Funimation's copyright takedowns

[Zeldafan2]

Wow....

It seems Funimation's pretty ticked off about sites that host their licensed products.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=158936

[battletech]

I see. Can't get to the sites themselves so make sure the sites don't show up in searches. I wonder if they will do the same for other search engines.

[goldenspines]

Oh yeah, I've seen these on Google and I think on some other search engines (but I usually just use Google, so idk) about removed links to certain things and such. A lot of companies have been doing this for a while, not just Funimation and not just anime companies.

Funimation does have a right to be upset, though, since illegal hosting of dubbed episodes makes Funimation lose money. (also, note that a lot of the stuff listed here is One Piece, which needs to be the biggest money maker for Funi or else they wasted a ton of money (500+ episodes) on something people won't buy if they can watch them all online, ESPECIALLY the dubs (for those of you who like dubs, the One Piece one is fantastic and you should buy it)).

Overall, no one should really be complaining since Funi is one of the biggest companies to keep the anime market alive in the US (otherwise, we'd have to pay Japanese BD prices and import fees, and only a few devoted fans have that kind of money. D: ). Plus, Funi is even awesome enough to stream a lot of their series, even before they're dubbed to their site; which is rather generous of them, I'd say (sure their streaming capabilities suck, but I give them a B for effort and extra credit for using Youtube and Hulu to their benefit).

Now if only Funi would pick up better stuff, life would be awesome. 8)

[MomentOfInertia]

I think that Funimation already has most of this stuff up on their site free anyway.

Frankly I have no problem with the legitimate source for a product acting to become the top search result for that product.

Also I noticed that the forum posted is dated December 2011, so this is kind of old news.

[blkmage]

DMCA takedowns have been routine business all over the internet for almost fifteen years now

[Zeldafan2]

True, but Funimation has been VERY outspoken about it. True, I did give a rather outdated link, but there are more recent posts (say, August 2012) where they have also been doing this kinda thing.

They have a ton of titles in their library (as has already been said), but they don't license NEARLY as many titles as say, Sentai Filmworks has as of late. Unless I'm mistake, I'm pretty sure they are in rather fierce competition (Sentai Filmworks has been very leiniant about copyright, however, not filing a single take down notice to the DMCA, although they have taken videos off of Youtube on occasion when informed.)

[blkmage]

The only correlation between the number of takedowns and a corporation is the amount of money they want to spend on their legal department.

DMCA takedowns don't require that much effort since the onus is on whoever's hosting to prove that they're not infringing any copyright. But when you're launching hundreds of takedowns, then that's the sort of thing that you'd need a team of lawyers to take care of. Funimation has decided that it's apparently worth it to play the whack-a-mole game once in a while, since issuing DMCA takedowns on sites whose sole purpose is to host pirated content is pointless. I bet Sentai has lawyers too, but they're likely busy figuring out ways to shuffle assets and evade bankruptcy or something.

Basically DMCA takedowns are meaningless, both in terms of significance and practicality.

[randomuser2349]

What else do you expect? They're trying to make money.

[Scatcatpdx]

Illegal download has been a very sore spot for me especially in Anime. companies have been devastated and went bankrupt of loss revenue by so called fans' entitlement mentality trumps over ensuring distribution of Anime in the US and creation of new titles. Then there the moral aspect like thou shalt not steal.
finally many of the site are trojan horse site form malware. Go on Funimation and pox on the rest

[Nate]

Illegal download has been a very sore spot for me especially in Anime. companies have been devastated and went bankrupt of loss revenue by so called fans' entitlement mentality trumps over ensuring distribution of Anime in the US and creation of new titles. Then there the moral aspect like thou shalt not steal.

Okay, so here's a question. For whatever reason, you move to South Korea. You want to watch some anime, but whoops! US released products don't play in Korean DVD players due to different region coding! You try to go on Funimation's website, but you get a message that says "We're sorry, you're not in the United States, so you don't get to watch any anime."

If I were in such a position, I'd probably try and find some downloads, as purchasing anime legally to view outside of the US can often be a pain. Now, you can say that just because you want to watch something doesn't give you the right to resort to illegal downloads, and it's true, it doesn't. However, to strawman anyone who downloads anime as having an entitlement mentality is pretty rude.

[skreyola]

companies have been devastated and went bankrupt of loss revenue by so called fans' entitlement mentality

Citation needed.