neglected

[davemerrill]

I neglected my AN staff duties yesterday and we went to the comic book show downtown. Didn't really pick up a lot of comics. The pickin's were a little slimmer than last time in terms of the weirdo stuff. Prices were all over the map. It pays to shop around. Canada scored their first goal while we were there and the entire room erupted with cheers, and one guy asked "Who scored?" with a response of WHADYA MEAN, "WHO SCORED?" But he meant the player, not the team.

Canada played the game they should have played earlier, tight and tough. Good thing too, because it was 'with your shield or on it' time for those guys.

I believe it was Deb Aoki who made the first comparison of the whole Nick Simmons "Incarnate" plagarizing "Bleach" thing with anime fans who distribute scanlations and fansubs online, or who sell licenced-character fanart in artist alleys at anime cons. Chris Butcher agrees, while Simon Jones - link may be NSFW does not.

I tend to agree with Simon Jones, who has an interesting take on the doujinshi side of things. I don't think professional American comic artist plagiarism and fans selling fan art or fans distributing scanlations or fansubs is anywhere close to being the same thing, and it's kind of disingenuous to equate the two, or to claim that anime fans shouldn't complain about this because they spend all their time ripping off copyrights. It's apples and oranges. What Nick Simmons did was plagiarism - passing off somebody else's artwork as his own work - something every professional artist is aware of and should be on guard against.

Using the Nick Simmons Experience to condemn fan artists for creating derivative works... well, the "fans creating derivative works based on their favorite characters" horse has been out of that barn for decades and decades now. Nobody seems to have a problem with it, even when Kirk and Spock were inventing the term "slash".

What people DO have a problem with is profit, and that's what makes Nick Simmons stand out - he's doing his ripping off in a professional comic book that he gets paid for, that is sold as a professional magazine in the marketplace of professional magazines. Which understandably is held to a higher standard than the artists alley at Doofuscon '09 or Fantastic Trekiverse Vol 6 #3, circulation 50.

The Artist Alleys of anime conventions are all different and they all have their own set of rules, but they all address the issues of IP theft and fair use, the issues of plagiarism and of swiping and of selling your own work. It's not a wild west free for all. The video rooms at anime cons get clearance for the titles they show. The dealers room contracts are very clear about what dealers are allowed to sell, and bootlegs are not allowed. So, to characterize all anime fans as being ignorant or uncaring about IP is false.

Do some anime fans download illegal fansubs or scanlations? Sure. All the time. Do some Marvel/DC fans download scans of their favorite comics? Sure. All the time. Do professional American comic artists sit behind their tables and sell sketches of Wonder Woman or Spiderman or Spawn or Donald Duck? Sure, all the time. Do fans of American movies download illegal copies of their favorite movies? Sure, all the time. Does this have anything to do with Nick Simmons swiping Bleach? Not a bit.

Personally I think selling 25 or 50 or 500 prints of your fanart is crossing the line into sketchy ethical territory. Of course back in the 1980s I thought charging to copy tapes was ethically sketchy too. And the guys that filled tables at every comic book show selling VHS copies of laserdiscs they taped themselves, those are guys that anime fandom campaigned against at every opportunity, and when we started our own shows those people were not allowed to sell bootlegs. (not that they didn't try). Considering at the start anime fandom wouldn't exist without home taping, without tape trading, without the same kind of copyright infringement we now look down on, it's ironic. But what separates the fans from the pros, or the fans from the criminals, in the final analysis, it's all money. Nobody ever got rich selling fanzines of fan art or fan fiction, and while they may be on ethically shaky ground, at least they aren't swiping like a goddamn 12-year old and trying to pass it off as their own work in a professionally printed and distributed comic book.

Comments

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

For me, it just comes down to: Simmons didn't do the work.

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

The "craft vs. idea" discussion is pretty interesting, btw.

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

And kudos to Chris for putting forth the first anti-fanart statement I've read that makes actual sense, instead of the usual "waste of time"/"waste of effort"/"ew gross, nerds having fun" crap.
I don't agree with his stance, but it's nice to see actual logic going into it, rather than the desire to look down one's nose at others.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is like ground level Art School 101 stuff; learn by tracing and copying and swiping and imitating, but DON'T PASS IT OFF AS YOUR OWN WORK, STUPID.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

I'm actually surprised most people can't tell the difference between plagiarism and derivative works.

[dwinghy.livejournal.com]

Is it really that hard for a non-artist to understand the difference between tracing someone else's art and creating an original piece of art using someone else's characters? Really? This is the hill Chris chose to die on, the Nicky Simmons hill? All right then.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm saying. Why can't non-artists understand this?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm actually less offended by the plagiarism (which is just stupid) than Simmons' assumption that nobody would notice it (which is insulting). And that circles back around to multiply the stupid since he chose a top-selling manga to trace from. That's like his dad grabbing a riff from a Top 40 hit song and plugging into one of his own with no changes. You'd think a member of the Simmons family would be smarter than that, but I guess not.

-Tim E.

[ferricide.livejournal.com]

yeah it's kind of laughable that he ripped off BLEACH, of all things, and expected nobody to notice it. was he like "i'm a GENIUS! as long as i avoid naruto and DBZ, nobody will ever know!"

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I've often seen people abuse the definition of "fanart" to make questionable profits

I've seen people do this too, and to a man they are all complete losers. I mean livin' out of their car, bathing-optional losers. It makes me wonder exactly why they got into the whole "ripping people off" thing, if the payoff is less than minimum wage at McDonalds.

You used to see the same thing with the video bootleggers at conventions, they'd have tables and tables of copies for sale, I mean a lot of capital and labor went into their video bootlegging operation, and if you find out anything about them, you find out they live in a leaky trailer somewhere and can barely pay the rent or gas up their old pickup truck or keep their five dogs fed. Guys, if you're going to steal, at least steal something that will IMPROVE YOUR LIFE.

Part of the mindset is, and this is a real vague theory of mine, but you go to the flea markets in the sticks, and you see a lot of people from agricultural families, who have traditions of picking berries or apples and selling them by the roadside or at the market - the stuff is lying around and you pick it up and sell it. You have chickens, they lay eggs, you sell the eggs. You have dogs, they have puppies, you sell the puppies. You find junk at the dump somebody wants, haul it home and sell it. (You have a lot of corn, people want liquor, why not set up a still?) You find stripped paperbacks at the distributor, you sell 'em at the flea market. If there's income to be generated from something, then do it. If you have some crazy Japanese cartoon or Godzilla movie somebody wants, why not run off a few VHS tapes? What's the harm? Who says I shouldn't? Those fat cats in Washington? That's the mindset. That's my theory anyway. Not that it has anything to do with this discussion, but there ya go.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

But people doing scanslations aren't claiming them as theirs nor do they charge for them.

And people doing fanart aren't claiming the original characters/works as their own.

Big difference.

I am not violating copyright with my mad-Asto icon. I don't claim I created and own Astro. To do that would be absurd. It's a derivative work. A parody, because Astro wouldn't do what I'm depicting.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

See, doesn't Mr. Viz Naruto have lawyers? They need to get off their ass and earn their pay.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

I posted 8 pages of an old Marvel Mighty Morphing Power Rangers on the AnimeHELL blog a week ago. Where does that place me?

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

http://animehel.blogspot.com/2010/02/comic-book-hell-reach-out-and-crash.html

Just presented as is.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

If I got a C&D I'd just take the post down.

And Dave and Shain's Stupid Comics is Dave and Shain's thing. Not mine. I'd rather let the comics speak for themselves.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Presenting an entire copyrighted work without any commentary or attribution whatsoever, that's crossing the line into ethically iffy territory, I think.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

Should I take it down?

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Do you think it's ethical to present the work of others without attribution or commentary, without any transformative content? Personally I think it's unethical, but ultimately this is a decision you'll have to make.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I don't want to seem like I'm ganging up here but yeah, um.

I mean, what's the point? You have a comic (or ganked something off the net) and boom there it is, so, why? Did you find it funny? Were you outraged by poor anatomy or horrible framing or bad grammar or what?

I'm not saying you need to deconstruct it like Seanbaby does over at Cracked.com (and his stuff makes me pee it's so funny sometimes), nor copy Stupid Comics, just...talk about it. right? Because otherwise it's like that most annoying thing in the universe, linkbombing.

God, I hate that. People spending all day digging thru YouTube, sending link after link with no warning that it's a video, no commentary about what's interesting or fun or horrible about it, man, that's just lazy ass ADD kinda stuff. People gotta TALK or we all just sit in our chairs like Bevis and Butthead "Hu huhuhu huh that was cool...huh uhuhuh"

I fight against that! I fight with love!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I still say what's eventually going to come out is that Simmons only put his name on the work and it was done by the 'assistants', who may actually have thought nobody would notice the swipes.

I mean, we've all seen that kind of shameless ignorance all over the place, in so many ways. Politicians who seem to can't believe that anybody would remember what they say when they say something different and get called on it, people who act badly in public and are shocked that anyone had a camera on their cell and captured the moment putting the lie to the deny, etc.

Some how, at some point, it became common to think 'well, *I* won't get caught, I'm tooo damn smart' and that's just a sign of being dumb.

Might an artist draw something that turns out to be similar to a frame out of a comic, or a scene from a movie? Sure, because all the experiences that person has had is a giant boiling stew and it goes to 'is it possible for art to be original in this day and age' discussions but what Dave is talking about it right on the button. I'll add one more thing. It's not the MONEY so much, back in the day of fighting the bootleg VHS guys, it's the MORALITY. We all knew we were doing something 'wrong' back then, wrong in the strict reading and we had all manner of wiggly justifications (I bought the LD, the copies I make to VHS are degraded just like making a cassette from a LP are down a gen, and the medium will self destruct over time) but in the end, we did it for the love and did everything we could to support the industry. Bootleggers, they were in your face and didn't CARE, they just slap the tapes on the table and so what. Plus they stole from each other.

Nowadays, of course. Man.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the morality part is why the discussions on scanlations are becoming so prevalent in relation to this controversy.

People like Deb and myself are kind of put off by the fact that there's all this fan outrage at the immorality of Nick Simmons knocking off the work of their precious Tite Kubo, while they're off not blinking an eye at the rate in which they swipe his stuff. I kind of doubt the majority of them are buying books or dvd's, and have been told off many times by people who've told me they most definitely don't.

And of course, with things like scanlation aggregator sites making money off of advertisements [think for a minute how many clicks that can add up to, and images don't take up much room on a server nowadasy] and sites that charge subscriptions, there is a large amount of profit being made off of this aspect of fandom by someone.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I understand where Chris is coming from in that he has to stand there behind the register and listen to d-bags tell you to your face that they're taking money out of your pocket, and that's a frustration that I couldn't deal with.

And I'm totally in agreement that people who steal copyrighted work online should not be complaining about some other guy stealing artwork for his comics.

But not everybody complaining about Nick Simmons is a scanlatin' jagoff. Me, for instance. I think I've looked at CANDY CANDY scans online, and.. um... hell, I have a Black Jack story that a friend translated 20 years ago that I was tempted to post online, before, you know, Viz and Vertical saved me the trouble.

The fascinating part of the scanlation issue is that it's something anime fandom has dealt with before, only in a different guise - there were industry organizations (J.A.I.L.E.D.) that attempted to fight bootlegs and unauthorized copying by, um, sending cease and desist letters to fan translators, there were fans who got sued for calling other fans "video pirates", there were endless debats about SM CDs and wall scrolls and you name it. And at the end of the day the fan organizations had to (a) set down guidelines and see that they were enforced, and (b) that was about it.

Because I am not Toei Animation Company's unpaid legal watchdog, and Interpol does not pay me to see that international copyrights are enforced. We're not cops. All we can do is see that the stuff that's sold at our shops or our conventions is as legit as we can determine, and the rest is up to the people who are actually being hurt by the pirates.

If scanlation sites are making money off of somebody's copyrighted material, then the copyright holders need to take action. Us shaking our fingers at the naughty people who download scanlations will not accomplish much.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

It's kind of a bugaboo of mine, the accusation that all anime fandom is ripping people off and doesn't care. We got thrown out of conventions for agitating against video pirates, we walked away from actual cash money we could have made selling dealers tables to bootleggers or selling tapes ourselves. There was a standard of ethics that was accepted in anime fandom - we argued about bootlegs, about charging to make copies, about SM CDs, about bootleg wall scrolls, about gray market HK DVDs, you name it we argued about it, but at the end of the day the ethical questions were always there and no matter what side of whatever argument you were on, at least we were aware there WAS an argument.

[gyopi.livejournal.com]

Ethics aside, I am just waiting for his father to somehow use this as an excuse to sue the internet and all of Japan.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

http://comicsworthreading.com/2010/03/01/nick-simmons-releases-statement-takes-no-responsibility/

And he doesn't see that he did anything wrong. It's all, "haters gonna hate."

[(Anonymous)]

I notice one of the comments in that thread over there includes the names of three "assistant artists" who were listed in the comic's credits. How many US comic books pay enough for ONE assistant artist, let alone THREE? I smell "unpaid intern" in the background.

[(Anonymous)]

Since the topic of scanlations is being bandied about, this seems like a good place to solicit opinions. Sometime in the future I'm considering picking up where Viz left of with the Gundam The Origin manga, since I get it every month in Gundam Ace magazine (it's still running, probably will be for another year or two) and I have the resources to translate it. My daydream is to put it all online with full credit to the source. I wouldn't need to add my name, since it would be on my personal website.

Good idea or bad idea? I don't think there's a chance in hell anyone else will do it in any format.

-Tim E.

PS: the 'Captcha' code I had to type in order to post this reads 'atlanta said.' Coincidence???

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

well, just speaking for myself, I say that's not a good idea. I understand why you want to do that, the frustration that Viz wouldn't see it thru to the end(nor have a system in place to continue non-Naruto manga)and all that, but seriously, that becomes theft.

"What's the difference between that and fansubs?"

Exactly. They're both theft of the I.P., and just because you want it doesn't make it right. That's the entitlement mindset of the AmeriOtaku.

Consider, even if Viz isn't continuing with releasing it, they probably still have the rights. Yes, they are saying "we are big meanies and say you cannot have this" but it's their right.

So that's me.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

If this was 1997 and you were going to run the translated manga in Animanga APA with a limited distribution to people who could be trusted to not make a buck off it, sure. Here in 2010, I would be leery of putting a project like this onto the public internets for the whole world to see.

A private members-only file-sharing server, or a friends-locked Livejournal post, something like that, that's a different story.

[(Anonymous)]

I kind'a think they'd already have the resources to do it on their own if they choose to. The fact that they haven't (so far) tells me the Viz edition didn't sell enough copies to continue publishing (duh), thus it's not attractive to someone else--especially since they'd have to pick it up in the middle. No, I'd say the chances of this being done professionally are zero.

[astrange.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever accepted a deal like that? I've never of heard of it if so, though I know a few Bungie games are legitimately being kept up by fan groups. But I seriously doubt any Japanese company would do it.

(Besides, how do fansubs not provide "full credit to the source"? It's not like they edit out the author's name.)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

There's also the fact that even if you do credit someone, you're still guilty of copyright infringement if you don't have the license to use it.

This discussion has ranged far afield from Nick Simmons, but I just want to point out that the whole "fansubbers are guilty of copyright infringement" argument has been brought up many many times in the decades of nerds arguing about the legality of copying shit they don't won. And the correct response is (a) so what, and (b) who cares.

I mean, no offense, but if not for fansubbers there wouldn't be an anime fandom. If not for fans doing what they liked with the video they like, we wouldn't have anime music videos or fan parodies or parody subtitles or most of the ouvre of Corn Pone Flicks, and most of what makes the fandom interesting would not exist.

If the only Japanese cartoons I was allowed to watch were the Japanese cartoons that various corporations had seen fit to release in North America, I wouldn't be an anime fan, because the mountains of absolute garbage released by these selfsame corporations would convince me that there wasn't anything worthwhile in the medium whatsoever.

I have done my time in the trenches protecting the copyrights of these corporations, and have never gotten so much as a 'thank you' from these guys, who instead send C&D letters about fansubs we didn't do, of things they didn't own.

Those interested in lengthy, incredibly boring and completely unproductive debates between different sets of non-lawyers are directed to visit Just About Every Anime Fan Internet Forum Ever, circa 2001. I could absolutely care less about the "legality" of fansubs, and would prefer fruitless debate take place somewhere far far away from me.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

ALL the anime importers could close down, and it wouldn't affect me whatsoever. In fact, it would put anime fandom back where it was in 1990, except it would be a helluva lot easier to swap anime with each other. Anime conventions would go back to being small gatherings of like-minded enthusiasts instead of World's Biggest Douchebag competitions.

All the scanlations and filesharing and fansubbing didn't stop ADV and Geneon and Viz and Manga Entertainment and CPM and whoever from cramming retail shelves full of inept farted out junk. That's what killed the anime industry - it choked to death on its own greed, trying to sell forgettable TV detrius as high art. That'll kill any industry.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

See, it works out great for me. I watch what I want to watch. If they release it here, I buy it, and if they don't, I watch it anyway. They can make money off me, or not.

I get real tired of the mindset that we have to go out of our way and make special efforts to 'support' the activities of giant corporations, that we have to 'save comics', that we have to buy things we don't enjoy in the hopes that it will lead to something we do. It doesn't work like that, not for me.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

And that's where it gets really strange, because one has to remember that companies don't do things because they are 'right' or any nonsense like that, they do things because the return-on-investment says they can make a profit, and there's nothing wrong with making a profit.

Problem comes from when you're dealing with an entity that is only concerned by numbers, what you or I or anyone WANTS doesn't matter, because the only message understood is 'we make moneys now? y/n?'

So, support crap, and all that says is crap sells.

Boycott crap, all that says is "this crazy Japan shit is dead, stop releasing it"

Point being, since they are companies and not people, they cannot LEARN.

Oh, there might be someone in a company that actually cares and thinks all the nonsense we believe matters but in the end they still LISTEN to the numbers FIRST.

Avatar made a bazillion Dollars, just INSANE money. 3 years from now expect a flood of CG movies wanting to be the next Avatar. And they will SUCK because every studio will utterly miss the point. (i.e. it's not just effects, it's how they're used, and as trite as ripping 'Dances with Wolves' might have been as the story, at least it was a solid template familiar to the public)

(OTOH if Disney's John Carter of Mars movie turns out decent because they rethink it in light of Avatar I'll forgive them)

[wtf.livejournal.com]

What Chris Butcher fails to realize is that the industry knows and is accepting of the Artist Alley community. That kind of throws a monkey wrench into his argument.