So this confuses me. They were a pirate site, and everyone knew they were pirate site, and then an investment company drops millions of dollars into them so they can go legit.
Doesn't that just expose the investment to lawsuits from all the companies whose content they were pirating? I mean, a studio may send a cease and desist letter but never pursue serious court action because there's no assets to take from a website that's run by a couple of college students. But once they get an influx if cash, now there's something worth suing over. Even if they stopped posting pirated content, shouldn't their previous acts still be subject to litigation?
Clearly that didn't happen, but I'm just wondering why.
There's probably some whack-ass reason involving a combination of Japanese IP laws, said Japanese companies not giving a fuck, with the added potential of 'It's free advertising' for said companies.
Japanese companies can do this thing that western companies seem to have forgotten how to do, think about the future. Why sue and get a one time payment, or maybe a small yearly payment, when you can take the deal, and make money from streaming for years and years to come and actually expand the audience paying for your content in an entirely new part of the world?
Is it really all that different than how pornhub strong-armed the porn industry into making them legit only after letting millions of people host illegally ripped movies, or how Youtube convinced the record labels to give them favorable terms after letting millions of people upload random songs on the platform for years? How about Spotify saturated the entire world in streaming music until the record companies finally realized that this was the new paradigm and signed deals with them? (Spotify did what Napster couldn't) Or how uber ignored local laws in some places that made private taxi services illegal until everyone saw how much better it was and forced politicians to look the other way? (becoming so ubiquitous that now the mere threat of removing uber from a city is enough to change the law) The first person who breaks the law gets to keep the jewels - then they help change the law so nobody else can do the same.
To answer your question directly, the business proposition led to more continuing profits than the lawsuit against the investors would have raised. An offer they couldn't refuse.
What always confused me though was why crunchroll remained dominant even after Japanese saw there was demand. Why couldn't another company convince them that it's time for a new business model, or start competing services? Vic Mignogna for example should have lots of contacts in Japan. The Japanese companies
themselves could simply stream their original content in a region-unlocked form and get subscribers from all over the world. Maybe let users upload subs the way YouTube used to do.
So this confuses me. They were a pirate site, and everyone knew they were pirate site, and then an investment company drops millions of dollars into them so they can go legit.
Doesn't that just expose the investment to lawsuits from all the companies whose content they were pirating? I mean, a studio may send a cease and desist letter but never pursue serious court action because there's no assets to take from a website that's run by a couple of college students. But once they get an influx if cash, now there's something worth suing over. Even if they stopped posting pirated content, shouldn't their previous acts still be subject to litigation?
Clearly that didn't happen, but I'm just wondering why.
There's probably some whack-ass reason involving a combination of Japanese IP laws, said Japanese companies not giving a fuck, with the added potential of 'It's free advertising' for said companies.
But I could be completely off.
Japanese companies can do this thing that western companies seem to have forgotten how to do, think about the future. Why sue and get a one time payment, or maybe a small yearly payment, when you can take the deal, and make money from streaming for years and years to come and actually expand the audience paying for your content in an entirely new part of the world?
Is it really all that different than how pornhub strong-armed the porn industry into making them legit only after letting millions of people host illegally ripped movies, or how Youtube convinced the record labels to give them favorable terms after letting millions of people upload random songs on the platform for years? How about Spotify saturated the entire world in streaming music until the record companies finally realized that this was the new paradigm and signed deals with them? (Spotify did what Napster couldn't) Or how uber ignored local laws in some places that made private taxi services illegal until everyone saw how much better it was and forced politicians to look the other way? (becoming so ubiquitous that now the mere threat of removing uber from a city is enough to change the law) The first person who breaks the law gets to keep the jewels - then they help change the law so nobody else can do the same.
To answer your question directly, the business proposition led to more continuing profits than the lawsuit against the investors would have raised. An offer they couldn't refuse.
What always confused me though was why crunchroll remained dominant even after Japanese saw there was demand. Why couldn't another company convince them that it's time for a new business model, or start competing services? Vic Mignogna for example should have lots of contacts in Japan. The Japanese companies themselves could simply stream their original content in a region-unlocked form and get subscribers from all over the world. Maybe let users upload subs the way YouTube used to do.