It's bad to pirate anime

I don't know there are worse crimes than watching pirated media.
If it's there people will watch it.

Me fr fr

Not everyone can afford physical or streaming services, and you want people to just stop doing what they enjoy? No, thank you.

I'm aware that a distinction between stealing an apple and pirating an anime is that in the latter case, you don't make it so there's less anime to go around. I do however believe in intellectual property rights.

And I think with enough self reflection most people would. Otherwise you'd support my right to print copies of the Game of Thrones novel and support my right to sell it for profit without compensating George R.R. Martin.

The lost media bit did make me chuckle nonetheless! Good humor.

I think there's a good exception when distributors have made it exceptionally hard to get the product legally.

This hinges on whether you view intellectual property rights as legitimate. Once you do, we just go to an analogy of a store and none of this makes sense.

Suppose you're correct and it's really much more profitable for you to buy their merchandise rather than use legal streaming services. We'll ignore that more people will use a streaming service rather than buy merchandise. Nonetheless this is like saying it's okay to shoplift an apple from a supermarket if you will one day buy a TV from the store. No, you should buy the apple and buy the TV. You don't buy TVs to make up for stealing apples.

Now if the store wants to offer apples for free because it encourages more people to buy more pasta or more TVs even, that's fair enough. But that's for the business to decide. Crunchyroll does actually let you have some "free apples." You just need to watch ads, and you don't have access to all the shows.

Just because Crunchyroll and Netflix took a worse hit doesn't mean the anime industry didn't also take a hit.

Also, it's not okay to steal from someone just because they're rich and not a good person. The question isn't whether someone who owns something is a good person. The question is whether they own it. If they own something, it's wrong to steal what they own.

Property rights involve being able to restrict the use other people have with regards to your property. So if I own a chair, part of me owning a chair involves being able to tell you whether or not you can use my chair. This is not just a matter of "if you can't use it, I can't use it." You don't gain the right to use a chair I own just because I am not currently using it. My point being, someone with intellectual property rights has the right to exclude you from using it. And I think having this as a system is extremely reasonable. Again, otherwise I am allowed to create mass copies of Game of Thrones novels and mass sell them for profit.

As for the other analogies you're talking about, that's a matter for the owner of the intellectual property to decide. They can't feasibly enforce you not sharing VHS tapes, but if they could, I don't see why that wouldn't be a legitimate extension of intellectual property rights. Again, having property rights involves having the ability to restrict how other people use what you own.

Wouldn't you be watching the "censored" version for free anyway? It's not like you're pirating an uncensored version.

I also doubt much anime is seriously censored. I'm aware there are notable cases like Prison School having weird dub translations. But if it were ubiquitous I'd assume people would bring up many more egregious translations than they do.

You're thinking within the currently existing legal framework. If you do not recognize intellectual property rights, this could be done out in the open. Otherwise, even if it were not me since I am not wealthy, someone with sufficient capital could make the necessary investment. The investment would be much smaller than the amount of investment to make the original work. George R.R. Martin needed to exert creative effort. Publishers just need to mass print copies and distribute the books.
If the owners of a business want to give some of the product for free, that is fine. But that is up to them. Again, if people want to view some anime for free, you can actually do this legally on Crunchyroll if you are willing to watch some ads.

@Freshell
The thing is that people have no idea how FEW money streaming does.
There was a band once saying that buying a single shirt already gave them more profit than hearing their songs a thousand times on Spotify.

Likewise, if you buy a BD or any piece of merchandise to an anime, you're giving more money to it than you ever could by watching it on NETFLIX or Crunchyroll. IIRC there was a study that people who pirate movies end up giving more money to the creators because of that, but I couldn't say without a dedicated study that this would also apply to anime fans.

And you could also go with the argument that the money they "lose" with me pirating is the same money they would lose with me not pirating and not watching it.

@thewiru I don't like this argument, it is like you can't buy the bd/merch and watch it by official means. How the hell it is being counted? What about anime without merchandising and bd s?

You can make the argument that they lose potential for money with you pirating. Pirates don't operate on loss too. So you are supporting their enemies.
People seem to pirate even things that are available for free if they have a chance.

I assume that would be an anime made for charity then, because otherwise how tf is it is going to make money?

I don't morally condemn or shame piracy, especially for those in underserved/low-income countries and for obscure/unavailable titles. However, we should be honest that a good chunk of piracy comes from wealthy regions like the US and Japan that don't lack legal options, and that the lion's share of pirate activity centers around recent/airing anime and some classics that are available in those regions.

Legal sites sell subscriptions and pay licensing fees and royalties to the rights-holders in Japan. That's how the global anime industry works, unless you have some explanation for legal sites being able to stream for free and keep all the profit for themselves.

Paying for one or more services and pirating content that isn't on it/them is a reasonable middle ground between "pay for everything" and "pay for nothing." The stance that many pirates take of "I won't pay anything unless they come up with one cheap service that has every anime ever" is not realistic.
If that were true for anime fans, we wouldn't have seen the US DVD market crash (and subsequent decline of revenue in Japan) in the late 2000s. Incidentally, the industry recovered when legal streaming became viable.
Short answer: very different. Long answers below.

@thewiru Streaming fees, license agreements, Broadcast network ads for the timeslot, generally something made out of oysters that helps you to look healthy and is 0% related to anime.