The 2nd industry panel was a moderated panel.
Technology, Entertainment and Licensing
Ken Iyadomi – President & CEO, Bandai Entertainment
Vu Nyugen – VP Business Development & Strategy, Crunchyroll
Trulee Karahashi – Society for the Promotion of Japanese Anime
Asako Suzuki – Director of Manga, CMX
Moderated by Justin Sevakis, Director of New Media, Anime New Network
Licensing is becoming more, not less, complicated. Multiple parties want approval and control rights about how things are released. The Japanese distributors have no real internet strategy because they fear the impact on DVD sales as well as piracy.
The charging system is a problem. In Japan the ISP’s or phone companies can do charging for download content, but in the US those companies want too high of a fee. Which leaves the options as credit cards and paypal, both harder to use. The only real alternative is an ad-supported model.
Issues with Blu-Ray. Since there is no region code separating Japan and the US, we can’t release Blu-Ray here before the Japanese distributors do to avoid reverse-importation.
According to Crunchyroll, they now offer DRM-free, platform independant DTO.
According to Suzuki, Scanlations aren’t affecting sales because the translations aren’t very good and people want to buy books. CMX is not worried about scanlations and is also not interested in online options.
Next steps: Looking at silmulcast, DTO, community building/brand engagement. There have been issues with mobile delivery as phone companies want an episode of anime trimmed down to 10 minutes, and they’re not going to do that.
Regarding leveraging P2P technologies or incorporating fansubs groups, there were lots of ambiguous “that’s a good question” type of answers with no real thought or information.
Seems like the same load of industry talk that every company makes when they’re trying to avoid the issue. While I don’t like the idea of the industry accepting Crunchyroll as legitimate now, it has taken, in the past, outrageous actions to produce results. As much as I despise they’re methods, if it means forcing the industries hand, it’s better than nothing.