Ouch, a personal attack from someone on a bloodsucker site. Oh! The Pain!.

Normally, when people resort to personal attacks online, it means they are not able to offer an actual counter argument. So I read that comment as an admission of defeat.

Animesfree, you wondered if any of us knew anything about how young anime fans feel about watching anime, and if any of us were even young people to begin with. I’ll have you know that I am a college freshman, meaning that I am young and I don’t have a lot of money (the two types of people that you said FUNi doesn’t care about). So to answer your question: Yes, I *do* know what young anime fans go through – I talk to people about it every day. And what I hear from nearly every fan I talk to is a strong disdain of the entire legal industry, with no factual basis whatsoever. They say that anime is free to watch online, so I’m an idiot for paying so much for DVDs.

Think about that. Kids try to say that I’m an idiot for PAYING for my entertainment. You want to know why people like me keep coming back to argue these points with you? It’s not because we work for FUNimation or have any attachment to the company. It’s because we care about the anime medium as a whole, and we are disgusted by people who propagate a view that anime is a worthless, disposable type of entertainment that can be found for free online with no effort whatsoever.

One of the best ways of describing the attitude that this site and ones like it espouse is this question: How much would you be willing to pay for a 13-episode anime series? A few of you said you buy DVDs, but for the majority of anime fans, the answer to that question would be “zero dollars,” since anime can be found for free so easily. That means that, to a majority of anime fans, the cartoons that they love so much are worth nothing to them. If that’s the kind of atmosphere that you and other sites want to exist in, then God help the animators in Japan, the majority of whom labor well under the poverty line in order to create this stuff.

Anime streaming sites didn’t exist 10-15 years ago, your options to procur anime were 1) purchase legally licensed/distributed products, 2) acquire fansubs (which certainly weren’t as easily obtained as they are today, were mostly titles that weren’t licensed here yet, and nowhere near the quality digital media offers) 3) dub someone elses’s VHS or LD (ignoring purchasing bootlegged material or fansubs, as they essentially fall under option 3). Keep in mind anime was a LOT more expensive then, $30-40 for a subtitled VHS tape consisting of 2-4 episodes was common. Now we can agree that option 3 *is* illegal. You are copying/distributing the content without paying for it. No one would claim that they were entitled to owning copies of VHS tapes, Laserdiscs, or DVDs. Digital streaming has sort of allowed this to run rampant without you having to maintain or procure an actual copy of the media. Imagine it more like broadcasting what you’re watching on a dvd or your vcr to thousands of other people. The original company/licensor makes *no* money off of this, yet hundreds of people are watching it.

The claim that Funimation could have just sent a nice, personal, letter asking you to C&D your activities is rather irrelevant. First of all, it’s probably a form letter sent out amongst several others to other similar sites; whoever sent it, be it lawyer or intern, doesn’t have the time to address every bloodsucker site individually. Secondly, why should they bother? You’ve already made a bad impression on them by illegally linking to content that they hold copyright for – you’re stealing from them (and by proxy, the animation studios that created the content in the first place). You claim that you offer a way for them to find new viewership, which might be true; but the viewership isn’t paying them anything; and certainly isn’t making any intention to do so. Do you link to any places where people CAN purchase the things they watch? Are you setting an example by doing so or reviewing box sets of anime released in your region for purchase?

Someone made the claim that Funimation could allow their streams to be embedded on other sites: due to bandwidth concerns, this might not be practical. In addition to streaming commercials; they will rely on other ads on their site, as well as metrics gathered by people visiting their site in order to better target and measure their audience.

Despite what people might like to think, anime (as well as film, music, and other forms of entertainment) isn’t free. Claiming that the people criticizing your site isn’t “supporting Funimation”, it’s supporting the anime industry: an industry that only exists because fans supported it legally.

I did not bash any comment. I certainly disagree with some arguments defending actions by this site that hurt the industry that creates the products that gives life to this site, but I did no bashing.

@sugarsarah: “i think that bruce guy didnt understand he was talking about the chatngo chat not a mesagebord you post on i cant stand that random chatter either if u have something to say say it if not quit spamming random garbage oh guys keep doing what u do and ill keep coming here to watch”

But how is chatngo chat a reason to avoid legal streaming sites? I don’t see a lot of random chatter on Crunchyroll, and Crunchyroll has switched over completely to helping fans support the industry. And, indeed, there’s nothing forcing AnimesFree to get all of its material from illegal sources – when there is a legal stream, it would be perfectly possibly to have a link that popped up the legal stream in a new window. “All illegal, all the time” is just a decision by the site because its more convenient.