May 18, 2007
Anime BitTorrent Focus: Love the Sharing
Posted by Devin
Downloading unlicensed anime has never been easier. IRC used to be the place where fansubbers distributed their new releases, but five or six years ago BitTorrent and other p2p trackers sites like AnimeSuki took over. Now thousands of unlicensed anime (Unlicensed here, btw) can be downloaded and distributed.
A new study published today says that BitTorrent’s are hot…but for TV:
TV-series are by far the most shared files on BitTorrent. Nearly 50% of all the people who use BitTorrent at any given point in time do this to download a TV-show, even though the number of available torrents are much lower than for Music or Video. The second most popular torrent category based on the number of downloaders and uploaders is Video (15.7%), followed by Games (8.6%), Music (7.8%) and of course XXX (6.0%).
Next on the list is Anime (5.4%). When it come to shear number type of torrents are offered, Anime (4.3%) lacks again behind Music (25.9%), Video (24.2%), Applications (13.3%), and Games (7.8%).
However, not all is lost. It seems anime fans do have a spine:
Sharing is one of key features of BitTorrent etiquette. The more people that are sharing a file, the faster other people are able to download it. If we take a look at the sharing ratios of the categories we see that Anime fans have an impressive share ratio of 2.5, and are sharing the most. Anime fans are followed by people who download Music (ratio 1.9) and Applications (ratio 1.5) respectively.
Its not suprising that licensing companes are starting to distribute their warez via BitTorrent: Kadokawa and ADV has been leveraging it for promotion reasons for the last couple of years.
Does that mean that people who share anime are more honest because they share so much? I wonder how that breaks down between anime that is licensed and unlicensed?
Filed To: Distribution / Digital / Licensing
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[…] Because the audience anime companies serve is some of the most proficient online, there’s no doubt that anime more any other medium is shared on p2p networks. The danger is fans often don’t understand the rights and wrongs of IP. Take the quote from one 17 year old: “I wouldn’t steal a car. I wouldn’t steal a DVD. But I might borrow a DVD from a friend. And what’s the Internet these days, but a big group of friends sharing stuff?” [And] ultimately, because downloading is just too easy…too attractive to resist. A click of a mouse and “it’s all at our disposal.” […]
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