think that is stupid.
People should take their future into their own hands
I will start my own original novel platform. Otome games and Dating Sim games to follow. It is transmedia or no party
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/fe...ordable-housing-for-animators-matters/.119155

 

I think the only person who ever gone to court for something like this is Sumguy. One of the early translators during the time of Re: Translation. I'm not really sure how the details went because at that time, I was somewhat of a newcomer and I didn't want to rile people up by asking too much.

But the most other people got so far are DMCAs and before that, lawyer's letter of demands.

 

Putting aside what people want or don’t want, the unfortunate reality is that aside from the few top directors etc pretty much all the animators tend to be freelance and/or work on a commission basis that calculates pay per sheet. Hence, even those that work at a specific studio may accept work from other studios depending on their network of aquaintances/ friends.

This is also another reason why quality has dropped in general; people are unable to support themselves in the industry. Meanwhile the number of titles keeps increasing per year even as the number of animators drops, and there are less experienced animators as the older ones die off...

I’ve heard from someone in the industry that Netflix doing original anime is both a boon and a curse right now, because they pay very well, but contract prevents those animators from taking on extra work they may have in the past, so even fewer available animators...

Anyway kinda ended up rambling but sometimes it really saddens me to see the crap series the anime industry is killing itself to produce... wish they would self-edit a bit, cut down their production by half and just focus on those titles, but if wishes were horses...

 

People don't want to pay for content. They behave like Free is some religion.
I saw an article about seafood industry: a company promised to reduce prices every year for their goods. Turns out people are locked in cages and forced to live on the boats without pay as slaves.
That's how prices stay low.
I am not a fan of Netflx or subscription system as a whole.
I rather pay per episode or buy a DVD. It is more sustainable

 

Actually I'm don't understand why the author doesn't want people to translate their work to English.How does it really affect them?

 

Authors need publishers(Amazon is not a publisher). Publishers like Kadokawa or Yen Press decide that.
It is the same with subtitles for anime.
If there are already easy to access fan subs. Netflix for instance might refuse to license the anime in English speaking regions.
Of course, is very unlikely that it will get licensed but it is a good option to have. It is like an added perk

 

But if there are no English subs, english speakers may not be watching it. Similarly, if there are no english translations, english readers would not be exposed to the author's work as they can't read their native language and most definitely would not be browsing the native language novel website.

Plus it's not guaranteed that publishers like Kadokawa or Yen Press would agreed to market their work to English speaking regions. The chances of the publishers doing that is extremely slim since English speaking regions may not really like their work even though theirs are extremely popular in their native country. So I think that there shouldn't have much negative impact to the author when their work gets translated by fans.

 

Friend, you are grossly uninformed. Please stop saying things that have zero basis in reality
Yen Press is an English publisher owned by the Japanese publisher, Kadokawa
So you are wrong.
I recommend that you educate yourself.
And stop letting unsubstantiated opinions cause you to ignore facts.

You should also learn how the publishing industry actually works. It has one of the lowest profit margins of any business.
It is understandable that publishers can be difficult

I always said this to the ridiculous claim that unlicensed translations help to market a product:

A 3 minute video from a 1 hour movie is marketing
Giving away the entire 1 hour movie is not marketing. It is daylight robbery

 

Okay, i know I'm ignorant of the publisher name and owner of Yen Press, Kadokawa, you have enlighten me on that. But I still don't see what's the negative impact to author when their work gets translated by fans.

Based on what you say, assuming the fan translator just did a teaser of the author's work and then doesn't not translate any more using your idea to market the author's work. because

So, intrigued english readers can only go to the author webnovel site for more only to find the rest of the story being written in the author's native language which is gibberish to English readers. In the end, the traffic from english speaking region would be just die away since the english reader saw it meaningless to keep up browsing when they can't even read any of the content in it. So I still don't see why fans translating their work would be harmful to the author.

 

I was looking for an AMA with an English distributor but could not find it.
I thought I explained it well. I guess I failed
I will make it simple

Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Why should people pay for novels they have already read for free online?

I found it lol
https://ask.fm/ANNZac/answers/124947950281

 

Well, I feel fans translations of the author's work aren't really bringing that much negative impact to author as perceived, so I don't understand why the author would be so mindful of fans translating their work to English. Assuming that there are no official English works published by publishers (the only negative impact I know so far). Besides, since they both cater to different region (english speaking regions and author native country) so there should not have any conflict of interest either.

As for buying cow when milk is free thing, honestly why would people want to buy the cow (raw version) when they can't/don't even know how to milk it aka understanding the author's native language. It is kinda like asking/convincing people to buy themselves a pair of shoes with size that won't fit the buyer (raw version) just to show support to the shoemaker/designer (author). Some may be willing to spend the money but the majority would just go 'no thank you' and then leave the place.

 

Now you are just playing mental gymnastics.
I never asked fans to buy the raw version.
What you feel is irrelevant. Publishers run the business and they consider it a negative impact. Authors have to follow their wishes if they wish to get their works published.
Why not actually talk to publishers instead of simply stating your feelings.
Your feelings do not define facts.
Sam Panisky of J-Novel Club is easily reachable.

 

So, actually it's the author's publisher that against fan translating and not the author themselves?!! I knew it!! Publishers are the evil ones!! So, if the authors' work are not being published into books, then there shouldn't be a negative for author to have fans translations, right?

BTW Who is Sam Panisky of J-Novel Club?