How is anime and manga piracy "good" for the industry?

The way I see it, most people who are pirating probably weren't gonna spend money on it anyway, so atleast they can be a source of talk and get other people interested in it, who themselves may be willing buy the subscription/physical/digital media.

Before \~2014 piracy was the only way overseas fans could watch most anime as it was airing, Crunchyroll used to be a piracy site. Without piracy the overseas anime audience wouldn't be as big as it is today. To some extent this effect remains true, though not to the same magnitude. People without legal access to anime remain anime fans due to access to piracy.

I watch the anime for free and if I really really like them, I consider buying them on sale one day. ;P Or I buy merch from time to time.

Its not, for japanese culture propagation maybe, but industry its not, they are not getting a dime on it

Basically the logic is that pirates, will eventually become legal consumers (was true for me) or that they will support the industry in other ways. I guess in that frame, sure, anime is very big internationally right now, and one could argue piracy helped support that. CR is a former pirate site after all.

I guess as a mainly retro/niche anime watcher I could add that your 90% point is also a good argument for it. There is still lots of retro niche shows that lack any form of legal streaming, or even legal availability at all. Piracy still allows for works like that to still be easily accessed. This is a big issue in manga spaces too, where there are so many works that have no legal release, and fan translators are all you got.

That said...personally I really really fucking hate self righteous pirate arguments that do try to self righteous justify what is basically taking without paying. I didn't blame Japanese creators for wanting to crack down on it, even when I benefited largely from it. Artists have a right to protect their work, and I don't think anyone has the right to get mad at that.

In the end, most pirates are not protesting what they think are unfair streaming practices, or are watching niche hard to find anime or are even supporting the industry legally in other ways. They are just opportunistically looking for free entertainment, without providing any sort of contribution. Which fine whatever, everyone's circumstance is different, not everyone treasures the industry whatever; however, you don't get to pretend to be virtuous doing it. I wasn't when I relied on it. Now, it is a bit more virtuous (I wanted my Kai Falconer cut lol) however, yeah I mean sometimes it really is just hey I am subbed to Netflix and CR...I don't want to pay for Disney + or the inverse. I am just not going to pretend that is a righteous decision.

I won't say if piracy does have a positive effect on the overall revenue of the industry....especially now where anime is not a niche hard to find thing. I don't have enough info for that.

Even though these days it feels difficult to consume all the anime because they are scattered across various streaming services, 10-20 years ago it was 3x as hard. Piracy solved a distribution problem and made it so anime gained a greatly increased market share and went from a niche hobby to more mainstream. That created capital and interest on the industry side in building up the distribution network to connect with the international market. 10 years ago the overwhelming majority of income for the anime industry came from within Japan. Now its 56% coming from the international market. Anime piracy basically was the first several steps on a path that doubled the size of the industry.

At any given time, its assumed piracy hurts because its seen as diverting money from the industry that exists now, while the benefits of more widespread distribution and market penetration is 5-10 years away. That's how the argument typically works.

Well, I’ve bought merch from shows I watched that wasn’t available on any paid platform.

Robbing banks is good for the economy because the unexpected loss of money means the government has to try harder to increase productivity!

[](#fuukothumbsup)

People don't pirate because "it's good for the industry", the pirate because

- Why not?
- Paying $0 is better than paying some $
- Some shows are not available in their countries
- They don't like having to pay for 17 different services to watch 1 show on each service
- They think a company that can't even get subs right doesn't deserve their money
- Sometimes the free product is better than they one they would pay for

Anyone who says they pirate because it's good for the industry is just pretending to be righteous/arguing for the sake of arguing.

The only reason I hear is that like a decade ago, piracy made anime popular in other countries, now it is pretty popular across the globe


And now if someone hits me with the logic of it makes anime popular, I just don't think it increases the popularity on the same level as it used to do a decade ago, cause now there are official legal ways to watch anime in most of the countries


Now its just used as a reason for people to validate their piracy for a good cause👍

I've never paid for anime streaming but I have paid way more in official merch than I would ever pay in a lifetime for subscribing to any platform. I am fully capable of subscribing but there's no service that provides all the anime in one place and without region restrictions. Piracy is just easier. I also pay for movie tickets.

Eventually, most fans transition from piracy (usually when they’re younger and poorer) to legit sources, assuming they’re available. Mostly due to convenience. However, this does mean that legit sources have to work a little to make sure piracy isn’t TOO convenient.

Globally, people do pirate and globally not every country has manga cafes. People want to try different and new series all the time. You liked first chapter? Why not buy the rest?

Some countries are behind the modern series and some countries has corrupted corpo that only publish first few chapters/seasons of a popular manga/anime and leave it be. Since they already claimed the publishing rights, no other corporation can show it to local consumer either. And this is why, non japanese speakers are commonly using pirate.

For example there wasn't even a single published manga in my country ten years ago. Now we have lots of Naruto (but not all of it) it's okay but if I want to read Gunnm or something else, there is no choice but to learn another language and purchase from amazon etc. But guess what? Some countries even block that so you can't purchase from outside of your country if it's too expensive.

I watched fujimoto mini series from prime but there was one episode blocked in my country for example. It's bonkers. (that one episode, the boyfriend turns into girl)

There are also very cheap or poor people who can't afford even a small subscription fee but still want to enjoy. You can't sell anything to those people at all, they are not the target consumer. Corpos think they are, but they are wrong.

TL:TR; some countries suck and people pirate.

> the industry

What part of the extended anime industry? Piracy can directly affect some interests (streaming services) and others indirectly (anime studios payed by contract).

> “good”

I like to think that piracy is sort of similar to Comiket where fanzines/doujinshi are encouraged to be bought and sold although legally it is not really allowed. Piracy, likewise, serves as a platform to enable people to consume and eventually talk about anime with others when otherwise they had no choice. The exposure is probably a net positive as a sum of all parts (though, I couldn’t back that up) and you will get some people (source: me!) who will eventually go down the legal route and become a consumer not just of anime, but of the merchandise, bd, songs, manga/ln, … which benefits all the sponsors.

Other comments have covered that piracy and fansubbing is what built western anime audiences.

Right now with streaming rights so concentrated with just a handful of services I think that piracy fills the role of a "public option" of a sort to keep Crunchyroll and it's pitiful competitors somewhat honest. If you don't like the way that CR is handling their subs there's nowhere else to watch it since they have the exclusive license.

The only way to "vote with your wallet" is to simply stop paying CR money. It would be great if this wasn't the case, but that seems to just be how it is these days.

I've bought thanks to piracy around 200 titles in the 2000's on R1 dvd's. Which was technically still illegal because importing them in Europe is not allowed.
I still pirate and buy what I really like, but I refuse to give money to a streaming service that started as a piracy site.

I used to read manga for free  when there was  no other option but I don't anymore because quite frankly now that we have legal access to a lot of it the argument about stuff being niche or unavailable is a moot point. Also, I hate the anger people have that authors don't want their hardwork given away for free. I read a comment earlier where someone acted like it was terrible authors were commenting under a manga aggregator site to remove their work. Would you like to spend hours doing something that also makes your living for you, only for a bunch of entiled people steal it because they simply don't want to pay to read your work? Oh they enjoy it but not enough to support their favorite authors in any real way.


All the moralizing people come up with is bs they simply don't want to pay for anime There is no ands ifs or buts about it. 

Lots of people who pirate are willing to spend money on merchandise anyways. Like most film and tv it’s actually just advertising for the merchandise.

The anime industry keeps publishing new figures of how much money “piracy is losing them” but at the end of the day, they can’t understand that there’s anime people want to watch but aren’t being given the legal means in which to do so so ultimately full blame lies on the anime industry

It is not good at all period, but back in the days it was the only way to watch a lot of the animes since not that much got brought over to the west. So we did it because there was no other options, but today people just do it with everything even the stuff which is fully licensed. They try to explain why it's not bad even though when no one pays nothing is actually produced at all. The latest crackdown on these sites for manga and manwah just shows these asian companies have had enough and these sites rly should have sticked to only pick up stuff which is not offically published to the western world.
For me it is a no brainer I love animes so I pay to watch it, because if no one pays, it would just be as bad as it was when I was young where nothing was available.