#i understand not wanting people to pirate but just going ‘piracy is bad!!!!’ is unproductive

[glassamphibians]

the book piracy discussion is so weird bc like . what if instead of telling people they’re awful for pirating you talked about websites that make books accessible!! or talked about other ways to support authors!! telling someone to stop doing something isn’t gonna work if you don’t give them alternatives

#i understand not wanting people to pirate but just going ‘piracy is bad!!!!’ is unproductive #people know that piracy can harm authors they Get That #but its also free and accessible #which cant be guaranteed with bookstores and libraries #so either find them alternatives or leave them alone #books

[shiruvan]

Things going in twitter about Japanese Garage Kits

The issue was started because ‘western’ garage kit youtube content creator, was implied to have been sponsored by certain unauthorized recaster company(basically pirated); the youtuber’s denial seems plausible that by accepting the recast kit for free to make content, it doesn’t mean accepting sponsorship, but alas, the Japanese sculptors see it just as guilty as taking sponsorship from pirates. The overblown picking on unrelated mistakes or bad things from every side was just, imo, overblown, and simply unproductive, but this common thing in western part of social media is difficult to translate to the Japanese like they can’t believe those things just happen all the time, whereas us in the Anglosphere, not limited to western, seem to accept that such are the Japanese and their polite-politics, being stiff and difficult.

Given the history that it’s difficult to even purchase Garage kit directly from Japanese GK makers and thus making it expensive to buy from scalpers, the very expensive, unprotected gray market, I understand as much to the people who enjoyed and use pirated products extensively due to poor distribution, albeit most of the issue is overbaked political problems that are outside the consumers and these 3rd party producers’ hand.

To the Japanese GK producers, its so much seemed like a god-granted privilege to sell their original work copies to the domestic Japanese market, so for them, to ask license for selling overseas is out of their mind, albeit WE CAN ALSO UNDERSTAND as foreigner or not, that there are always issues with fanmades, licensed 3rd party products, for possibly wrongly representing a company’s interests, such are the right holders for popular characters/IP such as Kadokawa, Gainax, Toho, and everything else, if gaining income for someone elses’ intellectual property might be on the wrong side without permission.

To the rest of the world who’d like to enjoy Japanese paraphernalia as direct as possible, we’re kind of boned with piracy as a better option; paying direct to creators might be what we want, but how many proxies/hands should we pay to deserve that? distrust to own country’s system is usually enough to sway to the pirate option because they can also reduce tax from illicit customs declaration(and somewhat generally not so much of problem by law in many countries?)

what we can do

-Try gaining permission to sell overseas, make a line of trusted potential buyers/distribution points, confirm their identity as to not misuse the purchase. If done right, this is the way to serve better than the pirates and gray market scalpers, so the garage kits end in the proper end-users.

-Do not normalize piracy like it’s okay to advertise them. Simple as this may sound, our lack of option may turn even the most illegal ways to be ‘It won’t hurt anyone except their feelings’ gray-legal, this won’t be an instant utterance, instead, a constant campaign from all of us who supports, even if only morally, by not purchasing pirated kits, not watching/reacting to youtubers who endorse/mention piracy as the way.

I meant to say all this in Japanese, but damn, just how. I’m even speaking it through both views/sides, sometimes it’s all us, both sides, to do them in agreement, since it’s so hard to solve that political problem on our own.