HK DvD's & Anime Creators

[fastsixty6]

Hey all,

I had sent a e-mail to the contact address of import-anime, but I'll ask here cause maybe I'll get a quicker response. (no offense to the person answering the e-mails.)

I recently finished watching an Anime series I really enjoyed. I watched 10 episodes on Anime on Demand, and the last 3 I missed, so I bought the Region 1 copy of those episdoes. Well, now to complete the set, I'm buying the other 3 disks for the incredible price of 20 bucks a disk. :mad:

However it got me thinking, and this may be a stupid question but I gotta know. When you purchase a HK DvD from either here or the other websites that sell the same, do any royalties go to the creators and producers of the series you're watching?

I assume laws and such are different in other parts of the world, so I could have been enjoying all this good anime w/o any of the prophets of my purchases going to the makers. My concern is to endorce the makers of good anime to keep doing so. I know there's alot of "stealing" going on as far as downloading and such, but I for one would like to be a good egg, and give them some support.

Any information would be much appritiated.

[bmvtoys]

this is where the grey area comes in.


In HK, in all technicallity (and i do know what im saying here), the releases made by companies such as MI, FX, etc.. are LEGITIMATE to produce, but NOT to sell or export.

Confused yet?

They pay the right to produce the items but laws prohibit them from exporting or selling them in HK. No joke. What does that mean? They know they are making them, do they care? Sometimes, that's when they export far too much in a given period and someone has to get busted for it. (FX, MI, AC, every major company has gotten raided, but seem to always come back..amazing).

Now moving to your question, do they see royalties? Nope.

Any monies given out are for the production permit, but beyond that, thats it.

B

[fastsixty6]

Okay, so we got unpractical laws then it seems in HK.

These companies buy the rights to reproduce to the owner of the material, and then from there on out the company that bought rights to reproduce it, make all prophet.

Second question. When you buy thing Region 1 (America) do the creators of the anime get royalties from that? Basicly, there are some anime that I would like to support and others I may not care to. Kinda walking the line on being supportive of good anime and unsupportive of bad.

[Puppet Master]

Okay, so we got unpractical laws then it seems in HK.

These companies buy the rights to reproduce to the owner of the material, and then from there on out the company that bought rights to reproduce it, make all prophet.

Second question. When you buy thing Region 1 (America) do the creators of the anime get royalties from that? Basicly, there are some anime that I would like to support and others I may not care to. Kinda walking the line on being supportive of good anime and unsupportive of bad.

If you mean the HKs they don't pay shit the mosty they pay is to get the source material for the english tracks. Otherwise they commonly just rip them right off TV.

As far as R1s go unless im mistaken the companies just pay the Japanese company to get the rights to sell the title and are given the masters for it. Than that's where it ends they hold the license for a certain ammount of time and they can release it and keep printing in till that runs out at which point they can either renew or not depending on the company and the licensors.

[Blight]

By creators do you mean the original Japanese creators or the company that licenses it for region one? The first of which get paid by the dubbing companies (normally a huge amount) to licenses the product in this region. The dubbing companies are the ones that make all the money on the R1 DVD's you buy.

[Elcoholic]

Okay, so we got unpractical laws then it seems in HK.

These companies buy the rights to reproduce to the owner of the material, and then from there on out the company that bought rights to reproduce it, make all prophet.

Second question. When you buy thing Region 1 (America) do the creators of the anime get royalties from that? Basicly, there are some anime that I would like to support and others I may not care to. Kinda walking the line on being supportive of good anime and unsupportive of bad.

From the dvd's you buy here, zero $$ goes to the creators. They basically buy an R1 set, rip it and print their own or they get the series from another source like TV. All the money they get by selling them goes into their own pockets.

Second question. I think like Puppet Master says, the R1 companies buy the rights to sell the show in america for a period of time. They pay a licensing fee to the creators and maybe royalties. But financial numbers are extremenly hard to get for the anime shows. I've rarely seen numbers for licensing and royalties. I personally don't really care about the creators getting money. I think the high prices you pay in america and europe are their fault.

Anime is known for its cheap production costs. All those still shots and camera work make for less frames that need to be painted. Then they make money by showing it on tv in Japan and selling the dvd's there and merchandise. I think at this point they must have made back the cost of the show. But then they go selling it to R1 companies for, what i think are are very high prices and that results in US companies selling the dvd's for $20 per 3 eps. The R1 companies also make money out of merchandise and TV broadcast.

Somewhere in this story there is someone who gets alot of money. Because the numbers are so hard to get I don't know wether they live in Japan or america.

[fastsixty6]

So to sum up.

HK rips are similar to R1, though may be a little shadier.

R1 companies buy licensing for a certain amount of time, and sell the product in America.

In either case, the creators of the series don't make money off of the DvD's sold, either by R1 or HK. The Creators make all their money from television stations picking it up, as well as merchandising.

So the only difference between R1 and HK is probably the quality and the ammount of money you'll be paying; no money goes to support the creators. Okay, I got it now.

Thanks guys and gals for clearing that up.

[Elcoholic]

No no no. HK rips are bootleg. You know what that means right?

Only in the case of official R1 series that you buy at Bestbuy etc. does money go to Japan. Wether the creators directly make money of it depends on their contract but generally yes.

So if you really want to support the creators OR the american companies who bring it over and put a dub on it then you must buy official R1 dvd's. If you want good quality, cheap anime without supporting american or Japanese companies you can get HKDVD's. Like i said, personally I don't care for the creators or R1 companies since i think somewhere in that line someone is making to much money of our backs (but I feel that way with music, games and movies so its probably my problem).

Basically R1 is legal, HK is illegal!

[fastsixty6]

Yeah, it all seems rather confusing.

So is it illegal for this website to be up and running and functioning as a business? Is it illegal to purchase HK DvD's? It seems to me if these company bought licensing, but it's illegal for them to reproduce and sell it, it's some what redundant for the people holding those rights to sell them in the rights in the first place.

ok ok ok, let me try this on for size. It's illegal for them to sell it/reproduce it, but we buy it fair and square, and it's not our problem but there's (FX, MAC, etc).

Do I sound like I get it yet?

[Puppet Master]

Yeah, it all seems rather confusing.

So is it illegal for this website to be up and running and functioning as a business? Is it illegal to purchase HK DvD's? It seems to me if these company bought licensing, but it's illegal for them to reproduce and sell it, it's some what redundant for the people holding those rights to sell them in the rights in the first place.

ok ok ok, let me try this on for size. It's illegal for them to sell it/reproduce it, but we buy it fair and square, and it's not our problem but there's (FX, MAC, etc).

Do I sound like I get it yet?

It's illegal for them to make the sets and it's illegal to sell and buy them. But companies seem to be smart enough to know that if the want sometihng doen they will have to cut the head off the snake. But that doesn't seem to happen E-Bay is sometimes controlled by one company at least but that's about it.

[Cidien]

Gotta love ebay... it would be so easy for them to do something but they don't. They probably get too much money from boots lol.

And buying R1's does help the creators. They get money by selling the license to america and if we don't buy any R1's then they'll stop buying the license and the creators get nothing from us.

[Elcoholic]

Yeah, it all seems rather confusing.

So is it illegal for this website to be up and running and functioning as a business? Is it illegal to purchase HK DvD's? It seems to me if these company bought licensing, but it's illegal for them to reproduce and sell it, it's some what redundant for the people holding those rights to sell them in the rights in the first place.

ok ok ok, let me try this on for size. It's illegal for them to sell it/reproduce it, but we buy it fair and square, and it's not our problem but there's (FX, MAC, etc).

Do I sound like I get it yet?

Its all very shady. This website pays import tax when the discs come through customs. So customs doesn't know or doesn't care they're not the official product since it all looks very professional. Also i think JJ pays sales tax for his company.

Sometimes a cetain US anime company contacts this website or other HK website's with a cease and desist (sp?) letter telling them to stop selling so and so sets. They have never sued a HK shop but if they would they would probably win but its just not worth the effort since there are so many places to get these sets. Kinda like downloading music of Kazaa. They can shut down Kazaa but there are dozens of other places that will pick up where they left of so its not worth the money and time.

The only thing that can be done to stop these sets is going to the people who make them in Asia and american anime companies just don't have the power and funds to do that.

About it being illegal to buy them from here, I don't know. I think buying them is not illegal but selling them is but i'm not sure. There are also alot of sets sold here that are not licensed in the US and that complicates it even more since in theory the only way we can see those shows is through HKdvd's.

But don't worry about getting busted or buying these discs. Noone I know of has ever even had their package confiscated by customs as long as its not hentai. That's also the reason why we aren't completely sure as to how the law sees these sets.

[fastsixty6]

I got a pretty clear picture now.

Honestly, I still like HK sets better due to the fact that they don't take up as much room as R1's. My DVD rack is already full and where I'll place another one, ugh!

So, I'm going to keep buying HK, unless I find a series that really is special to me, and then I'll buy the R1's just because of their better quality and the chance that it will support the creators.

This has been a very informative thread, I thank all of you!

[Zagatto]

Personally, I buy the HK discs of all the Miyazaki releases when they come out because I'm so anxious to see them then I buy the R1 releases of the same movies when they are released to show my support of Miyazaki. I know about the line you walk and showing my support of creators that I think have earned my dollars.

[Mot_Soldats]

For me it's all about the money. Since there are more cheap R1 sets these days like ADV thin packs, that means I can pay around $26 for a 13 episodes and $58 for 26 episodes for stuff I like. Theres no way in hell I'd pay $100+ for a series no matter how much I love it.

Given if that it is a series that I'm intrusted in (I buy blind since downloading is hard on my set up), I plan to try to buy R1 thin packs and such more often to support cheaper R1 dvds more so then to support who makes them. I guess that's a little cold of me, oh well.