Anime Is a Privilege And a Right
[I’m farming my drafts, here is one of the abortions that I felt made some sense.]
There’s a school of thought among some anime fans that anime is not a right, it’s a privilege. And I understand well enough where that thought come from. But I think it’s wrong to think that–at least, it’s no more correct from an economics or moral perspective than self-entitling warez kiddies ripping UR DVDs.
Of course, you have to bear with me. The saying of “anime is not a right, it’s a privilege” is just a saying. It doesn’t actually mean anime is a privilege. Because the word privilege is not so different from right–both are legal devices that allow a category of people’s freedom to do something they aren’t entitled to. For example, everyone in the US has the right to receive reasonable medical care but only the rich and insured are privileged to do so. On the flip side, since there’s no right to economic solvency, poor people go bankrupt when they get tagged with a bad disease without health insurance, where as the insured and the rich are privileged to afford their health care. To be precise, the on-the-face meaning of the saying implies that anime is a right–the privilege is the ability to watch it legally and foster a (potentially) positive, mutually beneficial relationship with the copyright owner. The statement “anime is…” refers to its existence and not just the partaking of anime as fans do.
Which is to say, all of that is not at all what these people mean. Or is it? I think I wouldn’t be writing this rant if people said “anime is a right and a privilege.” But the saying, I think, addresses the fundamental, “all man are created equal” concept that is so beholden in American culture. And anime is not any kind of that.
Or is it? What exactly is a right under those conditions? Our freedom of speech, assembly, privacy, the right to own firearms for traditional use…none of them are absolute rights. The right to watch anime? The right to buy anime? The right to demand it? The first two are rights of privacy, the last two are rights of expression… So to me, anime is definitely a right. What else do you really need?
As far as privilege goes, if it’s a right, it’s also a privilege as long as you can pull it off via influence, wealth, or the rule of law. I think anime falls under the “wealth” category. After all, it’s “lol anime” in the sense that it is a commercial expression for the most part–used to sell books, manga, toys, “a moe moe gay ol’ time,” or what have you. Nobody is entitled or privileged to that unless they pay.
So there you have it–anime is a right and a privilege; or neither. I just find it ironic one of the biggest supporter of the North American anime industry think otherwise. I guess it just never occur to some that there are parts in the world where speech is not free, and people really do have to fight for the right to party. That they can’t even buy half the anime that gets released in America because it’s “not a right” and it doesn’t pass mustard against moral censors or the local government’s opinion on what passes as permissible media. Heck, stuff like DRM and region coding suggest that anime isn’t even a privilege, and they have the legal right of way as well. So I guess it’s more accurate that anime isn’t even a privilege.
A right to access to culture? Assuming that you subscribe to the concept that art is an expression of culture…
It’s pretty sad how much of this “anime is not a right, it’s a privilege” talk comes down to thoughless chauvinism. No wonder 99% of those championing this idea are (North) Americans.
This “anti-entitlement” stance may apply well enough in their back yard, where you truly have to be very lazy, stingy, and/or entitlement-minded to not pay for at least some of your anime entertainment. But for some unfathomable reason they then extend the same thinking globally, never mind that for most of the world importing R1 DVD’s is the only real option, and that option is very costly (especially when adjusted to local living standards) and often a serious logistical hassle as well (or even impossible, as you say).
I fail to see the logic of people who themselves would not import Japanese R2 product because it “costs too much”, but expect people in other countries to import R1 which can relatively be a lot more expensive for them than R2 is for Americans. Unless you’re super rich or insanely fanatical about your hobby, there is a cost/hassle limit which, when passed, does not simply make you more selective, it makes you think that you’d be insane to spend that kind of money/effort PERIOD.
Which then lands us in the LaLa-land of “you’re hurting the industry if you watch anime without paying for it, because we can’t fathom that you honestly would not watch that anime if you had to pay for it, thus causing zero loss of revenue”…
So, no, let not the privileged have a right to dictate to the underprivileged that they’re immoral criminals for engaging in some imaginary “theft” that harms no one anywhere, but enriches the lives of those who partake in it, and by extension enriches the world on a much more fundamental level than the all-important wad of cash changing hands ever could.
@NegativeZero: yeah, basically.
“I fail to see the logic of people who themselves would not import Japanese R2 product because it “costs too much”, but expect people in other countries to import R1 which can relatively be a lot more expensive for them than R2 is for Americans. Unless you’re super rich or insanely fanatical about your hobby, there is a cost/hassle limit which, when passed, does not simply make you more selective, it makes you think that you’d be insane to spend that kind of money/effort PERIOD.”
I agree very much with this statement in the context of now-deceased Bandai Visual USA, lol. Some of its detractors really were two-faced hypocrites. But at the same time, I also see their point as a matter of consumer’s “right.” Which in the end is still a matter of who pays and who doesn’t, sadly.
I say fuck the companies, but the shit straight from Japan…. that’s what I do with manga anyway.
Associating privilege and right to anime just seems funny. I mean it’s just anime. Yeah, I know most countries have trouble getting stuff because they have stricter laws or whatever but who cares about them? I’m an American so I don’t have to worry about that shit.
Also, if I can find anime for free I’m going to download that shit, watch it and then delete it. It saves me money, and I would never watch these shows again anyway. MOST of them never even come to America fast enough while I’m interested in them.
If supporting the industry is a problem, I buy other stuff like figures, manga and magazines. Most of it Japanese raw stuff because I don’t need this in English garbage. If that makes me any less of a fan then okay.
Omo, your post makes the political science major in me very sad.
Realistically, you shouldn’t talk about “rights” and “privileges” as if they were two different points along a continuum of entitlement. The important part of the statement isn’t “is a privilege” (it’s not really, but that’s a term of art and not well-understood), but “is not a right” (in other words, laws which prevent you from it aren’t prima facie illegitimate.)
In America it would be a right, however, since public laws prevent you from it would be a restraint on speech and illegitimate. I never implied that privilege and right were on a continuum; if there was any implication, I suspect it stems from the statement in question in the first place.
It’s neither a right nor a privilege. It’s a product.
Health care, food and oxygen are also products; the rights to such things address accessibility (including cost) and treatment of them. Of course, on a surface read anime is not a right or a privilege, but that’s not what is meant by the people who says it is or isn’t a right.
Not to put it bluntly, but the government is not obligated to provide you with food, oxygen, or health care. You don’t have a “right” to any of these things. (You can argue that you have a right not to be prevented from taking in food, or oxygen, but that’s only in context of a general “right not to be killed by the government”. There’s no government obligation to provide you with any of those things, save what is written into law. To the extent that it IS written into law, that constitutes a privilege. But nobody’s contesting that is relevant here.)
What I’m saying is that the statement is not a political argument, it’s a metaphor of a political argument.
There are indeed people that hold to the position that intellectual property is not a valid concept in any context. But in a world where intellectual property has no protection in law, anime as a hobby -dies-. Not because of the relationship between viewers and the production companies, but because of the relationship between the production companies and the TV networks… If it’s valid and moral for Joe Impoverished to copy it as he likes, why would it be immoral for TV Tokyo to steal the whole thing and broadcast it without paying?
At the end of the day, you get down to “someone has to pay to get the bloody stuff made,” after all. Without the prospect of remuneration, the only anime you’ll see are the weird one-offs, the Makoto Shinkai iron-man projects and the Touhou fan type stuff. There’s a place for that, but it’s… quite unlikely that it would comprise anything like the present volume of shows. Nor are they as likely to be to your tastes - if everything that’s getting done is a personal project fueled by the creator’s own mad whim, how the heck do you feed back to that?
Once you’ve conceded that copyright has any moral standing, though, it’s no longer a question of rights, but your own personal morals. This can get complicated - very few people recognize a moral obligation to follow every jot and tittle of the law. But it’s a completely different kind of argument.
I find it extremely odd that the recent fiasco about Google and Rupert Murdoch bitching about Google making money over revenue ads while using THEIR news applies to this. (There’s also the disturbing fact that Rupert Murdoch should be shot for the good of humanity, but that’s another story)
I’d love to follow every jot and tittle of the law. I’m supposed to. But I can’t even fulfill the simplest command I’m told to do so. (Bloody hell, I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to love my enemies. I struggle with that, and no, don’t say religion is not relevant. I think it totally is.) How much easier, then, is trying to even follow human laws?
And rights? What rights? No one is entitled to any bloody fucking rights, period. NO ONE. We’re not supposed to have ANY BLOODY RIGHTS. Not to food, nor to water, or to any of the primary and secondary rights we’re assumed to have and are supposed to fight for. (Again, this is religious in nature.)
Forgive me for oversimplifying it, but there are two questions I’d like to ask.
Do you like the work enough to support it, whether it be in concerts or physical media, and do you care about the artist/studio/industry enough to pay for it? If your answer is no to either (or both), then IMO, you really should be looking for another hobby. Or go shoot yourself.
Avatar: no, the right is a negative limitation and not a positive limitation. People can help themselves to all of the above on their own. Same with anime, mind you. Of course nobody says people have to make anime in the first place, I agree, but it would be a jump in logic to say that it will stop existing if people/tv stations/etc pirate it; as is it’s already not making any money per se as is and is more or less an advertisement for something else. Even if TV Tokyo wants to take it whole and pirate it, I doubt they’ll even bother !
I agree that it is a metaphor for a political analogy, but I fail to see how that is any different than what I was saying in the post. It has the same flaws given that rights are, as you say, not an obligation.