I find it amusing that he's so worried about a few large donors having undo influence because... historically we've had something similar happen before. Back when the great classical composers were doing their thing the vast majority of them would be sponsored by one person, often a monarch. And somehow, even being horribly influenced by one "super fan", they managed to produce what are widely recognized as some of the greatest works of music ever made. That includes composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Mozart, etc.
I still don't see where the parent's faith comes into this at all. There don't appear to be any reports that the kid's mom is a Christian, fundamentalist or otherwise, though suddenly that conclusion is being jumped to. Oh, I see. South Carolina. It must be then!
To be honest, if you've read the book, it's hard to see how anyone could jump the conclusion it's pornographic unless they have an axe to grind of some kind. Which opens up the possibility that the parent's Christian and overly touchy about some things. So while it may be an assumption it's not unreasonable in this case. Ender's Game is not even remotely pornographic.
So if the parent isn't a Christian with an axe to grind, they've still got issues of some kind.
That theory seems to have been invented wholesale by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) in an interview. There's an update to the story linked at the very top that says the claims the teacher was reading pornography off the Internet (which came from Card) are patently false.
The other two books are another young adult novel and an Agatha Christie novel, neither of which are pornographic.
It was a foregone conclusion, LS always was going to use the upper 20mhz as well, that was always in their plans, even after the testing started showing massive interference (like everyone predicted but LS). Their investors should be raising holy hell with LS, they got ripped off, pure and simple.
Yes it's too bad they wasted a lot of money on a doomed project. But not something to regret unless it was your money. They really didn't help the market. Maybe they were planning to be open in some ways, but their antagonistic attitude towards the GPS people, and really engineers in general, have set the stage for the next innovative startup that comes along that wants to use some satellite spectrum that's not adjacent to GPS and actually has a sound business plan that won't violate the laws of physics to have an uphill battle thanks to LS.
That's what we should be regretting: that LS's totally botched implementation has set back the market segment quite a bit. Not that they failed, that they failed in the way they did.
From what I've read, LightSquared actually passed up on the chance to get some different satellite spectrum from Dish Networks a while back, spectrum that's not adjacent to GPS and wouldn't have had the same interference issues. So we could have had both, GPS and a nation-wide wireless Internet service, but LS was too dead-set on using their GPS-adjacent spectrum and (and insisting the laws of physics didn't apply to them) for that to happen.
That's the real thing to regret: that LS's management was so incompetent.
Competition is nice, but LightSpeed's kind of the poster child for bad business plans (and decisions), so I'm not feeling any loss for them failing. I don't think they've helped matters any either, because they were so antagonistic towards GPS makers (and engineers, they were were trying to violate the laws of physics) they've set the whole business segment back a long ways. The next innovative company that comes along with a real, workable, business plan that would use satellite spectrum's going to have an uphill battle now.
So in the end, they've actually made things worse, not better.
That is precisely the kind of 'scrappy' that I wrote about in the article. As you and Artp noted, I somewhat glossed over the spectrum purchase part. What I wrote about, and what will be missed, is this venue of open and free thought, unlimited by any legacy.
That kind of thinking isn't very useful when you're and idiot in all the ways that count. Ignoring the laws of physics, passing up the opportunity to get different satellite bands (as I understand it, they passed up the chance to get some bandwidth from Dish networks that was in a range of frequencies where interference wouldn't have been an issue, but they passed on the chance and put all the eggs in the adjacent-to-GPS-band they already had. Now Dish is moving ahead with similar plans.), and when reality proved that you really can't do what they wanted without interference, they started whining like a spoiled toddler saying it's everyone else's fault. (It's not, as any Electronics Engineer and/or undergrad can tell you.)
Maybe LS had a few creative ideas, but when it came to the really important stuff (business plans, ignoring the laws of physics) they blew it big-time. So their creativity counts for nothing. And they aren't going to be missed. What we actually need are creative business plans that are actually possible to implement. If your business plan violates the laws of physics it's a joke, not a plan.
Apparently you have no clue about the laws of physics. As has been pointed out numerous times by many, many people, LightSquared's failure was their own damn fault and what's more, they should have seen it coming.
This isn't GPS receiver's faults. The band that LightSquared wanted to use is directly adjacent to the GPS bands. And it was licensed, properly, for satellite broadcast. That means very low power signals. The terrestrial signals LightSquared wanted to use are, literally, over 1,000 times as powerful. Let's see you make out a candle lit in front of a spotlight while staring into the spotlight and see how well you fare. It might be possible, but it's very, very difficult. Filters that can filter out that kind of power level are about the size of a scuba tank. I don't think people are going to be willing to lug their GPS receivers around on their backs because some idiots refuse to grasp the laws of physics.
The only thing to regret here is that LightSquared is run by idiots who should have known better, were undoubtedly told multiple times by their own engineers that this was impossible, but they continued to forge ahead anyway. Any shareholders should sue them into oblivion. If they're privately held, their investors should raise holy hell with them. This wasn't an example of creativity, this was an example of idiocy trying to blame everyone else for their own failures.
Piracy won't stop. People have been exchanging material with friends since floppy disks in the 80's.
It's been going on much, much longer than that. At the very least a couple of centuries, probably longer. Back in August Mike posted about how France kept upping the penalties when people kept infringing on (exclusive) fabric patterns. Eventually they went all the way to the death penalty and killed some 16,000 people. It didn't stop the copying then either.
But you're absolutely correct, this won't cause much of a delay, if any. The only reason I think it may cause a noticeable drop briefly is because it may take a few weeks for all of the file locker companies to settle down on what they're going to do. Until then, it'll be a bit chaotic and can't really settle down, so pirating may drop due to that. But it will go back up again.
And pirating will not drop one bit, nor will they make an extra dime.
It's possible pirating will drop, but only for a short while until the dust settles and all the dedicated pirates move on to the next big thing. (Whether there's another technology, or just finding new, preferred file lockers to use.) I'm sure the copyright maximalists will cheer this brief drop as proof that their actions are making a difference, then either ignore the piracy rate going back up, or use that as an excuse to demand yet more over-bearing and damaging laws/lawsuits/etc. against yet more technology.
I'm starting to think this isn't a war about copyright, it's a war on technology, because that nasty technology is disruptive and makes it too easy to copy stuff.
And yes, I do think this is a war now. The copyright maximalists and the US government have essentially wiped out an entire technology with unproven allegations (MegaUpload's not had their day in court, it's entirely possible they could be found not guilty, in part if not fully). That's definitely an attack, and a rather nasty one at that.
Here's a list someone posted on a message board a short while ago:
MegaUpload - Closed.
Rapidshare - status unknown
FileServe - Closing does not sell premium. File sharing already disabled.
FileJungle - Deleting files. Locked in the U.S..
UploadStation - Locked in the U.S..
FileSonic - the news is arbitrary (under FBI investigation). No longer allows sharing files.
VideoBB - Closed! would disappear soon.
Uploaded - Banned U.S. and the FBI went after the owners who are gone.
FilePost - Deleting all material (will leave executables, pdfs, txts)
Videoz - closed and locked in the countries affiliated with the USA.
4shared - Deleting files with copyright and waits in line at the FBI.
MediaFire - Called to testify in the next 90 days
What I find most disturbing is the sites that are simply banning all US IPs. We're quickly becoming pariahs online, and this will likely continue. After all, we've essentially wiped out a useful sector technology of overnight, and this is making a lot of people (NOT just pirates) very, very angry at us the world over.
Who's going to develop anything that might be used to infringe -- even if it has mainly productive non-infringing uses -- if it may lead to such a horrible and drawn out process?
I'm sure that's the whole point. All that new technology interferes with existing business models, and the entertainment companies don't want to change. If you can't adapt, you try to stop the world changing.
I would find it infinitely amusing if, say, The Pirate Bay bought it and put up a torrent tracker on the site (or some other site that would royally tick off Righthaven's masters).
Or maybe just slap up a webpage that says "RightHaven sued me and all I got was this lousy domain."
Even if you give them the possibility that the password to the account is the trade secret, if that's the case shouldn't PhoneDog know said password? After all, it's their trade secret. If they did know it then it'd be a trivial matter to take control and/or delete the account. (Likewise, if the account relied on PhoneDog resources (such as E-mail address) they could easily take control of the account.) They haven't done so, this seems to imply that at the least he changed the password (probably around the same time he changed the account to @noahkravitz) so that would mean... he's not misappropriated their trade secret, he left it behind when he left the company.
To be fair, even most of the ardent IP trolls disliked Righthaven. Righthaven has proven time and time again that they were, at best, clueless idiots who were making utter fools of themselves and their whole legal "strategy". They've been an embarrassment to supporters of stronger IP laws (and lawyers) everywhere. I doubt anyone is going to miss them.
Not me, I don't buy Hollywood movies, I don't download them either, I rarely ever go to the theater (last time was about 3 years ago), I could care less if they go out of business, I won't miss them at all. I certainly won't miss their content, it's not worth watching, let alone paying for.
But I do care about this stuff because when it fails they use it as an excuse to encourage more draconian laws that will take away my freedoms and try to destroy the Internet in the process. I'm sick and tired of businesses I don't support (and don't give a damn about) trying to take away my rights because they feel they have some God-given right to make obscene profits without having to adapt with the times.
Of course all you copyright maximalists will refuse to believe that I don't want their product. Your world view is completely "us vs. them" and if we're not one of you we're lying, thieving, stealing jerks who want everything free. You can't fathom someone thinking your industry's worthless and not worth supporting (or watching). But we do exist, and we're freaking sick and tired of you taking away our freedoms because you can't adapt to changing times.
How about you try reading my post instead of trolling? So she paid for a pro IMDB account, that's a credit card transaction. How could Amazon have obtained her age from that? Are you claiming that any company out there obtains your age when you purchase something with your credit card? (If so, proof please, because I'm not buying it and I doubt anyone else will either.) As I pointed out (and you quote, and ignore), why would Amazon have run a credit report on her anyway? They had no reason to do so, and I seriously doubt it would be worth the cost to them (they aren't free) just to get the age of some relatively unknown actress to add to the IMDB. It just doesn't make sense.
And yes, they are regarded as confidential, but there's absolutely no logic here in how (or even why, getting her age isn't enough) Amazon would have obtained one. Not to mention there's no explanation for how Amazon obtained her social security number to run the report. That's definitely not part of a credit card transaction, and notably, while the lawsuit itself says that signing up for IMDB pro requires providing personal information, it does not claim it requires a social security number. Given that would be quite pertinent in this case it would be mentioned. And if Amazon could have gotten a report so easily, just about anyone she's ever used her credit card with could have obtained one as well.
Add in my original points, that it's pretty much impossible that all her employers (aka, the people hiring her to act) could have not known her age, that the Screen Actors Guild probably knows it, that it's likely in her credit reports, etc. and the most likely scenario is exactly what I said before: that any of a hundred different people that knew her real age due to various reasons added it to the IMDB, not that Amazon did something that makes not a bit of sense to obtain and add it. Is it possible that someone broke some confidentiality rules when adding it to the IMDB? Quite likely. But is it likely that Amazon was the one who did it? No, they really had no reason to do so.
Like I said last time, she may think she's been meticulous in hiding her real age, but the reality is likely to be something quite different.
I understand that the lawsuit is about how she claims they got her age information but...
How could those who employ her not know her age? Even if she can somehow keep it from them (which I doubt), what about the Screen Actors Guild? I seriously, seriously doubt the only way this information could have leaked is via her credit card (and do credit cards even have that info tied to them by anyone but the credit card company? Age is certainly not required for any credit card transaction I've ever completed at Amazon or anywhere else.)
If she's saying Amazon got it from her credit report, well then... it's not exactly well hidden if they have it either is it? (And why would Amazon have pulled her credit report?)
All in all, I think this info most likely leaked from one of a hundred different places than from Amazon. She may think she's been meticulous in hiding it, but the reality is likely to be something quite different.
It's a perfectly reasonable business. Good luck trying to do it however. All reports I've seen is that the Japanese publishing companies are very difficult to deal with. Obstinate would probably be putting it kindly. They're also terrified of re-importation (although somewhat less so with manga) because they tend to insanely overprice their product in the Japanese market, and have made little to no moves to provide digital manga within Japan so they're at best uninterested in allowing a company in another part of the world to provide the same service, at worst they're actively against it.
So the inevitable has happened, and despite what the WIPO article claims the problem isn't the scanlation groups, it's the big aggregators like MangaFox. The aggregators take the work the fans do, put it up in online readers, slap ads all over the site and rake in ad income, while doing none of the work. There's quite a bit of very strong dislike in the manga fan community about what sites like MangaFox do (very, very strong dislike, hate is probably a better word). Many groups have policies forbidding the big aggregators from posting their scans at all, or requiring a delay of several days (to weeks). MangaFox has a tendency to only honor these requests when it's not a super popular series.
There's also further problems with WIPO's article. Nearly all of the scanlations groups host their manga on MediaFire as it's far less annoying than most file sharing sites and works wonderfully for the small files that manga scanlations typically are. MediaFire has no points system, nor any way to earn money from downloads. Many of the scanlation groups do run ads on their sites, but it's exceptionally rare for any of them to even break even on hosting costs, much less turn a profit. All the sites making profit are the big, big aggregators like MangaFox.
Finally, and I say this as a long-time fan of anime & manga, it's very, very hard to feel sorry for the Japanese anime & manga industry. The publishing companies have been repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot for a long time, and have apparently still learned nothing. They grossly overprice their product in their own market (anime on BluRay in Japan routinely costs $60 USD or more a disc with 2 episodes a disc being the norm, that's $30 an episode!) and are terrified of re-importation (Japanese customers buying the release from another country and just disabling subtitles to watch it). This is an industry in dire need of change, but it's resisting it even more strongly than the RIAA and MPAA are in the US, and it's starting to catch up with them.
We've had the "super-fan" thing in the past, it worked fine
I find it amusing that he's so worried about a few large donors having undo influence because... historically we've had something similar happen before. Back when the great classical composers were doing their thing the vast majority of them would be sponsored by one person, often a monarch. And somehow, even being horribly influenced by one "super fan", they managed to produce what are widely recognized as some of the greatest works of music ever made. That includes composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Mozart, etc.
So what's the problem again?
Re: Re: I see it the other way
So if the parent isn't a Christian with an axe to grind, they've still got issues of some kind.
Re: Re: My guess
That theory seems to have been invented wholesale by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) in an interview. There's an update to the story linked at the very top that says the claims the teacher was reading pornography off the Internet (which came from Card) are patently false.
The other two books are another young adult novel and an Agatha Christie novel, neither of which are pornographic.
I think a parent overreacted badly.
Re: Re: sigh, please learn some basics
It was a foregone conclusion, LS always was going to use the upper 20mhz as well, that was always in their plans, even after the testing started showing massive interference (like everyone predicted but LS). Their investors should be raising holy hell with LS, they got ripped off, pure and simple.
Yes it's too bad they wasted a lot of money on a doomed project. But not something to regret unless it was your money. They really didn't help the market. Maybe they were planning to be open in some ways, but their antagonistic attitude towards the GPS people, and really engineers in general, have set the stage for the next innovative startup that comes along that wants to use some satellite spectrum that's not adjacent to GPS and actually has a sound business plan that won't violate the laws of physics to have an uphill battle thanks to LS.
That's what we should be regretting: that LS's totally botched implementation has set back the market segment quite a bit. Not that they failed, that they failed in the way they did.
Re:
From what I've read, LightSquared actually passed up on the chance to get some different satellite spectrum from Dish Networks a while back, spectrum that's not adjacent to GPS and wouldn't have had the same interference issues. So we could have had both, GPS and a nation-wide wireless Internet service, but LS was too dead-set on using their GPS-adjacent spectrum and (and insisting the laws of physics didn't apply to them) for that to happen.
That's the real thing to regret: that LS's management was so incompetent.
Re: Re:
Competition is nice, but LightSpeed's kind of the poster child for bad business plans (and decisions), so I'm not feeling any loss for them failing. I don't think they've helped matters any either, because they were so antagonistic towards GPS makers (and engineers, they were were trying to violate the laws of physics) they've set the whole business segment back a long ways. The next innovative company that comes along with a real, workable, business plan that would use satellite spectrum's going to have an uphill battle now.
So in the end, they've actually made things worse, not better.
Re: Re: Re: Whose problem was it?
Maybe LS had a few creative ideas, but when it came to the really important stuff (business plans, ignoring the laws of physics) they blew it big-time. So their creativity counts for nothing. And they aren't going to be missed. What we actually need are creative business plans that are actually possible to implement. If your business plan violates the laws of physics it's a joke, not a plan.
We should regret LightSquared's failure to grasp the laws of physics?
Apparently you have no clue about the laws of physics. As has been pointed out numerous times by many, many people, LightSquared's failure was their own damn fault and what's more, they should have seen it coming.
This isn't GPS receiver's faults. The band that LightSquared wanted to use is directly adjacent to the GPS bands. And it was licensed, properly, for satellite broadcast. That means very low power signals. The terrestrial signals LightSquared wanted to use are, literally, over 1,000 times as powerful. Let's see you make out a candle lit in front of a spotlight while staring into the spotlight and see how well you fare. It might be possible, but it's very, very difficult. Filters that can filter out that kind of power level are about the size of a scuba tank. I don't think people are going to be willing to lug their GPS receivers around on their backs because some idiots refuse to grasp the laws of physics.
The only thing to regret here is that LightSquared is run by idiots who should have known better, were undoubtedly told multiple times by their own engineers that this was impossible, but they continued to forge ahead anyway. Any shareholders should sue them into oblivion. If they're privately held, their investors should raise holy hell with them. This wasn't an example of creativity, this was an example of idiocy trying to blame everyone else for their own failures.
Re: Re: Piracy might drop in the short run, but not the long run
But you're absolutely correct, this won't cause much of a delay, if any. The only reason I think it may cause a noticeable drop briefly is because it may take a few weeks for all of the file locker companies to settle down on what they're going to do. Until then, it'll be a bit chaotic and can't really settle down, so pirating may drop due to that. But it will go back up again.
Piracy might drop in the short run, but not the long run
I'm starting to think this isn't a war about copyright, it's a war on technology, because that nasty technology is disruptive and makes it too easy to copy stuff.
And yes, I do think this is a war now. The copyright maximalists and the US government have essentially wiped out an entire technology with unproven allegations (MegaUpload's not had their day in court, it's entirely possible they could be found not guilty, in part if not fully). That's definitely an attack, and a rather nasty one at that.
It's actually really, really bad
Here's a list someone posted on a message board a short while ago:
What I find most disturbing is the sites that are simply banning all US IPs. We're quickly becoming pariahs online, and this will likely continue. After all, we've essentially wiped out a useful sector technology of overnight, and this is making a lot of people (NOT just pirates) very, very angry at us the world over.I really doubt this is going to end well.
(untitled comment)
Re: Re: confused
I would find it infinitely amusing if, say, The Pirate Bay bought it and put up a torrent tracker on the site (or some other site that would royally tick off Righthaven's masters).
Or maybe just slap up a webpage that says "RightHaven sued me and all I got was this lousy domain."
If the password is the "trade secret" shouldn't PhoneDog know it?
Even if you give them the possibility that the password to the account is the trade secret, if that's the case shouldn't PhoneDog know said password? After all, it's their trade secret. If they did know it then it'd be a trivial matter to take control and/or delete the account. (Likewise, if the account relied on PhoneDog resources (such as E-mail address) they could easily take control of the account.) They haven't done so, this seems to imply that at the least he changed the password (probably around the same time he changed the account to @noahkravitz) so that would mean... he's not misappropriated their trade secret, he left it behind when he left the company.
Re:
To be fair, even most of the ardent IP trolls disliked Righthaven. Righthaven has proven time and time again that they were, at best, clueless idiots who were making utter fools of themselves and their whole legal "strategy". They've been an embarrassment to supporters of stronger IP laws (and lawyers) everywhere. I doubt anyone is going to miss them.
Re:
Not me, I don't buy Hollywood movies, I don't download them either, I rarely ever go to the theater (last time was about 3 years ago), I could care less if they go out of business, I won't miss them at all. I certainly won't miss their content, it's not worth watching, let alone paying for.
But I do care about this stuff because when it fails they use it as an excuse to encourage more draconian laws that will take away my freedoms and try to destroy the Internet in the process. I'm sick and tired of businesses I don't support (and don't give a damn about) trying to take away my rights because they feel they have some God-given right to make obscene profits without having to adapt with the times.
Of course all you copyright maximalists will refuse to believe that I don't want their product. Your world view is completely "us vs. them" and if we're not one of you we're lying, thieving, stealing jerks who want everything free. You can't fathom someone thinking your industry's worthless and not worth supporting (or watching). But we do exist, and we're freaking sick and tired of you taking away our freedoms because you can't adapt to changing times.
Re: Re: Re: Re: @ "Manabi": try reading an entire paragraph.
How about you try reading my post instead of trolling? So she paid for a pro IMDB account, that's a credit card transaction. How could Amazon have obtained her age from that? Are you claiming that any company out there obtains your age when you purchase something with your credit card? (If so, proof please, because I'm not buying it and I doubt anyone else will either.) As I pointed out (and you quote, and ignore), why would Amazon have run a credit report on her anyway? They had no reason to do so, and I seriously doubt it would be worth the cost to them (they aren't free) just to get the age of some relatively unknown actress to add to the IMDB. It just doesn't make sense.
And yes, they are regarded as confidential, but there's absolutely no logic here in how (or even why, getting her age isn't enough) Amazon would have obtained one. Not to mention there's no explanation for how Amazon obtained her social security number to run the report. That's definitely not part of a credit card transaction, and notably, while the lawsuit itself says that signing up for IMDB pro requires providing personal information, it does not claim it requires a social security number. Given that would be quite pertinent in this case it would be mentioned. And if Amazon could have gotten a report so easily, just about anyone she's ever used her credit card with could have obtained one as well.
Add in my original points, that it's pretty much impossible that all her employers (aka, the people hiring her to act) could have not known her age, that the Screen Actors Guild probably knows it, that it's likely in her credit reports, etc. and the most likely scenario is exactly what I said before: that any of a hundred different people that knew her real age due to various reasons added it to the IMDB, not that Amazon did something that makes not a bit of sense to obtain and add it. Is it possible that someone broke some confidentiality rules when adding it to the IMDB? Quite likely. But is it likely that Amazon was the one who did it? No, they really had no reason to do so.
Like I said last time, she may think she's been meticulous in hiding her real age, but the reality is likely to be something quite different.
Re: Re:
I understand that the lawsuit is about how she claims they got her age information but...
How could those who employ her not know her age? Even if she can somehow keep it from them (which I doubt), what about the Screen Actors Guild? I seriously, seriously doubt the only way this information could have leaked is via her credit card (and do credit cards even have that info tied to them by anyone but the credit card company? Age is certainly not required for any credit card transaction I've ever completed at Amazon or anywhere else.)
If she's saying Amazon got it from her credit report, well then... it's not exactly well hidden if they have it either is it? (And why would Amazon have pulled her credit report?)
All in all, I think this info most likely leaked from one of a hundred different places than from Amazon. She may think she's been meticulous in hiding it, but the reality is likely to be something quite different.
Re: Re: Re:
No it doesn't, it just takes a lot of money to spread around as bri... er, campaign contributions!
Re:
It's a perfectly reasonable business. Good luck trying to do it however. All reports I've seen is that the Japanese publishing companies are very difficult to deal with. Obstinate would probably be putting it kindly. They're also terrified of re-importation (although somewhat less so with manga) because they tend to insanely overprice their product in the Japanese market, and have made little to no moves to provide digital manga within Japan so they're at best uninterested in allowing a company in another part of the world to provide the same service, at worst they're actively against it.
So the inevitable has happened, and despite what the WIPO article claims the problem isn't the scanlation groups, it's the big aggregators like MangaFox. The aggregators take the work the fans do, put it up in online readers, slap ads all over the site and rake in ad income, while doing none of the work. There's quite a bit of very strong dislike in the manga fan community about what sites like MangaFox do (very, very strong dislike, hate is probably a better word). Many groups have policies forbidding the big aggregators from posting their scans at all, or requiring a delay of several days (to weeks). MangaFox has a tendency to only honor these requests when it's not a super popular series.
There's also further problems with WIPO's article. Nearly all of the scanlations groups host their manga on MediaFire as it's far less annoying than most file sharing sites and works wonderfully for the small files that manga scanlations typically are. MediaFire has no points system, nor any way to earn money from downloads. Many of the scanlation groups do run ads on their sites, but it's exceptionally rare for any of them to even break even on hosting costs, much less turn a profit. All the sites making profit are the big, big aggregators like MangaFox.
Finally, and I say this as a long-time fan of anime & manga, it's very, very hard to feel sorry for the Japanese anime & manga industry. The publishing companies have been repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot for a long time, and have apparently still learned nothing. They grossly overprice their product in their own market (anime on BluRay in Japan routinely costs $60 USD or more a disc with 2 episodes a disc being the norm, that's $30 an episode!) and are terrified of re-importation (Japanese customers buying the release from another country and just disabling subtitles to watch it). This is an industry in dire need of change, but it's resisting it even more strongly than the RIAA and MPAA are in the US, and it's starting to catch up with them.