The big news this week is that Indokid, Serene and Jasmine have decided to drop the Iryu 3 subbing project. The reason? Serene says Space, the person who runs yellowcinema disrespected indokid. You can see the whole incident here. From what I can gather, it basically started from yellowcinema uploading the series and subs to the website but not crediting the subbers.
The basis of space's argument is that there is no honour among thieves and that anything that is uploaded online is free to be stolen from others. If there is only one link for subs, what happens when the original link dies, yada yada yada. I'd imagine the 2000 people who've downloaded Iryu 3 would have the subs sitting on their HD if the links to the subs ever stopped working.
It comes back to the whole issue of other sites, especially streaming ones taking and using the work of fansub group without permission. An issue that has cause many a fansubber to stop subbing. My view on this is that it is not really a matter of ethics/morality. It is a question of utilitarianism. What is best for the jdorama addicts like you and me?
What would possess someone who understands Japanese perfectly to waste their time and sub for other people? If you can watch jdoramas and jmovies, why waste your limited free time so that other people can understand the show? Its all because they enjoy the shows and want other to enjoy them too. There's no money to be made.
So if a fansub group says that they would appreciate it people do not post their subs elsewhere, I think it is in the best interest of the community to at least respect their wishes for all the time and effort they have put into the subs, regardless of whether one feels that about sub ownership.
This is not anime where every show under the sun will get subbed by multiple subbing groups with fans arguing who has the best subs. Look through the subbing list at d-addicts and you can see many dropped jdoramas. There are a lot of nice shows out there that have never been fansubbed like Tadano Hitoshi. I think this incident could have been avoided if Space had done a proper apology but its too late now. At least the dialogue in Iryu 3 is pretty easy to understand except for the medical and operations stuff.
Yellowcinema is an awesome website with lots of content. Its great for getting old stuff which are no longer being seeded and is the successor to am-addiction which is now dormant. With the success of the website, the simple act of crediting the subbers on the main Iryu 3 page would have avoided any controversy.
9 comments:
I understand your comment, but I don't understand the crazy demands of the subbers on what can be done with the subs. It was hard work. Why not let people just enjoy the subs and watch the shows.
By the way, from now on my subs can only be watched if you hop on one foot and hum "poker face". Please respect my wishes!
I'v been following the iryu3 & YC and understand the viewpoint of the fansubber on why they decide to drop it.
it was very little to do with re-uploading or crediting. It started it, but it was not a strong enough reason to disband the team.
space handled it wrongly.
"As long as people fansub, I will pirate them [if you can call it that since they don't own the legal rights to the subtitle, but that's another story]." -space's wise words
" Stop putting fansubbers on a pedestal, that’s why they are being so demanding with their “rules”." - space
"Why should we care about fansubbers more?" - space
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I would quit too if I'm the fansubber. Go type the three sentences above in any D-A ongoing fansubs, and see the chaos that will follow.
Even space's apology is crap, he's saying that he is indeed correct, he's implying serene is insane, he is just doing a favor by helping serene realize that "fansubbing is not for her"
I know it's not the issue, but the iryu 3 subs re-uploaded by YC has the following credit:
File name: [YellowCinema] Iryu 3 06.srt
File description: Asian Movies and Drama: YELLOWCiNEMA.COM uploaded by: Azazel
it's very disrespectful to the real fansubber, I too would have thought YC is the one making the subs, they have no rights to put their name on the sub.
I've been involved with a few softsub projects that ended up on streaming sites with the credits stripped out. Some were burned to DVD and sold on eBay. It's a creepy feeling...like identity theft. I imagine musicians feel the same when their MP3s get posted. The only difference is that people know when they're listening to Metallica.
For me the anti-streaming stance isn't about egotism or being a control freak. It's about staying off the radar so the community can continue to exist.
it's the same logic if i were to copy-paste your jdorama reviews wholesale and bring it to another site, and credit it as my creation. you'll come to my site asking me to take it down, i reply anything you post on the internet is public domain, you can't make me stop.
in this case, the fansubbers went a bit too far, and dropped the sub, and strangely half of the yc comments are blaming the fansubber for their "childishness".. i would have done the same thing as what the fansubbers did
wow.. you wrote about this?
btw, I'm one of the iryu 3 fansubbers, I frequent your blog to read reviews for recommended dramas to watch, good job on your drama reviews.
as much as we like to continue subbing, from this incident, while most ppl are nice, there would be a few pricks who choose to be extremely rude and mean.. "it's your own fault you chose to spend your own free time on fansubbing, to hell with your demanding rules, I'll pirate your sub, and do anything with it, you don't own the legal rights to sub at first place.. bla bla". when we did drop the sub, 1 in 5 PMs will be ppl scolding us "insane", "immature", "childish", "rubbish attitude", "irresponsible"
the above are some real quotes of the many bashings we received btw.
what would you do if you were us? I guess most will respond like us: "f**k it, let's just close shop, we are not losing anything too"
fansubbers are humans and have feelings too, we certainly don't expect ppl to worship us or "put us on a pedestal", but a little "thank you" or appreciation makes us extremely happy, and is probably the only reward we will get from the time we spent.
speaking on the time spent, although we love the show and want to share it to other fans, sometimes we can't really justify the amount of free time we have to give up to complete an episode of the sub. fansubbing is an extremely unrewarding past-time unless you are training to be a translator, for iryu 3, it takes us 30+ hours, times 3 person, for an episode. mainly cos we are inexperienced in (timing, translations, wordings, etc). we would have easily spent close to 1000 hours total if we were to complete the entire 11 episodes.
till now, i still don't understand how other fansubbers can march on despite receiving ungrateful remarks and baseless criticisms.
there's no plan to resume subbing, there's too much pain and less enjoyment doing the sub now. it's such a pity cos the series really only starts to get interesting ep5 onwards, and we were just slightly past the midway mark when we drop the sub. I do hope other fansubbers will pick up this and continue where we left off.
Confessions of a subber
The reason I hate streaming sites is because only poor people use them, and I hate poor people. My subs should only be viewed on a 50 inch Sony HDTV with a WD media player, not some shitty little browser window in a library. I can't kick every poor person in the world in the nuts, so I do what I can, you know?
Wow...I can't believe some of the comments (including some in the original post) being made here; it's like the whole 'siantut' episode regarding subs of 'Nodame Cantabile' resurfacing, again.
I've read all the comments on d-addicts, and I'm totally on the fansubbers' side. In what way are the fansubbers' requests unreasonable or crazy? Since when is someone 'responsible' for subbing a JDorama, using their own spare time and w/o getting paid? They're sacrificing their own time and effort (which BTW can be tranlated into real monetary terms via opportunity costs and so forth) so that more people can enjoy JDoramas; the least you can do is to show a little appreciation.
People are entitled to the necessities in life, and being able to watch JDoramas certainly isn't one of them. What YC is doing is essentially taking credit for something they didn't do. How would you feel if someone where you work takes credit for the work you did, and as a result got all the accolades or even rewards/promotion, which essentially is == streaming sites getting ad revenue or people earning profits via selling DVDs w/ other people's subs? YC is an awesome site, huh...keep it up and soon all they have will be old JDoramas, that is if the legal authorities don't go after them first.
Wow, what a sad situation.
From my years of subbing, sites like this have always abused the relationships that fansubbers have with viewers. And 100% of the time, these people do not give a shit about the feelings of the fansubber and the adverse effects that may occur. To them, a downloader/visitor is just a "hit" on their site which brings in ad revenue. They're all in it for profit.
Usually I ignore them and continue to fansub thinking about the greater good. At times it did get to me, but it does gives me some solace to know that these sites don't last long and judging from all the licensed movies that I see on the site (very stupid move), they'll be in deep shit in no time.
My condolences to the Iryu fansubbing group.
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