Internet Scrap Heap, May 6, 2013

Just random thoughts.

John from Ask John finally addresses the hilarious bit in the Wikipedia entry for Risky Safety. AN Entertainment, the short-lived licensing arm of AnimeNation, a fairly sizable Florida-based anime store (online and B&M), licensed Risky & Safety. Later, it licensed Miami Guns. Then, Hare Guu. That would be the three things they’ve licensed. In the Wikipedia article for Risky & Safety, a snarky joke was put in the article (edited in Dec 23, 2011, out in Mar 31, 2012) that you can see here.

How do you even hate on Risky Safety anyway? It’s like kicking a puppy. John’s blog is basically the semi-official mouthpiece of AN so it’s good he addressed it finally.

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Arudoc’s kickstarter to translate Little Witch’s Romanesqe, launched earlier in May, has now been DMCA’d. So LW’s HQ is in Koto, Tokyo? Cool. Anyway, this is actually not as big of a deal as people think it is. It’s just an interesting thing to gnaw on mentally. Slightly less interesting than how ZUN still hesitate to release his games “commercially.”

The comment thread of the original launch post on Arudoc’s blog go through all the key elements. Basically, it’s illegal. And once money is involved, your petty translation project now gets a higher level of scrutiny. People will DMCA you. And I think Kickstarter is way too high profile for illegal fan crap anyway. This is why fair use is kind of a lamer way to say what you do is illegal. Better is to make sure what is legal is legal to begin with [yes yes free culture 4eva blah blah].

I think Arudoc operated with a “if it’s not stopped it’ll go ahead” kind of the mentality, one that makes the Internet the hyper-copyright-infringing machine that it is. Maybe that’s okay, but people will stop you? Anyway, I agree it’s a step in the right direction–just a wrong step in the right direction. He did reach out to various “legit” parties but it seems LW just doesn’t want their game ported for whatever reasons (eg., piracy). Maybe we can analyze their claims in detail (I think it is not ridiculous to consider games that are exported & localized will increase piracy even in its home country) but that’s way too much work. I would give Arudoc more credit if he cited a $ figure that LW might budge. I mean, this is Kickstarter he’s trying to use, he owes us that much. Actually, that’s exactly the “wrong step”: he’s basically trying to use KS as an improved “donation” system and that is just way too half-assed.

Which is to say, donations for piracy is simply way too shady. How can you really bring yourself to do it? I’d buy some xdcc bot owners a beer or something, sure, but money for servers and bandwidth is too much.

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https://twitter.com/Yuyucow/statuses/331038897146580994

oh also

https://twitter.com/Yuyucow/status/331452437221228544

(psst)

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