FUNimation’s C&D
Recently, within the past day or so (I’m not sure when, for I’ve been holed up in bed, sick), we were sent a Cease and Desist order from FUNimation.
While it has always been my personal belief that fansubs only support the American companies by “previewing” their work, I own my own business, and as a business man I understand the right of wanting to protect your intellectual properties.
It is a sad day today that I must announce that IY4Ever² Fansubs is dropping Slayers REVOLUTION.
Hopefully, somewhere, a group of anonymous people will continue on to finish this series for the fans, but for now I must ask you to support your local anime distribution company and purchase Slayers REVOLUTION when you arrive on DVD shelves. I will be.
Sincerely,
Zephie-chan, IY4Ever² Fansubs Group Coordinator
And I say NoFunimation can go to hell.
If they had licensed it? Maybe. You know what? I’ll be damned if I wind up being forced through the same shit they’ve pulled years past, where we wait and wait and wait while they get crapass VA’s for Lina-The-Barfly and Rat-Boy-Gourry to do the US “dubs” again.
I was fully intending to buy the Slayers REVOLUTION DVD set when it came out. Now? NoFunimation can go to hell. I’m boycotting them. Slayers TRY was the last thing I shall ever purchase from their crap company.
Well there goes that shining light of hope. Guess its not the worst thing since this season of Slayers has honestly been a cut below the usual. While Funimation is killing people’s weeks they should pass along to the creators to bring up the quality if they expect anyone to buy this series.
Guess they did a good job of killing the subs for this series though. Since SS-Eclipse and here were the only groups that cared enough about this in the first place. Down now to the RAWs and getting some basic summary from a blog. Yeah that’s pretty sad.
Still can understand the choice made even if I don’t like it. These things happen and you find a way to keep going.
This makes me a sad panda. At least the translated manga is about…sorta.
I really don’t like this any more than you guys, but the Cease and Desist is a real legal threat, and can be enforced on half of the current staff (the other half being outside of the country), including the translator. In the economic depression that the US is headed towards, we can’t afford a lawsuit, or even the potential risk of one.
Hey, without a translator, I have no translation to watch Slayers either. Which sucks big time, because the only reason we did this project was because I’ve been a huge fan of Slayers since the first VHS translations by Software Sculptors. This was my personal baby.
We just have to cross our fingers and hope something totally awesome happens.
Zephie, do you realise that unless you release your translation without original video and soundtrack (i.e. in SRT/ASS/whatever subtitles file format), your fansubs are perfectly legal? For example, opensubtitles.org and divxsubtitles.net operate in the USA for years and nobody sued them. In fact, your translation is nothing other than fan fiction and fan art which are perfectly legal and acceptable to everyone.
I was in similar situation (under the legal threat) for making a translation patch for Pokemon Sapphire game. Neither Nintendo of America or Russian Nintendo (compare Nintendo with Fu**imation!) were able to win their cases (in Russia and U.S. respectively): my work, distributed in form of patch without any relation to original game ROMs was considered as perfectly legal under both countries’ laws.
So I humbly ask your team to reconsider the decision on this case. Just think how many people you could make happy…