quote:
Originally posted by Unicorn:
At least it is a suitable topic for this board if they only supply a patch that has to be applied to the original game.Still, this bears two dangers that might not be obvious:
1.) If a fan-translation already exists, there are people who use it and thus wouldn't be interested in a professional translation. Hence there would be no point for the original company to license its product for localization anymore after it got fan-translated and this translation is available to everyone.
2.) As soon as a fan-translation exists, the original japanese game becomes material that's worth pirating. Before that, the pirates only could try to go their paths blindly through the game, but after the patch exists, they simply stick first to their standard-agument #2: "It is japanese, so I can't understand it anyway. So, why should I pay for it?".
Then, they grab the patch and say: "Oh, lucky!!! Now I can play it, but because I already have it, why should I pay?".
(Note: between those two statements, there may be turnaround-times less than 5 minutes... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/rolleyes.gif[/img] )
I was asked to help in fan-translation-projects before, but these problems made me turn down such requests, even if I would have gotten back my soul for it... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
[This message has been edited by Unicorn (edited 06-08-2004).]
Fansubs are generally tolerated in the anime world. I see no reason the same logic cannot be applied to b-games.
They have always been illegal - fansubs get ignored because of the self-policing controls put in place. In particular fansubs are not supposed to be done of licensed shows. The plain fact of the matter is that it happens anyway, now that it's possible to distribute them via the Internet. But it's not supposed to.
I have no problem distributing translation patches (I've taken to referring to translation patches as "fannotating" because I think "fanslate" sounds kind of silly). I don't even have a problem with people distributing fully functional ISO's with the patch included, so long as the game is not licensed. It is perfectly true that in practice this fannotated version would continue to be distributed. This is unavoidable. ANY translated English version will be pirated, including the legitimate distribution. The actual effect on sales of the fannotated-bootleg being avilable before the REAL release (instead of it taking 2-3 days for a real-bootleg), is not predictable.
But even aside from that question, it basically comes down to this for me. Copyright is, and always has been, a compromise between authors and the rest of society. There is a very strong interest in protecting the rights of copyright holders, and only a very weak interest that average people have in being able to freely copy material (as they would with no protection). However in certain narrow instances there are exceptions to this general rule - because this is a balance. In particular I personally feel that out-of-print works being (illegally) distributed is not a terribly big loss to the content creators but can be a very big boon to the public. (In fact copyrights are SUPPOSED to expire and the works were supposed to become public domain, but this keeps getting extended.) Therefore making a work available to English-speaking people seems to me to have value.
... I could try to explain myself better, but i'm hungry right now.
