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Fighting Piracy in Japan

A TV news crew recently found stores in Osaka that were selling bootleg DVD’s of feature films still in Japanese theaters. In this clip, a guy from an anti-piracy organization shows us how the bootleg DVD of 300 looks:

While the video of the film was filmed inside a theater with a camcorder, the overall video quality is pretty good. It also has Japanese subtitles, which were created and released by fans on the internet well before the 300 was even released in Japan. The expert claims the shadows of audience members getting up at the end of the film are foreign-looking, which means the video was filmed in a foreign country.*

It’s a shame that people aren’t paying to see movies. However, when most Hollywood films don’t see Japanese releases until 6 months to a year after their original release date, can you really blame impatient net-savvy Japanese fans for downloading and watching them?

Would you rather:

*If you’ve ever been to a movie theater in Japan, you’ll probably notice that audience members tend to wait until the film’s ending credits are completely over before standing up to leave.

30 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - December 23, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Categories: General Japan, Technology Tags: 300, copyright, dvd, internet, japan, Movies, piracy, tech, Technology

The Overthinker

“*If you’ve ever been to a movie theater in Japan, you’ll probably notice that audience members tend to wait until the film’s ending credits are completely over before standing up to leave.”

I have never found this to be the case. If anything, because (at least for foreign films) they can’t actually read the credits, they leave sooner rather than later.

Personally I would never watch a cam-cordered film. Not for the legality issues, but the arse quality.

helical

In my experience, the people who stand up and leave and those who stay are about half and half.
I personally stay to see if I can pick up anything from the credits and to try to get every yen worth of experience out of my overpriced ticket

The Overthinker

“and to try to get every yen worth of experience out of my overpriced ticket”

Definitely.

Sid

James, talking bout piracy, on all the vids you post on your site with your Japanprobe URL plastered on them. Are you copying these vids from TV or just adding your URL to them? Either way, I think what you’re doing is piracy. Besides that I think your blog is great.

The Overthinker

This falls under Fair Use: limited use for purposes of criticism and comment.

James

Yeah, what Overthinker said.

I only started adding the urls to video clips because I kept finding that people would download them and re-upload them to other sites, changing their description to things like “WTF LOL JAPAN IS CRAAAZZZY. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS CRAZY JAPANESE TV!!!” It was pretty damn annoying.

At least with a url on the video they’d be able to come read this site and see the videos with an English description that is accurate and in context.
pwim

But does Japanese law allow for “Fair Use”?
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

This falls under Fair Use: limited use for purposes of criticism and comment.

No it doesn’t.

The Overthinker

That is not a helpful comment. You need to explain the law.
http://www.japanprobe.com James

I believe Ken is right about the law.

Still, I’m a believer in fair use and free access to information. I’d also like to think people come to Japan Probe to read the commentary I write in English about things, rather than use this site as a substitution for watching Japanese television.
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

James, I agree with you on both points!

Yes, it’s hard to imagine people stopping watching telly and reading Japan Probe instead, but the law’s the law, but by hosting stuff on YouTube/DailyMotion you can leave it up to them and the content rights holders to fight it out.

http://www.deviants-fansub.es marra182

18$ to see a movie? In spain it’s like 7 euros and I think is quite expensive ._.

toratora

he means 1800 yen….or if your female and go on the second Wednesday of the month when the moon is at 6/7 full and at the time of 7:61 then you can get in for 1000 yen…for us guys..were stuck paying 1800 yen…ill wait the 2 months for a good quality download instead of the 6 months and 1800yen….

deth

I bet those ladies are getting all excited over king leonidas there!

Kamisama

Even straight guys in America are going crazy about this hunk of a man with his nicely formed arse.

http://www.japaneconomynews.com/ Ken

The industry’s pretty clueless here. They keep saying they need a 6 month delay to get everything ready for marketing the files, and especially for the subtitles. Then we find out enthusiasts have the subtitles done before the movie’s even out in the US. Not sure how good the quality is, but it would be hard to be worse than what we get in regular Hollywood movies, where I once heard someone say in English, “You’re just splitting hairs and playing games with semantics” and read a subtitle of “違うよ！”

The industry has a lot of room for improvement, but there probably won’t be too much pressure from consumers.

Kevin

I had a conversation with a friend about the release schedule of movies in Japan, and the gist of it comes down to this:
Almost all Hollywood movies are being distributed by the two major film companies in Japan – Toei and Toho. They develop a very rigid release schedule for the year and they try to separate big releases so they can get more money from rentals over the course of the year and also so movies released by the same company aren’t taking away from money from other movies released by the same company. This is also combined with a large number of straight-to-video movies being release in theaters *solely* to improve rental numbers.
So, if you ever see a movie being released three to six months late, it has zero to do with preparation and 100% to do with marketing the movie for future video rentals.
If you follow the release schedule for big movies in the US, most of them are in May-June and December. The rest of the year is dead time. If you think about Japan however, the US times as well as March and August-October are also big times for movies.

D-san

The Military bases get new movies months before the rest of Japan does so I don’t care.

The Overthinker

Well invite us in for advance screenings….

http://www.feitclub.com feitclub

A few thoughts:

[1] Yes, the standard price for films is usually 1800 Yen. However, there are a number of ways around that price for anyone, male or female. Not only are there monthly “service days” (typically the first of the month) but major Hollywood films inevitably offer discount coupons at ticket shops (the same places where you can buy discounted train tickets). Lots of theaters have other options; my wife and I recently paid a special “couple price” and got two tickets for 2000 Yen, which is cheaper than I would have paid in New York. So if you plan ahead, the movies aren’t as outrageously expensive.

[2] I agree, the delay can be quite frustrating and apparently arbitrary. Spider Man 3 opened in Tokyo before it did in in the US, Oceans 13 opened in Japan six weeks after it did in the US, and Bourne Ultimatium opened about three months after it did in the US. Others take years to turn up in Japan, or not at all if it’s a comedy that no one thinks the Japanese will like (I’m guessing that Superbad is not a high priority).

[3] In addition to all this, you have to hope there’s a subtitled version available near you! The recent release of The Simpsons was a double disaster; not only did FOX decide to bring in “celebrity” voice to drum up interest, they only opened the subtitled print in two theaters nationwide, both in Tokyo. So my wife and I have to wait for the DVD (or resort to other means).
sod

there are a few films that are released in japan before europe. eg ‘i am legend’ no1 at the box office in usa at the mo. the premier was in tokyo 6 days before new york and released at the same time as usa. britan doesn’t get it till the 26th.its the same with the new alien film.the uk gets it 2 weeks later.one missed call doesn’t get here till may but its a classic ‘usa’ remake so im in no hurry to see it.
big film’s are usually released here quite quickly now with the odd exception and its really frustrating when they do that but you can usually download the dvd (apparently!)just as it comes out here. check out IMDb.
The Overthinker

What was really annoying for me was that Japan was dead last in the entire globe for the LOTR films, so I had to hear about all the hype and how absolutely amazing they were from my friends in more advanced (at least in movie releases) countries, and sit here seething in frustration.
newsboy

I heard that piracy forced alot of other asian cities to show hollywood films closer to the release date stateside so they would have a chance to make some money on the market. ALmost everywhere else in Asia including places like Jakarta, KL and Taipei get hollywood films the same time they release in the U.S. once again these are 3 cities that had and still have major issues of DVD piracy. But Japan is Japan and you will still get late releases with 1800 yen ticket prices.
D-san

Everytime i visited Hong Kong I remember buying VCDs of new films before the DVDs came out. I don’t know how they did it, but the quality was excellent.
http://myso-calledjapaneselife.blogspot.com/ Shari

I usually vote in Japan Probe’s polls but I don’t do either of the options given so I couldn’t this time. I wait 6 months for the American video to be released (usually just before the Japanese movie release or about the same time) and buy it for about $12 and play it on my region-free player. It costs less and you can pause any time you want.

BTW, Merry Christmas to Japan Probe. You’re my favorite news site and I appreciate all the work you do.
erno pielstrom

Well I always keep sitting until all the titles are finished as well….
http://www.goddesscarlie.com GoddessCarlie

I believe this is also a huge issue in Australia. Being in the arse end of the world, I remember the days when we used to get films a year after they were released in Australia. This was before the internet of course. Now they are releasing most movies at the same time, and the same with TV shows. I think I remember reading somewhere that Australia is a country that downloads the most per person on the net or some such statistic. Which is surprising because we have crap speeds and high internet prices, but not surprising in that sometimes we are forgotten down here.

Joseph K

Yeah the TV show thing is quite true. Especially after reality TV competition style shows started hittnig their boom, and suddenly that tantalising sneak preview of where Survivor will happen next season becomes redundant, because any fan with a decent internet connection is watching it already, and knew the winners from last season way before they played on TV.
Even without downloading the show itself, the amount of web paged value adding that these shows started to do caused what I would think would have been rather embarassing incongruities people that followed the link given on the show accidentally stumbled upon the winners and episode by episode rundowns of the season they have only half seen, as well as whatever has run of the next one.
Some sitcoms and dramas that were imported have also gradually stepped up their net-based content, causing further problems.

This is of course more of a problem for Australian networks, since they are both English speaking countries, and Australia produces a very small amount of television compared to America, or even Japan.

And Y1800 is ridiculous. I might pay that much if the cinema was rather new and spacious with great sound and video quality, but every time I’ve been to the cinema here the quality was pretty average. I’m guessing it might have something to do with land rates and the amount of space a cinema requires vs the revenue it normally generates, but I really have no idea.

I’ve only seen two Japanese language films here: in Paprika the lights stayed completely dark and absolutely no one left the cinema until every last credit had rolled (for obvious no reason – nothing post credits, no interesting graphics, just white on black text) which was horrible since I needed to use the facilities and was sitting dead centre; and in Sakuran, most people took off after the credits started rolling. The former was in Shinjuku and the latter in a mall in the suburbs, for the record.

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Fighting Piracy in Japan

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