I've been going to bbs.greedland.net, which is sort of the Chinese pirating central for anything anime/manga related. As long as you've an email address to register you can wholesale download any amount of pirated manga/anime + random related stuff (depending on how hard you look).
So recently, due to some power struggle that has something to do with the site sold off to a commercial company, a bunch of guys responsible for getting the pirated stuff broke off and went to another site. Okay, so you just get the pirated stuff and upload them to greedland, right? After all, Greedland is still the biggest BBS/BT network in China for this kind of stuff as far as I'm aware of. Nope. The pirate teams say they'll sue if their stuff is used for unauthorized commercial use because it's their copyright. Hello? If this is US I can at least understand why people might think their pirating work could potentially contribute to the anime/manga world so they've a right to what they do. But this is China, the pirating capital of the world! Everything you could possibly want is pirated. Why would anyone even think copyright matters?
I'm also seeing post like 'you can't stop the power of the people, information will be free!' that you'd normally only expect to find in a democratic society with too much time and freedom on its hands. Of course, China is still one of the least open society in regards to free speech. In fact even on this bastion of piracy one of the first rules you can find is "You will not say anything negative about the government or we turn you over to the police."
If this happened in a western society, it'd be a misunderstanding of how copyright and freedom of speech works. In China, though, it's downright silly, for they have no copyright to protect in the first place and mostly minimal freedom of speech. I wonder if some people will get busted and jailed for promoting democracy, even though all they're trying to do is protect their copyright of their pirated stuff to themselves.
Now if you excuse me, I'm off to get more manga for the purpose of understanding the Japanese culture and language. Yep.
So recently, due to some power struggle that has something to do with the site sold off to a commercial company, a bunch of guys responsible for getting the pirated stuff broke off and went to another site. Okay, so you just get the pirated stuff and upload them to greedland, right? After all, Greedland is still the biggest BBS/BT network in China for this kind of stuff as far as I'm aware of. Nope. The pirate teams say they'll sue if their stuff is used for unauthorized commercial use because it's their copyright. Hello? If this is US I can at least understand why people might think their pirating work could potentially contribute to the anime/manga world so they've a right to what they do. But this is China, the pirating capital of the world! Everything you could possibly want is pirated. Why would anyone even think copyright matters?
I'm also seeing post like 'you can't stop the power of the people, information will be free!' that you'd normally only expect to find in a democratic society with too much time and freedom on its hands. Of course, China is still one of the least open society in regards to free speech. In fact even on this bastion of piracy one of the first rules you can find is "You will not say anything negative about the government or we turn you over to the police."
If this happened in a western society, it'd be a misunderstanding of how copyright and freedom of speech works. In China, though, it's downright silly, for they have no copyright to protect in the first place and mostly minimal freedom of speech. I wonder if some people will get busted and jailed for promoting democracy, even though all they're trying to do is protect their copyright of their pirated stuff to themselves.
Now if you excuse me, I'm off to get more manga for the purpose of understanding the Japanese culture and language. Yep.
