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***relentlessflame*** · 2019-09-30, 05:42

The short and simple answer to the question is that, for AnimeSuki, there isn't any foreseeable future in doing any torrent tracking or being involved with that anymore.

One of the issues with this kind of thing nowadays is that, although we make some sort of moral/ethical distinction about licensing status, it actually makes no difference to the rightsholders (there's no legal distinction), and these days most of the copyright takedown notices are automated/scripted. So you can't really treat it like the old days where you hope the industry will turn a blind eye to your site just because you abide by a sort of code of conduct; you're either "a piracy site" or "not a piracy site." If you're going to be a piracy site, you have to be prepared to deal with the related complications, but it's pretty hard to justify that amount of effort (and likely cost) for something so super niche.

Combine that with what was said above... most people don't make any distinction about licensing at all (or even know what it is these days), and even torrents themselves are mostly supplanted by streaming (both legal and illegal). So to run a torrent tracker for unlicensed, generally-older anime would be almost impossible, I think, unless some of the admins at sites currently in this field had a real passion for this niche.

It seems to me that, at this point, this has turned into more of an archivist project than anything strictly related to licensing or BitTorrent. As fansubs were the only way some of these old super-niche shows were ever made available in English, there'd be a historic value in trying to preserve all those files somehow and make them available in some form or fashion. Here too I don't think this is really a project that AnimeSuki would be involved with anymore, but I can definitely see the value of such a project.

So anyway, for AnimeSuki the chapter is fully closed on playing this role, but perhaps a new team will take on this problem and cast a new vision for how it can be solved in this day and age.

2019-09-30, 05:42	Link #3
*relentlessflame* 　 Administrator Join Date: Dec 2003 Age: 41	The short and simple answer to the question is that, for AnimeSuki, there isn't any foreseeable future in doing any torrent tracking or being involved with that anymore. One of the issues with this kind of thing nowadays is that, although we make some sort of moral/ethical distinction about licensing status, it actually makes no difference to the rightsholders (there's no legal distinction), and these days most of the copyright takedown notices are automated/scripted. So you can't really treat it like the old days where you hope the industry will turn a blind eye to your site just because you abide by a sort of code of conduct; you're either "a piracy site" or "not a piracy site." If you're going to be a piracy site, you have to be prepared to deal with the related complications, but it's pretty hard to justify that amount of effort (and likely cost) for something so super niche. Combine that with what was said above... most people don't make any distinction about licensing at all (or even know what it is these days), and even torrents themselves are mostly supplanted by streaming (both legal and illegal). So to run a torrent tracker for unlicensed, generally-older anime would be almost impossible, I think, unless some of the admins at sites currently in this field had a real passion for this niche. It seems to me that, at this point, this has turned into more of an archivist project than anything strictly related to licensing or BitTorrent. As fansubs were the only way some of these old super-niche shows were ever made available in English, there'd be a historic value in trying to preserve all those files somehow and make them available in some form or fashion. Here too I don't think this is really a project that AnimeSuki would be involved with anymore, but I can definitely see the value of such a project. So anyway, for AnimeSuki the chapter is fully closed on playing this role, but perhaps a new team will take on this problem and cast a new vision for how it can be solved in this day and age. __________________ [...]