Anime Meta-Review
Glossary Entry : Fansub
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All hail the heroic fan-subbers. Without these people who purchase, translate, sub-title and (possibly) distribute original Japanese animation I would have to wait X years for the anime companies to release a tiny subsection of the anime that exists, and be certain of the fact that they would select based on a target market of 10 year old sex and violence cretins. This is why M.D. Geist has a commercial release. While this argument works in America, it works double in smaller markets (such as Australia). The fan subber code of ethics respects the intent (rather than the specific letter) of copyright law and disallows personal profit or the release of material that has a commercial release. This has the delicious side effect of making the brain damage of Australian commercial releases a bonus. Sadly there is also a paradox in that maintaining a library and distributing tapes is work, which under the ethics cannot generate profit which means that distributors are caught between their desire to share anime and a natural desire to not do masses of unpaid work. In addition most fan-subbers are American, so an American commercial release my halt the production of a fan sub which would otherwise be distributed word-wide.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:50 WST 2009