Pirating anime music in the 1980s

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labsenpai
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Re: Pirating anime music in the 1980s

Post by labsenpai »

Fireminer wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2020 6:30 am Did anyone here use MiniDisc when it came out?
I used Sony's MD for a few years; I think the player could record/mix from a variety of sources, which is why I bought it. That, and I consider Apple's insidious wares something I can live without.
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Drew_Sutton
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Re: Pirating anime music in the 1980s

Post by Drew_Sutton »

davemerrill wrote:Cassettes, on the other hand, were just about perfect. You could take them anywhere, you could listen to them privately on a Walkman, in the car stereo, in a boom box on a picnic, in a home stereo system at home. They sounded good, you could record anything you wanted on them, they even made dual-cassette boom boxes and cassette decks to facilitate copying from one cassette to another.
This echos a lot of other folks' comments here but I'll add to it - cassettes were super flexible because they were so widespread. Even though I didn't get into anime until the 90s, everybody and their mother had access to a cassette player of some type, most people had ones with two decks, perfect for recording. I didn't have a car with a CD player until the early 2000s but I think the couple cars my family bought in the 90s all had cassette decks.

I never had any official anime cassettes or copies of them, but I recorded my own mix tapes. I had a few, usually taped from playing a VHS through the TV, until I started buying anime CDs in my teens. A few tapes I made copying from CD, which was mostly our of convenience for having in the car, until I got a car with a CD player. At that point, making mix CDs (anime and otherwise) pretty much exploded for me. Most of my music is on my phone (or accessible via my phone, but I'm never opposed to making mix CDs).
Fireminer wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2020 6:30 am Did anyone here use MiniDisc when it came out? I always like the type of records/optical discs that you can play from the caddies--that is why I still stick with my PSP and a bunch of UMD.
I personally wasn't big on them; have a couple of CD singles that used them. My friend in high school from Macau absolutely loved them.
SteveH wrote:I don't think I would use the term 'pirate' for music sharing circa the '80s. AFAIK there was never a network of people bootlegging music cassettes. Let us not forget that the music industry worked with the music publishing community to build a 'tax' into blank tape prices to cover 'lost revenue' due to recording a LP onto tape. I consider that a de facto license to reproduce for private use.

Pirate definitely fits the SM/Son May/Evergreen and whatever else they were called CDs, an epidemic during the '90s to today.
While I agree that there should be a distinction between copies for personal use or limited distribution, the construct of copyright, particularly in the US now, is that there is no such distinction. And yes, even if the legit products weren't for widespread sale, I am sure that whatever the Japanese equivalent to the RIAA would say "yeah, it's piracy" in between determining costs of prosecution and astonishment that foreigners liked the music to their cartoons.
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_D_
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Re: Pirating anime music in the 1980s

Post by _D_ »

That is the operative word NOW. At the time in the early 1980s, things were much more flexible. It wasn't until the Reagan era as I recall that things started to get draconian, though there was some rumblings after the Betamax case. I never heard of a Japanese outfit suing a fan in the 1980s. This was at a time when Komiket was a big thing and fan works were allowed. But nowadays, everyone is ready to call in the lawyers for ANY (perceived) infraction. Frankly, I think it's gotten out of hand...
davemerrill
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Re: Pirating anime music in the 1980s

Post by davemerrill »

I'm unclear as to how fan-made artwork and and fan-made comics relates to the outright physical reproduction of copyrighted works, but apart from this whole COVID-19 thing, Comiket is doing just fine, cheerfully selling derivative works as usual.

Japan's been prosecuting pirate sales of copyrighted works all this time. There are provisions in Japanese law to allow for the home recording of media for personal use, however.
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