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| Dash no Chris 296th Post
 
Copper Customer
    
|  "Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers"
, posted Thu 8 Jul 07:15
Never thought I'd live to see the day:
quote:
Bandai Entertainment Cracks Down on DVD Piracy and Intellectual Property Infringement
July 07, 2004
by: Vincent Del Vecchio
Bandai cracks down on illegal counterfeit products; sues retailers.
Cypress, CA (July 7, 2004) —Bandai Entertainment announced today that it has served lawsuits against several retailers for engaging in the duplication, importation, distribution, and/or sale of unauthorized merchandise infringing upon copyrighted and trademarked properties at this year’s Anime Expo convention in Anaheim, California. Defendants in Bandai’s lawsuit include:
Otaku Entertainment, Inc., (doing business as MANGA HOUSE)
EJ International, Inc., (doing business as ABCTOY4ME.COM and ANIMECIRCLE.COM)
Anime Combo
MTWC Group, Inc., (doing business as Kawaii Anime and Kawaii-Anime.com)
John Lo, Inc., (doing business as House of Anime and Houseofanime.com)
“The increased proliferation of counterfeit merchandise and DVD piracy of Japanese animated properties has gone on for too long”, states Ken Iyadomi, Executive Vice President of Bandai Entertainment. “The time has come to take a stand against the flood of cheap knockoffs and blatant bootlegs. The vendors who sell pirated merchandise, CDs, and DVDs are causing huge economic losses for legitimate businesses and must be stopped.”
With the full cooperation of all those who participate in the creation and distribution of these products in Japan and elsewhere - Bandai Entertainment aims to aggressively protect its intellectual property rights and licenses through these actions and hopes that these lawsuits will send a clear message to other retailers and distributors that distributing counterfeit or bootleg DVDs and merchandise will not be tolerated.
Consumers and retailers are urged to contact Bandai Entertainment at support@bandai-ent.com to report other distributors suspected of selling counterfeit DVDs and merchandise.
"Defendants in Bandai’s lawsuit include" -- I hope this means there are still more companies (perhaps to be named in the coming weekds) getting nailed in this lawsuit (hopefully we'll be seeing Banzai Anime added to that list). Having attended Anime Expo for nearly 10 years -- and the last 3 of those, as a dealer -- I can tell you there are alot more than 5 retailers hawking bootlegged goods in the AX dealers hall. AX has never had an anti-bootleg policy for their dealers room (many, if not most, anime conventions nowadays have such a policy), so I'm glad to see an industry heavyweight like Bandai taking matters into their own hands. Perhaps this is the first step toward convincing AX to run a "no bootlegs" dealers room, if only to spare itself additional bad press by associating its name with companies being sued for copyright infringement.
--Chris
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| Sano 801th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member+
   
   
| "Re(4):Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers" , posted Thu 8 Jul 14:04
Sadly, when Companies aqquire rights to some Animes, they edit it, change Music, change opening and ending credits, don't give us a Subtitled Version and that forces some of us to get Bootlegs. I get Bootlegs sometimes but always throw them away when the properties are released here correctly. Shoot, I would throw my Bootleg of the SF2 Animated Movie away really fast if someone would offer an Official Subtitled Copy and not that crappy Dubbed Version.
And people say, "Get Fan Subs, they're Free!" I'm sorry, I live in NYC and the circles of Fan Subs giving people stuff for free does not exist here(Well, they do, BUT IT IS HARD.) I love how on bootleg tapes messages are included saying "If you brought this you got ripped off! You should of got it for free!" Well, thanks Asshoes for telling us how to get it free.
Anyway, I hate the current state of Anime so I rarely bootleg or acquire Fan Subs nowadays. Only more or less current shows I like are Ninja Scroll (even though it finished) and Ghost in the Shell. There's other stuff I like, but why bother if I can get the Manga version in English for a lot cheaper which is official/canon before Animes change every freaking thing, I can read it whenever I want and don't have to deal with Cartoon Network's insane sheduling skills.
By the way, the quality of Fansubs has gone WAAAAAAAY down over the years.
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| DarkZero 851th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(5):Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers" , posted Thu 8 Jul 14:40
quote:
By the way, the quality of Fansubs has gone WAAAAAAAY down over the years.
In just the last five years, we've gone from fansubs with fundamental grammar, spelling, and translation errors being released weeks or years after the episodes air in Japan to receiving weekly fansubs with perfect grammar, perfect spelling, a perfect translation, appropriate font colors (no more FLCL "White text on white background?! BRILLIANT!" fansubs), and standard English and Japanese karaoke subtitles for all openings and endings. Fansubs are infinitely better than they were years ago. Of all of the fansubs I've watched in the last year, I can't say that any have been less than perfect, nor had less than DVD-quality video and excellent sound.
Are you sure you aren't talking about bootleg DVDs from Asia? Those aren't "fansubs". Those are for-profit works of piracy. Not that there's anyway wrong with that, though. Without them, I never would've been able to watch Hikaru No Go or Initial D First Stage, bad translation or not.
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| hikarutilmitt
209th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(4):Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers" , posted Sun 11 Jul 17:15
quote:
And which place would that be, out of curiousity?
I know that the Heroes & Fantasies behind Ingram Park Mall sells them, so I can only assume that the others probably do as well. Gamer's Edge sells them (though since the owner used to work at Gamefellas, the store itself feels like a smaller, and further crappier, version of Gamefellas). I should fix my earlier statement to be a few less, since Shazaam no longer seems to carry ANY sort of anime goods, though they always sold bootlegs of CDs and anime DVDs.
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And yes, Gamefellas was an evil company. They would markup their import Dreamcast games wayyy too high (Ikaruga was still $70 when I could get it for less than half that online). Plus, they would markup their US games higher than MSRP.
Then again, they did sell Hentai, though at premium prices.
I think Gamefellas closed their two shops in San Antonio. Might still be open in Austin.
Yeah, Gamefellas used to sell tons and tons of hentai, right next to the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh (bootleg) DVDs on their shelves. Both of their stores in San Antonio, North Star and Rolling Oaks, have been closed for at least a month or two each. Also, at least one of the stores in Austin has closed.
I'm not upset to see them go, though. They were mostly jerks who overpriced their games and sold inferior products anyway.
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| Burning Ranger 855th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(5):Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers" , posted Sun 11 Jul 20:00
quote:
And which place would that be, out of curiousity?
I know that the Heroes & Fantasies behind Ingram Park Mall sells them, so I can only assume that the others probably do as well. Gamer's Edge sells them (though since the owner used to work at Gamefellas, the store itself feels like a smaller, and further crappier, version of Gamefellas). I should fix my earlier statement to be a few less, since Shazaam no longer seems to carry ANY sort of anime goods, though they always sold bootlegs of CDs and anime DVDs.
Hmm, I haven't noticed any bootleg DVDs at the Heroes and Fantasies where I live (Universal City, supposedly the main store). But strangely enough, I saw a TV in the place showing Dodgeball. I have to admit, though, that the owner of the store (big guy, reminds me of ComicBookGuy from the Simpsons) is a nice fella and always helps me find what I'm looking for.
So Gamers is just another pisspoor version of Gamefellas? I saw that store on Thousand Oaks. Went in there once and had Eternal Darkness there on clearance... but that was maybe 2 years ago or so.
Advanced Cyborg E. Branger AKA Burning Ranger
"Never underestimate the predictabilty of stupidity." -Vinnie Jones from SNATCH
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| hikarutilmitt
210th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(6):Bandai sues bootleg anime retailers" , posted Sun 11 Jul 23:39
quote:
Hmm, I haven't noticed any bootleg DVDs at the Heroes and Fantasies where I live (Universal City, supposedly the main store). But strangely enough, I saw a TV in the place showing Dodgeball. I have to admit, though, that the owner of the store (big guy, reminds me of ComicBookGuy from the Simpsons) is a nice fella and always helps me find what I'm looking for.
Oh he still works there? Big guy with dark/red/something hair, beard and glasses (name is on the tip of my tongue)? I haven't seen him last time I was in there. I used to live in UC back when in 8th-10th grade. Used to play Magic:TG there a lot back in those days.
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So Gamers is just another pisspoor version of Gamefellas? I saw that store on Thousand Oaks. Went in there once and had Eternal Darkness there on clearance... but that was maybe 2 years ago or so.
Yeah, what's worse is that they have a lot of TVs in there for people to play on so that it can be a sort of gathering place, yet the charges are outrageous. If I want to pay to play a game I either buy it or go to an arcade. I refuse to pay to play a console game in a store.
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ippen no kuinashi!"
