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.
Getting to the Bones of Google Reader
In celebration of, oh I don’t know, Otou-san’s balls or Google’s new Sidewiki launch (which is unfortunate that it works only w/ Google Toolbar thus far), here above is the next leg of the joke.
Tech Thoughts, Part 2
This is a continuation post on that fanart citation circlejerk, but a tangent that began here (scroll down).
While it’s easy to go into the legal or moral/ethical aspect of this discussion, there is a technical one as well. Let me cite a few things to get the ball rolling.
First, there is a matter of context. JP said this in a few places:
Basically, if we think of fanart as a thing the artist conjures out of the Nether-Realms and into existence into this World, then, like a familiar, the art is bound to its creator. Now I say this in a simple sense of the analogy, and not the silly “free culture” sense. Simply, creators deserve some rights, may it be natural or artificial. The amount of rights afforded is a function of law and social norms. When we take Saito away from Louise, and free him from his servitude and feelings of affection (seriously he deserves way better) do we not have now a man who is free and moves on with life? And isn’t that a good thing? But what did Louise get from all her trouble? Is Louise big enough of a girl to move on? (Certainly not.)
I already said we should skip the law in this discussion, so there’s that moral/ethical aspect. And it is via that we get to the technical. Here is how we can sever Saito from Louise, the creator and her creation. Danbooru happens to be a site that is of interest to me personally and it serves as a good example.
For starters, a lot of the stuff on Danbooru is cited! You can find a link (source) which takes you to one of these commonly found destinations: pixiv, an artist home page gallery, or another image board. In recent years, a sizable number of the images are even tagged with the artists’ names. I don’t know what % is the stuff cited or what, but given its wealth of useful tags and ultimately its English-language interface it becomes a pretty good source for fanart in terms of a simple storehouse. It’s pretty much a no-brainer many people upload to Danbooru just stuff straight from pixiv. It serves as a reasonable gateway even just in that regard.
Second, which is a really obvious no-brainer, is that pixiv is all Japanese. Perhaps less of a problem than Nicovideo…I mean I had no problem registering an account on pixiv but I imagine it can be difficult. Short of it is, someone whining about using pixiv should actually write an English-language guide for it. Because, uh, it actually helps your cause?
Oh wait a Danbooru thread on just that. Who would’ve thunk.
Third, let’s go back to context. Now this is separate from control. If you have Saito standing next to Louise, you know he’s with her. Now if you have the two of them standing across two different dimensions, you would not have a clue he’s with her if you just saw Saito walking down the street. This doesn’t have anything per se to do with Louise cracking down on Saito with a cat-o-nine-tails but everything to do with removing the “purpose” of the artwork one degree away from its original intention. Now if you’re clever you’d know this is not always the case, as it isn’t. If I read a few chapters of Bakuman in Weekly Shounen Jump versus a few chapters on Onemanga, I’m still getting the full context, more or less. But if someone is “replying” to someone else on lol pixiv via artwork, much like video replies on youtube, then who would know?
And how much more disturbing if we lift poor Mayoi-chan from her novels and insert her in some tragic, yet adult situation? Slashing and doing bad porn on fictional characters are probably some of the worst ways you can do to sever context of creation from creator.
Fact remains far most fanart stand alone beyond the background knowledge necessary to invoke the basic character and franchise concepts. A picture of Azaka Kokutou looking like a prim badass is per se awesome after all. But instead of looking at pixiv confused, a site like Danbooru shows you a simple tag, which points you to the artist. What’s more, it serves to archive it even when the work gets subsequently removed from pixiv…
But my problem is just how Danbooru reduces the artist attribute to the same as one would consider image tags like “long hair” or “dress” or “Christmas.” The contextual link is there for the curious, but the work is now present alone and Louise has to get by with her own skills, with no help from her friends. Well, nothing right or wrong, good or bad about that I think, but it feels a little too lonely, vulnerable.
At any rate, that is the status quo. Is there a way that we can ask for better treatment, on a technical, organizational level, that brings more respect to creators as creators but not as individuals? (Tangent here, but someone whining about artwork has no real artist cred until he is talking his own works, right? This oh-so sacred context exists only between a creator and his or her works.) Solving social problems on the intarwebs through better intarwebs-based, social networking platforms sounds like a no-brainer to me. Here is one valiant attempt–an old-fashion image search engine that might be new to you. I previously proposed (scroll down to my 2nd and 3rd comment) a new organizational structure for Danbooru in which artists may get a different kind of tag, or pool, or something, which elevates it beyond mere intrinsic descriptors of a piece of artwork. It’s just another idea. But whatever works–you youngins know better than I do.
Fanart Use Best Practices
Yay a law-related topic…not. Point by point drill-down-ish. Also, citing my comments in your blog is kind of… :# But anyways–read Digitalboy’s rant for some background first, if this is not familiar to you.
Second, I’m going to post a picture by gofu and not cite him…oh wait. (Look at that lol sig. Anyways, have some loli.jpg.) Crap, that’s not exactly citing him but yet it is citing him! I’m in a bind desu ne.
Third, it’s not about law. Law is like, power. It’s like a stick you hit people over the head with. It’s like puffed-up ego. Just because the law may be on your side doesn’t make you less of a jerk, you know what I’m saying? And if you think about it, resorting to legal tactics is something bullies, loan sharks, and ambulance chasers do. Good people live by grace of others and the good will they first deposited in their friends’ lives. Of course, it is not always possible to get by without resorting to your legal rights, but it should be a last resort. We have civil, personal lawsuits because we outlawed duels, so you might consider legal threats the same way as throwing down a pistol match.
It’s not so much about feelings, but it is about feelings. I’m not going to try to explain to you how people feel about their original work that gets copied for other people’s ends. I mean, I run this blog on a CC BY-SA 3.0 license, so I am not in any place to say “oh attribution is w/e.” I would like to see what kind of crazy-man out there would copy my content, even when I don’t really give a damn about scrapers or whatever. It’s like one of those silly shareware licenses where you send a novelty item like beerware or postcardware to fulfill your terms. As you may imagine, you can do some pretty neat things by passing out software, or blog links, or fanart. Sadly when it comes to the Japanese, they’re kind of stuck in their rigid framework and don’t think outside the box much when it comes to “rights” and “feelings.” If you feel butt-hurt because you choose to sit on hard rocks, your feelings are not going to matter very much?
I bring up the OFP, only because I still think it’s dumb even after all these years. It’s a good example of feeling butt-hurt when you don’t have to. I think there may be a consensus that people would credit artists more if they were readily identifiable, that it’s not a hassle. It’s also something a fortified and divided internet by language and culture invariably make more difficult. Drop that us-versus-them mentality. What the OFP people need to do is educate “them” dirty gaijins if they are actually serious about their butt-hurting, and not just tell us “our butts hurt and this is how you hurt our butts.” That’s what all the good NGOs do, right?
Anime blogging, ultimately, is not serious business. This blog discusses some serious things at times, but it is not serious business. I reiterate this because that’s my bottom line about this debate here and here. It’s easy to misunderstand Hinano, but it’s cute and fun that way. And it’s probably not worth our time to try to understand what Wah has to say about this either. And if you do understand the both of them, well more power to you. If not, no big deal. Still, remember it’s not serious business. A lot of anime blogs, or so-called such things, are just image dumps. Imagine a 30-image dump that is mostly fanart and mixed in there are caps and vectors and artbook scans, because the said blogger can’t write to save his or her life. Or you have people like good o’ Super Rats who … well, let’s just say that he should stick to pictures, lol, because it makes me cringe less and the text does the job more than enough as is. Citing the fanart becomes a service, a courtesy.
But it’s a good opportunity to examine the underlying mechanism that explains why CrunchyRoll earns the ire of many, and this is exactly why sites like Sankaku Complex seem so horrible. I would take a step back from harassing image boards in general, because sites like Danbooru are more a service to the community than a way to make money? This depends on the specifics, but some people are paying out of pocket and spending personal time to make the world a better place. I respect the feeling of those who are trying to help, I guess.
With all that said, people do and should express their concerns about inappropriate use of their intellectual property. I think it’s perfectly OK to email someone to ask them to take down a picture or accredit something. Make delicious link love, and make some friends while at it. Just don’t go all paranoid or like a butt-hole when it happens. Yea, you can’t stop everyone, or catch everyone, but what’s the harm? Woo decontextualized images of animu porn wooo? Hurt feelings, man. Put some ice on it.
Being the free-cultured copyleft-leaning guy that I am, however, I think accreditation adds to the possibility of transformative work through free propagation of IP, where as withholding said propagation is never good. There’s a point on the balance where one burdens too much on the other. Better than that decontextualized argument, it’s better to just say that I occasionally get requests to post my OP pic in full, and it’s in those instances where an artist’s pixiv or home page can be handy, to cross-pollinate where one has not sow and introduce someone’s work to someone else, rather than simply have a pretty image on the internet. A win-win situation for everybody methinks, and that’s why it is important to accredit. In fact, I can say that for Danbooru, it’s rather well-cited for an image board of that size. Furthermore, undeniably some most active visitors on sites like those are fans of artists, and accreditation is natural. It’s just like Wah stalking Akiyuki Shinbo. Talk about a trackback! So why piss on those guys? They’re good folks. As good as wanking lolicons can be, at any rate.
So, feel free to ask “source” for my images, because sometimes I do have them and for some reason I neglect to post where they are from.
More Convention Crap, 2009
Not much sleep, jet lag, fatigue, work to do…
But was it worth it? Probably. (What’s scary is that it isn’t everything, even.)
What I need you to do:
Got any questions for MELL or Yamakan? Let me know! I’ve been looking around but time isn’t on my side. Currently trying to push out that Yoko Kanno concert writeup before my memory rot away by Otakon… And yeah, I have been thinking of a way to ask about the whole Kyoani fallout, but that’s just bad taste, you know?
Do stop by and say hello if you want to grab me at the convention or something. I have my schedule set up and sans anything I don’t know about (and…there will be things I don’t know about happening that I have to go to) I will be most available on Saturday evening. Schedules are so worthless at this point in time anyways.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll write something for the Nana Mizuki show too. It was quite the experience.
I do have a new idea brewing. I’ll probably push it out sometime later this year if I get all the help I need…
