@theackwardstation:
People can take as much time as they want. I was just pulling you back to the discussion.
For all that you have said, you are anti-piracy. The only circunstance in which you accept piracy is just an exception when the product is basically legally unavailable by any practical means, which would be the ultimate exception. Although this situation would still be morally questionable (enriching someone that doesn't hold the rights to the product), it is a redeeming excuse for the consumer to be doing it as if he had no other valid option.
Just to be clear, there is nothing wrong in being anti-piracy. Piracy is a violation of the somewhat fair and logical legal system that we live in, which incentivizes artistic production by giving economic and moral rights to creators for them to profit with their work. In other words, piracy is theft and violation of (intellectual) property, therefore a bad thing.
That said, I am favorable to piracy at the current moment. That means that I'm not offended by the guy leaking Avengers before the international release date. That means that I am not validating my arguments with the word "LEGAL" in capslock. I have my reasons, but to avoid any misunderstanding, it's not that I am against property or legality (because I am ideologically favorable to property and legality), but in this case I don't follow the same moral as you that piracy is only legitimate when all legal means in a country are obtuse in a way or another.
It's important that I made clear about this distinction between my stance and yours in principles, because you should understand my previous arguments in context with the overall picture of how I understand things. And why is that? Why be favorable to piracy?
Because the consequences of piracy in the last decades were much more complex and multifaceted than just its obvious negative side, and that deserves at least some consideration. You see, it was obvious to anyone that piracy was hurtful to the industry inside the logic of the intellectual property legal system (the negative, illegal side), and nobody would intuitively say that there was anything to gain from this theft. The prognose of the future was bleak if pirate was not stopped, but what was not so obvious is that, years laters, the threat of piracy would actually have lead us to a better environment than ever before, with business models that are better to the consumers (Netflix, Spotify, Crunchyroll, Patreon, crowdfunding etc) and with the development of "fringe markets" reaching consumers where there was none before because of piracy.
If we had to make this a simple subject, then I'd be fully against piracy, because I condemn the negative side of piracy, since it is a violation of rights that has actually done damage to authors and the industry. However, the effects of piracy were never simple, and it has existed in a balance between good and bad payoffs for society, and where consumers and business don't act so predictably. In some industries, like the fashion industry, there is even an academic term called "the piracy paradox". Amidst this whole mess, my only certainty is that piracy is slowly bringing improvements to the overall design of the market.
This is not 2005 anymore, lol, but for the moment I still accept piracy as external force of the market… with its good and its bad.
--- Update From New Post Merge ---
Oh, you can take your time. I take mine too (I was travelling). It's just that sometimes people just don't answer despite your effort at writing something for them.
Ah, I may have been snarkier than was necessary about the reply time bit. Sorry if that caused any offense.
As for viewpoints towards piracy, I would say my stance favours two things: the circumstances of the consumer and support of the author. Neither of these factors inherently supersedes the other, they have to be balanced on case by case basis. There are plenty of things that are legal that shouldn't be, and more than enough that aren't legal that should be in all different sets of laws around the world. So simply say my stance is the LEGAL one therefore it is right would be irresponsible. However, equally, a non-critical approach to piracy is just as irresponsible, especially on the basis of it being helpful at one point in the past. If it still helps, by all means, still do it. Oh, and remember that this is a One Piece forum, and I'm giving my opinions relative to that. A lot of streaming services, particularly outside of America, are resting on their laurels and string to bring back old business practices like expensive exclusive content, the kinds of things that inspired piracy and forced the distribution model to change in the past. When I pirate Game of Thrones later this year that choice is equally a matter of my finances a protest to the monopolistic way the licence is handled in Australia. On a GoT forum we might be having an extremely different conversation. Even in a discussion on other anime or manga, issues of delays and exclusivity would change my apparent stance significantly.
And there, you see, I agree about the potential benefits of piracy to industries, but the thing with us, here, right now, is that we suddenly have a really solid system, most of the flaws of which (region-locking outside the English-speaking world and releasing after the scans) are beyond the control of the publisher. For that reason, and another I'll outline below, I'm coming out batting hard for the system to be supported.
@theackwardstation:
Obviously, you know that I don't have the sources for how well this new WSJ thing is doing. I was being a little audacious, but arguing under the assumption that this "product" will follow the patterns of other markets and the current consumer behaviour. For example, people can illegally download any film in the Netflix catalogue for free, but they pay for Netflix. People can illegally download any song in Spotify, but they pay for Spotify. People are patreons on Patreon, people donate for Twitch streamers. People pay. And to back this up, there are researches that show that consumers are willing to consume less pirated content and also that piracy consumption happens the most in countries where content availability is inferior (ex: https://irdeto.com/news/nearly-half-of-consumers-around-the-globe-are-willing-to-stop-or-watch-less-pirated-video-content/).
All of this shows people's interest in supporting the industry when they find that it affordable.
WSJ online is for free now. Is there any reasonable doubt that "many/most" will use the services?
Btw, I am from a country that is not supported by the online Jump site, and I and many other people I know are using VPN to read the official release too just in case.
And on this point I want to talk a little about attitudes I've seen in the anime and manga community. You're absolutely right that people were willing to legally support TV, movies and music after distribution became convenient and affordable, but those medias weren't initially popularised through piracy the way anime and manga were. For the longest time, piracy wasn't just the most convenient way to access anime and manga, it was the only way, and that's lead to a different community attitude. No other fan set I've been part of has ever shown so much contempt for official releases. And I understand where it's come from. Official releases used to be low-quality, inaccurate, and hard to find. Mistrust of them came about for a reason, but it's remained long after the issues disappeared. One Piece has it especially bad with the official manga release retaining some names from the 4Kids dub. Netflix and Spotify didn't have to overcome attitudes like those in their communities, and that's why I do think there's "reasonable doubt" over the service's viability. Until we get more data to work with, I think it's best to keep pushing services like these to the forefront because a large subset of the community still obviously carries the harmful belief that official releases are inherently inferior or untrustworthy.
Though, on that note, I applaud you using a VPN to access the site. A lot of the detractors I've seen claim they won't use the service until it's available worldwide, but the solution is to boycott the overseas rights holders that don't want to fight the English release with their own, not Viz. You're doing the right thing, and hell, even if you weren't, the lack of decent official access in your country makes a fair justification for piracy in my eyes.
@theackwardstation:
Oh, I don't see the big scalators as good boys full of good intentions. I just think they are an important limb of the current environment, that is, the pirates.
Maybe it is a rotten limb that needs to be cut off, but you can see in my answer to Md-Martin that I still feel like piracy is an external force that shapes the market in a healthier way just as it does some damage too.
Maybe we should look at big scanlators with contempt anyway just because they are thieves… but, honestly, I'm just unable to have contradictory feelings like that while I'm also glad they exist.
Piracy is indeed less necessary for One Piece than other small series, but isn't piracy still playing a role here? You see, right now there is this new online WSJ for free, but that was not true 30 days ago. I may be wrong with my speculation, but this great product (and its price) looks like a reaction of Shueisha to piracy and its everlasting threat.
Besides that, 30 days ago, if I had never read One Piece before, I'd probably start reading it through an illegal scan instead of purchasing the first volume of the series on Amazon. If I liked the manga, only then I'd probably buy the official product and merchandising. However, if I hadn't had the option of piracy at the start, maybe I wouldn't have given the series a chance at all.
(I'm not sure how I'd do today)
Anyway, I want WSJ to succeed with their new business model and I hope that they get readers back from the hands of scanlators. But all of this is very recent too, so I don't want JB or Mangastream to disappear yet.
I don't mean to make assumptions about how you feel about scanlators and the like. I just saw a couple of odd posts around the time the thing was announced saying "what about scanlators" as if they were somehow the victims. On the other hand, most of what you're saying here comes down to "we got where we are because piracy was a threat to the bottom line," which I fully and openly acknowledge, but then, why not try the things we got through that pressure on the industry. What else are we trying to change, at least in the English speaking world?
I'd like to see scanlators evolve to distributing official material outside the places it can legally be rather than competing with their own translations, the same way a lot of fansub sites have come to do. (That, or they should focus on the colour version, or full, edited releases of databooks and the like, or even just focus on series without such accessible official releases.) The Viz/Mangastream/Jaiminis comparisons we used to get in these threads show clearly that Viz is the most accurate now, and having contradictory bootlegs floating around becomes unnecessarily confusing.
@theackwardstation:
It's not a new idea that the market is flawed. There are flaws of distribution and flaws of information. Sometimes the industry stops evolving and gets stagnant instead of innovating, especially when big companies at the top of the market becomes predatory and lazy (too powerful). Sometimes the industry is just greedy and practices abusive prices. There are all kinds of flaws, and many of them are not properly tackled by governamental regulation.
The irony of piracy is that piracy helped dealing with some of these flaws. Piracy reached places where some companies were not reaching and developed new markets. Piracy gives consumers more information about all kinds of stuff for them to make optimal decisions. Piracy makes full use of power of the internet and so it forced the industry to remodel their business according to this reality. Piracy has lead to innovation. Piracy forces the industry to practice better prices.
That's how I think piracy balances out the current system.
Another way to look at things is that the threat of piracy forces the industry to give the best service possible at the best price. It's a perverted market in which the industry is competing against the pirates for (almost) the same consumers, and each get their share according to their performance, even though one of the two doesn't have the right to be doing so.
Right now, Shueisha has made their move with a great service at an accessible price, also appealing to the appeal of consuming the "official product", so hopefully Shueisha will have good results… that is, winning against the pirates.
I just think they should be around, just in case.
I want to acknowledge there that a lot of what both of us are saying is speculative, as the new service is a huge change that has only just come about. But with that in mind, I think the first paragraph of this section works for the point I'm trying to make. Piracy drives change in a stagnant industry, yes, absolutely, and we have just had that change. We won it, maybe we should enjoy that instead of continuing to steal. When the new status quo becomes an issue, then we can look at what protests need to happen and what change we can force.
But again, this is a super new thing. We haven't even tried it with a normal release schedule yet. It could turn out to not work for one reason or another (login or stability issues, or scans start coming earlier again) or it could make scans redundant without any extra effort from opinionated types like myself. And things like region locking will change how much of a success or failure it is in the eyes of different people. You, having to use a VPN, are having a very different user experience to myself, who can just go to the site, I get that. I think the future looks bright for the official release, but we'll just have to wait and see.