Piracy Issues of Japanese Material Culture and Intellectual Property
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAJapanese/comments/1row8xd/what_do_people_think_about_the_idea_that_piracy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
CONTEXT: I was busy browsing through my terminally online SNS app Reddit when I stumbled this sub r/AskAJapanese. It's not that they represent the entire Japanese existence, but you do know they're the most active on that SNS app. So, after doomscrolling, I stumbled this post that garnered a whopping 1.2k upvotes. That's high. Only to found out the comment section is so tediously long and a highly contested position.
Anti-piracy for the Japanese side; and morally gray Pro-piracy for the Westerner's side.
One of the controversial take I've read came from an out-of-touch well-off Japanese, with a comment that said:
"This is an unpleasant topic.
First, let me state that I understand the high hurdles overseas fans face in accessing Japanese content, and I strongly support companies expanding overseas. I also believe that piracy can be tolerated in extreme cases, such as content becoming lost media due to the dissolution of the rights holder, or the existence of censorship by an authoritarian government. This is undoubtedly a very lenient stance on piracy within Japanese public opinion.
That being said, the advocacy and justification for piracy overseas have truly reached an abnormal level. The mere inconvenience of access is entirely insufficient to justify it. You can access content by studying Japanese laguage, buying a plane ticket, coming to Japan, visiting a bookstore or something similar, and buy it. In fact, there are people in Japan who spend hundreds of hours learning Chinese or Spanish or anything and buy plane tickets just to read what they want to read. These people simply want to steal, and they do it because it's cheap.
No excuses."
Until it was rebutted by a Canadian that said:
"Let me spend $2500 on a plane ticket round trip just to get a book that I can't get here in my country when they could just ship."
With an American backing it up:
"Literally what is this person saying, we should spend 2k just to buy a book from Japan(≧▽≦)."
***
I honestly don't know if it's a difference in cultural orientation, but I kinda agree with both the Canadian and the American. No cap. Lol. Who on earth would casually book a plane ticket that costs me around ₱40,000 for a two way ride just so I can buy the manga that I wanted?
Trippin'. Lol.
But that's just me. You can visit and read all of the comments and trust me; it's more than this controversial take. And as for the larger picture of SNS world... another day, another drama. The internet people have so much time to argue on SNS anyway.
