Jackasses? Fan-translators are breaking the law. The people protected by said law asked them politely to “please, respect the law” and they’re jackasses? The fan-translators --who pretend to respect the authors of whatever they translate-- therefore agree to respect said law and said authors and they’re “spineless chickens with their heads cut off”? Does “law-abiding citizen” mean anything to you?
Well, contrary to what you believe, some people obey the law, at the very least when asked to.
I agree with Lancer its better to be safe than sorry. The companies taking the translations down have the right to do it. Like olf said fan-translators are breaking the law.
Well guess what? They have been acting like jackasses by sending C&Ds over the translation patches without even attempting to release anything over here. Are they planning on releasing their titles here somehow? Are they going to make any more sales by doing this, despite the fact that they even don’t even attempt to produce more than a few thousand copies? If not, why whould they even waste their time doing this, other than out of blatant xenophobia?
You say they’re the creators and that it’s within their rights to send such statements, and that the translators are breaking the law. Well, you’re right on all those counts–I have neither the moral, ethical, nor the legal right to justify a defiance against the companies’ wishes.
But I gotta ask: Why should I care? Why should they care? They haven’t tried to reach out to us by releasing their titles over here, they haven’t even tried working with companies here to produce a localization, and they haven’t even tried to make their retailers accept orders from foreign countries. One company has even shown such bitterness towards foreign fans that they went as far as to block all non-Japanese IP addresses to their site. Considering this, why should I care about their interests when they’ve shown that they don’t care about mine?
Bullshit. You completely like to overlook the concept of “materiality” over and over and over again. You take in even the slightest hint of a possibility as something bound to happen, and you take isolated incidents as the beginning of some sort of doomsday domino effect. I can damn well assume that nothing will happen on both counts because the chances are hardly even there to begin with. I don’t think anything is perfectly safe, but I can say with absolute certainty that we’re reasonably safe.
Let me get one thing straight–Our fears of a conviction/lawsuit pose a far greater danger to the industry/fandom than the actual chances of such things happening. So unless something like JAST’s latest release does end up monopolizing the headlines on Fox News or TLWiki does go to court (and loses), I suggest you take the that into consideration before preaching to me about any of that crap.
“Probability over probabilty.”–I will stick by this principle to the last letter. I am not going to submit to the argument of some fearmongering conspiracy theorist.
You don’t even know what the hell an ad hominem is. Why don’t we look at the Wikipedia entry that describes it as "an attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.
You’re attempting to compare my situation with the subject’s situation, and trying to use that to accuse me that I possess zero knowledge of their situation or environment so that you can say I’m not the one to talk.
You’re telling me that I am not the one in danger and have no involvement in such things, so therefore I know absolutely nothing about such things and therefore my complaints about the ridiculousness of the situation have zero validity. How much more ad hominem can you get than that? I may have nothing to do with the subject’s affairs, but how does my lack of participation in their matters refute my argument that their actions are spineless?
Here’s a personal attack for you–You’re not involved with the industry, you’re neither a lawyer or a legal expert with the right credentials, you have no experience with creating translations/localizations, you’re not even in “danger” either, so why would your opinion matter have any validity?
Oh, and by the way, I’ve worked on translations before. So far, ZUN hasn’t tried to sue us when we released that patch for Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
I don’t know, but there’s a good chance that everything will be hunky-dorky. Not to mention if they do continue doing so, I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t be acting like an angry idiot wasting his time engaging in an argument on some forum with a paranoid imbecile. I’m also quite certain I would actually feel more respectful towards them and the fandom as a whole, as well as more confident in humanity knowing that there are some people out there that actually have some balls and don’t submit to bullshit.
What do you want them to do, bang on JAST’s door until they agree to license Gungnir’s products? It’s not up to them to pursue licenses. It is up to them to protect their copyright, however. Why? Because if they don’t, their products will lose value to potential licensees - the translated eroge industry is very very small as it is and if half the potential market for a game have already played it, you might as well give up.
Re: this and the ‘If not, why whould they even waste their time doing this, other than out of blatant xenophobia?’ comment before:
This is complete crap! There is no such ‘bitterness’, they are not blocking you from their site because they hate you. Eroge companies are business. They are not children. There would be no value in blocking people they hate from their site. If you think they’re doing this because they’re ‘xenophobic’, have you had your head under a rock for the past year? Remember a little bit of controversy around an old ILLUSION game? That caused the Japanese government and the EOCS to plan a whole heap of new restrictions? The only xenophobia here is that they are (justifiably) afraid of self-righteous Western groups that believe they own the definition of morality.
Isolated incidents? So I guess the fact that 5 tlwiki titles were C&D’d were all isolated? Complete coincidences? Here’s the thing; practically nothing of this nature happened before 2009, even though eroge has been going strong since the 90s, licensed eroge translation has been going strong since the 00s and fan translation has been going strong since 06 or so. There’s nothing isolated about these incidents at all.
I’m not banking on such a thing happening at all. I doubt it will. However, the point is that the risk is still there - you may argue that nothing JAST develops is in any way similar to RapeLay, but do you really think Fox is going to come to that expert conclusion itself? That it’s going to listen to people who actually know about the subject?
That is essentially the definition I was applying here.
That’s not it at all. In fact, that was a completely personal dare - I want to see you put yourself in danger - and not related to the validity of your arguments. I felt I shattered said arguments quite nicely well before I even got to that.
Correct, correct, incorrect (in a number of different roles, too), incorrect (incorrect in that, while I don’t put myself danger, I’m not advocating other people put themselves in it, so it’s more that your justification for mentioning that point is incorrect). Furthermore, I have a personal stake in this because I see careless fan translators as threatening an industry I care for very much. I like for people to enjoy the same stuff I enjoy and I don’t want the translation scene to be destroyed - which is why crap like this needs to stop. I don’t think my opinion has any validity outside the basis of my arguments. If my arguments are invalid, my opinion too may be invalid.
You picked one of the safest targets you could. Not only does ZUN lack the resources to sue you for the translation, but he even allows for derivative works like that to be created. Heck, JLIST even links to the translation patches. He’s okay with translations. Here’s an idea:
- Move to Japan
- Set yourself up in a nice, cosy little apartment somewhere around minori’s offices
- Translate eden*, put the translation up on a locally hosted website
- Phone minori, tell them exactly what you are doing and make it clear you have no plans to stop
Come on, you’re not a coward or anything, are you? Not like those tlwiki guys.
No, I don’t think anyone is going to sue tlwiki - but does the fact that you can get away with breaking the law make it okay? The thing is that a lot of people on these boards are fans of eroge - we actually like eroge companies and the stuff they produce. This doubles for many of the people who work on fan translations because it takes a HUGE amount of time and effort to translate something like an eroge. You have to be a pretty big fan to do it. As such, I think it’s pretty understandable for these people to want to stop if the creators of the game they are translating ask for it.
Oh, and why don’t I think tlwiki are cowards? Well, I suspect that if the email went something like this:
they would have taken it down anyway. I think it is a sensible policy for fan translators to take.
EDIT: I’m done, anyway. If I haven’t gotten my point across to you after three posts I probably never will.
They’d be breaking the law though: you’re basically saying you want them to commit a crime. 
It’s like saying it’s okay to steal money from the mall, if you know the cops won’t catch you and/or there’s no security system to stop you. I can’t agree with that at all.
Now what I can agree with, is that minori (and all the other companies like them) are being dicks about the whole thing - but personal feelings aside, minori is 100% in the right. It’s their IP, so they can order a C&D. That’s what being the IP holder means. However 7 years from the day of first release, after submitting some lame paperwork to the local Japanese consulate and US copyright office, an unofficial fanlation can be done - even if minori doesn’t want it, because then -[u]and only then[/u] - are the fanlators in the right.
Not all fanlators are cowards or worried about being sued: most simply wish to obey the law. Stopping their fanlation project, is clearly doing that. If someone wants to do a fanlation of Eden, and be 100% legit, they can start doing it in 2016 if minori doesn’t release an official English translation by then.
For my part, I care because I’m a law-abiding citizen and, furthermore, an erogamer who respects the people creating the games he plays and their will. As for why you should care, see with your own conscience.
Are they?
Let’s suppose you’re trespassing on a private property, in order to look at the scenery. As such, you’re not doing any harm, are you? Now, let’s suppose the land owner comes and chases you away. Is he a dick if he does so by shouting at you while sending his dogs at you, instead of politely asking you to leave? I don’t personally think so. You laincursed broke into his property; not matter what, you’re not IMO entitled to complain if you’re caught on the way you’re chased away.
I don’t think either said owner is a dick by putting on walls around his property so that unauthorized people can’t see over.
As a note, many did it the correct way in order to make their work legal: both Narcissu and all of altogether projects are approved by their original author.
Personally, I’m sure the fantranslators wouldn’t have many trouble getting official permissions if they were aiming at old games, and from defunct companies. For instance, TAMASoft has excellent games, and is dead as dead can be so I don’t think its copyright owners would care much about them being translated. Of course, the hardship would come from tracking them, but most people from a defunct company more often than not merely move to another so it wouldn’t be impossible either.
…okay, tracking the games may not be easy either. ^^;;;;;;;
I tend to agree with Narg and BM [even if he is being hostile].
What minori is doing is way beyond C&D. They’ve blocked foreign IPs and made it impossible to play unless you have a Japanese OS. Also Olf,I could point out any number of totalitarian regimes.Just because it’s on the books doesn’t imbue it with righteousness.
I did a giant grin when thepiratebay got hammered. All these guys are doing is translating .If the end user purchased a legit copy and wants to install a patch I don’t really see the problem.
And it’s all within their rights.
You live in one? Japan is one? A law protecting one’s IP is totalitarian? So, please, don’t talk apples and oranges; no one is asking you to obey a law infringing on your human rights. Don’t justify breaking the law with “there are laws that are completely morally wrong so I can break any --including this one-- if I want.” Or is it what you do whenever you break one, are caught by the police and asked to respect the law? “Hey, not all laws are right! Look at all those totalitarian regimes! Therefore, it allows me to break the one I just did!”
Beyond that, we’re not just talking about minori here. We’re talking about, most recently, Gungnir. They don’t block foreign IPs. They don’t use any sort of region blocking. They don’t stop their games from being sold on erogeshop etc. All they did was send a C&D to a website that was improperly using their scripts. I see no problem with this.
I’d stay calm about the Innocent Grey thing for now. One thing to consider, and this is being extremely optimistic, is this: the C&D on Innocent Grey’s end could be because they might be, or are seriously considering, licensing their games. The reason this may be is as follows:
- To my knowledge, this company hasn’t shown any anti foreign sentiment like minori and Illusion (and possibly Akabesoft but those may just be rumors).
- Their site is accessible and is in fact easy for a non Japanese reader to navigate.
- This:
http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2010/03 … /#comments
Innocent Grey is in the Top 10 of the companies MG is considering approaching by fan demand. - This is occuring pretty close to con season…
Now the chances of this happening aren’t very high, but then again until the license agreements were announced didn’t we consider games from Nitro+, Navel, Circus, and possibly even Key unlikely to ever be officially translated in english?
And if I’m wrong, well Innocent Grey’s games are written in a way that translates well in online translators.
A wise move in my opinion. I decided long ago that it was a lost cause to try and reason with him. Personally, I think he enjoys being contrary and provoking reactions from others, which is precisely why I don’t say anything back to him. To me at least, he’s not even worth my taking a few seconds type, “I disagree” in response.
Sorry, that was an error on my part; it actually has only existed for half a year or so. Cartagra was the one that started 2 years ago and was recently taken over.
Ah I see Innocent grey could have just discovered the project recently. And if they knew about Cartagra they probably didn’t ask to remove it because no progress was made for about a year.
Bang on JAST’s door to license Gungnir’s products? Well that would certainly be a start. If those dipshits even bothered to try to open up and market their own licenses to the companies over here, or daresay gasp localize their titles themselves, maybe they’d go somewhere! How do they know if the market is that small if they don’t even bother trying to give the gaijin an opportunity to play their games at all?
If they felt that their own titles/licenses were being threatened by translation modifications, they might as well give up–The eroge industry in and of itself is too small to sustain if it can be that threatened by a few guys releasing what amounts to an insignificant mod. Period.
Uh-uh. Sorry, but no. Minori flat-out ignored all the fans that were trying to defend them and labeled all the westerners to be “Antipathic to EROGE”. Not to mention, what were all the companies doing to fight against all those restrictions that the government and the EOCS were going to impose? Absolutely nothing. A couple of feminists from America decided raised a stink about their games, their own government representatives got all riled up, but they were too incompetent do anything to defend themselves, and now they just ignore the fandom outside of Japan and put a blanket label on all westerners looking at their games as a bunch of pricks that have “antipathy to EROGE”? Tell me that’s not bitterness! Tell me that’s not unprofessional! Tell me that’s not antagonistic! Tell me that’s not xenophobia! Tell me that’s not scapegoating!
Not to mention, Minori didn’t even bear the brunt of the Rapelay case–Illusion did. Illusion was at the center of it all, and they should be the most angry out of all the eroge companies, yet not even they went as far as to block foreign IPs from their site. Minori is the only eroge company I can think of that is blocking foreign IPs right now. I didn’t even know anything about Minori until they started their site block. I wonder what the hell got their panties in a bunch?
The 5 tlwikis that were sued were isolated? What are you talking about? Of course that’s not an isolated incident. The compliance of the bozos at the TLWiki to Minori’s requests prompted some companies who associate with Minori to follow suit.
[color=#FF0000]I’M REFERRING TO THE WHORELY AND HANDLEY CASES YOU LOVE TO DRONE ON AND ON AND MAKE OVERBLOWN DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS ABOUT.[/color]
The risk is still there, but the risk is so minute it’s not even worth losing sleep over. Just because something can happen doesn’t mean it will happen. What part about “materiality” do you not understand?
You didn’t shatter anything, dude. You just associated me, an irrelevent party, to the subject in an attempt to guilt-trip me. Shows how far that got you.
Excuse me, but you don’t have an appropriate stake in anything. You are neither involved in fan translation groups, nor are you involved directly with the companies. You don’t know anything about either party. You don’t even realize that these patches require a copy of the actual game to run. You don’t even know how little of an impact these patches make on their sales when they aren’t even bothering to produce any copies at all. You don’t have enough experience or involvement with anything to come to the conclusion that these fan translations are “threatening the industry”. What you are doing is simply defending an action done to deliberately attempt to prevent foreign audiences from gaining access to a modification patch that had been created because they have failed to open up themselves.
They have nothing to gain from doing any of this this–They are not going to get anymore sales from their product by “protecting” their intelectual properties. Do you know why copyright even exists? It’s doesn’t exist because of a “name”, it doesn’t exist because of “pride”, it exists because of “money”. It exists to protect a company’s intellectual property from being used by someone else and prevent said unauthorized users from taking away from sales. What good is defending your intellectual properties against a foreign entity if you don’t even bother to make any sales off of them?
You’re doing what I would refer to as “dick-sucking”. You love their games so much that you view their creators with rose-colored glasses, unable to realize that they too can be just as irrational or as prone to making mistakes as you, me, or anyone else. You abandon all skepticism toward the companies and defend them through blind faith as if all their decisions possess irrefutable merit.
Why do I have to do any of that when I can just do it from my nice cosy appartment in the United States? Again, you’re associating an irrelevant party (me) with the subject, except this time you’re just trying to call me “chicken” instead of guilt-tripping me. That’s not going to work on me either–They’re the ones who decided on their own accord to do these translations, and they’re the ones to be held accountable for whatever actions they make. Why do I need to lift a finger to call BS if I see BS in action?
If you don’t think anyone is going to sue TLWiki, then that should be the end of that.
Does the fact that they can get away with breaking the law make it okay? Yes–It IS okay, provided that the producers make no attempts to releasing them over here. There’s no legal, moral or ethical basis for it, but I don’t see any reason to care unless I’m actually getting somethng in return. The world operates on a give-and-take basis–There should nothing for the companies to take if they have nothing to give back.
Fansubs, scanlations, and fanlations all exist because there are people who want to experience their creations–In other words, there is demand for them outside of Japan. They exist because the companies aren’t bothering to make it available over here. Unless a company publically announces that they intend to release some of their games here, I cannot for the love of me understand how eliminating fan-created translations and forcing the translators to waste huge amounts of time and effort, can possibly expand or create new interest outside of Japan. You can’t make it if you huddle up and not take any risks. If they don’t even try to make their titles accessible here, then I fail to see any understandability in eliminating a translation effort that doesn’t even profit off of their titles. They only need to sell 3000 copies to break even? They don’t even try to sell much in their own turf to begin with. That is not an opinion, that is a FACT.
If you want me to respect the companies’ decisions, then I’d better see them either working with JAST/MG to procure a localization or working to release a localization themselves.
Oh sure, ignore the fandom, ignore all the hard work you put in just because a company doesn’t even bother to making their titles accessible outside of Japan. Oh sure. Oh, and what’s this I hear about Moogy continuing to work on the translation of Kara no Shoujo and releasing it underground on 4chan? Nice policy there.
You’ve already talked to me before. If you expected to sway my opinions so easily, you barking up the wrong tree. You should’ve just said nothing and went along with your business.
Well, it may also be pointed out that some search tags in Mangagamer site would fit really well with Innocent Grey games - bizarre mistery and suspense are the most obvious, but even western mansion looks promising (Caucasus). Still, it’s all speculation. I’d really love to see Innocent Grey games in english, since it’s one of my favorite companies (if not the favorite), but I don’t think there are many possibilities that is ever going to happen. Well, ok, never say never. Let’s just say I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. The reason is JAST is currently busy with Nitroplus titles, while Mangagamer already has a huge pool of games to choose from (and has already hinted at their next releases, and none of them looked like an Innocent Grey title).
Alrighty, Calm down
There is nothing wrong with tlwiki taking down the translations, because:
1)No one wants to get sued,
2)All progress is backuped (and KnS is gonna be released anyway, the guys said they spent way too much time on it just to stop when its almost completed)
3)Just because they don’t want to localize for a relatively small niche market in the US doesn’t mean that it is legal to “violate” their copyright, no matter how much I disagree with the companies decision.
4)Localization requires capital and why would they spend money to localize games when the market in the US is so small that they won’t make any profit. It makes economic sense to keep the games in Japan and minimize the exposure VNs get abroad so there would not be internal repercussions (ex. EOCS restricting certain topics in Ero-games)
Doesn’t mean I agree with their decision, of course I am dissapointed that it has come do this, but there is no need to bash tlwiki (and staff) and the game makers.
Anyways, just my 2 cents.
True enough, but remember when that post was made on MG’s end. The reason hints haven’t been dropped could be because talks may have just recently started, or an agreement has just been made and MG needs time to assign translators, editors, and beta testers. Also in some of their interviews they have mentioned expanding their translation staff; they would need a larger staff if they’ve made deals with more companies wouldn’t they?
I know I’m probably being too optimistic, but considering all the “doom and gloom” talk ever since this whole business with minori and the DMCAs started, I’ve gotten tired enough of it to go against the flow.
You have no clue who Lancer is, do you? :roll: And here I was thinking it was pretty much an open secret. He’s actually a major member of the fan translation community, who has been a part of some big-name projects. He just prefers to go by a different handle here. Does the name ‘Asceai’ ring a bell? (Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to say anything, Lancer, but I wanted to shut him up.)
I highly doubt that it’ll have any effect knowing the real identity of Lancer, and I would also doubt it would put any sort of restraints on him this time either… he’ll probably just ignore it and keep up repeating himself as usual. (if we’re lucky he’ll maybe use more colouring this time about… always fun to see some red yellow and green in there.)