Lecture Tomorrow
The Berkman Center will not host a Berkman luncheon series event tomorrow -- we're taking the day off. Instead, we recommend that you attend Ian Condry's lecture, "Anime Fans and the Copyright Wars: What Should Japan's Content Industries Do About Online Piracy?" at 12:30 at MIT:
Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist of Japan and professor at MIT, will discuss a phenomenon known as "fansubbing" whereby non-Japanese fans of anime (Japanese animated films and TV programs) digitize broadcasts in Japan, translate them into English, add subtitles, and make them available online for free using peer-to-peer software. These fans recognize that what they are doing infringes on copyrights, yet they have developed an ethics to the practice that includes removing links to their translations once the show has been licensed or released in the US market. Fansubbers' practical efforts to re-define "fair use" for transnational media offer lessons for other industries' attempts to deal with online piracy.
Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist of Japan and professor at MIT, will discuss a phenomenon known as "fansubbing" whereby non-Japanese fans of anime (Japanese animated films and TV programs) digitize broadcasts in Japan, translate them into English, add subtitles, and make them available online for free using peer-to-peer software. These fans recognize that what they are doing infringes on copyrights, yet they have developed an ethics to the practice that includes removing links to their translations once the show has been licensed or released in the US market. Fansubbers' practical efforts to re-define "fair use" for transnational media offer lessons for other industries' attempts to deal with online piracy.